In Peter Allison's sermon titled 'Harvest Laws,' he explores the teachings of Jesus from Luke chapter 6, focusing on the principles of judgment, forgiveness, and generosity. The sermon emphasizes the 'laws of harvest' which include reaping only where there has been sowing, reaping the same kind as what is sown, reaping in proportion to what is sown, and reaping after sowing. It discusses how these principles apply to Christian life, urging believers to forgive, give generously, and refrain from unjust judgment. The sermon clarifies that judgment in a Christian context doesn't necessarily mean condemnation but can also represent approval. Through the story of Louis Zamperini, the sermon illustrates the transformative power of forgiveness and love for one's enemies. It concludes by encouraging listeners to embody these principles, as they lead to spiritual growth and obedience to God’s word.

Our scripture reading in preparation for the message this morning is Luke from Luke chapter 6 Begin at verse 37 We will begin at verse 37. Judge not and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and you shall not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be put into your bosom.

For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. And he spoke a parable to them, Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not perceive the plank in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye, When you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye, And then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. The word of the Lord. May we long for His commandments as one who pants with an open mouth longs for the air. Father in heaven, please bless your word to our minds and our hearts.

Please instruct us. Open and prepare our minds to receive with meekness your word as it comes to us this morning. May it transform us. May it sanctify us. May it prune us.

May it comfort us. May it encourage us and move us to greater fidelity and greater obedience to the gospel of your kingdom. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those that are nice to them.

If you do good to those who do good to you? What credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. Remember in the eyes of the first century Jew, a sinner was one of the lowest sorts of people. A sinner was on the same category as the tax collector, the trader, The one who went over to the Romans and sold out their own people.

See Jesus is saying it's easy to be nice, to be kind, to be generous to those who treat us that way. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to receive back as much. Jesus says, love your enemies. Do good and lend hoping for nothing in return, and your reward will be great.

And you will be sons of the Most High. For He, Jehovah, is kind to the unthankful and the evil. And therefore Jesus said, we are to be like our heavenly Father. That was the message that we heard last week, the text that we looked at last week. You remember that Jesus speaks in figures of speech, He speaks in similes, in parables.

And when he says that we are to turn the other cheek when we're struck on one cheek we saw that even from Jesus' own example, what he meant by that, he meant that we are to not resist Those who are doing evil in a spirit of vengeance, in a spirit of hatred, in a spirit of rage, but rather we are, if we have to resist, if we are called to resist, we are to do it with love. Now you say, what does that look like? Well there's not a lot of difference maybe in the outward appearance between some resisting out of love for their enemy and somebody who is resisting out of revenge, a spirit of vengeance and out of revenge. That difference though becomes much more readily apparent when we are bound, when we are not able to resist. Then, this difference becomes huge.

Huge becomes everything. And Jesus talks about lending here. He's not saying that we can't ever lend. He talks about giving and not hoping to receive nothing in return. He's not talking here about lending and not expecting to get what you lent back.

He's talking about the purpose, just like when he said, turn the other cheek, he's talking here about the purpose for our lending. Are we lending in the hopes that We're going to earn favor with somebody, and are we lending to somebody in the hopes that they'll be able to do us something good later on? Is that our purpose? Is that our motivation, I should say, for lending? Is that we'll earn favor with somebody who has something that we want?

We'll earn favor with somebody who is important? That's what Jesus is saying. Don't lend that way. Lend because there's a need and you're willing to give generously for that need. And so we come to this next section here where Jesus continues this sermon on the plain, a slightly different sermon from the one that he gave on the mount that is maybe well, more well known in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

But there are many similar concepts, similar messages. He goes on in 37 and following to give us the laws of harvest. The laws of harvest, yes, sowing and reaping is a very biblical principle. And Jesus says judge not and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and you will not be condemned.

Forgiven you will be forgiven. Given will be given to you. Judge not and you shall not be judged. This like the turn the other cheek and give or lend not hoping for anything in return is often misunderstood and frequently misquoted. How many times have you heard somebody say, when the Word of God is brought to them, when the precepts of God are brought to them, when the commandments of God's Word are brought to them by brothers and sisters in the Lord.

How many times have you been told, if you heard back, well judge not, you're not to judge me. And this passage, this sermon on the plain and sermon on the mount are the references that they have in view. Is that what Jesus is saying here? That we are never to judge? That we are never to render a judgment about what somebody else has done?

Judgment is actually a neutral word. It can mean, it can refer to something positive or it can refer to something negative. We talk about critics today, critics of music or critics of theater and drama, and The word critic normally conveys to us a negative response. If somebody is critical of us, they are not for what we are doing. They are condemning what we are doing.

But a critic can also be for something. It can be in favor of whatever they are the critic of. It doesn't necessarily mean a wrong judgment. So to judge doesn't necessarily mean that we are condemning an action. It can mean that we are approving of an action.

That is to render a judgment as well. If you are in a court, the judgment can be guilty or not guilty. It can be you are exonerated and what you have done is not wrong, or it can be a condemnation that you are guilty. And so Jesus here in saying, judge not, lest you be not judged, is not saying that we are not as Christians to judge. Actually, just the opposite.

There are many places in Scripture where we are commanded to judge. Probably one of the most forceful, prominent places is in 1 Corinthians, Where we are taught that we are to judge. First Corinthians 6, dare any of you have a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Do you not know that saints will judge the world? So these people in this church were taking their complaints with one another to a judge, an unrighteous judge.

And Jesus is saying, Why are you doing that? Why are you taking your issues, your concerns, your matters that need judgment, and going to an unrighteous judge? Don't you know? Why aren't you coming to fellow Christians to receive a judgment? Don't you know that the saints will judge the world?

And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more the things that pertain to this life? If you then have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you not appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge? I say this to your shame.

Is it not so that there is not a wise man among you, not even one who will be able to judge between his brethren? We are here, Paul is rebuking this church because they were not rendering judgments, because they were going somewhere else to receive a judgment. Jesus himself made many statements that were judgments against people. He gave the strongest of judgments against the Pharisees and the Sadducees, many times, calling them blind leaders of the blind, calling woes down upon them, rebuking them for their unbelief, the hardness of their heart, their not knowing the Scriptures. He even judged the disciples, his own disciples.

Said that they were acting like the Gentiles in trying to rule over each other. They were concerned about their own power. And so, if we look at the life of Jesus, just like last week when we looked at turning the other cheek, we look at the life of Jesus, we see that Jesus is not at all saying that we are not to judge when he says, judge not. It's judge not and you shall not be judged. He explains it a little later in this parable when he says, can the blind lead the blind?

Can the blind lead the blind? Can the blind lead the blind? What's an obvious question? Everybody this morning here that can understand and think about the words that I'm saying knows that the blind can't lead the blind. They will both fall into the ditch.

A disciple is not above his teacher, But everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. It's something to remember as parents. We can't train our children to be more than what we are. We can't train them to be more fervent for the Lord than we are. We can't train them to be more disciplined in the spiritual disciplines than we are.

We can't train them to be more disciplined in the spiritual disciplines than we are. We can't train them to be more patient with their siblings and more kind to their siblings than than we are with them a Disciple is not above his teacher But everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher when their training is complete That is saying they will be like their teacher for better or for worse, you know, we're all We're all training those of us that have children or had children. We're all training them for better or for worse. And when that training is complete, they will be like us. In other words, Jesus is cautioning here those of us who are in positions of responsibility where we have to care for other people.

And we see that they have this speck in their eye, this fault. Jesus is reminding us that if they are somebody that we are discipling, they are going to be like us. If we are training them, They are going to be like us. And why, Jesus said, do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do you not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, brother let me remove the speck that is in your eye, and then when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye.

These aren't hard words to understand. We don't have to go to the Greek here to understand the nuance. This is very, very obvious. Our problem is we can be blind to it. When you have a plank in your eye, you can't see very well.

One of the things that we can easily be blind to is the plank that is in our eye. First you remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. Jesus here in This message though gives us the laws of harvest. The laws of harvest. They're important laws that are true about our day.

Our day. They're true about our week, our month, and they are true about our life from start to finish. The laws of harvest. The first law Jesus gives is that we reap only where we have been sowing. We reap only where there has been sowing.

We can't expect to reap a harvest if we have not been sowing, if we haven't been planting the seed. Forgive and we will be forgiven. Give and we will receive. Don't condemn and we won't be condemned. We can't expect people to forgive us when we haven't sown forgiveness.

We can't expect people to give to us when we have not been sowing generosity. We can't expect people not to condemn us if we haven't been sowing that. Proverbs says, he who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord and he will pay back what he has given. There is a return, there is a harvest. But you notice it's to those who are sowing.

It's to those who have pity on the poor and lend that the Lord will pay back what they have been. Paul instructed Timothy to command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to Trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, Paul said, that they may be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share. And what's the fruit of that? There is a harvest.

If they are sowing these things as rich people who have a lot to give and a lot to share, they are, Paul said, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life. We reap only where we have been sowing or only where there has been sowing. The second law of harvest is that we reap the same kind as we sow. We reap what we sow. If we forgive, if we sow forgiveness, then we will reap forgiveness.

If we sow not judging unjustly, then we won't be judged unjustly. That's what Jesus was saying in that judge not. He's speaking about a critical eye, having, being Somebody who is finding fault with things. There are people that you just know they are always going to find fault with whatever you are doing. The first thing that they want to say is to find fault.

Sometimes it is easy to be that way with our children. And when Jesus says, Judge not, nice to be not judged, He is calling us to be generous, to be generous and charitable in our judgments of other people. And to not be those who are looking to find a mistake, because if you're looking to find a mistake you will find it. If you're looking to find a flaw, if you're looking to find an error, you will find it. We reap the same kind of thing we sow.

If that is what we are sowing, then that is what we will reap. Paul told the Galatians, do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, But he who sows to the Spirit will have the Spirit reap everlasting life. Proverbs says he who sows iniquity will reap sorrow. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.

He who digs a pit, the Proverb says, will fall into it. He who rolls a stone will have it rolled back on him. Even Job saw this law of the harvest that we reap the same thing that we sow. If you feel that your life is difficult, that you have coming upon you all these judgments, maybe ask, what am I sowing? What am I sowing?

Am I reaping what I have been sowing? Thirdly, the third law of the harvest is that we reap in proportion to what we sow. We reap in proportion to what we sow. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. The same measure that we sow, it will be measured back to us.

It will be multiplied, but it will be measured back to us in the same measure that we sow. Paul applied this to giving in 2 Corinthians 9, this principle of law of the harvest. Giving is generosity, it's something that we sow. Paul said to them, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Paul was encouraging, exhorting the Corinthian Church to be generous in their giving, because those who gave generously would reap generously.

Jesus told his disciples that anyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake, for my name's sake, it's a very specific purpose attached to this promise of reaping, shall receive, he said, a hundredfold in this life and inherit eternal life. We reap in proportion to what we sow. The fourth law of harvest is that we reap after we sow. We reap after we sow, not before, but after. Or not when we sow, but after we sow.

There has to be an investment. We have to believe the word of God when he says, love your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. We can't say, well, where's the benefit for me? What do I get out of this?

We have to sow trusting God's word, believing that what he says is true because we reap after we sow. It says, give and it will be given to you. Give and it will be. That's a future tense. Give and it will be given to you.

James talks about the farmer who sows and then waits with patience for the rains to come, the early rains, the later rains, for the crops to grow and then only after patient waiting all the season is there a harvest, a reaping. We are to be like that farmer in our sowing and reaping. We have to sow before we can expect to reap. We reap the full harvest only if we persevere. The evil comes to harvest on its own, but we reap a good harvest only if we persevere Right those who don't do not grow weary in doing well because in due time we will reap the harvest if we do not lose heart, if we do not faint.

There is a perseverance that we have to wait on the Lord to bring a harvest. It doesn't come immediately. We don't give when we see the answer coming down the road. We give when there's nothing in sight. We don't see the harvest.

How true this is in the longer term sowing and reaping that we do in our life. The things that we are sowing now, the habits that we are sowing now, the disciplines that we are engaging in day by day, now. Some of them bring a harvest in 10, 20, 30 years. Sometimes the harvest is even later than that. Sometimes the harvest might come after we die.

We have to wait to heaven to see the harvest. But we reap a harvest only if we persevere. And we reap a harvest that is in proportion to our diligence. It's in proportion to our to what we sow, but it's also in proportion to our diligence in sowing and in tending and waiting, faithfully waiting, and faithfully continuing to sow generosity, to sow kindness, to sow forgiveness, to sow hope. Forgiveness to sow hope.

We can't do anything about last year's bad harvest, But we can do something about the next harvest. We can begin to sow. We can begin to wait patiently. We can begin to persevere. We can begin to sow what is good and stop sowing what is evil.

And lastly, we can reap sometimes from the sowing of others. Where we have been sowing and the Lord hasn't brought any fruit from that. Sometimes he sends a harvest to us from what other people have sown. Maybe you have enjoyed a blessing in your life. Maybe it was something that has been passed on to you from your parents, a material blessing, a generational blessing that you reaped.

We reap in our land many blessings that we didn't sow. If you look at just our, if you compare our culture as wicked, as corrupt, as bad as it has become, there are still many aspects to our culture that when you compare them to cultures in other countries that haven't had the gospel, wow, we are incredibly blessed. We have reaped what others have sown. We have reaped the fruit of other generations' faithful obedience. Maybe you have reaped what others have sown.

If so, give thanks for that. I told the prayer meeting this week about a man who set aside one hour a day to pray for his children. He had a couple daughters. I think he had four daughters. And he prayed for them an hour a day.

They all grew up and married ministers. And of those grandchildren, his daughter's grandchildren, There was a couple daughters and one son. The granddaughters all married ministers and the grandson became a minister. And then came the first two grandchildren of the next generation. They were cousins, same age, went to the same college, roomed together, and one of them felt called to the ministry.

You can suppose what the other one was feeling. The man's name was George, And that other grandson who wasn't called to the ministry was a man by the name of James Dobson. The Lord used him mightily in many lives. We can reap from the sowing of others. James Dobson's great grandfather sowed a life of prayer for his children, his grandchildren, and his great grandchildren.

But there's another example I'd like to give example I'd like to give to you this morning. We can read about loving our enemies, turning the other cheek here, But probably none of us, except maybe Norma even comes close, have experienced what it is to truly have an enemy. To truly be hurt. I can't talk to you about having been greatly injured and forgiving an enemy. But I'd like to give you a story about a man, some of you probably know him, who did.

At the end of World War II, thousands of Japanese POWs returned from the Pacific. Almost every one of them was physically destroyed, barely more than walking cadavers. Some of them had to be carried out of their prison camps. The average Pacific POW lost 61 pounds in captivity. And that's even more remarkable, I mean against today's obese culture that might seem like a blessing, but That's even more remarkable when you realize that the average weight of these men on enlisting was 159 pounds.

Tuberculosis, Malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, anemia, eye ailments, festering wounds were widespread. Among Canadian POWs, 84% had neurologic damage. Respiratory disease from infections and exposure to unbreathable air in factories and the slave camps and the mines were rampant. Men were crippled and disfigured by unset broken bones, their teeth ruined by beatings, and years of chewing grit and stone in their food. Others have gone blind from malnutrition.

Scores of men were near death when they were rescued. It was common for men to be hospitalized for months after coming back home. These physical injuries were lasting. They were debilitating. They were humiliating.

They were disfiguring. And they were often deadly. In the first two years after the war, Pacific POWs died at four times the expected rate for men of their age. And they continued to die at unusually high rates for many years after coming back from the Pacific. But as bad as these physical aspects of their torture and mistreatment were, the emotional injuries were far more damaging to their post-war lives because they were even more widespread, enduring, and insidious.

They were hidden. People didn't see them. They didn't recognize them. And so they didn't have support and comfort from other people, even their own family. Forty years after the war, more than 85% of Pacific POWs suffered from torturous flashbacks, anxiety attacks, and nightly recurring nightmares.

Today we would call that post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the more notorious Japanese guards was Matsuhiro Tanabe. Nicknamed the Bird, prisoners described him as a psychopathic sadist who relentlessly beat the POWs every day, shattering windpipes, rupturing eardrums, breaking off teeth, tearing off ears, leaving them mangled, blind, unconscious. And he had a special hatred for one man, one prisoner, above all else. In fact, later on, He named this man by name and said he was number one out of the 600 prisoners.

He had a special hatred for a man by the name of Louis Zamperini, an officer, a famous Olympian, and a man for whom defiance was inborn. Louis as he was known married in 1946 on returning from Japan. By 1949 Louis was without steady work, drinking himself into oblivion without restraint every day, slipping in and out of flashbacks. Even in the middle of the day, anything could set him off, Screaming and clawing through nightmares every night. Sometimes nightmares that he would get up and attack his own wife in his sleep, unaware of what he was doing.

He was consumed by anger. And murdering the bird became an obsession to which he had given his life. In a gym near his apartment, he spent hours slamming his hatred into a punching bag, preparing one day for a confrontation with the bird. A confrontation that he believed would save his life and deliver him from his suffering. When he wasn't working out or planning how to murder this enemy of his, He was chasing one failed scheme after another to raise money to get back to Japan and kill the bird.

His wife, Cynthia, had fled back to her parents with their little baby, and she returned long enough to complete the divorce proceedings. She was leaving. She'd had enough of his rage and his drunkenness. But before she could complete the process, Cynthia was converted by the preaching of Billy Graham at a crusade in Los Angeles in 1949. You can probably find that sermon in his archives.

And she came home and she told her husband that she would not divorce him, that she loved him. And she wanted him to go and hear this message of deliverance and hope that she had received He of course didn't want to have anything to do with it. He thought God was the one who was behind all his suffering He thought God was the one Who was bringing this on him and he didn't want to have anything to do with God But you know cut a long story short, the crusade was extended after several weeks of non-attendance. William Randall Hearst told the editors to start puffing up the story and lots of people started coming. And so Billy Graham extended his crusade in Los Angeles because God had one more person that he was going to call.

And through his wife's cajoling and pleading and threatening, she got him to come one night and then two nights. And it was on that second night that he was converted by the preaching of the Word of God. And that night he went home and he threw out everything that was associated with his hateful life. The pornography, the alcohol he poured it down the drain, throughout the cigarettes and he went to sleep. And for the first night in five years there were no flashbacks, there were no nightmares, There were no cold sweats.

In fact, never again for the rest of his life was he ever troubled by any dreams, flashbacks, nightmares. Never again did the bird come to him in one of his dreams ever. And he lived a long, long life. He returned to Japan in 1950, having forgiven his enemies, having loved them. But he came to answer a question.

He could love his enemies when they were far away. What about when they were right there in front of him? He didn't know. And he wanted to find out what would happen when he actually saw his captors. Will he still have that same love for them?

That supernatural love from knowing Jesus Christ. He was shown into the Sagamo prison. There were 850 prisoners there. They assembled, they brought him together so that he could speak to them. And he started looking out and seeing the faces of people who had beat him, or faces of the people who had broken his body.

And all of a sudden, he felt attracted to them. And he ran down the aisle and he started greeting all of these people who had named him so cruelly. He asked them where the bird was. He wasn't there. He didn't see him.

And they told him the colonel that ran the Sugama prison said, well, he had killed himself. And Louis At that moment said he felt great sorrow for this man that he didn't know the Lord. Well it turned out that was wrong. This Watanabe had been hiding And he wasn't dead. And years later when he went back to carry an Olympic torch, there was a possibility of meeting this man.

So he wrote him a letter, put it in his pocket before he went back to Japan. This is the letter that he wrote. As a result of my war experience under your unwarranted and unreasonable punishment, my post-war life became a nightmare. It was not due to the pain and suffering as much as it was due to the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me to hate with a vengeance. Under your discipline, my rights, not only as a prisoner of war but as a very human being, were stripped from me.

It was a struggle to maintain my dignity and hope to live until the war's end. The post-war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham, I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate I had for you. Christ said, forgive your enemies and pray for them. As you probably know, I returned to Japan in 1950 and was graciously allowed to address all the Japanese war criminals at Sugamo Prison.

I asked them about you and was told that you had committed harakiri, which I was sad to hear. At that moment, like the others, I also forgave you and now would hope that you would also become a Christian." Louis Zamperini. He was never able to meet the bird. The bird was unwilling to meet with him. The bird died in 2003.

Louis Zamparini died in 2014, 97 years old, living 65 years, reaping the fruit of loving his enemies, forgiving those who had sinned against him, turning the other cheek when he was struck on the first one. Be merciful just as your Father in heaven is merciful. May God enable us to forgive those and to love those who have wronged us. Heavenly Father, thank you for the beauty of your word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit that teaches it to us That changes us and gives to us your power to do what is humanly impossible in our own strength Father may we know your Holy Spirit this week and next week.

May we know the power of your Spirit, the power of your victory over death, over Satan, your victory defeating sin and it removing its sting. Father, we want to know this power in us. We ask that you would fill us with your Spirit. Enable us to do as you have called us to do here. To love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who spitefully use us, to turn the other cheek to those who strike us.

Teach us the laws of harvest, to sow with patience, with diligence, to sow unto your kingdom in its righteousness. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.