Sowing and Reaping: Heirs of Grace Sow to the Spirit
Jonathan Rollins - 3/19/2024
About
Call to worship: Proverbs 11:17-21
Text: Galatians 6:6-10
Summary:
Continuing with the theme of walking in the Spirit, Paul urges the Galatians to support those who teach the true gospel, sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh, and continue to love your neighbor as yourself. True teachers will not teach you to obey the law, but rather, because of the freedom found in the grace of Christ, to love one another rather than self. The freedom found in Christ is not to be used to serve the flesh. Sowing to the flesh, will just like in the physical world of sowing seeds, will reap fleshly results. While sowing to the Spirit will reap heavenly results. Paul argues that a day of eternal reaping is coming. And what we sow now will be reaped at the proper time.
Sermon Outline:
- Heirs of Grace Will Support True Gospel Teaching (v. 6)
- Heirs of Grace Will Sow to the Spirit (v. 7-9)
- Heirs of Grace Will Seek the Greater Good of the Body (v. 10)
Prepare
Discussion Questions:
- Read Galatians 6:6-10.
- What is the theme in these verses? How does verse 6 relate to verses 7-10? Based on verse 6, what is to be taught? Is Paul writing to the church at large or to individual Christians?
- How do we deceive ourselves? How do we attempt to mock God? What dies it mean to sow to the flesh? To sow to the Spirit? What is reaped by sowing to the flesh? To the Spirit? Does our sowing and reaping happen in this life or in the next or both? How does this principle affect our sharing all good things from v 6?
- If sowing and reaping is a rule that God has put into the world, how should we use it? To whom should our good be focused? If we have multiple places to choose to spend our time, energy, and money to help others, how are we to decide which place is to get the bulk of our investment? (See also I Timothy 5 and/or ATKT episodes 54 and 55.) Based on Paul’s instruction in v 10, to where should the majority of our charitable investments be made? Is that to the church universal, or to our local body where we know who are the household of faith?