The Growing Seed

Launching the parables series

Well, thank you. As Patty said, we are going to be launching into a series on the parables of Jesus. Patty and Nolan shared last week on the purpose of the parables. What’s the purpose of the parables? To teach about the kingdom of God. Most of the parables start out “the kingdom of God is like,” and right off the hop, whose kingdom is it? Did Jesus ever say “the kingdom of Jesus”? No. He always deferred to his Father. He always made everybody know who he was representing.

For some reason, this little parable got grouped online with the one about the weeds, where a good crop was planted and the enemy sowed weeds into it. That’s not the one we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the growing seed. This parable has intrigued and amazed me for years and years. There’s a lot to be mined out of each one of these, and I’m really looking forward to this community focusing on the specific teachings of Jesus. He didn’t always teach with parables (especially with his disciples) but when he talked to the crowds, he almost never spoke without using one. With his closest followers, he would explain them and teach in more detail.

Reading the parable

This parable is found in Mark chapter 4, starting at verse 26. Let me read it first:

“Jesus also said, ‘The kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. The earth produces the crops on its own. First the leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.'”

Remember, this parable was taught chronologically right after the parable of the sower and the seed, the one about the different soils: hard soil, rocky soil, thorny soil, good soil, and people’s different reactions to the seed as it’s sown. This parable goes into a little more detail. But it’s important to know that Jesus is not giving a teaching on agriculture. He often used pictures and situations his listeners were familiar with so we could understand a little about what the kingdom of God is like and how it functions. That’s the purpose. The kingdom of God is like this.

The elements: farmer, seed, soil

Let’s talk about the elements of the parable. Who’s the farmer? A farmer sows seed in his field, if it were God, would it say “he does not know how it grows”? So who’s the farmer? I guess us. What’s the seed? The word of God, the whole Bible. What else? Our testimony, our lives. See if you can answer that at the end; there’s a test. Who’s the soil? Our heart, the hearts of everybody in the world. This is audience-participation day.

So what’s the farmer’s job? Plant seeds. What’s the seed’s job? To grow. What’s the soil’s job? To nurture the seed, appreciate it, honor it, and help bring it to life.

A seed has tremendous potential in it. That’s why this parable intrigues me, the farmer plants the seed and goes to bed, and the seed begins to germinate and sprout, and he doesn’t know how. I remember preaching once on the parable of the mustard seed and bringing an actual mustard seed with me, you can barely see them, they’re so tiny. Jesus said the mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds there is, and yet it produces one of the largest plants in the garden, big enough for birds to build nests in. There’s tremendous potential in the seed. You could cut it open and ask, “Where’s the life?” There isn’t any visible life until it’s planted in soil. It’s always there, but it doesn’t begin to grow until it’s in the ground. Acorns produce monstrous oak trees. From the mustard seed to the acorn to a peach pit, any seed has within it the potential to reproduce a plant that will also reproduce more of its kind. Jesus uses the example of grain here (first a leaf, then the head forms, and finally the grain ripens) but that’s true of any kind of seed.

The line “he does not know how it happens” has always intrigued me, and I found myself reminiscing as I was planning this. When I was in elementary school (grade seven, back when that was still elementary school, not middle school) my little town was experimenting with open-learning concepts. We’d work on our own with the teacher just around, kind of like the ACE program at Christian schools where you’d go at your own pace and mark your own paces. We got to plan our own day, and if we’d finished our work, we could plan what we wanted, so as twelve-year-old boys, we’d write “play floor hockey in the gym,” and as long as we’d planned something, they had to let us go.

Another thing our school did: they hauled a big galvanized tub of pig guts from Johnson’s slaughterhouse in Oliver into our classroom. The class split into groups, each group took an organ (I had the lungs) and our job was to cut them apart, look them up in encyclopedias, and write reports. We figured out how a pig, or any animal really, is put together. It was hands-on. You got dirty. Our parents weren’t always overjoyed with how we came home. Another time, we each got a whole chicken, plucked it, boiled it down to nothing but bones, and then had to glue the skeleton back together on a wooden plaque.

Then there was the incubator, a whole batch of fertilized eggs. Every couple of days we’d break one open to chronicle its progress toward becoming a chick. I remember breaking one open the day before it would have hatched, a fully formed chick that couldn’t survive outside the shell. We let a few of the others hatch on their own.

But the last example (this one won’t gross you out) we put seeds in skinny glass containers, planted them against the glass with dirt and water, and watched. “Oh, look, there’s a little change today.” Pretty soon there’d be a root going down and a stalk going up, and we watched it break the surface and become a plant. We still didn’t know how it happened, but at least we knew what happened. And here’s the farmer in the parable, he doesn’t know how it happens either. Neither do we, really. We just know that God has created his creation so a seed reproduces after its own kind, given the right circumstances. Again, this isn’t a lecture on agriculture, it’s about the kingdom of the Father.

But the farmer isn’t running an experiment. He’s trying to plant a crop that’s useful to him. He sows the seed and then carries on with his life (goes to bed, rises, whatever) because he knows the seed is in the soil, and given good soil and the right conditions, it will come to life. He can’t force it to grow. If he stood over those seeds day and night, or paid someone to hover over them while he slept, it wouldn’t make any difference. The seed in the soil has life in itself. If the soil is good and the conditions are right, it will sprout. Besides maybe adding water if it doesn’t rain, he really can’t do anything to make it grow. Hovering won’t help.

Sowing seed in everyday life

So if we are the farmers, what does it look like to sow seeds? Is it just about sharing the gospel, telling people they must be born again, that the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life? That’s true, but is that the only seed we’re ever to sow? No. There’s more to it, and we’re going to get into what that is.

Robert had an interesting take when we were in our speaking class (come on up, Robert. [Robert:] There’s this thing called shama statements) spiritual openers. You might be at the cashier and say “God bless you,” or if you see a cross on someone’s neck, maybe they’re Catholic and you say, “Does that mean anything to you?” It’s a process of getting some kind of spiritual conversation going and maybe planting a seed.

So his concept was to develop openers, to be willing to say something innocuous just to get a conversation going, because if you get a conversation going, you might actually plant a seed. That was really good, worth sharing. Sowing seed can begin with something as simple as noticing someone, stopping for a chat, showing an interest, maybe helping somebody spontaneously. This could be an entry point.

People get so worried about “I need to witness enough.” I used to live in fear and trembling that I wasn’t witnessing enough. Anybody ever been in that situation? This was when I was in my early twenties in Whitehorse. I was so afraid I wasn’t witnessing enough that I bought a great big enormous cowboy belt buckle that said “Jesus Saves,” and I always tucked my shirt in so everyone could see it, hoping someone would ask me about it. But witnessing, sowing a seed, is more than “you must be born again.” That’s maybe down the road a little. We need to create initial contact with people, and that’s sometimes as simple as noticing someone, stopping for a chat, showing an interest.

I remember being in a Save-On parking lot and there was a woman sitting on the curb, slumped over, hands on her knees, head down, looking totally bedraggled. I walked past her, then felt the Father say something, so I went back and said, “Are you okay?” She brightened right up and said, “Yes, I am, actually, I’m just tired. But thank you so much for asking.” That was an opening point to maybe sow a seed. I didn’t, in that situation. But that noticing might have primed her for somebody else she was going to encounter that day, or in the days to come. Somebody noticed me that I looked like I needed help, it can be something that simple, an entry point.

But it’s important to remember whose kingdom this is that we’re engaged in, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the Father he’s representing. That means what we’re engaged in is pretty important work. It’s important to practice being tuned in to our Father, because he never runs out of words. He always has something to say about every situation we find ourselves in, if we’ll just ask him. It’s important to cultivate our relationship with the Father if we want to grow into good farmers who plant the right seeds at the right time, farmers who know when, where, how, and what to say. That only comes from being tuned in to the Father. It doesn’t come from your cleverness or your vivid imagination, unless God has inspired it. The Father wants to say something to people, and with that comes the wisdom to know that once the seed is planted, it’s up to the soil. The earth produces crops on its own, first the leaf, then the heads, then the grain. It’s a process we mostly can’t see, happening inside the person. It’s not the sower’s job to hover over and force growth.

Not responsible for the soil

So if what we say (what we hear the Father saying or doing in a given scenario) is the sowing, then what? We are not responsible for the soil’s reaction.

Pam has shared this story before. She was trying to share Jesus under great pressure with a family member who was dying, we thought at the time they were going to die. She was convinced she had to preach the gospel to him, so she did, because she loved him and wanted him to be assured of where he was going. And he turned to her and said, “If I want Billy Graham, I’ll turn on the TV,” and turned his back to her in his bed. That’s enough, no more. She went home a bit crushed. But it’s not up to us to force the seed to grow. Our job is simply to plant the seed and let the soil make its response, because if God has determined to give us free choice, and he won’t relinquish that choice, then why should we try to force it? At that time, I would have grabbed him by the ears if I could have. We were desperate. We didn’t realize it wasn’t our responsibility. Our responsibility was to share (to sow what we heard the Father say) not to produce the crop. That’s the soil’s responsibility.

We can sow seed and get a reaction like “Get away from me, I don’t want to hear from you,” and have no idea that later that day, that seed begins to germinate. We just plant it. The farmer plants the seed, goes to bed, good, I’m done, I’ve done my part. Now it’s up to the seed and the soil. The farmer doesn’t know how it happens; all he does is sow the seed and let nature take over, or in the meaning of the parable, let the Holy Spirit take over. The Holy Spirit is a far better person to activate seeds in somebody than we are. We don’t understand what goes on inside a person’s heart, someone can be hard as nails on the outside and going “Oh God, I wish I could believe that” on the inside.

Sometimes when we sow a seed, especially in someone we love, we have a tendency to hover over it. When the seed begins to sprout upward, the sower (if he’s in proximity) may gently, carefully loosen the soil without disturbing the seed. Anyone who’s ever hoed a garden knows this. We did that as kids, growing a ton of our own food, you hoe the carrots, careful not to damage anything, but loosening the soil so the plant has a better chance to spread out. We can weed and water and loosen the soil, but we’re still not responsible for its growth. That happens between the seed and the soil.

That’s if we’re in proximity. But even when we’re not, I love that we talked about Spirit Cafe today, especially at the Berry Festival, where we’ve watched maybe 150 to 175 people come through in an eight-hour stretch, many of whom have had no interaction with God whatsoever, and the vast majority of whom you’ll probably never see again because it’s a big city with a lot of people. So whether you sow a seed and are able to nurture its growth in proximity, or sow a seed and never see that person again, you can walk away having done your part. That’s what Spirit Cafe is about, people sit down, express a need in one of the five areas, and the team asks, “What do you want to say, Father?” and says what they hear him saying. If they never see the person again, they’ve sown the seed. Now it’s up to the person who heard it.

It’s a great relief, really, because when we take too much responsibility for something that lies within the person and the seed, it doesn’t actually aid the Holy Spirit in his mission, even though we might think it does. Sometimes we think the Holy Spirit needs a little push. I know there are people I’m constantly praying for, “Oh God, would you please intersect with them, interact with them, please.” But it’s not like he’s forgotten about those people or fallen asleep on the job. He knows the pace he’s moving at. He knows the seeds that have been planted, and he’s waiting for the response, because just like his decision to give us free choice, that choice is irrevocable, he will not force anybody into his kingdom.

So there are opportunities all around us, opportunities to make initial contact. It doesn’t always have to be the four spiritual laws. Pam’s said she was terrified she’d screw one of them up and mislead somebody, but at that point we were thinking it was our responsibility, and we were asking our pastor what he wanted us to say instead of asking the Father what he wanted to say. There are opportunities all around us to give encouragement, to show love, to answer questions, and sometimes to build on what others have planted, often over a person’s whole lifetime.

The harvest is ready

The fields are ripe and ready for harvest. Laborers are what’s needed. Jesus said in Matthew 9:37, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest and ask him to send more workers into his field.” And in John 4, talking to the Samaritan woman and teaching the disciples through that encounter, he says, you know the saying, four months between planting and harvest, but I say, wake up and look around. That line caught me as I was preparing this message: “Wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits the planter and harvester alike. You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests,’ and that’s true. I sent you to harvest what you didn’t plant. Others have already done the work, and now you get to gather the harvest.”

Amazing what we get to participate in when we understand whose kingdom it is and who’s responsible for outcomes, and what we’re actually responsible for. The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. I’ve had a few friends near the end of their lives who imagined that when they got to heaven, there’d be a lineup of people to greet them saying, “I’m here because of you. I’m here because you shared with me. I’m here because you loved me. I’m here because you took the time to notice me, before we built a relationship enough that I’d ask you questions and you could answer them.” Jesus said, “What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester.” Sometimes we make initial contact, and sometimes we’re building on things sown in another person’s life over many years.

One plants, another waters

1 Corinthians 3:6-7, Paul is talking to the Corinthian church and says, “I planted the seed in your heart. Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.” Not Paul’s responsibility, not Apollos’s. Their job was to plant and water, but God made it grow. He goes on: “It’s not important who does the planting or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.”

Jesus only taught and did what he heard from his Father. How often, when we see an opportunity to sow seed or engage with somebody, do we stop and ask the Father what he’d like to say in this situation? This is why we cultivate our relationship as children of God with our Father, he has something to say in every situation we find ourselves in. So I ask you, as I ask myself: how often, when I’m encountering somebody and see an opportunity to make initial contact, or water, or loosen the soil, do I actually stop and say, “Father, what do you want to say?” That’s such good practice from Spirit Cafe to carry into all of life. Because if we say what we hear our Father saying, that’s the best seed there is.

Asking the Father what to say

Recognizing an opportunity is the first thing, but knowing what to say is the next. This was Jesus’s go-to. He always said what he saw or heard his Father saying. He had a lot to say that he didn’t say. John 8:26: “I have much to say to you about you, and much to condemn, but I won’t, for I say only what I heard from the one who sent me, and he is completely truthful.” In other words, he could think of a lot of appropriate things to say, but he didn’t, he asked, “Father, what do you want me to say?” and said only that.

A lot of times we think, “Oh, I know what to say”, instead of stopping and asking the Father what he’d like to say. Sometimes it’s shockingly different from what we would have said. And most opportunities are time-limited. In John 9:4, right before Jesus heals the blind man (the whole story that fills chapter 9) he says, “We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work.”

We have the Holy Spirit to tell us what’s on the Father’s heart at any time. If we see an opportunity but don’t know what to say, ask. James 1:5: “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.” He wants us to participate with him in this. He could do it all himself, but he doesn’t want to, he wants to do it with his family, with his sons and daughters.

1 Corinthians 2:11-12 says, “No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own spirit… We have received God’s Spirit, not the world’s spirit, so that we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.” We’ve been given the Holy Spirit, who knows what’s on God’s heart, who knows the plan, the Father’s agenda. When we ask, he can impart what the Father wants to say in any situation.

The better you know someone, the better you can predict what they’re going to say or how they’ll feel in a given situation. We’ve been married fifty-one years now, and I can usually predict what my wife’s going to say or do, though she still shocks me sometimes, and I take great pains to try to shock her back. The closer you get with somebody, the more time you spend with them (and now we’re talking about you and your Father) the more you’ll begin to intuitively hear his voice and understand what he wants to say in any given situation.

Wrapping it up

So to wrap it up: we are the farmers. The seed is whatever God would want to say to the person in front of us, that’s what we’re to sow. The soil the seed is planted in is the person the Father wants to use us to speak his words to. Our job is to recognize opportunities, check in with the Father as to what he wants to say, and then sow the seed. What happens to it? We do not know, just like the farmer doesn’t know how it happens. The outcome isn’t up to us. It’s up to the person’s response, and we know the Holy Spirit will be active in drawing that person to the seed that’s been planted. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless my Father draws him.” The Father is out there drawing people to Jesus. We get to participate. If we get to bring somebody into eternal life (what joy. If we get to even move them a little bit closer) what joy.

I remember reading a study once about the stages of a person becoming a Christian and growing to maturity, laid out on a scale of ten on either side of zero, with zero being the moment of becoming born again. So often we go to somebody at an eight, nine, or ten (far off, atheist or whatever) and preach at them, “This is what God says,” and they think, “So what, who cares?” But maybe an act of love will open their heart a little. Maybe that’s the seed we’re supposed to sow with that person, and we need to be happy to bring them from an eight to a seven to a six to a five, building on whatever other people are also doing. We’re not solely responsible for anybody’s response. We’re responsible to say what we hear our Father say, and that’s it. Then we can go to bed and sleep.

I’ve lived far too long in guilt and anxiety over whether I was doing enough, or saying it the right way. If I learn, by repetition, how to hear my Father’s voice and get from him what he wants to say to anybody, then I’ve done my job. The Holy Spirit will be active in drawing that person, drawing that response to the seed that’s been planted. And having planted the seed, we can carry on with our day, secure in the knowledge that we planted something in that person’s life, in their soil, and we don’t carry the responsibility for what grows. This is what the kingdom of God is like.

A lot we can mine out of a short little parable. We want to be the people who understand opportunities and learn to grow in hearing our Father’s voice. Amen.