Word of Salvation – Vol. 35 No. 28 – July 1990

 

The Parable Of The Growing Seed

 

Sermon by Rev. M. Flinn on Mark 4:26-29

Reading: John 3:1-8; Mark 4:26-29

 

One of the most fascinating doctrines found in the Bible is the doctrine of the Kingdom of God.  It is a doctrine which has caused a great deal of discussion throughout the history of the Christian church.  Many books have been written on this subject and this is yet another of those tantalizing doctrines of Scripture upon which there is а great divergence of opinion.

Questions About The Kingdom.

All sorts of questions are asked: “What is the nature of the kingdom of God?  Is it invisible and spiritual or is it something with visible, tangible form?  Is the kingdom to be equated with the church or is it wider than the church?  When does the kingdom of God come into existence?  Did it begin with the coming of Christ or will it not begin until the second coming?  What about the progress and development of the kingdom of God?  Should we expect a time in history in which the world will be described as “Christian” or is the world the realm of Satan so that at no point throughout history should we expect the influence of Satan to be so nullified that nations as nations will be converted to Christ?  These are merely some of the questions that are raised in connection with this doctrine of the Kingdom of God.

Now the reaction of some Christians, when bombarded with a host of questions like this and when faced with such a divergence of opinion amongst writers and ministers in the church is to say: “Well, what is the point of my showing any interest in such a matter as this?  I mean, I’m just your everyday garden-variety sort of Christian and I’m not going to be able to plumb the depths of all these weird terms like premillennialism and neo-Platonism and eschatology and the like.  I think I’ll just stick to the simple matters like the fact that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and if I believe in him I’ll be saved.”

Well, let me say at the outset that I am inclined very much to sympathize with sentiments like that.  Theologians like to categorize views and positions with the use of fancy labels and sometimes those labels are even more confusing than the views that that they are supposed to describe!

An Important Doctrine

However, while it might be helpful, at least when beginning to examine this doctrine, to throw out the extra-biblical labels, if we mean to be serious followers of Christ, we cannot avoid this matter of the Kingdom of God.  The parable of the growing seed that we have before us is a parable about the nature of the Kingdom of God and it is one of many on the same subject.  Jesus obviously wanted his disciples to understand something about this matter.  Consider also that when Jesus began to preach, he told people that the time was fulfilled and that the kingdom of God was at hand (Mark 1:12,13).  And it was because of this very fact that they should repent and believe in the gospel.  Clearly, this matter of the kingdom of God has something to do with the proclamation of the gospel and that is surely a matter that all of us as Christians should be interested in and concerned about.  Then too, if you cast your eye up to verse 11 of Mark 4, you will see that Jesus tells his disciples:

“To you has been given the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but those who are outside get everything in parables.”

In other words, part of what it means to follow Christ is to receive something of the mystery of the Kingdom of God, or to have that mystery unfolded, whereas those who are outside that kingdom will be confused about it.  So for all these reasons we should be careful not to ignore this doctrine of the Kingdom of God.

Rather, let us learn from the Scripture what it is that the Lord wants us to know about it and how we should live in the face of that knowledge.

Let us then go to the text and consider its truth.  Jesus says:

“The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts up and grows – how, he himself does not know.  The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.  But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

What does Jesus mean when he talks about a man casting seed upon the soil?  Well, this should cause us no difficulty if we bear in mind the context of this parable.  Jesus has just told a parable about a man who went out and sowed some seed and in that parable he describes the various soils on which the seed falls and the end result of that sowing activity.  If you read that parable you will find that the sowing of the seed has to do with the proclamation of the Word of God while the various soils depict the various responses on the part of people who hear that Word.

The Growth of The Kingdom

So then, Jesus is now going on to reveal something more about this activity of sowing the seed of God’s Word in the world – only this time it is not the soils on which the seed falls that come under consideration so much as the manner in which the crop is produced.  Jesus is teaching something about the manner in which the kingdom of God grows and develops in the world.

Well, then, against that background, I would like to trace out three aspects of Jesus’ teaching here.  The first concerns the helplessness and dependence of man.  When it comes to this matter of the growth of the kingdom, man is both helpless and dependent.  How do we know that?  Well, Jesus points out that when a man sows his seed upon the soil, he goes to bed at night and gets up by day and the seed sprouts and grows.  Now it is not that the man is disinterested in his crop.  No doubt he will get up and water the ground if necessary and as the plants grow he will tend them, but the man does not know how the seed grows.  When the soil produces its crop it does so “by itself” or automatically, to get little closer to the term used in the Greek.  When it comes to the sprouting and the growth of the seed, the man is relatively helpless.  Forces take over which are beyond his control.  Many of us as children have tried to grow а seed in a pot or in the ground and we know something of what Jesus is talking about here.  We know that no matter how long we stand in front of that seed, we cannot make it sprout and grow any faster.  We have to go away and leave it for a few days and then come back and see how it is doing.  Then too, sometimes we meet with success and the seed grows into а plant but sometimes we meet with failure and the seed rots and dies altogether.

This is precisely the way it is when it comes to spiritual growth and development in the kingdom of God.  We are required to sow the seed of God’s Word.  God has not given us the truth so that we can hide it away.  The Lord requires that we let our light shine before men in the hope that others will become Christians through us.

We Cannot Create Spiritual Life

But we cannot make a person become a Christian.  We cannot produce new spiritual life in a person.  The giving of new spiritual life is the work of the Holy Spirit.  As Jesus puts it in John 3, when it when it comes to this matter of the new birth, the Holy Spirit is like the wind.  We see its effect as it rustles the grass and the leaves of the trees but we do not know where it comes from or where it is going to next.  So too, the Holy Spirit moves and acts as he chooses.  Sometimes the most unlikely candidates, by our judgement, become Christians.  One person will believe in Christ quickly, with what with what seems to be, from our point of view, very little prior preparation of the soil.  Another will resist Christ for years and years.  Many Christians will have witnessed to him and prayed for him but he does not repent and believe.  One will be converted as a very young child and will never know a time when he did not believe; another will be converted on his death bed.  When it comes to the matter of conversion, the Sower of the Word of God is helpless.  He must sow the seed but then he must wait upon the Lord.

The same is true when it comes to the matter of growth in the Christian life.  Paul puts it this way in 1Cor.3:  He says: “I planted, Apollos watered, but it is God who gives the growth.  The Sower cannot make a plant grow.  He can water and nourish and tend, but he cannot actually produce the growth.  Similarly, we can nurture and tend а person and try to assist them as best we can in their spiritual walk but we cannot make a person grow to maturity.  That’s a work of the Holy Spirit.

Impatience And Frustration

How easy it is to become impatient with people.  We sow the seed; we may have even gone to great lengths to prepare the ground on which the seed falls.  But how frustrating when the person does not want to believe!  How discouraging when we tell young, struggling Christian the truth that they need to hear and apply in order to get their lives in order but for some patently ridiculous reason, they do not understand or they choose not to listen to something that is so obvious to us!  And we find ourselves wishing: “If only that stubborn ignoramus would listen to me.  I’ve got all the answers.  Give me absolute power over his life for а few hours and I’d get him straightened out once and for all.  But it does not happen like that and thank God that it does not.  I hate to think what destruction we would cause if any one of us in our sinful depravity obtained such power over someone else.  Thankfully, the Lord does not expect us to do so much.  He wants us to be faithful in sowing the Word but the result of that activity in a person’s life is up to Him.  You know what that means?  That means that when we have fulfilled that responsibility we can rest.  We can go to bed at night and sleep and get up in the morning and get on with the rest of our lives.

We need not take upon our own shoulders the results of our witness.

Giving The Holy Spirit Space To Move

If you are anything like me, you need to be reminded of this and comforted with it.  Sometimes, when we have spoken our words and borne witness to the truth as far as we see it, we have to close our mouths and stand back and let the Holy Spirit deal with a person in His own way and in His own time.  When we rush back in there and open our mouths again, this will not do any good at all for the person may not be ready or willing to listen to us and further speech at that point will merely drive the person further away.  And what if the person does not listen to us and what if they do go off and do their own thing?  The Lord does not hold us responsible or accountable for the result of our witness.  We can be content to rest in the Lord and get on with the business of life.  And if you think about it, I believe you will find that a very comforting truth and а truth which will maintain and increase your zeal for witness.  How else could prophets like Jeremiah have witnessed for years and years with no converts?  It could only be because they understood that the result of their witness was up to God and they could rest in their dependence upon him.

The second point that I would like to make about growth in the kingdom of God from this parable is its slow and steady nature.  Jesus says in verse 28 that the soil produces the crop; “first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.”  In nature nothing happens instantaneously.  It takes time for the crop to be produced and the plant will go through various stages before it is ready to bear.  You cannot just snap your fingers and have instant fruit.

And it is precisely the same in the kingdom of God.  There is no such thing as instant Christian maturity.  Maturity takes time and there are various stages in the Christian life to be gone through before it is reached.  In fact, given the truth contained in the parable of the sower, we would do well to be suspicious about those who seem to have it all together in а very short space of time.  They may turn out to be those people who respond quickly to the Word and who spring up with a semblance of true spiritual life but who fall away because they lack sound convictions and perseverance.  True Christian maturity takes time.  It happens slowly and steadily but in the genuine child of God, it happens infallibly because, again, the growth towards this end is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now given this truth, what we need to remember is that even the smallest and weakest of plants is still a plant and given time and the right conditions, it will bear fruit in the end.  Even the newest and the weakest of Christians are still Christians and they are not to be despised and rejected just because they have not been Christians for as long as we have.  As the wise man puts it in Ecclesiastes 9, “Surely a live dog is better than a dead lion”.  It is better to have a “wimp” of an individual in whom there is spiritual life than a lion of a man in whom there is no spiritual life whatsoever.

The church is for all Christians weak and strong and the Holy Spirit is dealing with each one.  Once again, let’s not become impatient or frustrated because our fellow Christians are weak and immature.  Slow and steady wins the race.  In the end they will bear fruit.  If they have genuine spiritual life in them, they cannot help but do so.  Moreover, let’s not become frustrated at our own immaturity and our sinful, human weakness in the face of other, more mature Christians.  They had their struggles and their pilgrimage and they are still growing in the faith.  Let’s not become downhearted and discouraged at our ignorance of the Bible in the face of others who seem to know a lot more than ourselves.  The Holy Spirit did not give them instant knowledge.  He gave them their knowledge over time and so too will he give it to us.  Growth in the kingdom of God is slow and steady.

The third point that I would like to make concerns the day of consummation.

Jesus teaches that when the crop permits, the Sower points in his sickle because the harvest has come.  I do not wish to spend a great deal of time on this.  Suffice it to say here that God is the Lord of the harvest and the gathering in of the saints will infallibly take place at a given point in history.  Given the parable of the wheat and the tares which Jesus also delivers at this time but which is not recorded here in Mark’s gospel, we can deduce that when Jesus speaks about the harvest, he is thinking in particular of that great time of harvest at the end of the age when he will come again and the great and final judgement will take place.  But the point that I want that I want to stress here is the fact that Jesus does not point out when this great harvest will take place.  He simply says that the harvest will take place when the crop permits and not before.  In other words, the harvest will not come until the harvest come!  When it comes to the timing of the harvest, we are just as dependent upon God we are for the growth of the seed and of the plant.

Far too many times throughout the course of church history, there have been those who have tried to determine or predict the time of the Second Coming of Christ.

Christian Sensationalism

One of the most effective ways to achieve instant fame in the Christian world today is to come up with a new date for the return of Christ.  And you don’t even need а clear or plausible theory.  In fact the more complex it is and the more ingenious when it comes to the use of biblical texts, the more books you will sell and the more Christians will slavishly follow you – until of course, the date comes and goes, in which case, you can simply come up with a new theory and a new date or lie low for a few years while the Christian world looks around for another prophet.

If Jesus had wanted his disciples to know when the time of the end of the age would be, he would have told them.  But he does not.  Instead he pointed out that the harvest would come when the crop was ready and not before.  So then, we can conclude from this that since Jesus has not yet returned, the crop is not yet ready.  There is more work that needs to be done more seed to be sown, more witnessing to be done, more people who must be converted by the power of the Holy Spirit.  And Jesus wants us to be engaged in that activity on his behalf, not wasting our time with endless theories about when Jesus will return.

People talk about wanting to be prepared for the return of the Lord.  Well, the best way to be prepared is to carry on working and serving him in this life because his absence means that there is yet more work that he wants us to do.

I have not answered all the questions that are posed by the doctrine of the Kingdom of God in the Scriptures but then, it was not my purpose or intention to try.  I hope that I have at least shown that this doctrine of the kingdom is not to be avoided and there is no reason to be frightened off by this teaching of our Lord.

The Lord wants us to understand about the Kingdom of God.  When we examine this doctrine, we find truths which are both challenging and comforting to us as we struggle to live for Christ and bear witness to his name.

May God give us ears to hear and eyes to see.

AMEN