Listen here:

Please remember that sermon notes are meant to act as a guide and may not be exactly what was preached.

Galatians 6:6-10, Mark 4:1-9, 14-20

There are consequences to our actions, cause and effect, every time you choose to take action (or not) there are consequences to that choice. You can choose to get out of bed and come to a Sunday morning bible study and thereby grow in your understanding of God. Or you can choose to stay in bed and completely skip joining with your brothers and sisters as they grow in spiritual unity and understanding.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. – 1 Corinthians 2:14

Society tells us that we gain wisdom by study, accumulation of knowledge, and application of common sense. And that is true to a point, but knowledge and common sense won’t get you Spiritual discernment. Spiritual discernment comes through our obedience to the Word we have, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and prayer.

You can choose to place your agenda, what you want to do, over your spiritual growth and sow to the flesh, or you can sow to the Spirit and grow in spiritual blessings and bear fruit. The seed planted in us is watered and cultivated as we come together and encourage and help one another to grow in our understanding of God’s Word. That is, when we sow to the Spirit. When we apply what we learn together that is when we develop Spiritual discernment.

When we come together to learn in unity, we are sowing to the Spirit. When we practice the love that has been powered into our hearts by bearing one another’s burdens, encouraging, forgiving, bearing with one another, and all the other one anothers, we are sowing to the Spirit. But when we choose to not participate, not obey, and we do not come together to practice those same one anothers, then we are sowing to the flesh. Those that have left the Church, the different congregations, to move on, or who choose not to participate, not to be a part of the local Church, are sowing to their own desires, to their own flesh.

We “sow to the Spirit” by allowing Him to guide and control our actions through loving and serving God and others. When, and if, we do we will reap a reward (eternal life) if we do not grow weary. But, those who focus on satisfying the flesh will reap “eternal destruction “away from the presents of the Lord,” as we are told in 2 Thessalonians, “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” In that place of total darkness there will be gnashing of teeth and no hope of ever being saved.

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds… For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. – James 2:18, 26

My brothers, can a fig tree grow olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. – James 3:12

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Indeed, people do not gather figs from thornbushes, or grapes from brambles.” – Luke 6:43-44

Sheep “beget” sheep, wolves beget wolves… and sloths beget sloths…. What are you reproducing with your actions, priorities, words??

And it is my prayer that your Love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. – Philippians 1:9-11

When we don’t plant seeds, when we don’t “Speak the Truth (God’s Word) in Love” (Ephesians 4:15) then there are consequences, the seed you may have planted could not grow into what it was supposed to be. Your lack of participation in the Kingdom could cost someone or someones or even a hundred fold of someones their eternal souls. And it may even cost you yours…

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. – 1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)

Keep this in mind, you are not to force the Truth down their throats, as I have said in mentoring, people are not always ready to hear what you are saying, you have to prepare the soil for the seed you want to plant, and it may be that the seed you think you are planting is actually watering what was already implanted and it may raise questions as to why, or what, or how, at that point you are cultivating what has already begun to grow.

Some soil is too rocky to accept the seed at that point, but you may be preparing the soil for the seed someone else may plant. Never ever underestimate the power that is behind your faithfulness and your witness of God’s love.  It is the very presence of God’s love in you, the Holy Spirit, that enables and empowers you to grow and bear fruit, to seed the Word of God! So are you sowing to the flesh in and with your everyday activities and words or are you sowing to the Spirit?

J D Greear says, “Without the planting there will never be a harvest,” you will never know what the seed you could have planted might have produced. You don’t know how many apples are in that seed you are to plant, “thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” (Galatians 5:6, Romans 8)

Digging Deeper

• How many apples in a seed?
• Is your life the proof of God’s love?
• What are you sowing?
• Are you planting, watering, cultivating?

Further Reading: Galatians 5:6, Colossians 1:21-24, Luke 10:7, 1 Corinthians 3:5-17, 1 Corinthians 9:3-11, 14, James 1:19-27, James 2:14-26