Respecting the Law of the Harvest

You reap if you sow, you reap what you sow, you reap after you sow, you reap more than you sow. That's an eternal law that God has put into effect.

And so you do well and you live your life with an active respect for that law. It's called the principle of sowing and reaping and it's old as time itself. And Pastor Paul Shepherd is going to old school on today's Destined for Victory. Hello and thanks for listening today.

We live in a results oriented culture, one that wants immediate gratification, immediate blessing, often with as little sacrifice as possible. We ask God to bless America, but America has not always honored God. Today, Pastor Paul reminds us of one of the key principles to godly living and to receiving his blessing and favor in our lives. Stay right here or visit pastorpaul.net to listen anytime on demand. That's pastorpaul.net.

You can also subscribe to our podcast at Apple podcast at Spotify or wherever you get yours. Now here's Pastor Paul with today's Destined for Victory message, Respecting the Law of the Harvest. Jeremiah chapter six, verse 16. Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it. Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths.

Ask where the good way is and walk in it. This is the second installment in a series which I've entitled Old School Wisdom We Still Need Today. And in the last message, the opening message, I made the point that as I look at this series, I have two audiences in mind. First are young people. I am preaching especially to young people, teens, you who are in your 20s, you who are in your early 30s or so. The under 40 crowd is who I'm preaching to because I am very interested and I'm very aware of the need to prepare the generation following us for the baton that my generation is going to hand to you.

The baton of leadership, the baton of parenthood, the baton of representing the kingdom of God in this dark age. And we want you to be fully equipped. And so I have you in mind as I preach this series.

And then the second target audience are people who are over 40, in your 40s, in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, who still have a fire in your belly, who still want to see God move, who still want to see great things happen, who feel like since there's still time on the clock and the game hasn't been called, I want to have a great third quarter, a great fourth quarter of my game. I'm not trying to go out like a wimp. I'm trying to go out like a winner. I want to see God do some great and mighty things in and through and for my life. And so I have you in mind too. If you're hungry, I believe God wants to feed you in a special way.

And so that's who I'm shooting for in this series. Now, in the opening message, we discussed the importance of becoming excellent followers. That was the first nugget of wisdom.

Become an excellent follower of those God has placed in your life to lead you. I talked about the importance of parents being real parents. Don't take your parenting advice from these modern gurus. Don't do that because they don't know what they're talking about. Bless their hearts.

You need to take your parenting advice from the Word of God. You need to look at how your parents and your grandparents saw the world and prepared you. It was better than this newfangled stuff. I said it was better than this newfangled stuff. Their old sayings were better. They used to give you that mother wit, that common sense stuff. My mother used to say common sense ought to tell you some things. And then she'd go on and explain to you what she was talking about. But the problem is because we've turned from the Word of God, common sense is no longer common.

No longer common. And so we've got to go back to the Word of God where we'll find God's plan for parenting. Talk about the importance of following pastoral leadership. That's why God places pastors in the body of Christ. He gave some apostles and prophets, some evangelists, and then he gave some of us to be pastors and teachers.

The evangelists might help get you saved, but the pastor, especially one who is a pastor teacher, is going to lead you and feed you and have that long-term spiritual care over your life. And it's important that you follow. And we looked at the principle of followership from the words of the apostle Paul. And I was making a final point that one of the benefits of following your leaders is that they are going to be equipped to provide important building blocks for your future.

Let me just say a few more things about that and I'll move on to what I really want to share in this message. My job as a spiritual leader is to help you gain important building blocks for your future. The more you learn from your parents and from your mentors and from your pastor and from the key people God places in your life, your job is to pull on them and get out of them everything you can possibly get. Because all of those are building blocks for your future. And you're going to look back and say, I'm so glad that my mama taught me this. I'm so glad my father showed me that. I'm so glad my pastor told me that and kept me out of that danger.

Building blocks, they'll have you set up for your future. That's why Elisha wouldn't leave Elijah. Even when he knew the Lord was getting ready to take him, he said, I'm staying with him to the end. Elijah would say, all right now, get ready to go over to this city. So you just stay here. Elisha said, as the Lord lives and as you live, my soul lives, I'm going with you.

And then Elijah will get to another place. All right, now just stay here. I got to go over to another city.

And he said, I'm going with you. That's what you got to learn to do. You got to stick with them. If your mama, your daddy, your pastor is still in your life, stick with them.

Get everything you can get because it's going to be important. And people often talk about the fact that after Elisha showed he won't leave for anything, then finally Elijah looked at him and said, okay, what do you want? And he said, watch this. I want a double portion of your spirit. That's what we need, a double portion of the spirit of those who have led us in righteousness and led us in truth and led us in the way of God, a double portion of their spirit, that part of them that was connected to God and drove them to share God's wisdom with us. Double portion. That means, he said, I want to be your eldest son. I want the bulk of what you're leaving. Not so much in their case in terms of material things because he wasn't his biological son, but he said, I want your spiritual things.

I want everything you know about God. I want it transferred into my life in the portion of an eldest son. And it's just coincidental that when you look at it, although double portion doesn't mean literal number, it means what the oldest is going to get versus the other sibling. But as it happens, Elijah worked 16 miracles in his lifetime and Elisha worked 31, almost double. And if you want to just go on and move it up to 32, when Elisha was dead, you remember? Because some future tears ran into his dead bones, God worked another miracle. So technically, he went on to 32.

The last one was in his grave, but it counts. But that's not what double portion means. Double portion means the share of the eldest who's going to take the mantle and the responsibility. Same thing with Moses and Joshua. Joshua was called Moses' minister before he was called God's minister because he gleaned and he learned and he stuck with him. When Moses would go into the presence of God in the tent of meetings there in the wilderness, in the tent of meeting with God, Joshua was always nearby, gleaning, learning. And as a result, the day came when the Lord blessed him to be able to receive that mantle of leadership from Moses. And that's recorded in Numbers chapter 27, verses 15 through 23 tell you that the day came when the Lord said, all right, now I want you to get Joshua and present him in front of the people. I want you to lay your hands on him and bless him.

And then I want the priest to come and to anoint him because he is going to lead the people after you. He became a successor because he was a follower. And the last example of it of many I could share is Paul, who had his son Timothy. His spiritual son was a timid young man. That's why we have that scripture many people quote that said God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power of love of a sound mind.

Actually, the word fear there would be better translated, timidity. God has not given you a spirit of timidity. He hasn't given you that. He said he's given you a spirit of power, love and of a sound mind. So Timothy didn't look to many people like he would be a strong, effective leader. But listen, when God's hand is on you, you're going to pull it off and, and Timothy became the bishop, the overseer of the church at Ephesus.

And so we need to learn the importance of following our leaders in an excellent way. We're listening to Destin for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. He'll be right back with a second half of today's message.

This message is part of a five part special series called Old School Wisdom We Still Need Today. Look for it online at pastorpaul.net. Search for Destin for Victory right in the palm of your hand anytime by downloading our free mobile app. The app allows you to contact us for prayer, make a safe and secure donation, order resources, and you can even take notes on the daily messages right on your mobile device.

Search for Destin for Victory in the App Store and download it today absolutely free. Galatians 6, 8 tells us that whoever sows to please the flesh from the flesh will reap destruction, but whoever sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Here's Pastor Paul once again with the rest of today's Destin for Victory message, respecting the law of the harvest. Now let's move on to a second nugget of wisdom that I want to share with you. Wisdom point number two is respect the law of the harvest. Respect the law of the harvest. This is one of those old fashioned pieces of wisdom that we desperately need today.

A respect for the law of the harvest. You know why we need it so desperately because we tend to operate today more from the laws of technology and efficiency. We want to get things done efficiently. We want to get them done quickly. We want to get them done in the most modern, most tech savvy way possible. That's the law that we see around us.

All these companies are working hard to try to beat the other companies to we'll get this done. Your phone doesn't do that. Our phone does that.

Your computer doesn't do that. Our computer's a tablet and then you turn it around and it's a computer and then you turn it around and it's a phone. That's the world we live in.

Isn't that right? It's the world we live in. I almost shudder to think what life is going to be like another 20 years from now. I mean because we're always wanting to do something else that's quicker, that's faster, that's more convenient.

Nothing wrong with the law of technology but we shouldn't live our lives based on it. Oh, I love technology. Every time an iPhone comes out, cuz is there. I just will tell you straight up and I got a hook up.

I got a brother in one of the main Apple stores here in the Bay Area. And in fact, he called this week cuz there's another announcement coming this Tuesday and he's a faithful but he said, pastor, alright, now something's coming Tuesday. We can't talk about the details yet but just an alert.

So I've been watching the news. I'm ready for y'all. And the good thing about it is when it comes out and all them other people in the line, I'm able to walk in past the line. Y'all go over to Palo Alto. Whenever this comes out, you'll see me walking into the, just go, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. How y'all doing? Hey.

And I walk on and they had this back room for the VIPs and I go back in the room and they hooked me up and they set it up for me so when I come out, I already got the new thing that y'all waiting and praying for out in the line. I got nothing to do with my message but I just thought I'd share that. Law of technology is great but the law of the harvest is what you live by when you're walking wisdom. The law of the harvest is a principle that God put into effect. He talks about it in Genesis 8 in fact, verse 22. He says, as long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest will never cease. Seed time and harvest, what's God saying? He's saying until I wrap things up on planet and earth, there will be a law I placed in the world known as the law of seed time and harvest or sowing and reaping.

That's God's law. There are four parts to it. Let me give them to you. Jot these down. The first is you reap if you sow.

Jot that down. You reap if you sow. Below that, put you reap what you sow. You reap if you sow, you reap what you sow. Third part of it is you reap after you sow. And the fourth part is you reap more than you sow. Those are the four components of the law of the harvest. You reap if you sow, you reap what you sow, you reap after you sow, you reap more than you sow.

That's an eternal as long as earth endures law that God has put into effect. And so you do well and you live by old school wisdom if you intentionally, deliberately keep that law in mind and live your life with an active respect for that law. So all I want to do is take some time and walk you through it and help you to understand why this God-given law is so important.

Let's look at the first part of it. You reap if you sow. In putting, instituting that law, that principle, God says, I want you to understand that I am the God not only of creation, I am the God of procreation, meaning God wanted to bless our lives and he didn't want to have to bless us every single time reinventing what he did before. So he instituted the law of procreation and he said to original man, what did he say? He said be fruitful and multiply. It's still me but instead of me in creation, it's me in procreation. I gave you seed and as you sow it, you will reap the harvest of the seed. And notice even in the natural world, the fruit has a seed in it so that it can reproduce after its kind.

So if you want to reap, God says through this law, through this principle, you must intentionally sow. No farmer goes out in the fall looking for a harvest that he didn't plant seasons before. I'm going out to get the corn. I don't see any stalks out there.

What? He's never surprised if he did not intentionally sow corn. You don't sow corn, you don't reap corn. You don't sow peas, you don't reap peas. You don't sow anything that is living, that is a part of God's plan of procreation of producing after its kind, then you certainly don't expect to reap. Nothing sown, nothing reaped.

How does that apply to our lives? It means where you want to end up, you determine first and then you sow actions, words, efforts that will get you that result. You want to be wealthy, you have to sow toward that. You have to decide I'm going to do that and you have to sow effort, you have to sow time, you have to sow deliberately in that direction.

Nobody wakes up and says, oh my goodness, I got all this money. Not the way the world works. You have to go in that direction intentionally and you have to sow toward it. The same is true in your spiritual life. I want to really know God in a great way. I want to have an intimate relationship with God. I want him to use me, I want him to bless me, I want him to show me things. I want him just to work in my life, okay? You have to sow. God's not just going pow, jump in your life and suddenly you're spiritually mature and you have insight and wisdom beyond your years. No, you have to sow.

You have to sow. You want to walk in truth? You have to spend time in the word of truth.

Intentionally, deliberately spend time in the word of truth. When I was a teenager, few of us were at a camp meeting. One of our elder statesmen and one of our scholars, Dr. James Earl Massey, walked up to us. He's kind of like a godfather to me. Still calls me to this day every month or two. I can count on it. The phone's going to ring somewhere between four and eight weeks and it'll be Dr. Massey. And he'll say, Dr. Shepherd, he honors me with that title that was bestowed upon me in an honorary degree.

And he says, Dr. Shepherd, this is James Massey. I say, yes sir, I recognize your voice, so glad to hear from you. Just calling to let you know, I'm thinking about you, I'm praying for you. And just keep on doing the good work that you're doing. I get that, he sows that. As an elder statesman, he's a man in his 80s, and he calls me every four to eight weeks with that message.

All of one minute on the phone. I know there's a list of other folk, I'm not the only one, I'm sure, but I'm glad I'm on the list. Glad somebody's praying for me. He walked up to us when I was in my teen years, walked up to me and a few other little young prospective preachers. And he said, I want you young men to get in that word and stay in it.

You'll never regret doing it. God will reveal so many things to you. When you start preaching, you'll never run out of things to say, because the word will be fresh. And he said, I've spent my life in this word. And then he took one of our Bibles and said, I want to show it to you. And then he handed it back to us and said, just open it up and begin reading.

He said, anywhere, just flip it open, begin reading. And so one of us opened our Bible up and began to read. And he said, okay, you're in Zephaniah chapter two.

Somewhere in the middle, you're in about 18, 19. And we were in Zephaniah two. And then he closed it up and one of the other ones did it, opened up. He said, oh, you're in Psalm 38. I mean, every time we did it, all he'd need to hear is a few words or maybe a verse or two. And he knew where we were. I said, my goodness. But that was the harvest of having spent his time in the word.

And so it has to be intentional. You reap if you sow. You want to eat, get a job. You reap if you sow. Because if you sow towards some job, you'll reap a paycheck. So we were taught that as young people. I got to teach it to the new generation. Some of y'all think you're going to get paid because you're cute.

No, you're going to be fine and broke. You reap if you sow. In the old days, that's what allowance was about. In the old days, when I was a kid, that's what allowance was about. I hear these newfangled people say now, no, no, you never tie it to what they do because you want to teach them a sense of responsibility. When I heard the first person say that, I said, are you out of your mind? That's what teaches them responsibility. You want them new sneakers?

I better see checkmarks, buy everything on that chore list. I'm talking about the old fashioned way. I know you're traumatized because you never thought in your life of making your kids actually do something to get money from you. I know you're traumatized. God bless you.

God help your mind as it deals with the trauma. You know, God's principle of sowing and reaping applies to every area of life. Marriage and family, our jobs, friendships, and it applies to our tithes and offerings as well. In fact, God tells us we can test him when it comes to our giving, promising to bless us beyond all we can ask or imagine when we sow generously into his church. One of the best ways you can do that is to become a Destined for Victory partner for as little as $20 a month, joining a growing number of people who help Pastor Paul share the gospel all over the world through the Destined for Victory broadcast. As our way of saying thanks for your partnership, we'll send you a few thank you gifts, including one of Pastor Paul's most popular CDs, The Best of Let My People Smile. So call 855-339-5500 and find out more about how to become a Destined for Victory partner for as little as $20 a month. You can make your pledge over the phone or mail your gift letting us know you wish to become our partner.

Our address, Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. But you can also become our partner from our website, PastorPaul.net. And if you can't become a partner today but can make a generous one-time donation to Destined for Victory, we'd like to send you a booklet from Pastor Paul based on his message, Junk Removal for the Soul. Request it when you make a generous gift this month. And if you need prayer, be sure to stop by PastorPaul.net and use the Contact Us feature to let us know how we can pray for you.

That's PastorPaul.net. A lot of people want to believe that they can do wrong and reap right. A lot of people want to believe that they can sow just barely enough and then reap the harvest of somebody who did more than enough.

You can't go to school and cram before every exam and graduate at the top of the class. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, Respecting the Law of the Harvest. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory.