Tag Archives: seed

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE -FRUIT OR FRUITLESS?

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FRUIT OR FRUITLESS?

“As they went from town to town, a lot of people joined in and travelled along. He addressed them, using this story: ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some of it fell on the road; it was trampled down and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the gravel; it sprouted but withered because it didn’t have good roots. Other seed fell in the weeds; the weeds grew with it and strangled it. Other seed fell in rich earth and produced a bumper crop. Are you listening to this? Really listening?'” Luke 8:4-8.

How many sermons have been preached on this story!

As the crowds joined Jesus, He was aware that all of them represented one or even more of the soil types of which His story spoke. No doubt the scribes and Pharisees were among those whose hearts were so hard that the seed of God’s Word would remain exposed on the surface until the birds came and snatched it away.

What makes hearts so hard that the seed will never take root? Disobedience creates calluses in people’s hearts. God speaks and, because the time is not convenient, or because His instruction seems foolish or cuts across our own wishes or intentions, we do nothing. The next time His speaks, we hear but do nothing again. Eventually we no longer hear Him because our hearts have become deaf to His voice.

Sin dulls our sensitivity to His word. Self-will and the notion that we know better or that we are convinced we are right, like the Pharisees were, shuts us off from the influence of God’s Word until it no longer penetrates our minds and we dismiss it with contempt.

Gravelly soil represents the shallow person who is so caught up with the glitz and glamour of the world and the all the interests and entertainment that it can offer that the delicate roots of the Word of God find no place to anchor themselves. There’s hardness under the surface that resists the truth and the small plant of faith eventually withers and dies.

Ground that is full of weeds is like the person who has a divided heart. Jesus identified the weeds as “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things.” These are interesting concepts. To worry implies that you are split — you are here but your mind is there. You may be in church but your mind is somewhere else, churning over a situation or problem you cannot solve. You are unable to give your attention fully to God’s Word at that moment.

The deceitfulness of riches is equally distracting and you are equally split in your mind. Instead of being content with what you have now, you are continually living in the future – scheming and planning how you can get more money then. “Weeds” rob you of contentment and distract you from living in the present and in the place where you are here and now. Consequently God’s Word is gradually pushed out of your mind as you grapple with your worries and your ambitions.

Another word for “the desire for other things” is covetousness , discontent with what you have and always wanting more. This a two-fold issue -a slap in God’s face because, like Eve, you feel deprived…as though God has short-changed you, and a love for the things of the world which shuts out the love of the Father. Split again… you have this but you want that.

The person who recognises the value of what God says and applies it diligently to his life, not allowing sin, pride or self-will to prevent its entry into his heart or the glamour, greed or worries of the present life to choke its growth, will receive the Word, apply it and show the fruit of its influence in the way he lives.

There is a little of each type of soil in each of our lives, depending on our attitude to the issues the Word addresses. We may resist what God has to say about any sin we are entertaining; we may be shallow or superficial in our attitude towards something God requires of us that touches our pride or our purses; we may have worries or ambitions that we are not prepared to relinquish to Him, and in those areas we will shut out the Word and become unfruitful.

The fruitfulness of the seed depends entirely on quality of the soil that receives it.

When God looks for fruit in your life, what will He find? 66

Mysteries Of The Kingdom

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MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM

He also said, ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.’ (Mark 4:26-29).

God’s kingdom is real, but it is different from any other kingdom on earth. It has no geographical boundaries; it is here but unseen; it is among us now but yet to come; its influence spreads across the globe like yeast in a lump of dough; it transcends colour and culture; it unites all people under one rule and its constitution is summed up in one word – love.

How does one explain a kingdom like that? Jesus used many parables to highlight aspects of God’s kingdom because it is like a diamond with many facets. It is like a seed which has within in the power to germinate and grow. A farmer sows seed in his field with the hope that it will grow without he is heal. If he has prepared the soil well and provides water to sustain its growth, the seed will do what it is designed to do.

As he waits patiently, the field begins to turn green; the tiny plants appear above the ground; the plants thrive and eventually produce the awaited harvest. What does the farmer do when the harvest is ripe? He brings in the crop because the seed has served its purpose.

Jesus had already explained that the word of God is seed. Like a grain of wheat, it has the capacity to germinate in the soil of people’s hearts. Given the right environment, it will grow and produce a harvest of righteousness in the lives of those who respond to its truth. How it happens, no one knows. Just as the farmer knows what the seed can do, so we, who scatter the seed of the word, have the confidence that, given a favourable environment, the word of God will take root and change the lives of those who receive it.

His disciples were to be encouraged. Theirs was the task to do the sowing in the days to come, “Take heart,” said Jesus. “There will be a harvest of new life just as there is a harvest of grain when the farmer sows his seed.”

Again He said, ‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when it is planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.’ (Mark 4: 30-32).

Another mystery! We may not get the point of this parable if we do not understand the background to the parable. In ancient Israel, the householder owned two pieces of ground. Once was outside the village where he planted his crop to sustain the family during the year. Around his house he had a small piece of ground, a garden in which he planted herbs for the kitchen. To plant a mustard seed in his herb garden would be foolish because it would encroach on the garden.

Unlike our mustard seed which is relatively big, the mustard seed was as fine as ground pepper. The mustard plant in Israel was a weed which a farmer would not knowingly plant in his garden.

However, in this story a man did plant it in his garden. For what purpose? To give shelter to the birds! Birds were a nuisance to the farmer because they devoured the seed as he scattered it on the ground. Symbolically, birds represented unwelcome people – Gentiles if you will. Yet, the kingdom of God made room for them as well.

What was Jesus saying? God’s kingdom is about mercy. When a man deliberately plants a weed in his garden to provide shade and shelter for birds – the unwanted ones who are a nuisance to him – he has understood the nature of the kingdom. He overrides his own need for the sake of others for whom no one else cares. Such is the kingdom of God!

With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when He was alone with His disciples, He explained everything (Mark 4: 33-34).

True to His intention, Jesus taught the people in parables but explained the meaning to His disciples. Those who had a desire to understand the truth would grasp the meaning of the stories while those who were hangers-on who go away none the wiser. To His disciples was given the honour of deeper truth as they followed and learned from their rabbi.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footpaths And Rocks

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FOOTPATHS AND ROCKS

Then Jesus said to them, ‘Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. (Mark 4: 13-17).

Parables are stories about everyday things that bring understanding of deeper things. Have you ever asked the question, ‘Why do people respond to the gospel differently? Why do some receive it and believe while others remain untouched by the same message?’

Is Jesus saying that understanding this parable is basic to understanding all parables? Is all mankind divided into four groups – according to their response to God’s word? What if they never hear the word?

Is seems that this story, if it does not answer our question fully, at least acknowledges that people are different and their response to the word is different. The problem does not lie with the seed. God’s word is a seed. Like any good-quality seed, the power to grow and reproduce lies within the seed itself. The environment in which it is placed influences its capacity to reproduce.  It needs good soil, sunshine and water to kick start the growth process. People’s attitudes affect the productivity of the seed.

Today we look at two kinds of soil. The first is the “footpath” ground – hard and impenetrable. Any seed dropped on this ground lies exposed. It cannot penetrate the soil because the ground where it fell has been tramped hard by many pairs of feet. The ever-vigilant opportunist, Satan, will snatch away the seed as soon as it lands on the footpath so that it will never have an opportunity to send out a root and anchor itself in the ground.

What makes people so hardened to God’s word that they don’t even hear it? I suppose there are many reasons, one of them being the religious ones. Jesus met some of them on His travels through Israel – self-righteous people who refused to acknowledge any need. They thought they were right and defended their right to be right at the expense of the truth. Anything He said to them bounced off their self-righteousness and made their hearts even harder until they eventually murdered Him to silence His voice.

Then there were the ones who were hardened by greed. Judas Iscariot may be a good example. We don’t really know the motive behind his betrayal of Jesus but money certainly came into it until he had a light-bulb moment when the money no longer mattered. What about the rich young ruler? He also heard the message but his money held his heart so tightly that he forfeited the opportunity to follow Jesus for the love of his possessions.

Others are so hardened by responding to life’s troubles in the same way over and over again so that they are no longer able to think differently. They see themselves as victims; God is often the reason for their hardness. He gets the blame for “allowing” these things to “happen” and any other explanation just rolls off them.

Sin is a common reason for hardness of heart. “The pleasures of sin” the Bible calls it. Sin either captivates people’s hearts or there are held captive by it. When people are enslaved by sin, they are ensnared by hopelessness and despair. They are deaf to whatever God’s word has to say about their situation. It might work for others, they think, but not for me.

What about the rocky ground? There may be a bit of soil in between the stones but not enough to sustain the growth of the seed. It germinates readily enough but the heat of the sun soon causes the seedling to wither and die. Life happens – the good and the bad, and we cannot escape it. Some people’s lives are filled with the “rocks” of wrong thinking – belief systems that do not give way to the truth which the seed brings. “Trouble or persecution,” Jesus said, “because of the word, causes the seed to be choked and the seedling dies.”

How does this happen? Bad experiences in childhood, for example, give rise to false notions about ourselves and God. Anything that triggers those memories and the wrong thinking that comes out of them causes us to doubt or blame God. The result – we become offended with God and walk away.

The solution to “rocky” thinking is to renew our minds with the truth. God loves us with a furious, crazy, unconditional love. What happens is not His fault but He is always with us and will turn bad to good if we trust Him. If we don’t believe that through thick and thin, His word in us will never take root and anchor us in times of trouble.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Born Again

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BORN AGAIN

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each another, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God (1 Peter 1: 22-23).

Being first-born or second-born in Hebrew culture has all sorts of implications. We have already examined the privileges and responsibilities of the firstborn in the family.

Perhaps the most serious of all the implications is that the firstborn son received judgment for the rest of the family’s misdemeanours while the second-born – and all the other siblings were classified as second-born – received mercy. In other words, the first-born had to take responsibility for his siblings’ wrongdoing while they got away with murder.

This has important implications for us when it comes to judgment and mercy for our sin in God’s eyes. In Adam we are all firstborn and, since the firstborn took the rap for the sins of the family (and, in God’s eyes, there are no second-borns in Adam), we are all responsible for our own sin.

What do we need in order to receive mercy? We need to be second-born. But how can we become second-born when we are the first-born in Adam? This is where the genius of God’s wisdom comes in. He did not violate His own word but fulfilled it through His own Son.

Since Jesus is God’s first-born, He took the judgment for our sin and died in our place.  Through faith in Him, we are in Him and therefore, as we all die in Adam, so we died ‘in Christ’.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? (Rom. 6: 3).

But, as the same time, Jesus was the ‘second Adam’, created in the likeness of Adam so that in Him we might receive mercy. How do we move from judgment to mercy? As Jesus explained to Nicodemus on the night he visited Him, ‘you must be born again.’ To move from judgment to mercy you must move from first-born in Adam to second-born in Christ. How does this happen? Through believing what Jesus said.

To Nicodemus He said, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh give birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.’ (John 3: 5-6).

A miracle takes place in the spirit when a person who is in Adam takes Jesus at His word, confesses that He is Lord, and believes in heart that God raised Him from the dead. He is moved from firstborn in Adam to second-born in Christ. Instead of judgment which he deserved in Adam, he receives mercy because of Jesus.

For the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5: 15).

Jesus is also the first-born from the dead. Since we are ‘in Him’ in His death, we are also ‘in Him’ in His resurrection and therefore guaranteed resurrection from the dead.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. . . He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy (Col. 1: 15).

But Christ had indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15: 20-22).

It is, therefore, on the grounds of God’s faithfulness to His word that we have hope that we, too, will share in the resurrection of the dead, the perfection of our bodies and the blessing of eternal life.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

It’s All About Him

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IT’S ALL ABOUT HIM

“Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise, but God in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.” Galatians 3:15-18.

Without going into detail, the Bible clearly teaches that Abraham had four different kinds of “seed”.

1. It stand to reason that all Abraham’s natural-born children were his “seed”, That would include the all descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, even those who were not part of God’s selective history, that is, those who were set aside and not a part of the Jewish nation.

2. God chose Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, to be the father of Abraham’s special, natural seed – the children of Israel. These were the covenant people of God.

3. In Galatians 3:16, Paul narrowed Abraham’s seed down to one person, Jesus Christ, as Abraham’s unique seed because it was only through Him that all the promises God made to Abraham, would be fulfilled.

4. In Galatians 3:29, Paul identified believers as the spiritual seed of Abraham. Since God’s promises are received by faith, and the children of Israel failed to believe God and receive His gifts by grace, He opened the door to the Gentiles to be included in the family of Abraham if they received Jesus by faith. That made them the spiritual children of Abraham.

(www.audiowebman.org/bbc/books/NC/abrahams_seed/chpt_02.htm)

Do you understand, then, why Paul identified Jesus as the unique “seed” of Abraham? The covenant God established at Mount Sinai with the special natural seed of Abraham did not nullify, add to or subtract from His covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15). It was an interim covenant given to His people to show them how to live as His special people, and to teach them how impossible it was to obey Him without the Holy Spirit.

It was God’s intention to give the Holy Spirit back to those who trust in Him because, without the Spirit, people are still dead and unable to hear or communicate with God. The Holy Spirit would be only given when the barrier of sin between God and man had been removed. Only Jesus could remove that barrier by paying sin’s debt on behalf of sinners. Ultimately then, God’s promise to Abraham would be fulfilled through one man, Jesus, the “seed” of Abraham. In Him, all those who believe in Him are His seed by faith. Jesus Himself spoke of being a seed.

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But, if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24.

But Jesus was not just any old seed. He was the seed of Abraham, the offspring of God’s covenant people, the one whom God promised would come to crush the head of Satan.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring (seed), and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.” Genesis 3:15.

Jesus was both the seed of the woman (human) and the seed of Abraham (Jewish); he was born of a woman and born into the Jewish nation. He came at a specific time and into a specific culture which had been prepared through God’s covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai to understand the ramifications of sin so that they could understand and appreciate the enormity of God’s grace.

That they failed by rejecting their Messiah was no fault of God’s, but it did open the door for God’s grace in Christ to be given to the whole world. God intended for His people to be the revelation of Himself to the world. It did not happen through His chosen people as a whole, but through a small group, called the Apostles, who went in obedience to His command, and took the message to the world.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.