“. . . for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
—Galatians 6:7
Because keeping Him at the forefront of our minds is critical to our well-being, God commands His people to keep feasts to Him at various seasons of the year. These festival seasons are rooted in agriculture, which has been humanity’s mainstay until the relatively recent Industrial Revolution. Although we understand the concepts of agriculture, nearly all of us are removed from the reality of living off the land and depending on God for a good harvest.
But with each festival season, God returns our focus to Himself and to His works and providence. He is repeatedly recalled to His people’s minds for their good, as among the worst calamities is for a man to forget his Creator, Deliverer, and Provider.
In Exodus 23:14-16, the pre-incarnate Christ commands keeping the feasts to Him:
Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty); and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field.
God names two festival seasons in agricultural terms: the Feast of Harvest and the Feast of Ingathering. Despite the mention of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in terms of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, it also has a tangential connection to agriculture because the Wavesheaf offering was made on the day after the Sabbath within it (Leviticus 23:10-14). God required the Wavesheaf to be offered before any harvesting could take place once Israel was settled in the land. Israel had to acknowledge God before the harvest could proceed.
Harvest Symbolism
This passage contains the first mention of “the Feast of Harvest,” which we typically call Pentecost. The title has an obvious literal meaning, but it also contains a metaphorical one. However, we should not limit harvest symbolism just to prophecy, such as the harvest of firstfruits at the end of the age (Matthew 13:39; Revelation 14:15). More broadly, the Bible shows the time of harvest can imply a person receiving the consequences of his behavior, whether good or bad, at any time within his life. A harvest can be a symbol for a time of evaluation of an individual’s labors. God’s judgment of what we produce spiritually is not limited to the end of our lives (I Peter 4:17).
Notice that Exodus 23:16 emphasizes individual labor in connection with both the Feast of Harvest and the Feast of Ingathering (Tabernacles): “the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; . . . when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field” (emphasis ours). In type, those appointed times are when we bring the fruit of our labors before God. Israel did that physically, but for spiritual Israel, God is most interested in our spiritual labors and the spiritual fruit that comes as a result.
Within this harvest symbol, we find the well-known principle of sowing and reaping. In Galatians 6:7, the apostle Paul writes, “God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” Job 4:8 says, “. . . those who . . . sow trouble reap the same.” Proverbs 22:8 reads, “He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow . . ..” Finally, Hosea 8:7 refers to “sow[ing] the wind and reap[ing] the whirlwind.”
Thus, the laws of agriculture also extend to the laws of human behavior. The cause-and-effect principle, action and subsequent reaction, is always at work. If we plant a seed of something harmful, what comes to fruition can only be bad as well. But positively, if we begin with something good, more good will be produced in time—perhaps a great deal of time.
Gambling With Natural Law
One of the effects of industrialization and now digitalization is that we have moved away from constant reminders of natural law and constraints. As the wonders and inventions of mankind fill our minds, we enter a humanistic fantasy where it appears we have advanced beyond consequences. To varying degrees, we believe humanity can always find ways to override natural law; somehow, what we do will not catch up with us. We can overcome poor health with a pill, support profligate living with crypto, conquer sexually transmitted diseases with a shot, or deal with an unwanted pregnancy with a routine surgery.
The late comedian Fred Allen quipped, “Most of us spend the first six days of the week sowing wild oats, then we go to church and pray for a crop failure.” It accurately describes human nature, except that, all too often, the sowing of wild oats does not stop after just six days! Human nature tends to sow the wrong things for as long as it looks like it can get away with it, and then it starts urgently hoping that its harvest will somehow be completely different from what it sowed. Human nature gambles that eternal principles and laws do not apply to itself, as though God could be mocked with enough personal cleverness.
If, in looking at our circumstances, we see trouble, sorrow, or some sort of corruption, wisdom suggests we consider whether we have sown something that has contributed to the evils we are currently reaping. Of course, as with weather and pest problems in agriculture, there will always be elements outside our control, such as the economy, politics, or the actions (or inaction) of others. If a neighbor’s field is full of weeds that go to seed, that can also affect our field—our life. Additionally, sometimes God hedges us in on a difficult road, not because of sin, but because He is perfecting us. (The book of Job is an example of a just man who did not cause his suffering, which his “friends” could not accept.) Even so, maturity begins with owning up to what we have sown, regardless of what part others may have played, a step that must occur before we can improve.
We rarely understand the magnitude of what each seed will produce, not only in the first growing season but also throughout time. Something that starts off so small can become enormous in time and continue multiplying.
Sin Brings Death
The apostle James teaches:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. (James 1:13-15)
How often have we witnessed sin bringing forth death? Perhaps never. God’s immediate judgment—such as He carried out on Uzzah, Nadab and Abihu, and Ananias and Sapphira—does not happen often.
So, is James wrong? On the contrary, God is not mocked. Sin still brings forth death (Romans 6:23). We can be in a state of spiritual death even while we are physically alive. Spiritual death was in view when Jesus told the prospective disciple to “let the dead bury the dead” (Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60), meaning let those who have no spiritual life attend to the burial. Spiritual death is also readily seen in Christ’s letter to Sardis, the church that He says has “a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Revelation 3:1). The members are still breathing, but hardly any spiritual pulse remains.
Thus, death can describe an inferior quality of life in which there is separation from the Creator, the Life-giver, and the Sustainer. Eternal life is defined as knowing Him (John 17:3), and moving in the opposite direction—away from the Life-giver—indicates spiritual death.
Such death began in the Garden of Eden. God told Adam that in the day he ate the fruit, he would surely die (Genesis 2:17). God was not mocked: When Adam ate the fruit, death entered the world (Romans 5:12), even though he kept breathing for almost a thousand years. While still breathing, he was separated from His Creator, a grievous calamity. The ground was cursed, and his quality of life was drastically degraded. Not only that, but the effects of that choice have affected every person throughout time, now some 6,000 years later.
Attempts to Shift Blame
We rarely grasp the incredible potential of each thing we sow. Often, when bad fruit begins to develop from something we have done, we commonly try to find someone else to shoulder the blame and the burden. We may reason that it is only partly our fault—it is mainly someone else’s fault. Adam and Eve tried that, and God did not accept it.
Or we might try to categorize a sin as not really that bad, maybe not even bad at all. It was certainly not as bad as what somebody else did! That may be correct, but it does not keep us from reaping what we have sown.
Part of humanism that influences us is the “right” never to feel guilty. Thus, we often write off the trouble and sorrow we experience as mere coincidence, unrelated to our tiny, trifling infraction. We delude ourselves into thinking that what we say and do has no consequence. We assume what we sow will remain minuscule and certainly not increase to many times its original size.
Another aspect of this universal natural law is that it does not matter whether anybody witnesses our sin. Sowing a seed alone under cover of darkness does not keep the seed from growing. It will germinate because that is what it does, despite perhaps lying dormant for a time. Our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, or ministers may never fully know about our transgression, but their lack of awareness does not stop the law of cause and effect. It only means there may be fewer social consequences. We will still reap what we sow, or God would be mocked.
Any seed of carnality will eventually germinate and grow without regard to other people’s knowledge. Seeds of greed, lust, fear, pride, laziness, impatience, sexual immorality, envy, deception, hatred, selfish ambition, jealousy, or any other sin will bring forth an inferior quality of life, both for us and others. It will produce a life out of alignment with God (see Isaiah 59:1-3), a life the Bible calls death.
Reaping in Kind
God’s law is spiritual (Romans 7:14), reflecting the eternal operating principles of spiritual reality. We cannot advance beyond it, outsmart it, deceive it, manipulate it, charm it, or bribe it. Acknowledged or not, life operates according to principles that Almighty God upholds. Paul put it so simply: God is not mocked; what we sow is what we will reap. If we sow to the flesh, we will reap corruption. But if we sow to the Spirit, we will reap everlasting life.
Whatever seed is put into the ground will always produce more of the same kind, but we should understand that “the same kind” means “within two broad categories,” either corruption or everlasting life. Sometimes, the consequences will occur soon after the sin, such as David’s adultery and murder resulting in sexual sins and violence following his house.
But at other times, the cause and effect may not be as simple as our deceiving someone resulting in someone deceiving us. Instead, the principle can be general: If we act carnally, we will reap corruption. It simply implies a worse condition. It means sorrow and trouble, even if it does not resemble the exact sin we committed.
In Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, God gives sobering specifics of what Israel would reap based on what they had sown. Many of the dreadful curses do not resemble the sown transgressions except in the sense that they had sown corrupt behaviors and reaped more corruption. For example, how common is it today to draw a line between breaking God’s commandments and experiencing terrorism, wasting diseases, fever, and literal crop failure (Leviticus 26:14-16)? No national leader today would dare suggest such a thing. What about recognizing that Sabbath-breaking leads to scattering and captivity (Leviticus 26:33; Ezekiel 20:23-24)? Since they do not recognize these laws as legitimate, their links to curses must not exist.
Paul describes God’s judgments as unsearchable (Romans 11:33). Without God’s intervention, we may be unable to connect the dots between the trouble or sorrow we have now and some transgression we forgot about or thought we got away with.
The Crooked Made Straight—or Not
Using a different metaphor, Solomon writes that what is crooked cannot be made straight (Ecclesiastes 1:15), a reality of life “under the sun” or apart from God. However, when God is brought into the picture, there is hope for recovering from poor choices. Several places in Isaiah speak of God making the crooked places straight (Isaiah 40:4; 42:16; 45:2). God can improve things after we have corrupted them.
Proverbs 16:7 contains an example of this: “When a man’s ways please the LORD, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” God can turn and soften hearts. He can work things out. But the determining factor is whether God is pleased with the man’s ways.
In His mercy, God often blunts the full consequences of sin when the sinner repents. However, with some choices, the course becomes set and repentance does not alter it, as occurred after King David’s notorious sins, of which he repented. Similarly, when Abraham agreed to Sarah’s proposition regarding Hagar, the bitter fruit was not confined to one harvest season. Instead, it set a course that has continued to this day. These actions set sorrow and trouble into motion, and God did not stop them. He is not obligated to erase all the consequences of His servants’ choices.
God’s purpose is not to provide us with a painless life or to mitigate every effect of sin but to create us in His image. Ultimately, His purpose seeks to develop in us a life without sin, one based on His righteousness. When we transgress His righteousness, He may use what we reap to impress on us why He says what He says, permanently writing His laws on our hearts (see Hebrews 8:10; 10:16). He often allows deviations from His will to play out so we can learn that His way is always the best. Those lessons would prove ineffective if we never had to face the consequences of what we have done.
God’s Priceless Word
Jesus teaches, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Living by every Word of God is what leads to life—not just a life with fewer negative consequences now, but, ultimately, eternal life.
These harvest principles illustrate why God’s revelation of His way of life, set down in His Word, is worth so much. The truth in God’s Word is priceless, but as with all things of great worth, we must exert ourselves to extract as much profit as possible. Job and Solomon liken understanding and wisdom to hidden treasures that one must seek with great effort and determination (Job 28:1-28; Proverbs 2:2-5).
Because of the Bible’s ubiquity and the skyrocketing number of translations and study aids available, God’s Word is more accessible today than at any time in history. Paradoxically, because of the constant intrusions of this Information Age, tuning in to His truth requires even greater energy and focus now. These are days of viral superficiality when the trivial and inane capture our attention and consume our time while we casually set aside matters pertaining to eternal life.
In America, nominal Christianity has become a drive-through experience, saturated with emotion and seasoned with uplifting platitudes yet increasingly devoid of spiritual substance. Without a dogged determination to esteem the Word above all other information and put it into practice, it becomes just another viewpoint among a cacophony of voices.
As a result, the ever-more-accessible Word governs society less and less each year, not because God’s Word has lost any potency but because men and women are not allowing it to be planted and cultivated to produce good fruit. Just as Jesus “could do no mighty work” in His home area because of unbelief, the Word will also be ineffective where people do not pay it heed. Consequently, the nation is reaping what it has sown, and the whirlwind is on the horizon.
Psalm 119:105 declares that God’s Word “is a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path.” It helps us to see so we can make the best choices about where and how to step. God’s revelation contains the principles and examples to teach us what will produce good fruit and what will bring forth death. With that knowledge and the assurance that we will reap what we sow, we can make far better choices.
This Instruction Manual from the Creator, the faith to live by it, and God’s Spirit to understand its intent are incredible gifts. With them, we can understand what to sow and what to avoid altogether so that, as the fruit of our labors are brought before God, He will be glorified—not just at the end of our lives, but in each growing season within them.
