"Whatever a man shall sow, that shall he also reap." I substitute taught a Vo-tech Agriculture class years ago at Axtell High School in central Texas. My real work was as a pastor in that community. On the side I was doing graduate work. But occasionally, I got to spend time with the students as a substitute teacher. One of our deacons was the Ag teacher, and his wife was an English teacher. To this day I have great memories of and friendships with both of them. One day the kids played a practical joke on me. The next day I wrote this verse on the board. What we plant, we will harvest. If you plant grains of wheat, you will not harvest barley.
These words not only speak truth about farming but also about life. In Revelation, Christians have been persecuted in a great city which John symbolically calls Babylon. It has been a great center of trade and culture. Which city was the center of persecution in John's day? Rome. In the city of Rome, emperors like Nero, Vespasian and Domitian would put Christians to death. John envisions the day when the city is destroyed and God calls the empire to account for their treatment of his fellow Christians. A voice of God calls the Christians to escape like Lot and his family leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. Then everyone mourns the destruction of the great city. But the Christians are called to rejoice in the destruction of sin. Rome has harvested what it planted.
Sin is a sinking ship. If we choose to continue to connect our lives with the worst of the world, we are collaborating with Babylon. If we put our value in this world, we will lose our valuable things. But when we disconnect not from the world but from the center of sinful power in the world, then when it goes down, and it will, we will lose nothing at all. What seeds are we planting today? If we plant the good seed of the good news of Jesus Christ in our lives, it will produce love, joy and peace. If we plant seeds of sin, we must beware. If we plant the worthless wind, we may harvest a terrible tornado!
