Sermon Tone Analysis

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A Time to Plant And a Time to Pluck

In a copyrighted editorial in /U.S. News & World Report/ entitled "What Are We Planting?"

Marvin Stone (1977) writes: "It's planting time now for America.

The soil awaits decisions that can either shade and comfort the future, or create only thickets."

The burning questions are:

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Should we go on mindlessly wasting precious natural resources, or should we conserve as best we can, keeping in mind our children and our children's children?

Should we perpetuate a welfare system that ... [fosters] waste and corruption?

Or should we perform radical surgery to ensure health and wealth for all of us? ... Should we skimp on money for basic research, while spending on bigger race tracks and sports palaces, with multimillion-dollar contracts for young athletes?

Or should we also be building better libraries and laboratories, planting the seeds of tomorrow's science and technology?

... [In a word], what are we planting, anyway?

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These are questions we could ask about any nation—and they are necessary and urgent questions—but there are even more important questions facing the church—the church of God's people everywhere.

In the divine order of things, there is a law of harvest that affects every man and woman on earth.

It is the law of sowing and reaping.

From the age of responsibility to the hour of accountability, we sow and reap.

What we sow in youthful days, we reap in older years.

What we sow in time, we reap in eternity.

So there is "a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted" (3:2).

The only consolation about this /law/ of harvest is that behind it and beyond it is the /Lord/ of the harvest.

To know Him is to sow and reap to our eternal gain; to ignore Him is to sow and reap to our eternal loss.

Let us then address ourselves to this law of harvest:

!! The Responsibility of Sowing

There is "a time to plant" (Eccl.

3:2).

The responsibility of sowing becomes apparent when we apply the four tests of general inquiry.

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Why should we sow?/*

In the very nature of things, "sowing and reaping" is a law of life.

Therefore, to ask, "Why should we sow?" is to challenge the wisdom of God.

The apostle Paul exposes the impertinence of questioning Omniscience in this regard when he asks: "O man, who are you to reply against God?

Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me like this?'" (Rom.

9:20).

The fact of the matter is that /all/ of life is structured on the law of cause and effect.

Thus it happens that when we sow we also reap.

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What should we sow?/*

One of the world's great thinkers has reminded us:

Sow a thought, you reap an action;

Sow an action, you reap a habit:

Sow a habit, you reap a character:

Sow a character, you reap a destiny.

(Naismith 1962, 193 [1071])

It matters, therefore, what we sow.

In his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul tells us that "he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life" (Gal.

6:8).

The important question then is /what/ is "sowing to the Spirit?"

To find our answer, we do not need to leave the immediate context.

In simple terms, sowing to the Spirit is /loving God/ —Galatians 6:7 declares, "God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."

Loving God is the opposite of mocking God.

To /mock/ God literally means "to turn up the nose at Him," or "to treat Him with contempt."

In the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word is used to describe those who are not prepared to accept that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov.

1:7).

Concerning such, God says, "They would have none of my counsel and /despised/ my every rebuke" (Prov.

1:30).

Conversely, the/ fear/ of God leads to /faith/ in God, and faith in God leads, in turn, to the love of God.

And it is the office of the Holy Spirit to create in us that love of God through the redemptive merit our Lord Jesus Christ.

Only by the Savior's death and resurrection has the groundwork been laid for the sinner's reconciliation to a holy God.

But sowing to the Spirit is not only loving God, it is /loving man./

The apostle exhorts, "As we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith" (Gal.

6:10).

We are in the world to /sow love/—love to God and love to man.

And Paul makes it quite clear that such love is not just sentiment or mere words.

According to the apostle, such love is "doing good to all men"; it is meeting human need—spiritually, socially, and economically.

John echoes this when he declares:

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By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us.

And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth."

(1 John 3:16-18)

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A great many of the social, moral, and civil problems of our lives today could be solved if we knew how to "sow to the Spirit," for the fruit of the Spirit is love: love to God, and then love to man.

So we see that there is a time to plant, and what we should be planting is love.

*/3.

Where should we sow?/*

The Master answered this question, once and for all, when He told the parable of the four soils (see Mark 4:1-20).

There is /the dusty soil./

Along the plowed fields were little paths that became hard and dusty with the trampling of feet.

The fowls of the air immediately gobbled up seed that fell here.

This represents the heart that is defiled by human traffic, and therefore exposed to satanic domination.

There is /the stony soil./

This was ground that had a narrow skim of earth over a shelf of limestone rock.

Seed falling on this ground germinated all right, but because of shallowness of earth and lack of moisture, the sprouting seed quickly died.

There is such a thing as emotional response to the gospel without theological content and spiritual conviction.

There is /the busy soil./

We are told that the Palestinian farmer was a lazy man in those days.

He cut off the top of the weeds, but left the fibrous roots below the surface; consequently, when the new seed began to grow, the old weeds revived in all their strength and choked the harvest.

It is possible to be busy for self and lazy for God.

Room for pleasure, room for business,

But for Christ the Crucified,

Not a place that He can enter,

In the heart for which He died.

adapted by Daniel W. Whittle

There is /the ready soil./

This was the good, clean, and deep soil in which the seed always nourished.

This is the heart that is ready for the gospel of love in Jesus Christ.

So while it is true that the seed we need to sow is love, it is also true that love will not grow in dusty, stony, or busy soil.

Love grows only in ready soil, or good ground.

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When should we sow?/*

While it is clear that /all/ life is sowing and reaping, it is likewise evident that there are two crucial periods in the history of any one of us for sowing and consequent reaping.

One is the time of youth, and the other is the time of old age.

Ask any farmer, gardener, or forester and he will tell you that the two times for successful planting are spring and autumn.

Spring is youth time; autumn is old age.

The emphasis throughout Scripture is on planting when we are young.

Solomon says, "Remember /now/ your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, 'I have no pleasure in them'" (Eccl.

12:1).

There is a springtime of responsiveness.

It is the time of comparative innocence, interest, and initiative.

To a lesser degree, the autumn of life is also a time of decision.

The failure of life and the fear of death are often the incentives that prompt an older person to seek God and to plant his faith in Jesus Christ.

To such, the Bible says, "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor.

6:2).

So we see there is "a time to plant."

But there is also "a time to pluck what is planted," and it involves: