The Principle of Consequence
Tom Shrader begins a new series on Recovering Our Lost Legacy by examining the principle of consequences. Using Galatians 6:7-10 as the foundation, he explains that God has designed a system where what we sow, we reap. Shrader challenges listeners to understand that their daily decisions affect their future and the legacy they leave, emphasizing personal responsibility and the reality of God's unchangeable system of consequences.
“Don't be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Recovering Our Lost Legacy
Recorded: June 02, 2005
Duration: 39 min
Themes: consequences, legacy, responsibility, choices, sowing, reaping, influence, character, parent, mentor, making poor choices, young adult, struggling with decisions, new believer, building character, influencing others
Scripture: Galatians 6:7-10, Romans 8:28, Galatians 5, Matthew 6:24, Romans 7, Deuteronomy 7:9, Proverbs 16:25, John 9
Theological Themes: galatians, biblical principles, divine justice, moral law, stewardship, sanctification, spiritual growth, kingdom living
Full Transcript
New series today: Recovering Our Lost Legacy. The idea of legacy is not just something we think of in terms of an inheritance, meaning dollars and cents, but it's anything we're passing on to anyone really around us.
I was doing a funeral and there was a share time. A lady stood up and talked about what a great guy—we'll call him Bob—what a great guy Bob was and how Bob used to come into the grocery store every week. He was so positive and so upbeat and so nice and so encouraging. Inevitably, if I was feeling down, he would cheer me up. There was a time when she was facing this crisis and Bob said, "How are you?" She said she began to cry and he spent a little time with her. That resulted in her coming to church, and then it was at church that she heard the gospel and God saved her. God's used her in an amazing way in these last 10 or 15 years. In that story, Bob developed this incredible legacy, though that wasn't his intention at all—he was just being Bob at the grocery store.
You have this legacy that you're assembling whether you agree with it or whether it's intentional or not. I can just say certain names, and they never set out to build a legacy, but you already have this view of them, good or bad. What I'm saying is I want you to be conscious that you're passing on this legacy, and the question is: what do you pass on?
The Eight Principles of Our Lost Legacy
Here are the eight topics we're going to look at: the principle of authority, the principle of duty, the principle of reverence, the principle of stewardship, the principle of significance, the principle of opportunity, the principle of faith, and today the principle of consequences. Part of what I was doing this, I thought this is like retro—this is what you would have been taught 40 years ago and maybe need to be reintroduced to our individual lives, but maybe to the culture as well.
One professor of psychology at DePaul University wrote this: "A wide variety of kids are trying to figure out how they fit in. Feelings of frustration and alienation are widespread, particularly among lower economic class kids. When you couple a get-what-you-can attitude with peer pressure, you have an explosive combination and violence comes almost naturally." Here's his conclusion: "We live in a society that shows very few consequences for such behavior. The kids' role models in the space of two hours kill people and wind up heroes."
It's that kind of attitude, or you see it where you see it in parenting where delayed obedience is counted as obedience. If you're church people, you see it—I see it at church every Sunday. "Okay, Ocean, come over here with your mom. Ocean, one, two, three," and then eventually the kid saunters over because you got candy hanging out of your pockets and doesn't want to run wild.
Characteristics of People Who Don't Get the Principle of Consequences
What are the characteristics of people who don't get the principle of consequences? Number one: they make choices emphasized or driven by desire. "I want to do it. I do what I want to do." There's very little difference between that and an animal. Somebody will say, "I want to be happy. My marriage makes me unhappy. God wants me divorced. The last thing God would want me to do would be to be unhappy. God wants to meet my every desire." So I don't think in terms of consequences—I think of desire.
Number two, and these overlap: they justify their actions by claiming personal rights. Somebody has said, "Teach society its rights and you incite rebellion; teach society its responsibility and you incite revival." You live at a time and obviously you have rights for a reason and exercise them as appropriate, but they're almost overemphasized.
I had a situation, oh gosh, I don't know how long ago, where I was teaching on two consecutive Sunday mornings and somebody in two consecutive weeks passed out in the service. Of course I assumed it was the power—I don't know what you're laughing at—I assumed it was the power of the teaching combined with the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Well, the second week the lady that passed out was visibly pregnant, and the first person who came up to me didn't say, "Is she okay? Is she at the hospital?" What do you think they said? "Do you have insurance for this? Do you have coverage for this? Do we have a policy in place?" Because now they're going to want to see if we have these things in place. It's that kind of mentality that you have.
Always a Victim, Never a Villain
Here's the third thing: they reject responsibility by transferring blame. So in the old Flip Wilson days, "The devil made me do it." Here's the phrase that we would use and we deal with it frequently: always a victim, never a villain. Always an explanation. "This happened to me, this happened to me," and I'm not discounting those things. I'm saying there are legitimate things that happened to us that have shaped you.
We spend so much time, meaning Sandy and I with the grandkids and their parents, trying to raise them well and treat them well that I assume if you were mistreated as a child it had some negative effects. But that can't be the excuse forever.
I was meeting with a guy and he's probably, I don't know, mid-30s, and everything in his life was screwed up. I said, "Why do you think this is?" He said, "I can tell you why it is. My senior year of high school in the state championship game, the score was close, I was warming up in the bullpen, and the coach never put me in, and consequently I never got the scholarship and I never played Major League Baseball. I'd have been a Cy Young winner if he'd have put me in this game."
Well, let me tell you, here's what I know about baseball, especially if you're a Cub fan: we need pitching, okay? We're going to find you somewhere. They're going all around the world looking for players. But in this whole no-consequence, "I'm always a victim" mentality...
never a villain. Number four, they defy authority. They resist authority. There's constantly that chin out, and who are you to tell me?
We talk about it all the time. You're driving to Flagstaff, and the speed limit is 75, and you got your little speed control set at 80, and you come right out of that Prescott exit, and you come right over there where they're always there, and it's that day that you forget to hit the brake and slow back down, because you know they're sitting there, they're always there, and all of a sudden, they pull you over for going 80, and everything in you wants to go catch a criminal, go catch a bad guy. They did. It's you. The law was 75, it said it, but what about he went by me, see that pickup? That's not it. It's you. You drove 80, you set it at 80.
Here's the last thing. They discount difficulties by denying any sort of connection. They look at their life and the mess in their life, and they say, I don't see it. What did you do? Nothing. Do you see back here in the midst of this, that you made that decision five years ago, five months ago, five days ago, five minutes ago, whatever it was, you made that decision. Yeah, but that doesn't have anything to do with this.
The Biblical Foundation for Consequences
So here's the biblical passage, Galatians chapter 6, and it's our biblical foundation. We pull four principles out of this. Not true a hundred percent of the time, but true the majority of the time. Let's read the passage Galatians 6:7-10:
"Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially those who belong to the family of believers."
Here's the first biblical foundation. God has designed a system. Don't kid yourself. Verse 7a. Don't be deceived. God is not mocked. God has a system. And the system is in place, and it doesn't matter whether you get it, don't get it, comprehend it, consider it, understand it, believe in it. It doesn't matter. It's true.
Let's shout this out like we're Brophy kids: Two plus two is four. Now you may write down five. You may feel it's five. You may sincerely believe it's five. You may deny four is the answer, but the reality is two plus two is four.
The Reality of God's System
I take a test every year, part of my physical. It's a mental test to see how fast I'm deteriorating mentally. And it always begins, two years in a row I miss this, it always begins with what's the date. I never know what the date is. I mean, do you know what the date is? I got it Thursday. I never know the date. So this year I made a note going in what the date was. So what's the date? What state are you in? And I'll always say, confusion. And He'll laugh.
And so He'll say, two plus two, I'll say four. He'll say, apple penny table. Remember those. I'm going to come back to them. And then He'll say, write a sentence. And I'll write a sentence. And then He'll say, what were those things? Apple penny table. And then there's one, which this seems, He'll say, take that piece of paper, fold it in half. And I keep, you feel, these are so obvious that you feel like there must be a trick to this somehow. So I take the paper and fold it in half. And then He'll always say, drop it on the floor. I hate to do that. I got to pick it up. I don't want to do it. I mean, I can do this. So I'll take it. And this happens every time. He'll go, fold the paper in half, drop it on the floor. Every time that's what happens. Every time. It goes right to the floor.
Now I can say, and then He leaves it laying there the rest of the time. And it's driving me nuts. I said, can I pick up the paper? It shouldn't be on the floor. It's driving me crazy. This is the same. I think I told you this story. My mom took this test and she got every question wrong except write a sentence. And she wrote, I want to go home, was the only thing that she wrote, which is vintage my mom.
My point on this is I can say, I don't believe in gravity. I don't think it exists. It only exists in this room. And I can take you downtown and take you up to one of the high rises and take you to the top. And you go, I don't believe in gravity. And I said, well, let's go up to the top and see and step on out there. And by about the 12th floor, you're going to be converted. You're going to go, I believe in this gravity thing.
He has a system, consequences. Don't be deceived. God's not mocked. This is the system that He's designed.
You May Not See It, But It Exists
It was 10 years ago, May, that Clarkie sent me this email. I said, one day, and the point here is you may not be able to see gravity, but it exists. One day, an eight-year-old girl was sitting in a classroom. The teacher was explaining evolution to the children. The teacher asked a little boy, Tommy, do you see the tree outside? Tommy, yes. Teacher, Tommy, do you see the grass outside? Tommy, yes. Teacher, go inside, look up, see if you can see the sky. He came back. Yes, I saw the sky. Did you see God? No. That's my point, the teacher said. We can't see God because He isn't there. He doesn't exist.
A little girl spoke up, wanting to ask the boy some questions. The teacher agreed, so the little girl asked the boy, Tommy, did you see a tree outside? Tommy, yes. Little girl, did you see grass? Yes. Did you see the sky? Yes. Tommy, the little girl said, did you see the teacher? Yes, I did. The little girl, did you see her brain? No. Well, then according to what we've been taught today, she doesn't have one.
Well, whether I see it, agree with it, acknowledge it, it's there. When I was back home, my first sales job, I'm in this guy's office, made my presentation, he stepped
The Physics of Spiritual Consequences
I remember once visiting a potential customer who, after I presented my proposal, dramatically came back to tell me why I wasn't going to get the order. On his credenza was one of those metal frames—those of you that are my age have seen them. They used to be on every business owner's desk: metal frames with the eight balls hanging down. Remember those? I asked him, "What's that for?" He would take the one on the end, lift it out, let it go, and this one would go out and hit the others. Now, all I know is physics is at work there, and that'll happen every time. That's the system that God designed.
The system is in your control—that's the second point. You can control your behavior. What a man reaps, he sows. Though I fall guilty of this, I've corrected myself pretty well, so I don't do it anymore: looking at the world around me and seeing so much out of control that I assume everything is. I look at Iran potentially getting a nuclear weapon—I don't know, seems like it probably will. I see someone who comes to a red light and hits you just as you're driving through, and I look at all this stuff that's beyond my control. There's the 18 trillion dollar debt—I can go on, you can make your own list. Sometimes in the midst of that, I fail to understand there are things I can control.
What You Can Control
I was at the cardiologist for a normal check-up the other day, and he said, "How you doing?" I explained to him how bad I feel, and he just walked around like a caged cat. He said, "Really? That feels like it? You have that? I don't think it's your heart." I said, "Okay. Any idea what it might be?" "No. You got the copay, right? I got a boat payment due, I got to get that in there." Then he said, "Kind of keep a little bit of what you're doing. You need 20 to 30 minutes of exercise a day. Don't go nuts, just walk. Don't eat a bunch of junk, eat better, make sure you're eating well. There's some things you can do. You're prone to this, and you got tiny veins, and your tiny veins clog."
I walked out, and Sandy said, "Well, that was good." I said, "How was it good? You're sitting there, and you're healthy." She said, "Well, Tom, just do this stuff he said to do. You can control things." What a man sows, he reaps.
Three Principles of Sowing and Reaping
Here are three things I pulled from this. Number one: you're planting, sowing all the time. You're either sowing in the natural, or you're sowing in the spirit. By planting, there's a sense in which I'm deciding what the harvest will be. Now, don't get into some whack prosperity theology. He's saying if you're sowing in the flesh, if you're taking care of the flesh, if you're meeting the desires of the flesh, you're going to sow sin, you're going to reap sin.
The third thing that I got out of this: it takes away some of that fatalism. These are things that we know, that have become so familiar that we take them for granted. We know God's in control. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." God's in the midst of working all things together for your good and His glory. My job—I don't know if that's the right word—is to be obedient. This isn't all chance or random. God's at work. Again, Oprah says, "I believe everything happens for a reason." She's right.
Your Behavior Determines Your Future
Your behavior—the third point—determines your future. The one who sows to please his sinful nature... Earlier in Galatians 5, you're either led by the Spirit or led by the flesh. Those decisions you make determine your future.
It was 35 years ago this Friday that God saved me. It's amazing—I hadn't really thought about it. That's a long time. I've lived more than half my life as a believer. God has changed everything. In that moment, that point in time, He changed my designation from sinner to saint and my destination from hell to heaven. He changed everything along the way. I can use this phrase here because you're all old, so you'll remember it: it's been an E-ticket ride. It's been unbelievable.
The Transformation of the Heart
I look back and almost everything that's happened in 35 years was driven by that decision. That decision, that moment in time where I understood the Gospel and was given a new heart so now I can follow Him—all of a sudden, I'm sowing more and more in the Spirit than the flesh. Still a struggle that goes on, right? Romans 7: I sometimes don't do the things I should do. I do the things I shouldn't do. There's a struggle in there. Matthew 6:24 says you can't serve two masters. You'll either serve God or this world, but in no case am I the master. Now my "wanter" begins to change. God changes your heart. In that sense, there's some control of your future.
Take those boxes on your outline. Take the upper left-hand corner. What we're saying is from obedience comes blessing; from disobedience comes curse. Now, I'll confess what I want is to go from disobedience to blessing. But that's not the system that God designed. What I sow, I will reap.
God's Grace in the Midst of Consequences
It's not 100% of the time though. I think back to before God saved me and even a few times after. I'm driving home so drunk—I used to say, and it was meant to be funny though it's sad, that I had to drive home because I was too drunk to walk. I remember one night sitting at 24th and Camelback heading east, and the light turned green. I remember having to get my head sideways and get down to one eye just to pick a lane to kind of hit. In all that time, though I deserved a lot of bad things other than the DUIs, God protected me and everyone else. I never hit anybody. No one ever hit me. There were all sorts of things. It's not 100% of the time where I disobey that consequences immediately follow.
Where in the midst of that, God somehow preserves you. Therefore, here you go, Deuteronomy 7, verse 9: "Therefore, the Lord your God is God. He is a faithful God. Take care to follow His commandments. Obey the commandments of the Lord your God."
The Principle That Changes Everything
Here's the principle and then five points of application: Your decisions today affect tomorrow. That's what we try to get. See how we've kind of lost that? If I remove consequences, I'm really usurping God's plan.
So we used to try to raise our kids that way—that what you do today has consequences to it. It may be short term. It may be long term. I have to think of that end result in mind. So we used to try to encourage the girls to see their lives as photographs on a roll of film rather than in a motion picture.
You've all had that experience where all of a sudden—I just found one the other day—I found that old kind of box of pictures. I have no idea what's on them. I don't know if they're from five months ago. I presume five years or ten years. And when we get them back and they'll be developed, there'll be a picture at the beach and one from the mountains and one at a birthday party and one at a graduation. They're totally random. The number two photograph has no correlation to number three.
On the other hand, in a motion picture, two connects to three, connects to four. So we would say that to the girls, that there's a progression, that what you do today matters because there's long-term consequences.
A Seven-Step Progression of Growth
Here's a progression. I know I'm not smart enough to develop it. I didn't quote it from anyone and I tried to Google some stuff and I didn't find it. My point here is I don't want to plagiarize it. I don't know who, so I'm going to say some unknown author because it's just too good for me.
So here's like a seven-step progression in my behavior. It begins with humility, that you humble yourself before the Lord. And how do I know I'm humble? Because we spend a bunch of times trying to measure humility. Here's how I'll know I'm humble: I'll begin the second step, which is to submit. I'll submit—we'll talk about it next week—to the authority and authorities over me. There's a submissive spirit, not a combative spirit. There's not a "who made you king" attitude.
And submission leads to obedience. So if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Oftentimes, the fourth step is there'll be a suffering. There'll be a hardship. It seems that that's just part of the Christian life.
But the result of that is the fifth thing, and that's perseverance. So the perseverance is a result of the suffering, which are spiritual aerobics.
The Spiritual Aerobics of Suffering
Sandy was this morning—Sandy doesn't like the workout they do on Thursday. So she runs on Thursday and she ran a half marathon last week, and then said something I can't fathom saying after it. She said, "It was easy." And I said, "All right."
So this weekend, in two weeks or whatever, there's a half marathon down at Oro Valley that we did last year. That was my favorite marathon. They had a lot of comfort for the spectators, okay? And you can park fairly closely. And all I have to do is charge my Kindle and get her there on time. And I can do that.
Well, this weekend is mountain to fountain. So that's Fountain Hills. And it sounds like it's downhill, but we drove the course last year—she ran it. And I was tired driving it. I had to get to the fountain and get a latte there at the end. And we did that. So she's going to use this Sunday as her long run to prep for the half marathon.
My point here, it's exhausting listening to this. It's insane. But it's her preparation. It's the aerobics, that pushing it. And this is the tough one. Race day is not that tough. People are cheering, "Hey, go, this is great." And they shove a corn dog in their mouth and go, "You're doing great. You can do it." You know, it's nuts. But today's the tough day. She starts when it's dark. She runs through the neighborhood. There's nobody cheering. If anything, there's guys sitting, "Get out of the way," running into her. But you do this for race day.
The suffering is the spiritual aerobics for this. It produces perseverance, which produces maturity. That's how you grow. So my guess is, if you took that six-step process and you looked at some point in your life, you would see that you're constantly moving through this process with the end result being maturity. And it starts with humbling yourself before the Lord.
Point One: Understand the System
Maybe three points or five points of practical application. Number one, understand the system. Proverbs 16:25: "There's a way that seems right to man." But you can't sin and get away with it. And it doesn't matter whether you know this or not.
I have a friend who was a policeman. And we started hanging out. And I asked him, "When you stop somebody for a ticket for speeding or right turn or whatever it is you did wrong, is there anything you can say—I had an agenda here—to get out of it?" And he said, "Not really. There's nothing that just works." I said, "Was there anything that if I say, you'd write me up?" And he said, "Every time somebody said to me, 'I didn't know,' I wrote them up."
Now I thought that was odd. Because I had, coming out of Flagstaff, not terribly long ago, that space right when you come onto the freeway and before you get to exit 333, it's not 75 in there, it's 65. I think they subsequently changed it. But I had a highway patrolman stop me. And he said, "You know, I stopped you." And I said, "No clue." He said, "You know how fast you were going?" I said, "Yeah, 75." And he said, "Do you know what the speed limit is?" And I said, "75?" And he said, "No, 65. Where are you going?" I said, "Right there, I was getting off at 333. You can see it from here." And he took my stuff and went back, and saw that I haven't had a ticket since 1980, 1979. And came back, justified to write me a ticket, but he didn't.
What my friend was saying is what God says: Hey, whether you know it or not, you
When there are problems going on in your life, seek the cause. What's causing this? The disciples said to Jesus, as they saw the blind man in John 9, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he's blind?" You see those things that we started with that you didn't understand. What's the connection here? What are the consequences?
I had a guy who said, "Can we have coffee?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "I'm going to get married. Will you do the wedding?" I said, "No, I don't think so." He said, "All right. Will you come to the wedding?" I said, "I've been to three of your weddings. I wouldn't miss one, if the date's available."
He said, "What do you think about this?" I said, "Well..." He said, "No, you can be honest with me." I said, "Well, why don't you pay for this breakfast first? Then I'll be honest with you. I don't think this thing has a shot." He said, "Why?" I said, "You tried a fat one, you tried a skinny one, you tried a smart one, you tried one that was dumb as a bag of rocks, you tried a rich one and a poor one. You've tried every one there is, and none of them work. You know this now, right? The only common factor in this whole thing is what? You. And to the best of my knowledge, you haven't changed."
"It's going to be—although the one never made it through the honeymoon—you're going to get through the honeymoon, and it's going to be pretty good. Then she's going to do something, and you're going to do something, and you grow apart, and then there's a precipitating event, and you get divorced." He said, "Wow, I never really thought about that." Really?
The Need for Honest Self-Examination
So often we find ourselves in these situations, and we're never honest enough. Maybe you need a friend to help you, but how did I get there? I had a lady come up one day after one of these studies. She's not in here today, I guarantee you. She said, "Will you pray for me today?" So I take that very seriously, and historically, I've dropped the ball on that. Somebody will say, "Will you pray for me," and I get distracted. So I typically say, "Yeah, tell me what it is, and I'll try to pray right now."
She said, "Well, I have at home in the refrigerator a box of turtles, and would you pray that I don't eat these turtles?" Now, you know what a turtle is, right? That caramel with the pecan on it, and the chocolate—they were my mom's favorite. I love them. I laughed, and she said, "Well, it's not funny. I don't want to eat these." I said, "Well, I think you do. Here's how I know you do. You bought them. You didn't buy them to throw them away. You didn't buy them to come to me to pray about it so you could feel more guilty as you eat them."
"Here's what I'd recommend. Just go and eat them in one setting and get this over with, because those turtles are as good as gone. They are gone. You didn't spend the money... or bring them to me next week, and I'll eat them for you. But here's all that angst. She's in angst, and she's in turmoil." It sounds like I'm making fun of her. Maybe I'm not. I'm trying to see—listen, the way to nail that baby is at the point of purchase. Understand what's the cause of these things in your life.
Accept Responsibility
Number three, accept responsibility. You're responsible. There's a correlation between bad results and choices, behavior that you've made along the way, that you end up in trouble because of those. And know that God is going to, number four, balance the scales. God ultimately will judge.
Isn't that what happens sometimes in this area of sin? We sin, and then kind of look around, cautiously moving around, saying, "I wonder if He's going to zap me. I wonder if He's going to zap me." He didn't. "Maybe He was kidding about this. Let's go back." Don't be deceived. God is not mocked.
God's Discipline as an Expression of Love
Then this perseverance through these difficult times is demonstrated in love. Oftentimes, the connection between your sin and the result is the result of discipline in your life, and it's because God loves you. Jim Dobson said, "The number one mistake we make in child rearing is thinking if we love our kids enough, we don't need to discipline them." And that's the biggest mistake. You see them when they're young kids.
Sandy had an interesting thing where, at dinner we're talking, and I said, "Do you ever—she taught kindergarten for 12 years—do you ever wonder what happened to those kids?" She said, "Oh, I'd love to know. I had one." She started to describe this kid. She said, "This kid was a delinquent. He had a family problem, but this kid was a bad kid." I said, "Do you remember his name?" She said, "Yeah, I remember his name because it was such a unique name. I'd never heard the first name before. And it was a somewhat unique last name."
I Googled it. He had just been found guilty for transporting a teenager for the purposes of sex. He had cocaine in his car, which was remarkably for his own personal use. And he was on his way to prison. I'm not saying there's a direct connection there, but I'm saying, here's that behavior that you can spot and see and spot and see and spot and see. Those chickens are going to come home to roost.
You can't violate God's principles. He's going to discipline you. If He's your kid—if you're His kid—He's going to take you to the woodshed. Not because He wants to see you not have any fun, but because He loves you, and therefore, He disciplines you.
The Principle of Delayed Gratification
This requires, by the way, a thought process that we're not good at. It requires that we pursue delayed gratification. Here's the key to not eating those turtles. The only way I'm not going to eat that turtle is when feeling fat and dumpy or unhealthy exceeds the joy I get from that turtle.
There's a principle of consequences. What you do today affects tomorrow. That one meal is...
Going to make a difference in how I feel, how I look, my health. Next week, I don't want anybody telling me what to do. Authority. We'll take a look at it next week.
Father, thank You for this. We see it all around us. We know this. Help us, number one, learn this truth in our life. And number two, pass it on to the people that You bring around us. Give us a legacy that glorifies You, that's based on Your Word. Father, we pray that to You in Christ's name.