A big brother sits with his much younger little brother in the grass looking out over the lake. He tells him a story, and the little guy listens so intently, interested and happy to spend the time with his big brother. He’s his hero, and he wants so much to be like him, so, he hangs on his every word.
As we turn to the gospel for today, we find Jesus sitting and telling stories to a lot of people who are fascinated by him and hanging on his every word. He’s actually sitting in a boat on the lake in order to be heard, because there are too many people for him to sit with there on the shore and be heard. They listened intently to him, eager to hear what he had to say.
The lakeside stories he told were parables, stories that talked about everyday kinds of things, but that had meanings that soared above those things and expressed spiritual truths. We sometimes call parables “earthly stories with heavenly meanings.”
On this day, his stories had to do with the power of God’s Word that grows the kingdom of believers by working in the hearts of people bringing them to faith. Rulers and governments have always come up with their ways of growing their kingdoms. Well, God has a way of growing his. These stories of Jesus help us to understand how he does that.
God Grows His Kingdom His Way
1. With His People (26)
2. By His Power (27-28, 30-32)
3. At His Pace (29)
With His People
“The kingdom of God is like this: A man scatters seed on the ground.” A simple start to the story, right? A man scatters seed on the ground. Maybe you’ve done that tossed out some grass seed or sprinkled some wildflower seeds onto the ground so that they pop up in the spring. Even if you haven’t, you can picture it. If you need a visual, check out the stained-glass window right back there (pulpit side, 5th from front).
This is easy for us to understand because this scattering or planting is an everyday kind of thing we are familiar with. But this is a parable, so there is something more here. Jesus is the one who scatters the seed, which is his Word, but he does it through people. He uses you. He uses you and me and the person sitting next to you and in front of you. He uses parents and pastors and teachers and missionaries. He used the Apostle Paul and all the disciples. The seed is the Word of God, and he uses people to do his work of scattering it throughout the world.
That seed of the Word goes into the ground. What’s the ground? The ground is the heart. The heart of a person is the place where the scattered Word falls. The message of sins forgiven by Christ and eternal life by faith in him then begins to grow in that heart. Faith sprouts and emerges and eventually comes into beautiful full bloom. The kingdom of God, God’s gracious rule in the hearts of people, grows as each new seed comes to life. And as that plant and the one after it and the one after that are added to the family of believers, the kingdom grows.
It’s important to know that the seed-scatterer is simply the way God gets his Word to people so that he can do his work on their hearts. If you’ve ever seen the installation of a pastor, you’ve seen other pastors, one by one, address the one being installed as the new pastor at the church. They introduce themselves, say a few words of welcome, then speak a Bible verse to encourage them as they begin their ministry.
I have a favorite one to share with those pastors. My encouragement to them is to not give in to the pride or the despair that can come when you are sharing God’s Word with people—pride when there is success or despair when there seems to be no result but to always remember that we are simply God’s servants, doing what he askes us to do. To put it in parable talk, we are just people scattering seed. These words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians are what I share:
5 What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are ministers through whom you believed, and each served as the Lord gave him his role. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. 7 So then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but it is God who causes the growth. (v.5-7)
It makes Jesus’ point about the man sowing the seed, doesn’t it? Occasionally, we can, sinfully, attach too much importance to us as we share Jesus. Our thoughts and our words might suggest that we have something to do with causing the gospel’s success when we share it and a person then trusts in Jesus as their Savior That’s sinful because we are forgetting that we are just the seed-scatterers. We can spread the gospel around, share it with people, but we don’t have the power to bring someone to believe it. That’s God’s work God Grows His Kingdom His Way. We scatter the seed of God’s Word for him; he causes faith to begin and grow. That’s what Jesus meant as he continued his earthly illustration:
By His Power
And while (the man) sleeps and rises, night and day, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. The ground produces fruit on its own: first the blade, then the head, then the full grain in the head. You plant a seed, then at night you go to sleep. You get up the next day, and you look, and all you see is dirt. No plant yet. You go about your day. You go to bed that night, get up in the morning, take a look and…nothing but dirt. Day after day, this goes on. But eventually, the plant breaks the surface! You see green! And over the next days and weeks, you witness the growth and development of the plant or flower or tree.
We stand there looking down, and we don’t see anything that is happening inside the ground and the plant to cause the growth. I saw the seed, I now see the plant, but I don’t know how it all happens. Yes, a Google search or talking to a botanist can help you understand why nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium are essential nutrients for growth. And you can learn about different soil types and photosynthesis, but no matter how much information you gather, you’ll never quite be able to completely understand how it came to be this way that plants grow like this, and you won’t observe the “thing” that makes it all work because it is the Creator’s power in the background that makes it happen.
God’s Word is just like this. A little bit of God’s law and talk of sin affects a human heart, causing it to look for relief. The simple truth that Jesus paid for those sins starts the invisible work of faith in the heart. That faith grows in a way that cannot be seen or completely understood. All we know is that God’s power makes this happen. The seed of the gospel germinates as the Holy Spirit causes it in ways we can’t observe Faith grows and grows in the individual, and as more and more people have that seed planted in them, the kingdom of God, the Holy Christian Church we talk about in the creed, also grows and grows and grows.
This unseen power of God causes the kingdom to grow significantly through the simple gospel! Jesus’ example of the mustard seed teaches that The tiny little seed is planted in the ground and it grows into this great plant, big enough for birds to perch on.
Sometimes you witness this. You witness the growth of God’s kingdom right here as an individual comes to faith. Someone brings a friend to church where they hear God’s Word. And they start reading the Bible, or they come to church again and again. Maybe they start taking our Bible basics classes—our Grow in Grace classes. And you see faith sprout as they hear and understand the gospel and ask questions and begin to express the things they now believe. Then you see faith-filled living.
You can’t see how the Holy Spirit is working in their heart, but you can absolutely see that he is! Some of you know how this feels because you came to faith a little later in life. Whether you can recall the experience of coming to faith, or realized what was happening as you grew in faith, or had the privilege of seeing others come to faith, you have seen the kingdom of God grow with the addition of each new Christian.
The kingdom of God Jesus was talking about in these parables is the collection of all Christians in this world. That is the thing that grows as the Word is scattered throughout the world. That kingdom is made up of individuals who experience the sprouting and growing of faith.
God forgive us when we focus on the wrong things when it comes to the growth of God’s kingdom. We might think that if only I could think of the better words to say, then a person might believe. If only I knew all the answers to their religious questions. If only the pastor was a better preacher. We focus on church buildings and programs and other things, thinking that these will somehow make a person believe. Our way of making believers is not the way God says it happens.
Then we hear a lakeside story like this one, and the Storyteller who forgives us reminds us that we and all our “things” cannot cause the seed of his Word to crack open and begin the process of growth in a person’s heart. God Grows His Kingdom His Way, and his way is this: people come to believe when they hear the Word, and God’s power creates that faith. God works it in ways we don’t see or understand.
3. At His Pace
If you’ve ever grown vegetables, you know the patience it requires. You have to be patient for the plant to grow. You also have to be a bit patient when it comes to harvesting the vegetables. You don’t want to pick too soon. Tomatoes are best when they are fully red and ripe. You want your carrots to be good-sized, not tiny, so you have to wait. If you’re like me, you want nothing to do with green bell peppers, so you have to wait for them to turn color and become sweet yellow, orange, or red. The more you know about how all this works, the better you are at knowing just the right time to harvest them
How long will it be before the harvest of Christian souls comes? We can sometimes be impatient as we wait for the day we will be called to eternal life or the Last Day on which Jesus will swing the sickle, releasing us from this world and bringing us into heaven.
But God knows exactly when to bring the harvest in. With perfect love for souls and divine wisdom and perfect patience, he waits for the crop to be ready. On that day, all of those within whom faith was planted and grew will be brought to heaven. That includes you and me.
As you patiently await that day, remember these stories of Jesus told by the lake, and how they teach that God Grows His Kingdom His Way. He does it With His People and By His Power and at His Pace until he brings the harvest home. Amen.
Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.