Christian Living

The Lord Reaps What Weve Sown

by Thomas Kirkpatrick
09/06/21
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“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1Corinthians 15:54)

While I was sitting out on the stoop of my house early this morning, I was gathering my thoughts and pondering on the verses of Scripture I have read, and I was captured by a memory from seasons long ago. There was a place that the family would go to each summertime outside of the small town we lived in—Barger Springs in the rolling hills of the Almost Heaven of West Virginia. I had two shocking experiences there. One was the taste of sulfur-laden spring water from the well, and the other was the outhouse. As much as I tried to hold, I would have the adventure of the outhouse. My only fear was having to go in the darkness of night.

I loved it there in the country, and my favorite activity was roaming around the countryside. I was curious about the mountain behind the cabin and found a trail leading up the mountain a little way down the gravel road. At first, it had two ruts for wheeled traffic and then narrowed to one rut for folks or wild creatures. The ground was rocky, going up the hillside and laborious. When I reached the top, I wanted to know if I could see our cabin below. I had lost my direction and just walked around, exploring the area. I found a graveyard there and became captivated by the little monuments.

I am not much for graveyards and only planned to go once in my life, yet, it would not be me, only the leftovers of me. I looked at the monuments and noticed that the latest one was in 1896. That was amazing to me as that meant no one else had been placed there in sixty-five years. There were only twenty graves, and the oldest one was in 1841. Ten of them died from 1862 through 1864. Possibly they were war soldiers of the Civil War. A family plot kept coming to my mind, and I failed to find the last name of any I could read.

If it was a family plot, the second generation lived through some trying times and suffered the losses of ten of their children. Whoever they were, they have been long forgotten by any of us, as it now has been one-hundred-twenty-five years. How could they think of the world we live in now, and how could we imagine the realm they are in. The only assurance I can find for them is that God knows them well as we have forgotten them.

A small Presbyterian Church near Talcott called Keller Presbyterian Church is not far from this graveyard at Barger Springs. My father used to preach there on Sunday afternoons to the congregation of about twenty or so people. I do not remember many of their names, but their memories are etched in my mind. When I was about three or four, I remember sitting by the potbellied stove. It was summertime, but I sat there because it was close to the pulpit, and I could watch my father preach. When I explored the graveyard, a verse my father taught stayed with me until this moment on the stoop. I was amazed by the verse, but what stuck was this. Death is swallowed up in victory.

I know what jarred it into memory, and life again is what I was reading this morning as the scripture can from the same neighborhood, Corinthians. “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)

My father’s teaching at Keller, the grave at Barger Springs, and the reading this morning brought to my mind the parable of the wheat and tares. Some of those twenty family members in the graveyard at Barger Springs were all planted perishable, and it is my prayer and hope they will be raised imperishable. The body is a seed that someday will hear the trumpet of the Lord sound and raise imperishable. Then some will not, and they are the tares. God cannot pull the tares out, for they may damage the seeds of the imperishable. He said to His disciples. “And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up? But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.” (Matthew 13:28-29)

I see the grave as the planting field of the Lord. The result of our sin-fractured bodies is that once created perfectly now must be planted in death to rise again in perfection if they are without sin through the redemption of Jesus Christ. We cannot disturb those who have died in Christ by ripping out the wicked ones before the fullness of time and judgment. “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-43)

Just before the parable of the tares and wheat is the parable of the sower. Here we learn the opportunity the Word of God offers that all can find salvation from the second death. The Word of God is sown, and the soil of the heart determines its reception. There is a good reason for prayer and petition for God’s mercy and heart doors to be opened to receive the Gospel Truth. The parable is found in Matthew 13:1-9)

We see the sower sowing the seed of God’s Gospel, and some of the seed falls beside the road. These people are busy living in the world, and they do not have time to listen to myths, philosophies, and religious doctrines. They are involved in the present world and having to keep only a step behind their neighbors. They do not want spiritual truth, as they cannot understand it. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Some of the soil is rocky and crowds out the seed. These people are interested in and accept the truth into their hearts, as it seems good. They like the sound and feel of it, and it has lifted their emotions. They think the Christian life solves all their troubles, and when challenges come, they fall away. Their belief dies because they have no faith. They believed the truth, but they never practiced it in faith. “And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching.” (Mark 6:6)

No one can please God without faith. Faith is taking the truth you have received and living it as it is truth. You cannot see the truth until it comes alive in your life through faith. I can believe water will quench my thirst, but it never will until o drink of it. Faith brings the unseen into your vision. Without vision, a person will perish. Faith assures our hope and convicts of its reality. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Some of the soil sprouted up thorns. The world we live in has all kinds of distractions that will take our focus off the truth. Look around and see that every good gift God has given has been used by the evil one to distract the truth of God’s Word. Every minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is distracted by the thorns of this world. God told Adam the soil would be filled with thorns. The thorns choke the truth that mankind remains living in the lie. “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” (1 John 2:16)

Again the need for prayer and petition for the lost. Grace, for you, the power of your ministry to make disciples that will have faith to serve the Lord. Mercy for those who do not know so God would open the doors of their heart so they will have prepared soil. That they would have faith to confess Jesus as Lord. Repent removing the rocks that crowd their spiritual growth and root out the sins which rise up and choke the good seed. Then they as wheat will grow and flourish in the power of God Almighty and bring good fruit to the Kingdom of God. “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.” (Matthew 13:23)

The message given by Paul is we are the good seed that lives in the righteousness of God’s Word. When our work in this world is finished, and our bodies planted will rise again in the fullness of time, an imperishable body fit for eternity. “That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.” (1 Corinthians 15:36-38)

Jesus will lift the family plot of the Church from the earthy image we left here in the world to give us the heavenly image as His, so we will be fit in fine white linen of righteousness for the glory of our Heavenly Father. “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.” (1 Corinthians 15:49)

Thomas N Kirkpatrick

First Baptist Church of Durant, May 14, 2020