Silently but eloquently they testifyWhat archaeologists found in the 1st centuy C.E. Jerusalem house made the story clear: a human bone or two in the smallest room, fire-blackened walls, and a spear still The fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. should have been no big surprise. Again and again God had warned his people to repent. But they deceived themselves with this faulty argument: In Jerusalem is the temple of the LORD. Surely God would not allow His temple to suffer destruction. Perhaps they recalled God's earlier defense of Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah and Hezekiah, when His angel slaughtered 185,000 Assyrian soldiers as they prepared to lay siege (2 Kings 18-19; 2 Chron. 32; Isa. 36-37). More than 100 years later, however, Jeremiah had explained that God would not defend Jerusalem if the people continued their rebellion, temple or no temple (Jer. 7:1-8:3). God still sounds the alarm today. In Galatians 6 Paul warns us that people, even Christians, reap what they sow, whether corruption from sowing to the flesh, or life eternal from sowing to the Spirit. Peter urges us to be holy and godly as we wait for the coming day of the Lord (2 Peter 3:11-12). James predicts a coming "day of slaughter" (James 5:5). The Burnt House on display in Jerusalem today is a silent but eloquent testimony that we cannot ignore God's warnings without suffering due consequences. God gave us these warnings not to infuriate us, but to preserve our spiritual life. He will defend His obedient servants, but not rebels. |
| —Steve Singleton DeeperStudy.com |
Want to go deeper?Four times in Gal. 6:7-10, Paul uses the Greek verb therizō ("reap") to emphasize the consequences that always come from our actions, whether good or evil. "You reap what you sow" was not an adage Paul invented; Jesus Himself spoke of the connection between reaping and sowing in three parables of the kingdom (Mark 4:1-9, 13-20, 26-29; Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43), in comments while in Samaria (John 4:37-38), and in the twin parables of the mina (Luke 19:21-22) and the talents (Matt. 25:24, 26). Similar metaphors occur in Aristotle, Plato, the Hebrew Scriptures (Prov. 22:8; Jer. 12:13) and in Philo. The sow-reap principle is foundational to the way things work in this world in a variety of endeavors. Even those of us extremely isolated from farms where harvesting is commonplace can understand the link. It operates in fields as diverse as exercise ("no pain, no gain") and computer programming ("garbage in, garbage out"). To act as if the connection doesn't exist or can be broken easily is to mock God, who bound sowing and reaping together from the dawn of creation. And Paul says, "God cannot be mocked." We would be attempting the impossible. Rather than defy such an immutable law, we must learn to go with the flow, taking care to "sow" good things, that they may germinate, grow, and bear fruit in our lives.
R. C. Sproul. The Consequences of Ideas (2009). Studying the history of empirical thought helps us understand the culture in which we live. From Plato and Augustine to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Sproul's introduction to and analysis of philosophers and their ideas will help you respond as a Christian to the thinking that has shaped your world, for better or worse. Recommended for online reading: Henry Hardinge. "Sermon I: Galatians, vi.7," (1-22) in his Twelve Plain Sermons: Preached in a Village Church (1833). |
leaning against one corner. Soldiers bursting in must have killed one or more occupants of the house before they reached their weapon. If anyone survived, the soldiers probably led them off into exile or slavery.