"You [all] do not be being deceived, God is not being mocked. For whatever a man may be sowing, this also he will reap."
-You reap what you sow - an timeless proverb, this. Today this ancient adage is widely accepted as wisdom passed down from our forebears, but that saying originated in the Bible, right here, in this very verse. It’s about consequences. Our actions - good or bad - invariably have consequences, and sooner or later we usually have to face up to those consequences. It refers to the law of the harvest, one of the most fundamental laws of nature. After their kind. A grain of corn always will (given proper conditions) and will only bring forth a crop of corn. A grain of wheat always will and will only produce a crop of wheat. A grain of dandelion always will and will only produce a crop of weeds. Whatever seed(s) you plant, you will get a crop of that. If I sow bad seeds or only a few seeds - or if I plant my seeds in bad soil - i can expect to get a bad crop. Similarly, if I sow good seeds, lots of seeds, sowing them in good soil, I can expect to get a fantastic crop. A bountiful harvest. We're talking about outcomes, what comes out based on what goes in. This is the law of the harvest, and it extends beyond the natural realm of seeds and dirt and crops to the arena of life, to our deeds and attitudes and the outcome of our lives. God has wired the law of the physical harvest, for sure, but He is far more vested in the outcomes of life, what comes out of our heart.
-But here is the corollary which turns this ancient proverb into timeless and sobering truth: God is not mocked. And it deserves repeating. God is not mocked. Not ever. The eternal, omnipresent God will not be mocked. The word means to turn up your nose towards someone. To look down on them, to disrespect them. To not take them seriously, to take them for granted or take them out of the equation altogether. But God is always in the equation (whether we like it or know it, or not). He IS the equation! HE is the One with Whom we have to do. Whether to His face, or ‘behind His back’ or in the dark - God sees and knows all. There is nothing which ever escapes His notice, not our tiniest indiscretion, not our briefest of thoughts. Sometimes we act as tho we think He doesn’t know what we’re doing. We think He doesn’t see. Or maybe He doesn’t really care. We think we got away with it, cuz there were no immediate negative consequences. Or maybe we think we wasted our time, cuz there were no positive outcomes. Maybe we tried to do it right and we still got in trouble, or the other guy, the one who cheated or did something wrong, he got away with it. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are deceived if we think that - we are deceiving ourselves. God is not mocked. He sees, and knows, all. He cares, He cares deeply, about people, about our hearts, about what we do and say and think. One day, our chickens will come home to roost. This is a lesser know corollary of the harvest. Chickens. Always. Come. Home. And that is really what is often missing from our understanding of the equation. One day. It talks about timing. God’s timing is impeccable. It is not always immediate, it may not always play out on our timetable, but the Lord of the harvest works on a different schedule. Next verse...
No comments:
Post a Comment