Galatians 6:7

Galatians 6:7

I. There is none to whom so much mockery is offered as God. Men walk on His earth and deny His existence. Others acknowledge His existence, but by their lives defy His power. Men come to His house of prayer, and there, amidst the rising accents of supplication and praise and the descending message of His word, they think of their farm and their merchandise, or follow in fancy their worldly desires. They go thence, and not a word of that which they have asked is remembered with a view to its answer. And even to the spiritual ordinance of the body and blood of Christ do not men not unfrequently bring unclean hands and an unhallowed heart, and even when the signs of forgiveness and immortality are being administered to them are they not living in unrepented sin and the bondage of corruption? But with all this God is not mocked. His Divine majesty dwells in light unapproachable, far above any stain of pollution or danger of insult from us, the creatures of His almighty will. It is not God, it is our souls, that we mock when we thus tamper with their best and dearest interests. It is ourselves whom we expose to shame and everlasting contempt.

II. How this is the case, the second fact announced by the Apostle may explain to us: "God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The present life is our seedtime. Our hearts and consciences are the field to be sown. By the seed are meant those living principles, whether good or ill, which sink down below the level of the surface, not what men profess, but what men follow. Those seeds spring up and bring forth fruit of one kind or other; that is, they become put into practice in men's lives by the words of their tongues and the works of their hands. The great harvest is the end of the world, when every man's principles shall be judged by every man's works, the seed by the fruit which it shall have brought forth. What he has sown, not what he has professed to sow, will then be seen. The great harvest day shall declare what each man's principles have been in the deep chambers of his heart, and according to that declaration shall his eternal lot be, for happiness or for misery.

H. Alford, Sermons, p. 113.

References: Galatians 6:7 . T. J. Crawford, The Preaching of the Cross, p. 98; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 456; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 253; T. Teignmouth Shore, The Life of the World to Come, p. 1; J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons, 1875, p. 266; Outline Sermons to Children, p. 241.