The Principle of the Harvest

Well, I was not expecting anything like what I saw on my trip. In many ways, it was more like a time travel trip than it was a trip on an airplane. And I'm talking about my trip about a year and a half ago to Nicaragua. While I was there, I learned that Nicaragua is now the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti. And it really was like a trip back in time. In fact, in the part of Nicaragua that we went to, there's only one paved road, one paved road. And even on that paved road, cowboys and cattle and horse-drawn carts far outnumber automobiles. I mean, there's no comparison.

And while we were there, we traveled with this man. This is Rigo Reyes and his son Juan Carlos. Rigo's an amazing guy. He was an executive at Dole Foods. He has a degree in agricultural engineering. He owned several homes, nice cars, left it all to follow his calling to become a pastor. And now he plants churches all over Nicaragua. Recently, Rigo and Juan Carlos and several of his leaders got lost, wandering around on one of these dirt roads in Nicaragua. They did not know where they were. There's no cell service out there. You can't GPS yourself. And they stumbled into one of the poorest parts of the country.

This is the bridge across the river in that part of the country, just to show you what you're up against there. This is the house of the richest person in the village. And Rigo chats with the villagers there while they're trying to get their bearings. He finds out that they've been trying to scrape out their survival by growing corn. And it would grow stunted like this. Most of it would go bad. They never had enough to feed their families, let alone to sell. They were literally starving.

And Rigo figures, well, I don't think I just got lost. I think with my background as an executive at Dole Foods, I was put here by God to help these people. And so he asks to speak to the 20 poorest families in the village. He says, what if I, with my connections at Dole Foods, got you the best hybrid corn seed on earth? And I taught you how to plant it the best way. And what if I could get you microloans to buy chickens? Because chicken fertilizer is great for corn. And I showed you the best way to raise chickens. I think we could do something about your poverty.

And you know what the villagers said? They said, well, you know, we appreciate your thought, but that's not going to work here. And he said, well, why don't you think this will work here? And they said, because nothing works here. They said, the government has forgotten us, and nothing grows here. As you can see, we've tried everything. And then they said this, quote, even God has forgotten us. Now, I'm not telling you about ancient history. Rigo's ag project with them started about two years ago. All right? So guess what happens? They decide to try it.

Their first harvest, they quadrupled their corn numbers. The chickens grew so healthy that most of the farmers didn't lose one single chicken. They were able to take them to market and sell them, along with their extra corn. I want to show you something. I actually went to that village, and these are the people that I met there. These are some of the 20 exact villagers that Rigo met with a couple of years ago. And they told me, Pastor René, last summer we were starving, and now we're rich. Check this out. Their biggest problem now is where to put all the corn. They have piles of it everywhere.

They create makeshift silos out of scrap tin to keep the hundreds of pounds of extra corn. They've gone from starving to having their silos literally overflowing. Every little house I went to in the village just had corn pouring out of the doorways. And Rigo told me, René, I really think we're on our way to eradicating the hunger and poverty problem in this village. And I said, well, how many years do you think that'll take? Rigo's 18 months, and they've done it. So this pastor, who was a Dole Foods agricultural engineer, happens to get lost in the poorest part of Nicaragua. You think this was a God thing? I think so too.

And here's my takeaway from this for you this morning. Rigo's story with the villagers demonstrates a huge spiritual principle that could change your life. I want you to grab your message notes like this. "Free" is the name of our Verse By Verse series in the book of Galatians. And this morning I want to talk about the principle of the harvest. And this is a framework for you to see your life, see all of your choices, all of your decisions that could literally change everything for you. And I just want to welcome you here. Welcome. Everybody who's watching online, welcome. Everybody who's watching in venue. And I'm so glad you've joined us because this could be one of those light bulb moment weekends for you. I'm convinced of it.

So let's do a quick review. So far in Galatians, Paul has been relentlessly hammering on really one theme over and over and over again. He's expressed it in like 10 different ways using different examples from the Bible. And really you could summarize it in one word. And what's the word? Shout it out. Grace. Right. Grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. You are not saved by your works. You're saved 100% by God's gift, by God's grace. There is nothing you can possibly do to get God to love you more because he loves you infinitely already. And there's nothing you can possibly do to make God retract love from you because he loves you unconditionally already.

Without conditions, his love is not tied to your behavior. That's grace. Now, that makes some people really nervous. And it makes some people really sloppy. In fact, there's a lot of questions raised by what you could call the grace model. Like if I'm saved, why not just sin? You know? I mean, if God loves me unconditionally and saves me by grace, not by works, why can't I just do whatever I want to? I can enjoy my life and then go to heaven. Perfect. And then the legalists go, yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about. What's going to keep people in line if not rule-based religion? We've got to teach them to memorize a list of the rules.

So how do you answer these questions? How do you keep people from just kind of going wild when they hear the good news about God's grace? And Paul finally answers that with the principle of the harvest here in Galatians 6:7–10. And as I said, I just think this will be life-changing for some people here this weekend. So what I want to do is read through these verses and then we're going to kind of analyze them for just a few minutes. This is huge.

Galatians 6:7. Paul's been just grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. Then he says, now, do not be deceived. God can't be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Now, if that language is unfamiliar to you, reap means harvest, right? It's a farming term. And sow means plant, to plant seeds. A man reaps what he sows—you harvest what you plant. He goes on in verse 8. "Whoever sows to please their flesh from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who are of the family of believers."

This answers every objection I can think of to a grace emphasis. So together, let's look at four corollaries to the principle of the harvest that Paul talks about here. And you can jot these down in the white blank space at the bottom of page one there. And honestly, you know, listen, look up here for a second. I honestly challenge you not to just write these down, but to memorize these four things. They're easy to memorize because these are four truths that you can literally put into practice every day of your life. And they will do nothing but improve your life.

Four corollaries to the laws of the harvest. First, you reap what you sow. You harvest what you plant. Look, the people in that Nicaraguan village have been growing, you know, bad corn because they've been sowing bad corn seed. And no matter how much they crossed their fingers and hoped, they could not change the DNA in that seed. It was always going to be bad corn. But when they got great corn that Rigo brought them, they got a harvest of great corn, those big giant ears of corn that just were popping like popcorn all through their village. Paul says, "A man reaps what he sows."

Now, hang on here because if you're thinking going, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." It sounds like Paul has been saying for five and a half chapters, it's grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. You know, you're not saved by your works. You're only saved by grace. And now here it sounds like it's all about your works, right? It's karma. You reap what you sow. You get out what you put in. So is it karma or grace? Is it works or is it faith? Well, you have to read what Paul is saying in light of everything else that the whole entire letter is about.

You know, Paul's a smart guy. He's not going to contradict everything he's just been saying about being saved by grace. He's not, you know, a TED Talk speaker. He's not going to give a 20-minute talk and spend the first 19 minutes talking about how, you know, you should be vegan. And then in the last minute say, "And therefore in conclusion, eat lots of meat and genetically manipulated food," right? That would be the equivalent of Paul suddenly saying, "Oh, and by the way, it's all about works." What Paul is saying here is this is the principle that's going to allow you to live free.

Remember in Galatians he's talking about Christ came to set you free, to give you freedom from religion and freedom from sin, self-destructive behavior. And he's saying, "Here's the key to live free from religion and free from sin. And if you miss this, you will totally misunderstand everything else that he's saying in this section." When he says, "Whoever sows to please their flesh from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal life." He is not talking about going to hell or going to heaven based on your behavior. That's not what he's talking about here.

Watch. The word translated "destruction" here can also be rendered "corruption" or "disintegration." He's saying, "If you sin and you've received God's grace, God will still love you." That God's love for you is never in doubt. You're still saved, but your inner self will disintegrate. You felt it. I felt it. You sin. And you feel this disintegration happening. You know, to have integrity means to be whole, a whole number, an integer. It feels great. But when you make unwise choices, you feel like you're not whole inside. You are disintegrating. You're shattering into all kinds of different selves. You're compartmentalizing. You're one person here, you're another person there, and it causes so much tension and stress.

And then when he says, "eternal life," he's not saying, "Your good works will get you to heaven." And don't take this from me. A man named R. Allen Cole is a well-regarded Greek scholar. He says that means abundant life, that sense of wholeness and integration and serenity. He translates this as unending, present enjoyment of your life. This is not talking about whether we will go to hell or go to heaven. That is a settled issue. If you have received God's grace in Christ, you and God are okay on that point. You are saved. But, as someone put it, you can have a saved soul and a lost life. Does that make sense? You can have a saved soul and a lost life.

Paul's trying to correct an overreaction to grace. People can say, "Saved by grace! Wow, that's awesome! I'm going to heaven? Not based on my works?" Then, you know, "I'm going to embezzle company funds and do math and all kinds of crazy stuff because I'm saved!" You know? That's an exaggeration, but Paul's saying, "Yeah, okay, you're saved by grace always." But actions still have consequences. God loves you. But he's not going to prevent natural consequences most of the time. Really, Paul is teaching the Galatians how to move from an immature, childish way of obedience.

Right? Kind of like this. Kind of thinking, "Well, I guess I can't do that because that is in the rulebook as one of the don'ts. So I can't do that even though I want to, but the rules say I can't." Or thinking, "I guess I have to do that because the rulebook says it's one of the seven virtues that I've got to do, so I've got to check off the list." Listen, what's much more mature is to think, "I am not going to do that." Not just because the rulebook says no, but because I don't want to harvest disintegration and destruction in my life. I want to harvest integrity and wholeness and serenity and peace. And I'm going to do that because it's going to spread a harvest of so much goodness.

Do you see how this is a much more mature way of shaping your choices than some lists that you are forced to memorize? You know, I know a Christian's always understanding the concept of sin more biblically when they stop asking, "Is this a sin?" And they start asking, "Is this foolish?" "What would I be reaping later on if I sow the seed of this action?" Now, if you're thinking on this first point here, "You reap what you sow," you might be thinking, "Well, if you reap whatever you sow, then why do I have a friend who works over in the Silicon Valley and he's just a greedy son of a gun and he just indulges his sinful nature all the time, he's just a jerk, and it doesn't seem to be affecting his life at all. He's living a great life." Or, "Why am I not getting a better life? I've been sowing good seed, and man, all the wheels are coming off of my life."

Well, first, not every single thing that happens to a farmer is a result of the seed that they've sown, right? Farmers experience droughts like we're going through a drought right now. Farmers experience natural disasters. Farmers experience pests. And the same thing happens to you. You can sow good seed, but sometimes you just go through a period in your life where there's catastrophe, where there's drought, where there's pestilence. There's lots of things you can't control. But, generally speaking, sowing a lot of good seed is going to lead to better outcomes than sowing a lot of bad seed. And usually when you notice, "You know what? That person is sowing good seed or bad seed and they're not reaping, it's because of this next corollary you reap later than you sow."

Always. Always later. Never instantly. You know, those villagers didn't plant the corn and instantly get all of this. In farming, there's always a delay between sowing and reaping, right? That's why Paul says, "At the proper time." A farmer does not plant apple seed and, you know, "Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," watch the orchard spring up and all the trees suddenly, you know, come into flower and then fruit. Of course not. You have to be patient. And the same thing is true in every area of life. One of my favorite illustrations of this, a man named Ub Iwerks, had invested part of his salary in the Walt Disney Company.

He started working for Disney when there were three employees, Walt Disney, Roy Disney, and Ub Iwerks. And so the Disney brothers gave Ub a 20% share in Disney, a 1/5th share in Disney and a seat on the board. About two years into this, Ub kind of went, "You know what? This company is going nowhere, and I'm going to go work for another company. This company's going nowhere, you know? Disney, whoever heard of him?" And so he cashed out for $2,920. Now he went back to work for Disney again. He worked in the special effects department. I really wonder what he thought about this. In his lifetime, in his lifetime, his 20% share reached a value of $750 million.

Now he got a good job with Disney again. I mean, he remained good friends with Walt and Roy, but he never got those shares back. I wonder if he thought, "Man, I should have remembered. You always reap later than you sow, right? You got to hang in there. You got to be patient." And the same is true of everything in life. The same is true maybe of you with your family. You know, keep sowing those seeds in your children. I'm talking about the little people in your house that eat all your food and soil all your laundry in your clothes and never seem to lift a finger to help. Keep sowing those seeds, because eventually you'll reap a harvest later sometimes, much later.

Keep sowing those seeds in your family, in your friends of faith, even if it feels like they'll never come to Jesus. Keep sowing those seeds in ministry. Sometimes you feel like, "I'm working in ministry, this is just youth ministry or this children's ministry." And it sometimes just feels like glorified babysitting. But keep sowing those seeds. It's so funny, I actually have spoken a couple of times here in this room after a service with a couple of old men now who used to be my Sunday school teachers when I was in third grade and in fourth grade over at Calvary Church in Lascatus. And they have literally stood here and said, "René, I just can't believe it's starting to cry." Those Sunday school classes, they eventually did bear fruit.

And I thought, "What did I put them through?" You know? "I never thought anything would have come from you." You know, is that what they're implying? But you reap later than you sow, you reap what you sow, and you reap more than you sow, right? Rigo helped those villagers plant a little corn seed, and they reaped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of corn, literally tons. And isn't that the whole point of farming, right? Paul says, "We'll reap a harvest, not you'll reap an apple." The whole point of that whole, "No farmer would ever farm if he thought that planting one orange seed would get him one orange." You always reap more, way more than you sow.

But the point Paul's making is it happens with bad crops too. This week my wife Lori asks me to clean out the fridge, which I should be doing anyway, right? Why does she have to ask me? But she's giving all the time to the art sales. So I go, "Sure." So I'm dumping stuff out, you know? And I take out some old, you know, those glass Pyrex dishes with the Tupperware tops on them. And I look inside one through the glass, and it has this tiny little bit of mushroom casserole or something at the bottom, little bit of fuzz, like mold on it. And so I got it out, and I want to just make this clear. What she had asked me to do was to clean out the fridge, which I did do.

Now most of this stuff made it only as far as the counter, but it was out of the fridge. So we get involved here, right? It's a busy week with a garage. And so by Thursday what had happened was I had reaped far, far more than I had sown. That Tupperware was literally just full of just fuzzy mold, right? Now the last I saw it, it just had a little bit of mold in it, right? There was hardly anything in the Tupperware anymore. Well, the Tupperware was full. And the way I discovered that fact was this. I was finally doing the dishes, and the lid of this Tupperware was on just super tight, you know, that happens sometimes.

And so as I'm forcing the lid open, I feel the sneeze coming on. And in the same instant that I awkwardly pop open the Tupperware, I sneeze this humongous sneeze. So the timing couldn't have been worse. It's just like this. Just like that. And the spores of the mold just go everywhere. And then of course, because it was this huge sneeze, afterwards I breathe in this huge breath. So it's like, "Hiju!" Like this. Let me just say, if that was penicillin mold, I will never be sick again. All right? Well, Paul is saying here this. He's saying in your mental life, in your spiritual life, that's true too.

One little spore of, say, resentment can grow a whole crop of fuzzy soul mold that layers over everything else in your life, and is just waiting for an incident to just provoke it. And it's going to just layer this crop of more spores that are going to spread throughout your house, and it's just going to poison your life. Somebody wants to put it this way. "Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny." And it all starts with a thought. So I just want to give you a tool right now to sow some good seeds in your brain.

I want you to flip your notes over. Look at page two of your notes where it says, "Seeds to sow in your own soul." These are Bible verses. I want you to just imagine the difference it would make if you read these daily and believed them. Just look at a few of them. "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you.' I have swept your offenses away like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. The Lord your God is with you. He's mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing."

Now this is not magic. These aren't like magic incantations. This is just natural. It's just the way the world works. You reap what you sow. So here's some good seeds to sow. Because you reap more than you sow, you reap later than you sow, you reap what you sow, and finally you reap if you sow. Only if you sow. If Rigo would have given them the seed and the villagers would have said, "Thank you so much," and left the seed in the bags and not planted, not watered, not fertilized, nothing would have happened. It's not just about having the right seed. It's about actually sowing the seed, planting it.

And this is why Paul says, "If we do not give up." Now you can apply this all kinds of different ways. If you want a better life than you've been living so far, if you want a better outcome than you've been reaping lately, then you sow those seeds of hard work and diligence and education. And this applies to your thought life. This applies to your marriage. Your marriage isn't going to get better all by itself. That's for sure. And you know it's not going to get better if all you do is plant seeds of criticism. You know, "Man, I wish that my spouse was in better shape." Look, they've really let themselves go. And you know what else? I wish that they didn't do this kind of thing. No, it irritates me. I've told them that it irritates me, but they just keep doing it.

My husband's a pastor, and I have to ask him to clean out the fridge that should be part of his daily duties. You know, whatever it is, that kind of those thoughts get in your—if you plant seeds of criticism, you are going to reap that in your marriage. But if you plant seeds like, "You know what? There's something about her or about him that I fell in love with all those years ago, and it's still there." I love that part of their personality. You know what I love about what they did this week? I love that right there. You sow those kinds of thoughts, then that kind of gratitude and joy, that's what you're going to reap in your marriage. And do not give up.

Now, listen carefully to this next statement. You know what? One of the biggest reasons for discouragement is when it comes to sowing good seed. One of the biggest reasons that people give up is that—and we all do this. You look at what you've been harvesting lately in your life, and you go, "I don't like it, and it's frustrating, and it's disappointing. My life is not turning out well, and so I give up." Because you're looking at your current harvest, and maybe you made a mistake in your life. Listen, we all make mistakes, right? And sometimes you reap a bad harvest from—sometimes you get kind of lucky and you don't, but sometimes you do some mistake and you reap some really giant bad harvest in your life.

And that can be so discouraging to still be paying for some stuff you did that was stupid years and years ago. But listen, listen. You can't re-sow last year's crop. Does that make sense? You can't go back into time and say, "I wish I wouldn't have slept through that alarm on the day of my final. I wish I wouldn't have told my boss that he was the biggest idiot I've ever worked for. I wish I wouldn't have made that bad business deal. Man, am I still paying for that. You can't climb into Doc Brown's time machine and go back and change anything. You can't do it. And so what you've got to do is, "Okay, the harvest—what I'm getting—I'm getting bad corn right now in my field, but I'm not going to change that if I just give up.

What I'm going to do is go, "All right, that's this year's harvest, and I'm going to start over, and I'm going to start planting good seed right now." All you can do anything about is the next harvest in your life. On that, you've got a clean slate. So let's start to bring this in for a landing here. What is Paul's main application? "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." So listen, just so that you don't immediately get overwhelmed, Paul goes, "So let us do good to all people!" And you go, "All people, as we have opportunity," kind of just daily. Look for the opportunities. Sometimes they're going to be big. Sometimes they're going to be really small. And especially to your family and the family of believers, right?

Now, of course, here's where I want to give a shout-out to the world's biggest garage sale people, because what a great opportunity. These people who are in charge of this decided, "You know what? We have an opportunity here to raise some money for Second Harvest Food Bank, because everybody's got stuff they don't want." And so people came in, and we found amazing—I don't know if you heard this, but in one cardboard box that was donated a few days ago, we found unopened original Star Wars figurines from the '70s, and we sold them—I think they closed Thursday on eBay—for $1,849. Can you believe that? And it's all going to the food bank.

This young man, Gabe, was collecting golf balls. He's collected nearly 700 golf balls, polished them up, and he was selling them with everything going to Second Harvest Food Bank. Another woman sold her wedding dress she's had for 52 years. She's recently widowed, and she decided, "I want to sell this." Went to an antique dealer the week before the garage sale, sold it, she said, for more than she paid for it 52 years ago, donated it all to the world's biggest garage sale. And I can't wait to find out what happened, but people saw these opportunities, you know? "Hey, I've got these old action figures. I live next to a golf course. I can collect golf balls. I got this wedding dress. I'm not going to use it again." And as we have opportunity, we get to do good.

I'll tell you, this is my favorite quote from the garage. So many great things happened. But Willie Elliott McCray, who's the director of Second Harvest, he came to check it out. He was just over the moon. Now listen to what he said. This to me was—this was the payoff. He said, "René, you know what I see when I look around here?" And Willie's not a church attender here. He says, "I see God's love just overflowing." And I kind of said, "Well, thank you, Willie." And he said, "No, I mean it." He said, "You know what I see when I come to your church?" He said, "I see people who know their love by God, and that love just overflows to everybody else." And I thought, "That's what it's all about."

It's not about people who go, "We've got to do more for God to love us." It's people who know their love by God, and then that love just overflows. So would you join me in thanking everybody who worked so hard at the garage sale? That was awesome! As we have opportunities—you know, here's another—it's just real quick. You walk out that door, and you look to your right, and you know you will see rising above the rooftops, a field starting to turn green. A year and a half ago, you started sowing seeds. Some of you, just as much as you could afford, they were small seeds. And some of the college students say, "All I can give monthly is $5 to 20/20 Vision, because I don't have anything more to spare, but I want to sow seeds in that field."

And for many months, it didn't look like anything was going to grow in that field, because we had a lot of obstacles to go through. But now you're starting to see that new children's building take form. But that's not the harvest yet. The harvest is going to be generations of young people who are educated there in our school and in our CK Sunday school programs, and in their children, and that will be the harvest that results out of your diligent seeds. But every day, there are moments when you can say a word of encouragement. Every day, there's some way that you can help somebody. Paul's saying, "See the opportunity. Don't get cynical. Don't get hardened. Don't give up."

On our trip to Nicaragua, I also met this man, Otto de la Cruz. He was just across the border over in Guatemala. I first met Otto about 25 years ago, and on that occasion, I stood with him in his one-room house in a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City, dirt floor. He had his wife and he had five little girls, five daughters. And Otto told me then, 25 years ago, "I am here to plant churches." And I remember saying, "Well, Otto, how many people do you have so far in your ministry?" And he looked around and he said, "Counting my family? Seven." You know, he had exactly seven in his family. That's all he had in his church. That was 25 years ago.

So I visit Otto again about a year and a half ago. You want to know how it's going? So far, Otto has successfully planted 36 churches, which literally minister to thousands of people, and almost every single church he has planted has been in a rough neighborhood that didn't have any kind of church. Almost every single pastor is an ex-gang member or drug addict that Otto has brought to Christ and trained, and they're amazing people. I want to show you one of them, Herr Son and his wife. He's been tied up. He's been robbed. He's been threatened by gangs with death if he did not leave. And he's told him again and again, "I can't leave because I am called by God to show you love in the name of Jesus Christ."

And Herr Son's church, by the way, has been partly built by a team from Twin Lakes Church on one of our short-term projects down there. Now, these are the kind of pastors I met when I was visiting recently in Latin America. And we kind of have this pastors meeting, and they describe the gangs, and they describe the death threats. Then they turn to me and they say, "Pastor René, what are the challenges in your ministry?" And I thought to myself, "What am I going to say? Well, one of our Christmas concerts, the fog machine didn't work. What do you say? First world problems, you know?"

But how is it possible for guys like Otto and Herr Son to keep going for 25 years when all they started with was a dirt floor in his own family? Because they believe what Paul's been saying. You will reap a harvest if you do not give up. And I don't know what you're facing right now with your own personal life, with your kids, with your marriage, with your spiritual life, with your professional life, but you will reap what you sow, more than you sow, later than you sow, if you sow. So do not give up.

Now listen, let me close with this. Why do you think Paul doesn't just start with this inspirational message at the beginning of Galatians? If this is where he's going, why does he spend five and a half chapters talking about grace, grace, grace, grace, grace? Why does he not just start with this? Because if he would have started with, "You reap what you sow, you idiots. That should be obvious. So do good stuff. So good stuff happens." People would have stopped right there and thought, "Oh, that's the gospel. Do good." That's not the gospel. That's the response to the gospel. And that's why he puts it at the end.

This is not the gospel. This is the response to the gospel. And churches and Christians get that mixed up all the time. The gospel is not do good, be good. The gospel is God loves you unconditionally and infinitely. And if you receive that made available through what Christ did on the cross, the gospel is the root, what we've been talking about is the fruit. The gospel is not rules. The gospel is not advice. The gospel is not instruction. But the gospel always invites a response. So how are you responding to the gospel?

Heavenly Father, we all just want to confess to you in this moment that there have been times in our lives when we've been sowing bad seed. And we've reaped that harvest. But God, we are not happy with what we've been harvesting in our lives entirely. And so help us to learn how to change what we're planting. And God, I pray that if there's anybody here who wants to receive your grace right now, they would just pray with me in their hearts right now. "Lord, I want to respond to the gospel right now. Then help me to understand I'm not saved by my good deeds. There's no pressure on my performance there. I simply receive your grace purchased for me by Christ's death on the cross. I don't even have to understand it all, but I receive it. And then as I let it capture my imagination, as I stand amazed at what Jesus did for me, a sinner condemned to unclean, then I'm changed from the inside out. So help me to live my life in light of that love. In Jesus' name, Amen.