Everyone Lives As They Please

"Everyone Lives As They Please" – Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” God gives us freedom to decide, but our decisions have consequences: everyone is free to live as they please, yet no one is free from the law of sowing and reaping. What we sow today with our words, our attitudes and our actions will bear fruit tomorrow. The study walks through Galatians 6:7-8; Job 4:8 — with the warning that the principle is true but Eliphaz applied it wrongly by accusing Job of a hidden sin; Isaiah 53:6, where the Lord lays on the Servant the iniquity of us all; and Psalm 32:5, where David stops covering his iniquity and confesses it. It closes with the Lord's Supper and the reading of Luke 22.

I. Everyone lives as they please, but no one escapes sowing and reaping.

A. God gives freedom to decide, and our decisions have consequences.

1. What we sow with words, attitudes and actions will bear fruit tomorrow.

2. God chooses each one and puts the will in us: it is not wanting, it is coming to the act of doing.

B. Come down from fame and fall at the feet of others to wash their feet.

II. Do not be deceived: God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).

A. Paul teaches a principle God established: the law of sowing and reaping.

1. It is a law of agriculture, and it also operates in our decisions.

2. Every word is aimed at an action, and the action brings out the fruit.

B. “Do not be deceived” is a warning: we think our actions will have no consequences.

1. God knows the heart and cannot be mocked.

2. No one can ignore God's principles and expect different results.

3. If we are the body of Christ, we must reason as Christ.

III. Sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit (Galatians 6:8).

A. Whoever sows to his flesh — sinful desires, selfishness, disobedience — reaps corruption.

B. Whoever sows to the Spirit seeks to please God and be led by the Holy Spirit.

1. A moment comes when you must let yourself be led, and the one who leads is the Holy Spirit.

2. The fruit is a transformed life.

IV. The daily questions.

A. What am I sowing with my words?

1. The unruly child is counseled, admonished and taught: that is sowing words.

2. Sowing whatever is good, just, lovely and true.

B. What am I sowing with my decisions?

C. What am I sowing in my family and in my church?

D. What am I sowing in my relationship with God?

1. If the minister has no relationship with God, it is he who damages the work.

2. What is for my life is for yours too: no one has more privilege in heaven.

E. If we want a good harvest, we must sow love.

1. When you love, there is always pain, because love produces pain.

2. Sow obedience, generosity, faithfulness and holiness.

V. Those who plow iniquity (Job 4:8).

A. It is the first speech of Eliphaz, one of Job's friends.

1. Job is ill and his friends tell him why it is happening: they turn it into a judgment.

B. “Plow iniquity”: deep evil, persistent injustice, living deliberately in wickedness.

C. “Sow trouble”: it is sowing violence, injustice, deceit or harm toward others.

1. We deceive ourselves thinking we have never been violent.

2. Hence the daily prayer for forgiveness; for that one must have communion with heaven.

D. “They harvest it”: we gather the consequences of that conduct.

1. Every action produces something, good or bad, according to the action taken.

2. Life is made of loving and of deeds, and those deeds cry out what fruit they bore.

VI. The error of Eliphaz.

A. He assumed Job's suffering was proof of a hidden sin.

1. Job 1:1-8 shows Job was blameless and that his trials were not punishment for a fault.

2. In the end God tells Eliphaz: “you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.”

B. Let us not conclude that everyone who suffers is reaping a specific sin.

1. God may allow trials to strengthen faith, reveal His glory and form character.

2. Will we be the judges of the earth, or the righteous who pray on the earth?

VII. All of us like sheep have gone astray (Isaiah 53:6).

A. “Like sheep”: all of us have drifted from God (Romans 3:23).

B. “Each of us has turned to his own way”: each one puts his will above God's.

C. “But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him”: here is the heart of the Gospel.

1. God laid on the Messiah the guilt and the punishment we deserved.

2. We think of what has been done to us, and not of what we have done to another.

3. Knowing the right thing and not doing it is also sin.

VIII. I acknowledged my sin to You (Psalm 32:5).

A. David stopped hiding his sin: confession is an act of humility and sincerity.

B. “I did not hide my iniquity”: God wants a repentant heart, not an appearance of perfection.

1. We are quick to confess another's sin; we must confess our own.

2. One is set free when he brings out what is his.

C. Three words related to sin.

1. Sin: falling short of God's purpose.

2. Iniquity: the corruption or evil of the heart that produces sin.

3. Transgression: deliberately breaking a commandment of God.

D. “And You forgave the guilt of my sin”: God's answer was immediate.

1. Forgiveness is not earned by merit: it is received by the mercy of God.

IX. What it is to be the church.

A. The body of Christ is the hardest thing to carry; from the church is where most of the pain is heard.

B. Jesus went to the cross so that the church would be established on earth through His death.

1. The one who is saved has eternal life, crowns to win and a home in heaven.

2. At the rapture soul and spirit will be joined to the body; then the wedding of the Lamb and the millennium.

3. There will be a new heaven and a new earth: that is what we live for, because here all is vanity.