It's so good to have you all here this morning with us. We're in search of a 9-volt battery, but I really don't think you're going to have any trouble hearing me. I tend to believe in the things that I preach. And that can get a little loud at times, I suppose. So I just miss the opportunity that I have through the amplification of my voice to keep you all awake. I invite you all to open your Bibles to the book of Galatians. Turn to chapter 6 together with me as we're bringing this wonderful epistle to a close. We're headed down the home stretch. And the Apostle Paul, of course, is drop sort of a bombshell on us. In this passage before us this morning, we're going to be looking at verse 6 through verse 10 of chapter 6, if you'll read along with me. And let the one who has taught the words share all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. Thank you. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank You for this Your Word to us this morning. thinking that this would be rather a simple biblical principle to impart. You knew ahead of time, Lord, that as you smiled upon me, that I was about to be appearing at a mountain. as you unfold the importance of the principle that's bound up in our text this morning. And again, I feel overwhelmed at the arduous task it is to really grapple in such a way that presents a responsible treatment of this important text. And Lord, I thank You for the men and women who are here, who I know by face and by name, but most of all, who have become a great encouragement to me because they're seekers of the truth. They would be in an uncomfortable place, a place that isn't a huge, comfortable church with all the amenities, that they might hear a word from the Master. And so, this great burden has been put upon me, Lord. I take this seriously. I thank you for these, my brothers and sisters, who, to great sacrifice to themselves, would see the Master Jesus Christ. would hear the truth because it's the truth, as they've discovered, that sustains them, that gives them hope, that gives them help in times of need. And the different seasons and stations of life that you appoint in every man and woman here, all in various seasons of life, all needing the same truth, all needing the comfort, the hope, the guidance, of Scripture. Indeed, Lord, Your very presence be with us now as we seek You this morning to see You glorified in this place as we grapple with this mighty, mighty passage of Scripture. For it's in Your Son's name that we pray. Amen. Thought maybe this would be a simple agricultural principle that is kind of what we would call a no-brainer. Thought it would be very simple. Horticulturists, botanists, all are very familiar with this. And you know that you've touched on a pretty obvious principle. I have a little test. If the principle I'm about to teach, whether it's obvious to people or not, give it the kid test. Run it by your children. For instance, say, listen, if I ever planted an apple seed, do you think there's any chance I might get an orange tree out of it? What would a kid say? All right. I mean, it's obvious to them, right? If I jump off of a building, I want to jump off of a ten-story building, son. Do you think there's any chance that I would float to the ground? No way. This seems to be a real obvious portion of text. The one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, in verse 8, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. So flowing from Paul's exhortations in chapter 5 to walk in the Spirit and live by the Spirit, verses 16, verses 25, that sort of presaged our approach to chapter 6. We're coming in to chapter 6 now with that as Paul's emphasis. This dichotomy that he presents. You know what I love about the Scriptures? It presents things in antithesis, doesn't it? It's either black or it's white. There's either life or death. There's right and wrong. And we like that as Christians, don't we? Paul's making it very clear for us. I love this in what we refer to as the perspicuity of scriptures, which is the utter understandability of it. It's not real talk to understand. And yet this principle couldn't be any more profound than it is. This is one of the most profoundest principles that we've handled since I've started this epistle over a year ago. This is huge, my friends. This is huge. You're going to have to hold on. I can't do this in one attempt. I'm not that smart. So I'll probably muddy things up this week and have to spend next week clarifying, okay? This is huge. Today we have a physics lesson. Today we're going to indulge the sciences for a moment, because after all, who's the master of all of science? Scripture's bowed down to the scientists, or is it the other way around? Are they going to ever discover anything that is the scientists that's not already stated in Scripture? No, they are if they're wrong. Right? This is nothing new. First of all, I should say that last week we looked at the first five verses, didn't we? That flowed out of this walk in the Spirit now. Paul posed as a dichotomy or a contrast or comparison, verse 19 through 21 of chapter 5, where he's enumerating what it looks like, what the deeds of the flesh look like. And I said they manifest themselves in a pluralistic way, whereas the fruit of the Spirit is singular because it's meant to be produced in harmony with each other, having a singular source. There's a randomness to sin. And yet, the professionals are on the nightly news almost weekly trying to systematize why people destroy and kill other people. Why they rape little girls and throw them into dumpsters. You're not going to do it. It's a cancer. It's a randomness. It's a multiplying tumor. And then he brings us to the fruit of the Spirit. We've spent the last two or three months walking through, characteristic, virtue by virtue, what the fruit of the Spirit looks like. Now he's got us where he wants us, ending the chapter saying, so therefore, you know, you shouldn't be biting and devouring one another, should you? What does he say there at the end of chapter 5? Let us not become Verse 25, if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another. Why does he say that? Because that's what's going on there. Envying one another. He is presenting things in antithesis, in a dichotomous form for us as we go into chapter 6. And then on chapter 6, he starts unfolding what that looks like in a very practical way. Brethren, listen. Here's what that looks like. If your man is suggesting the nine fruit of the Spirit, if the Holy Spirit is operating in you, Here's what'll happen. You who are spiritual will go to your brother or sister who's caught up in a sin, and you will restore such a one out. Two ways, remember? Two ways. What are they? In the spirit of gentleness and humility. Gentleness because the word's in there, and humility because he said you should be careful lest you too be caught up in the same sin. Hence the humility. Right? This is what it looks like to live by the Spirit. This is what it looks like to walk in the Spirit. We're bearing one another's burdens, verse 2. And in that way, we're fulfilling the law of Christ. All that Christ intends for us is wrapped up in the two greatest commandments, after all, isn't it? That we love God and one another, right? That's a completion of the law. It's wrapped up in a single word, love. It's not in the legalistic perpetration of the Judaizers there in Galatia. That leads to this sort of tumor-like growth of all of these other bitings and devourings. There it is in verse 15 of chapter 5, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Why is this happening? Because you stepped out of walking in the Spirit and you're now relying on the flesh in your self-righteous approach to religion. And all manner of sin could be multiplying like a cancerous tumor. But the fruit of the Spirit is different. It works in harmony. And then he unpacks that. You, instead of biting and devouring, instead of being jealous of each other, and envying one another, and talking about each other behind your backs, biting and devouring, and snipping and sniping and snapping, you'll go to one another when you're in sin. With great love and heaviness in your heart that this brother or sister of yours is caught up in a sin. You'll go to them with gentleness. You'll be patient and you'll have humility. And we looked at that last time. And then a further outworking of that, you can almost attach verse 6 to our passage from last week. Because it's a further practical outworking of that. One who is taught the Word must share all good things with the one who teaches. If you're walking in the Spirit, there's this koinonia that's going on. This sharing of all good things. I don't think he has in specific mind financial remuneration for Bible teachers, but it's certainly captured in the idea of all good things. He's just saying this is how the Spirit would continue to manifest itself. There would be more of a giving instead of a taking. More of a selflessness than a selfishness. That dichotomy, that contrast. All the way through. This hasn't changed. We put the chapter breaks in here. This is the same thought, the same letter. It's just flowing on into a practical outworking of the sound theology that is stated in chapter 5. Now, here's the principle. And that's why the title of this particular message this morning is, A Universal Principle with Eternal Consequences. Now I was going to give it more of a sort of hip, cool, post-modern title like, Of Apples and Oranges. But I thought, no, what I lose there, in trying to be hip and cool, is the weightiness of this message. And I want you to get this principle. This is a weighty, weighty principle. This is a law. This is a law of nature. This is what we call axiomatic, or a self-evident truth, or something that will happen every time. Every time you sow an apple seed, you will get apples. Why is this going to take two weeks, you think? Oh, you should know by now. You should know by now. Because while we preach this message, I want you to be thinking about something. Here's what I want you to be thinking now. I want this in your minds. Think very carefully. If this is true and Paul is using this in the context, of walking in the Spirit over against walking in the flesh. And by the way, can a Christian walk in the flesh? Of course we can. We're fighting that battle all the time. I want to get out of Romans 7 just as much as you do. So this is very helpful for us because we can, in fact, walk in the flesh. And we do, many times, sow to the things of the flesh, and we end up reaping the corruption that he's talking about here in verse 8. Here's what I want you to think about. What are you sowing to in your life? Simple question, isn't it? What are you sowing to in your life? Just jot that down in your little margin there. What am I sowing to? What are you investing your precious, limited resources on? Because we're in a finite, closed system, as we call it, right? We have a certain number of resources. I put that into five main categories. The resources that each person has been given for the purposes of accomplishing the work of the gospel. And you can use the acronym TEAM to keep it simple. But TEAM, in order to be hip and cool, with two M's. Yeah, awesome. T-E-A-M, M. Alright, just like MAN with two N's. You know, something like, where does that come from? The Isle of Man off of Scotland, where my ancestors are from, is M-A-N. Right? Rabbit trail. time. You've been given a finite amount of time. You've been given a finite amount of energy. These are your resources. All the while you're bearing in mind the answer to that question, what am I sowing to? Because I'm going to do my best to bring this principle home in layman's physics terms. is it opened my eyes in a big way. Abilities. Now there's a drop-down window under abilities. What are your abilities? I don't know, but they're limited, aren't they? They can be put into three sub-categories underneath abilities. We can categorize in a sub-categorizing way intellectual, mechanical, and communicative. That is, I have a certain limited intellect or cognitive ability Do you have that question echoing in your mind? Keep it there. Leave it there. All this stuff is going to light up and it's really going to convict you. Or it should. You have a limited intellect. You have a limited mechanical ability. What I have in mind there is I can use these hands. There's certain things I can lift and certain things I can't. Right? You all know each one of your limitations in those areas. So you have a certain limited amount of time, and you have a certain limited amount of energy. Isn't that true? And for some of us it's really beginning to show, that is its limitations. You have a limited ability in those three categories with intellect, mechanical, and communicative. Because the reason communicative is in there is, well, for reasons like Ephesians 4.29, let no corrupt communication proceed from your mouth, but that what is useful for the purpose of what? No unwholesome words should proceed from your mouth. You've been given the marvelous, remarkable gift of language so that you can build people up, so that you can give them the hope of the gospel. There's people that are hurting, people that are dying, people need to be comforted, believers and unbelievers alike. It's a wonderful gift, but you have limitations. I can't go to India and speak, well, it's not Indian. Help me out. Don't let me twist in a wind. What? I can't talk like Gandhi did. I have limitations there, don't I? So do you! Who's set in the context of your life? Who's the one who sets the parameters on your limitations? In all of these areas? God. The first M is money. You have a certain amount of money in these days. That really is limited, isn't it? Yeah. But you have a finite amount of money in your bank account. That's a resource. And the last M is material. You have material goods. You have more shirts than you need. You have extra supplies that you could use. That's your extra bread, your extra canned goods, your clothes, your car. By the way, under mechanical abilities, under the abilities mechanical, the things that you can do with your hands, what can you fix? A gutter for a widow. That falls under that category. What are we doing? What are we doing with those five categories, those limited resorts, because they are, in fact, limited. And the first one, time is ticking away all the time. What are we doing? Well, all of these things. We live brief, finite lives in an isolated system. That's our life. God is outside of all that, isn't he? Now hang on with me, okay? You've got to hang in there. You know how I preach. There's a big investment on the front end, but hopefully it has a commensurate big payoff. If you hang in there, do not grow weary, do not lose heart, as the scripture says. So hang in there. I want you to think about what percentage of our limited time and limited resources are being spent toward what the Bible would characterize in our passage as doing good. Or simple words. We've got a simple principle, simple words. What does that mean? Because he ends in verse 10 with, so then while we have opportunity. Notice the finiteness of that term. Kairos. There's a window of time that you have. You're to buy up time. That's what Ephesians 5 and 16 means when it says, redeem the time. I wish we would leave it translated that. We've changed that word in some of our translations. I like redeem the time. Do you know why? Because it comes from the same word we use for redemption. Ex agorazo. To buy out from the market. That's what Jesus did for us. And you need to buy out, you need to grab up the time and make market with it. With the limited resources that you have, what are you investing in? Because folks, this principle ought to haunt every one of us. Shouldn't it? Why would he start out this way in verse 7? Do not be deceived. Well the implication, simple logic, is that some people what? It must be deceived. What did he say in chapter 3, verse 1 to the Galatians? Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? They're beguiled over there. Now the Judaizers have got them off on some kind of a track where they're trying to become self-righteous. I'm going to do religion my way now. I've got it from here. And Paul's saying, don't do it. Don't delude yourself. Don't be self-deceived. Because God is not mocking. That term means having the nose turned up and sneering at. That's what he's saying here. That's a pretty strong language. Don't mock God. Because there's a very important principle here at play. What a man sows, this he will also reap. You know, Jesus' life is characterized in a very concise way in Acts 10, isn't it? It says that Jesus, you know, Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit with power and how he went about doing good. It sounds like a nice sort of Sunday school story that would be good to have a little flannel graph. To put you know Jesus with his cloth and his nicely combed beard walking along doing good This folks. This is huge This is huge that Jesus made a Presentation of his life doing nothing, but good and who is he being to be an example? for us Jesus went about doing good. Don't be deceived. You're not mocking. Well, I'll get by. Yet we do that all the time. We do that all the time we mock God. How, you say? Let's see it in your face. How are we mocking God? I mock God every time I think, I'm going to blow that off for this week. But I'll get to it next week. Yeah, then I'll do good. Then I'll get to it. Have I got anybody's attention? I know I've got mine. Is that convicting or what? He went about doing good. Hopefully we're investing our lives in what will bring about the greatest good. Another question that I would like to have lingering in your mind. What am I sowing to? Am I sowing to what will bring about the greatest good in my life? Given those limited resources. time, energy, ability, all of those abilities, money, material goods. Given those things, am I investing in the highest good? That's what we should ask. Remember how James put it in James 1.22? Prove yourselves to be what? What should we prove? I'll read it for you since you don't remember. Prove yourselves to be hearers of the Word and don't worry about Being so busy. Is that what it says? No. Be what? Doers. I don't know how to pump up a word that has two letters that you've heard a thousand times probably in the last week. Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, the Christ whom you're persecuting. What would you have me do? Paul's very next question when he was converting. What am I doing? Because he doesn't want me to be deceived. I'm not mocking God. If I blow off another week, if I blow off another month, I'm not mocking this principle. Why? Because it is axiomatic. It's a law of nature. You cannot get away from it. It's as inescapable as the law of gravity. None of us, hopefully, would jump off of a building and think, well, maybe God will bear me up. Would we? You can't mock God. Why is this so important? But ask yourself first. If I'm lingering with the question, how much time am I spending on the greatest good? Please tell me what the greatest good is, right? What's the greatest good in one word? Begins with a G. It's not God. In a way it is. Grace, which brings us to the gospel. The gospel. Is that not man's highest need? Well, I jump to the answer. Is that not the highest good I can put my limited resources in? Because therein we're addressing man's greatest need, aren't we? This is the greatest task we can engage in, what we call the Great Commission. And this is a call we have on all believers. Alexander McLaren helps us to sort out some of the priorities by making this distinction. Listen to this. Luther said that justification was the article of a standing or falling church. That may be true in the region of theology, but in the region, listen to me, in the region of the practical life, I do not know that you will find a test more reliable and more easy of application than this. Does a man care for spreading amongst his fellows the gospel that he himself has received? If he does not let him ask himself whether, in any real sense, he has it, well-doing includes doing good to others, and the possession of Christ will make it certain that we shall impart him." What is the gospel called? The good news. Our evangeline. Our good news. What are we doing about it? That's man's highest good because it satisfies man's deepest need. Of that you can be sure, believer or unbeliever. The gospel is your greatest need, isn't it? In all of its varied manifestations in your life. It's not just John 3.16, folks. This is the good news that's life-changing, that goes on in terms of its ability to give you hope, to give you answers long after you've been justified. This continues to be the source of my life, my sustenance, my comfort, my hope. Herein do I find my blessed Savior. comforting me with words, inspired, timeless words that transcend the very ages that he himself sets man in like contexts. limiting the very number of days that you have, the very number of hours, the very minutes limited by Him. For what purpose we should be asking ourselves? If we don't ask it now, soon we'll be past this passage and we'll miss our opportunity. How important now is the sermon two sermons ago about self-control? We can't achieve the things we're talking about this morning unless and until we lead a disciplined life. And it begins with, what was A? The alarm clock. That's it. Nothing fancy about that. It starts with the alarm clock. Oh, we'll move on. We don't want to go back to that, do we? Oh, please don't. Now, here's the thing. We're about to set things in antithesis. The things that we sow to the Spirit have everlasting life. in terms of the fruit produced. The things you sow to the flesh, and Christians do that all the time, fall flat and live a short life here on earth and die, no matter how beneficent that work was. I don't care if you're Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi. If it's not done in the Spirit, it dies. Because of this principle, Remember that the laws of cause and effect apply to the Christian too, don't they? We wish we could sort of get past all that. We wish that we had sort of a special dispensation because after all, we're children of the King and we're under grace. No, it's still cause and effect. It still operates. If I ate some of the things that Dan Escobar does, I'd have heartburn. He's a Tabasco and hot sauce man, right? Jalapenos? Oh. Well, what's that? Chipotles? Yeah. Alright, that was the introduction. You can see why we're not going to get through this today. There's going to be four ways in which we break this passage down, alright? We're going to look at this principle, and I hope to get this in today. The principle, the product, the purpose, and the plan. The principle itself. This law we're talking about, we're going to unpack. We're going to ask you to put your lab coats on for a minute and be... Scientists, as you look at this law together with me, it is absolutely fascinating. It's fascinating. And it will tie together in a wonderful way as we work through this passage. We're going to look at the principle from verse 6 and 7. And then we're going to look at the product. That dichotomy, the product that's produced by walking or sowing to the flesh and the product that's produced by sowing to the spirit. Then we're going to look at the purpose. That was verse 9, the purpose, the product before that was verse 8, and then verse 10 is the plan. So the principle, the product, the purpose, and the plan to get us through this passage one wonderful step at a time. who has taught the word, share all good, or let, and let, verse 6, the one who has taught the word, share all good things with him who teaches, probably, as I said, better attached to where we were in verse 1 through 5. This is what it will look like when you all in Galatia are following the Spirit instead of walking in the flesh. part of the new church as it was exploding at the beginning of Acts. They had shared all things in one common. Those that had need, they were taken care of through the resources that they had. Think team. And then it occurs to him. There is a huge principle here that you need to know. And that's why he starts it the way he does. We would say, don't kid yourself, don't be self-deluded, do not be deceived by the Judaizers or anybody else, in any age, because God will not be mocked. This is a law, this is a principle of nature, for what a man sows, this he will also reap. In order to bring home all that he has from chapter 5, talking about this difference between the flesh and the spirit in those two lives, he's giving this wonderful law of nature, law of botany, horticulture, agriculture, just a law in general. I mean, this principle can be seen in many, many different ways because it's universal. It's a law of nature. I could have entitled the sermon, The Inescapable Principle, right? And this is an expression I don't hear too much anymore. You heard it a lot back in the days when we were more agrarian as a society. Reaping in kind. Who knows what that means? Reaping in kind? This is a sort of taxonomy question. Well, it just means that if I plant an apple seed, I'm going to get an apple tree. I reap in like kind. Think about it. As you have that question in your mind, what am I sowing to? And I have limited resources. You will reap in kind every wasted moment. I'm talking about judgment as it relates to being saved. This isn't a legalist statement here. It's what will last. I want what I do, what I invest those resources in to carry on into eternity. Don't you? Don't you? I do. This is such a short life. Jim Elliot, he is no fool who gives away what he cannot keep in order to gain that which he cannot lose. martyred in 1956 by the Alka Indians in South America. You might know Elizabeth Elliot. That is a wonderful statement that supports what we're talking about. You're not a fool. If you give away the thing, you can't keep anyway. You cannot keep that time. You can't keep your energy. You can't bottle it up. You love the experience of a waterfall. You're out camping and you want to show, you just want your family to experience the experience of the waterfall that you see at a park. And so you think, I got an idea. And you get a bucket and you catch that waterfall. You're going to take it back so your family can experience the awesomeness of a waterfall. Wasn't that the point with the manna? You can't keep this stuff. Jesus says, I'm the bread of life. I'm the water that always satisfies and never dries up. That's what carries on into eternity, those things that are manifested by the Spirit of Christ in the child of God. My father was raised on a farm. And if you'd ever asked him, say, listen, Jim, If we plant corn seed this year, what would be the chance of bringing up a crop of wheat? He'd be very quick to first look at you funny, and then say, zero, no chance. That's what we do all the time as Christians. We're hoping that somehow, and we lean heavily upon Romans 8.28 in a very irresponsible way if you ask me. All things are working together for good. Yeah, for God. In terms of His plan and the outworking in your life. But all those wasted moments, those are wasted moments. All that energy that is here today and is gone tomorrow isn't used for something that would last for eternity is a foolish investment if it ends up drying up on a couch staring at a screen. See? Those things will amount to burnable fuel for the final bonfire. You heard a wonderful sermon here a couple of weeks ago about what you're building your life on. This is a similar question. Remember the burnable materials? That's Steve named from the poker? Wood, what? Hands double? And I appreciate the way he uses the technique of repeating that at different points throughout the sermon so that you go home with that echoing in your mind. What are you building with? What are you building with? Something that's going to burn up here or something that will be carried on into eternity. That's the question here in this passage this morning. Don't fool yourself. You're going to reap in kind. So God has certain immutable, inviolable laws that can't be changed. I've mentioned the law of gravity. I tested that one time on a second story as a little boy. I was either a little boy or that was a cat that was five feet tall, which the figure was. I was probably a little boy because the cat was as big as me. Second story porch, I want to see if they really land on their feet. Be not deceived, Marquis. God is not mocked. He may love you, but you're about to make a big mistake. There's several laws at play there. Well, we're about to find out, as a little boy, the law of gravity. But also, there's laws of inertia and things. There's laws of, for every action, there's what? Equal? Yes. And you take an object and you push it. This is Newtonian physics, right? If you don't apply force to an object, it'll sit there. I knew that as a kid. Remember I told you, if you think it's a basic principle run it by a kid? I knew that I had to apply force to the cat if I wanted to see him become airborne. And I did that. I pushed this big cat, who was as big as me. I chest heaved it. But the cat had an equal and opposite reaction. He reached back and grabbed my shirt and pulled me off. Now, on my way down, I was considering the laws of gravity. Me and the cat. The cat was much more contented than I was, however. I was petrified, from what I can remember, and landed on my back on a little tree stump my mother had just sawed off. And it ripped my back open and dismissed my spinal column, where I'd be talking to you today, either from the grave, if that were possible, or a wheelchair. And I still have these nasty scars on my back to show it. That proves the loss. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. What you're sowing to, you're reaping. You don't get away from this law-free card because you're a Christian. Oh, Romans 8.28, don't misapply that verse. This is what he's talking about here. What are you investing in with your limited resources? Okay, another law I want to run by you, as we're setting this up. Please hang in there with me in this science class. It's what's called the law of perpetual motion, remember? And the thinking is that if you set something in motion, it would keep spinning forever like a little ball. You could spin it, and it would spin forever unless what? It meets with resistance. Exactly. You remember your science class. I had a sort of Wikipedia my way through this whole deal. It's been a while. Who is Wikipedia? It's an odd name anyway. That's true. That's another law. If you could spin this ball It would continue to spin unless it meets with resistance. But in fact, it does meet with resistance, right? So it eventually slows down. Okay? Alright. This was God's intention when he created the world. That Adam and Eve would keep on spinning. They would keep on going. Were they meant to die? Were Adam and Eve and their creation meant to die? No. They were meant to live forever, weren't they? They were meant to live forever. Things were meant to continually perpetuate themselves through eternity. But what happened? They met with another law. The law of resistance. The law of entropy. Second law of thermodynamics. Right? This is, now let me explain this to you. The law of entropy is a measure of spontaneous change and disorder or randomness in a closed system. That's starting to sound like, if you're confused, to me it started to sound like Galatians 5, 19-21 when he lists the deeds of the flesh. The randomness, the resistance. Up against something that was meant to be carried on eternally, which was life. The law of entropy brings randomness. The law of thermodynamics, which is another universal principle, explains what they call the phenomenon of irreversibility of nature. There's no reversing it. It's inescapable. Why? Let me read one more statement while you think about that. An irreversible process increases the entropy of the system, which is a measure of the microscopic disorder of the system. All complex natural processes are irreversible at that point. Did God create the world with the law of entropy in place or the second law of thermodynamics? What brought that on? God's a God of order and a God of life. He created an environment whereby that could be sustained. We have a word for it, it's called holy. There's only two human beings that ever lived, we're not talking about Jesus Christ because he was a God-man, two human beings that ever lived that had a true free will to choose in a contrary fashion, and that was Adam and Eve prior to the fall. They were, in fact, posse non peccare, or able not to sin. They had a choice. Let me prove it to you this way. Had they not sinned, would they be alive today? Yes. They'd keep on spinning. Nothing to resist that. No law of entropy working against that. The scientists don't know. They can't take the law of perpetual motion too far in terms of their understanding. You know why? Because you can't have that here. Everything that you start, if you don't continue to apply pressure, will die out. It'll go from order to disorder. That's the universe we live in. A chaotic, random, sinful, resistant, irreversible system. That's what we live in. That's the law. I hope you're all wondering, why are you giving us this science lesson? And my race is with the clock to have this make sense before we pick up again next week. Adam and Eve were created, as I said, in a holy environment. Unsullied, unadulterated. And if they had stayed that way, they would have carried on into eternity. Along with everything else that ever lived. Entropy is the law that prohibits the perfect order needed to maintain perpetual motion. That's what happened. The ball was spinning and they sinned. Things began to die. This is important to our passage for this reason. We have been given a choice because a Redeemer came. A Redeemer came and now made it possible for you, for the first time in your life, to live a life that's passe non peccare, where you're able not to sin. That's what Paul's trying to present to you. For the first time in your life. The unregenerate have no hope of doing that. Everything they do meets with this law of entropy. Read Romans 8. The whole world, what? Groans in futility. The sun's giving off, I don't know, I think I read something like 200 million tons of its mass burning up every day. Or maybe it was every hour. I don't know. It was a huge amount. Things are winding down. Things are going from order to disorder. Things aren't getting better, Mr. Darwin. They're not improving. If you shuffle a deck of cards, there's one principle that I'm going to launch into the next point and we'll stop there. A deck of cards that's in perfect order, okay? The more you shuffle it, the more it becomes what? Disordered. That's the principle. It loses its perfect arrangement. Who is the one who puts things in perfect order? Our Creator. What is the principle that's bringing disorder? Man and sin. You see? Things really are in an easy to see contrast. There's the dichotomy. Now, unsaved, we would have no hope of having the option of producing anything that would last through eternity, except for our eternal punishment. Everything that we produced here on earth, no matter how hard we worked, would die. You know what the scientists said? I pulled this from a science illustration. The deck of cards. The more you shuffle, the more random it becomes. You have very little, almost no hope of getting that in perfect order again with 52 cards. You know what they said would restore that to perfect order? Work. One man gets it. It would take work. Somebody came to do some work. Somebody came and did the work. Jesus the Redeemer. There's two things theologians study in their Christology. The personhood of Christ and the work of Christ. He came to work. And I saw that word as a Christian, and I thought it was as banal and as ordinary as, do good things. Does that mean? I'm getting it now. I'm getting it. A little bit. Understand these principles, Paul is saying. Understand that there's only one hope of your ever spinning that ball in terms of the things you're producing with your limited resources and wanting them to last for eternity. Because it's offered to you freely as a gift. Because He finished the work it took to bring order and arrangement back into life. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that spectacular? That's why there's no way of holding on to this or to present this in a single message. There's no way. Because next week we're going to unpack what that means in a very practical way in your lives. Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, entered our closed system of sin and of entropy We're aging. We're dying. We understand what Paul meant when he wrote in Romans chapter 8, the whole world suffers futility. Futility of the Greek, matiates, means that which continues to fail in its effort to live up to what it was created for. No matter how much we work and we strive, we cannot seem to achieve what we know we were created for. That's a wonderful platform, by the way, for presenting the gospel to people. Do you ever get the sense that you were created for something, but you just can't seem to fulfill it? You just can't seem to quite get there? You wouldn't have a longing if there wasn't an object of that longing, right? So I touch on the second point, and this is where we end this morning, the product from verse 8. Because talking about science is hardly an adequate ending. But this is, this is, this product that you have a choice on what you're going to produce. Why do you have a choice? Because of Christ. For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life." He entered our existence as a man, a completed man, a perfect man. I recently enjoyed what I heard Tim Keller refer to him as. for us who are hard to understand things. They make these books called such-and-so for dummies, computer for dummies. God bless those folks that produce that. But when he said that, in that sense, Jesus came as deity for dummies. I want you to see what I look like. I want you to see what a spinning ball that will spin on into eternity looks like. I want you to know what it would have been like had we not sinned. Earlier I said that bringing a random, disordered, chaotic environment into perfect order would take what the scientists say is work. John 4.34, Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. He prayed to the Father in John 17, For I glorify thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. He came and did the work that no man could do. And now Paul's crying out to us, saying, consider this. Consider this carefully, because God's not mocked. What you sow to, you will reap. Whether of the flesh to corruption, and by the way, the word for corruption means something like food that was useful for nourishment at one point in time that turned rancid. Now we're called for this work to continue. John 6, 27-29. Do not work for the food which perishes, Jesus says. Makes sense, doesn't it? After our little science class. But for the food which endures to eternal life. He's giving you the same choice. The same choice Paul is. which the Son of Man shall give to you. For on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal. They said to Him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God?" That should be our question. Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him who He has sent. And in John 9, verse 4, we must work the works of Him who sent me. Jesus is saying this to all of us. As long as it is day, night is coming when no man can work. Get the time limitation. Get the window of opportunity. We know that it would be wrong for us to say that he's talking about working towards salvation. We know that's not true. But he is, in fact, talking about the outworking of our lives. That we are meant to produce something. That's what he meant by the analogy of the vine and the branches. That's why he became so upset with a fig tree when he was hungry. A fig tree is meant to produce figs. So I ask you again today as we close, what are you sowing to? You have limited resources. Time, energy, abilities, money, and material goods. What are you spending them for? Making sure other people reach their highest good? Are you doing something about the gospel? Because here's the most awesome thing of all. This he offers to you freely. Because he's finished the work himself. He's got one week to think about these things. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. It's hard for us to understand fully some of these deeper lessons, but we get the main principle, Lord, that apart from you it is literally impossible to do anything that would launch into eternity apart from the work of your Spirit and seeing to it, as you've now given us choice, a choice similar to what Adam and Eve had before they fell. We now have a choice because that holy environment has been re-established by the work of your son. It was a work. It takes a work to go against the very laws that sin put into motion. The laws of entropy, of death, of randomness, of disorder. Thank you for coming to do that. Thank you for offering us this wonderful gift. I pray, Lord, that as anyone considers their life and considers the choices that they've made, that they wouldn't just assume that this is a settled issue between them and you, but they would rethink how they stand. that they would rethink and revisit the cross in their lives. And certainly for those, Lord, who hear this for the first time, I pray for them too, Lord, that right now, in the privacy of their hearts, they would reconcile with you and have that same spirit in them that would begin now to produce works that would last for eternity. What a wonderful privilege. And we thank you for it in your son's name.