One spring when my children were young, I tripled the size of my vegetable garden. Our family was growing, and we had a large new freezer where I could put up more vegetables. I enjoyed preparing, planting, and tending the garden, but once my first plants sprouted I realized how much more weeding was necessary. After weeks of hot and sweaty weeding, I knew I had to upgrade from a hoe to a rototiller (to weed in between the rows).

I was off to the tractor store, daydreaming of a freezer packed with green beans, carrots, cabbage, and rutabaga, and a pantry overflowing jars of pickles and tomatoes.

On my way home from the store, I was in a car accident. I wasn’t hurt badly, but my back and neck were sore and I could not work in the garden for weeks.

Those of you who have had a garden know what happened; with no one to tend the garden, the weeds grew rapidly, choking out my tender plants. In just a few days, due to neglect, weeds overgrew all the hard work of getting the soil ready and planting the seeds. The garden did not care if the neglect was accidental or on purpose, and the weeds did what weeds do––they germinated and multiplied.

We default to our sinful nature every day. We battle our flesh with prayer, Bible study, and fellowship. If we don’t battle our flesh, spiritual weeds can take root—fear, self-pity, anger, lust, pride, etc. Sinful inclinations do not go away on their own. If we neglect our hearts, old attitudes will soon take over (Proverbs 4:23).

Christ taught many heavenly truths with stories common people could understand. When they asked if God would give his Spirit to them Jesus replied, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Christ and Paul both used this style of teaching, including the familiar process of sowing and reaping. It is as if he said that every man as he journeys through life is scattering seed at every step. The seed consists of his thoughts, his words, his actions. The seeds that pass from him eventually spring up and bear fruit.

(This class has nothing to do with the Prosperity Gospel also known as the Word of Faith Movement.)

Every life has a field to sow, cultivate, and finally, to reap. We plant by exposure to good or bad influences (habits and friends) and we are cultivating the seed for the coming harvest. We cannot see the seed as it grows however as it develops time will reveal it.

The full harvest is potentially contained in the seed, so it potentially contained the fruit of sin or holiness. “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

We cannot reap a good harvest unless we have sown the good seed. Weeds grow easily without the planting, just as sin springs up naturally in our hearts.

Several of the lessons are from Paul's writings. I highly recommend you view the movie Paul, the Apostle of Christ.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Hi, I'm Robin Sampson. 

Over 20 years ago I found a structured strategy to unlock the treasures of God's Word to see it as one unified story. We journal through the entire Bible in one year using the 12 Bible Eras method studying each era for one month.