My dear readers,

Will You Scatter or Withhold?

Proverbs 11:24: “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”

In farming, the one who works the hardest will reap the greatest amount. If the farmer tills ten acres of his land versus the one who tills only one acre, he works ten times harder. The hours he spends in the sun will increase markedly. The number of seeds he scatters will be ten times as many. The cost will also increase. Of course, after all the hard work, he depends on God to send the early and latter rain. He trusts in the Lord of the harvest to grow his crops and make his labour fruitful. Borrowing the imagery of a farmer sowing in biblical times, God teaches us how we should spend our time and live our lives.

The farmer scatters the seeds as he walks along the hardened path of his land. Some seeds will fall on hard ground, others on stony ground with stones beneath the earth. Some will fall on good earth but grow near thorny bushes that might choke the plants and prevent them from growing and bearing fruit. Thankfully, most will fall on good earth, and good crops will grow and bear fruit at harvest time. After scattering the seeds, he needs to water the ground. Then he waits for the seeds to die beneath the earth before they can begin to grow from infancy to fully grown crops bearing good fruit. The lazy farmer who fails to scatter because he went on a holiday or is just plain slothful will have nothing when harvest time comes. If it is true in the physical realm, it is also true in the spiritual realm.

• Must Scatter – Believers scatter God’s Word. It begins with the seed of the gospel, through which sinners can be saved from their sins. Without the gospel, there is no salvation. Just praying without sharing the gospel is like a farmer in a dream, scattering seeds, hoping to reap real crops with good fruit. Giving tracts in hard and soft copies, sending gospel messages to loved ones, and sharing the gospel face-to-face are ways to scatter the gospel seed in our time. Gospel meetings and worship services are held in churches to encourage Christians to invite their loved ones to hear God's truth and to save sinners.

Unlike the real seeds, the gospel seed cannot fail once it is planted into the hearts of the sinners by the work of the Holy Spirit, who is the third Person in the Godhead. It will bear the fruit of salvation because salvation is of the LORD alone. There is no sinner so sinful that the blood of Christ cannot cleanse. There is no sin so heinous that God the Father would not forgive for Christ’s sake. The gospel of Jesus Christ must be the first seed that every believer must sow to their loved ones, friends, and family members. Didn’t Jesus share with His disciples that the harvest was ripe and ready?

After salvation, there is the scattering of God’s Word that will help God’s children grow in grace and in the knowledge of God’s Word. Babes in Christ cannot do much in God's kingdom. They must grow in faith and maturity. God’s Word is known as the milk and meat to every believer’s soul. All believers must now scatter God’s Word into their own lives to know God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit better. They need to know themselves better through the study of God’s Word. The study of God's Word helps the believer to grow in knowledge and wisdom. He will have discernment to live right. He understands the will of God in every situation and acts accordingly, in a manner pleasing to God. He judges people the way God does, based on his knowledge of God's Word. His life will be a life of God-honouring convictions. His life is rich with spiritual abundance, free from the ills and foolish standards of the world by which he used to measure himself. His increase is no longer measured by the abundance of what he possesses. The old measurement had been a deception spawned by the god of this world to deceive the spiritually blind and spiritually dead. He has experienced deliverance from the bondage of sin, availing him, for the first time in his life, genuine peace in his heart. He is rich beyond measure, for his wealth is all spiritual and eternal.

He must also scatter by way of his service unto the Lord as he serves God faithfully in God’s church.

He will keep on scattering the gospel seed and all the different doctrinal seeds that will help him and God’s children to keep growing in the Lord.

• No Scatter – On the other hand, some withhold from scattering. God understands that all farmers will withhold some of their seeds for personal use. That is why Proverbs 11:24b says, “withholdeth more than is meet,”e. more than is right. For example, they do not share the gospel with their loved ones. God knows they do not need to share the gospel every time they meet their friends and loved ones. Their loved ones will probably avoid them, seeing them as one-dimensional and knowing nothing but the gospel.

Verse 24b refers to those who have not given a single tract in their lives. Such a one is comfortable with the belief that he is going to heaven; that is all that matters to him. By his failure to serve, he suffocates his spiritual gift or gifts, which God gives to believers upon salvation. He has no love for lost souls. He sees the need and hears the cry of sinners, but he makes himself blind and deaf so that he can sleep at night. He works hard day and night to provide for his family, so he reasons to soothe his conscience. His family life will grow materially, as he still measures his life by what he possesses. Health and wealth have become his golden calves. He cannot break away from this materialistic path each week. He walks deeper and deeper along the path of carnality and sin, struggling to look back as the kingdom of God recedes further and further away from his tear-filled eyes. His mind tells him to stop walking and turn back, but his heart is filled with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes; it may be easier to rein in a wild horse rushing headlong toward the cliff. The pride of life stands in the way of his heart humbly surrendering to God. It is like a ten-metre-thick giant wall reaching toward the sky.

His self-contentment with materialism and his erroneous version of Christianity, that attending church regularly every Sunday and nothing else is pleasing to God, has numbed his conscience to God’s Word that he hears every Lord’s Day challenging him to repent. He sows nothing spiritual, and he will have nothing at the end of his life that is of any eternal and spiritual value.

The question that needs to be asked is: Is it even possible for a truly born-again believer to behave callously and to deliberately withhold the gospel from sinners who will die in sin and end up in hell? Also, is it possible for a born-again believer to have no love for, or interest in, reading, studying and listening to God’s Word, which God describes as the milk and meat to His children? Isn’t it true that dead people cannot eat or drink and that the very sick will have no desire for food and water?

Jesus needs more of His disciples to scatter so that there will be much to harvest. John 4:34-38: “³⁴Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. ³⁵Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. ³⁶And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. ³⁷And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. ³⁸I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.”

Will you scatter or withhold?