You reap what you sow, 1
If you were going to plant a seed to “please the Spirit” what kind of seed would it be? Where would you plant it? How would you take care of it?
God gave planet earth a law in the form of a statement. Here it is:
“Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.
This law is genius. When sowing a seed, if it sprouts (germinates), it produces a plant of the same species as the plant it came from.
Let us not race past this. It is fundamental block for human survival. Consider this scenario to help see what would happen if this were not the case.
Imagine you plant a garden in your yard. You have six seeds you harvested from a watermelon. You pull the grass up where you want your garden. It is in a place with adequate sunlight. Or is it? You don’t know which plants will come up, and different plants need different amounts of sunlight. Here in Traverse City, MI, the TC Journey Church building is built on a lot with very sandy soil. The plot where the building is located used to be an orchard. Cherry trees grow awesome here! But orange trees do not.
So imagine, you use a rototiller to plow straight rows in the soil. You mix in some healthy topsoil with your tiller. Then you plant your six seeds in two neat rows of three. How deeply should you plant them? You aren’t sure. It depends on what plant it will become. How apart should you plant them? You don’t know.
You carefully water your seeds. Since you aren’t sure which seeds will grow into which plants, how much water should you use? With all these variables, somehow, miraculously you happen to plant the seeds with the correct amount of sunlight, depth, distance from each other and water. You get it right, and a couple of month later each of your seeds has sprouted!
You invite your botanist friend over to help you identify the plants. She looks at your plants and pronounces you the proud owner of a dandelion plant, a sunflower plant, a maple tree, a poison ivy plant, a pumpkin vine, and a rare form of thistle. But no watermelons. What would you do with such a curious blend of plants?
If this was how the world worked, it would be impossible for humans to grow food in farms. It would be a mysterious grab bag of plants in a random order with different care needs. It is a great blessing that plants and trees bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds.
Nested in this law, is another blessing. We have blessings upon blessings here! The nested blessing is that a plant multiplies seed. For example, from one seed potato you can expect 6-8 potatoes when properly cultivated. From one wheat seed, you can expect 110 wheat seeds in a mature plant. A corn seed can produce 800 kernels of corn or more per ear of corn that the plant develops!
It is amazing that God has blessed his world in such a way that not only does a plant produce fruit with seeds according to its kind, but also that it does so in a multiplicative fashion. Within a couple of generations you can go from one seed to hundreds of thousands.
The ancient writer Paul uses this physical law as an illustration for a law of the spiritual realm. Galatians 6:7-8 NIV says: “Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
It appears that the seeds we plant in our decisions will reproduce a harvest of the same kind and in a multiplicative fashion, just like the seeds in our garden.
We are planting seeds all of the time. Whereas we would chuckle if a child planted a dandelion seed and expected a watermelon to grow from it, we often plant seeds, and expect different plants to grow from them in our lives.
We plant seeds in our own minds by the things we think. We plant seeds in the minds of others by the words we say. We plant seeds in the world by the things we do.
If you were going to plant a seed to “please the Spirit” what kind of seed would it be? Where would you plant it? How would you take care of it?