Bye night. and rise by day, and
the seed should sprout and grow. He himself does not know how,
for the earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then
the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the
grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the
harvest has come." And in the next verse, He then asks the
apostles, his disciples, and asks us, to what shall we liken
the kingdom of God? Or with what parables shall we
picture it? And so these parables are parables
about the kingdom of God and the way the kingdom of God interacts
with this world, the way the Lord Jesus comes and declares
himself. and the way the Word of God reaches
in to this world and does a mighty work. And so in the parable of
the soil, we have the impact of the gospel revealing and exposing
the hearts of men. And then there's a warning passage
about those who have ears to hear, that they should hear,
they should be careful how they hear, who they hear, and also
just the fact that only God will give the hearing ears. But now
the Lord Jesus explains what happens as God works individually,
as He works by grace in chosen sinners that He calls to Himself. And so the Lord just uses this
beautifully simple picture that was so common for these people
of just the growth of a grain growing into a strong and fruitful
plant. And I think there are four specific
lessons about the believer's growth in grace. The first one
is that as the growth of the wheat requires someone to sow
the seed, in God's work of grace, in his kingdom, there must be
a sower to sow the precious seed of the gospel. In growing the
wheat and in the work of grace, there is much that is beyond
man's comprehension and control. And thirdly, in both the cultivation
of the wheat and in the work of grace, life is made manifest
by degrees, by stages. And finally, I think the Lord
Jesus is teaching us that in both the cultivation of the wheat
and in the kingdom of God, there is both a seed time and a time
for harvest. That was a beautiful hymn we
just sang, and I just wonder how some of us picture spiritual
growth. So often we hear of books and
we read of programs that show people how they can grow spiritually,
paths to holiness, paths to greater devotion to God. But as we saw
last week, the way God grows His people is to grow them down
before He grows them up. And I'd just like to read a hymn
of John Newton's and I just wonder if his experience is like our
experience. like the experience of Paul who
died considering himself the chief of sinners and as a mature
apostle saw himself as a wretched man. This is how John Newton
described Christian life. I wonder if it's your experience
as well. I ask the Lord that I might grow
in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know
and seek more earnestly his face. "'Twas he who taught me thus
to pray, and he, I trust, has answered prayer. "'But it has
been in such a way as almost drove me to despair.'" I hope that in some favoured
hour at once he'd answered my request. But by his love's constraining
power, and by his love's constraining power, subdue my sins and give
me rest. Instead of this he made me feel
the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell
assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand
he seemed, Intent to aggravate my woe, Crossed all the fair
designs I schemed, Blasted my gourds, and laid me low. Lord,
why is this? I trembling cried, Wilt thou
pursue thy worm to death? "'Tis in this way,' the Lord
replied, "'I answer prayer for grace and faith. "'These inward
trials I employ from self and pride "'to set thee free and
break thy schemes of earthly joy "'that thou mayest seek thine
all in me.'" And so in this parable, the Lord Jesus is talking about
the activities of the seed in the good soil. And as we saw
in the previous weeks, the good soil, the soil of this earth,
the soil of man's natural heart, according to God, is going to
produce thorns and thistles. That's the promise in Genesis.
There's a promise in Genesis 9 that seed time and harvest
would continue to the end. But the promise of seed time
and harvest according to Genesis 3 is that by painful toil you
will eat of the ground. The ground will not give forth
fruit for man without hard labor. And so in the scriptures the
hardness of men's heart is pictured in these parables as soil. In
other places it's a rock, a stone, and the soil needs to be cultivated
deep. All that is growing there has
to be destroyed and broken down and left to the ravages of wind
and time and rain to make the soil good. Soil is not good. for growing wheat and other crops
all by itself. It needs work done to it. And he was saying, says the Lord
Jesus, the kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon
the soil. Now God's children are born because
God sends gospel preachers to cast seed upon the soil. They just cast the gospel Indiscriminately,
it seems, they cast it, having prayed deeply about it, being
passionate about proclaiming the truth of the gospel. but
also knowing that this scattered seed is going to produce a crop
that God has designed for it to produce. In 1 Peter, this
scattering of the seed is talked about in terms of people being
born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by
the word of God, which lives and abides forever. and then
to go back to the soil of man's natural heart. For all flesh
is grass, and the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The
grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord
endures forever. And this is the word by which
the gospel is preached to you." So gospel preachers scatter the
seed. And it's the living and active
Word of God. It contains its own life within
it. Faith comes by hearing the Word
of God. And this Word of God brings forth
fruit, not because of human wisdom, because 1 Corinthians 1 21 says,
is please God through the foolishness of the message preached to save
those who believe. The gospel preachers preached
Jesus Christ and him crucified, knowing that there is a promise
associated with that. We know, we have a promise from
God that that powerful word of the crucified Savior is going
to bring forth life. Isaiah puts it so beautifully
in 61 11, for as the earth brings forth its sprouts and as a garden
causes things so in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause
righteousness. and praise to spring up before
all nations. But then the gospel preacher
does something which might seem unusual. He goes to bed at night
and gets up by day. He just continues on in his normal
activities. But as he's sleeping and getting
up, the seed sprouts and grows. How? He himself doesn't know. So in the growth of God's crop,
there must be a sower. In the growth of God's crop and
in the work of grace, there is much that is beyond man's comprehension
and control. Gospel preachers are not able
to see the germination of the seed deep within the soil. He
gets up and goes to bed, continuing his normal life. And maybe this
is a reference to the confidence of faith, that having proclaimed
God's word, having raised up the Lord Jesus, then God's people
will, in God's time, be drawn to him. So the seed sprouts and
grows. And when the good seed meets
the right conditions in the soil, it swells and grows. And it first
produces a root, which goes down quickly into the soil, which
provides the moisture and nutrients to feed the shoot, which eventually
pushes its way up through the soil. The root from God's seed in believers'
lives does a deep work, unseen by the world, not clearly seen
by the believer, and often especially those around him. Jesus doesn't
say to his apostles that they will have a clear knowledge of
what is happening. And the growth is not according
to human wisdom. The gospel preacher is not necessarily
conscious of what's happening in the soil, because God's preachers
and God's people live their lives not on the basis of what they
see, but on the basis of what God has promised. If the living
word of the gospel is proclaimed, then God has promised that it
will bear fruit. We live by faith and not by sight. The Lord Jesus does not nor ever
will send his servants out with a method of evangelism which
can be understood by men for their salvation or not. Faith
comes supernaturally by hearing the gospel, and only those who
are given God's ears to hear will respond. It's foolishness
to those who are perishing, but to those who are saved, it is
the power of God. A true saving faith always and
only always comes by revelation from God. Faith that is based
on human wisdom will someday to be seen to have been built
on a foundation of sand. Nicodemus was an intelligent,
knowledgeable man who didn't have a clue about spiritual life. You must be born again. So grace in the heart of man
is an exotic plant. It's altogether a new thing.
It comes down from heaven, left to himself. No man would ever
see or know or need anything of the Lord Jesus. They wouldn't
seek after him. God promises that they won't.
So grace and righteousness and spiritual life and inward godliness
is a work of God alone. The true gospel is the power
of God unto salvation. From faith, the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus, to faith, the faith given by grace to the
elect. Salvation is of the Lord. He will save his people from
their sins. So gospel preachers don't have
to know what's happening. They know the promises of God.
God in his great mercy delights to bring us confirmation again
and again of his faithfulness to his promises. But we just
wait for him to do what he's promised to do. And the soil
in Mark 28, the good soil produces crops by itself. by itself. That's the word that
we get automatic from. The one thing that you can be
sure to do if you're growing young seedlings and looking after
seeds is if you fiddle with them when they're growing, you'll
kill them as quick as anything. You just leave them alone. The
growth that the Lord Jesus is talking about here comes from
the life that's in the seed. The seed seems dead. Nothing seems deader than a little
seed, a little round hard ball. But inside it is life. And that's
the life that produces when it meets with the soil. So Paul
planted Apollos watered, but it's God who gives the increase. And this increase comes by degrees. So the seed is sown, the work
of grace in the lives of people is beyond man's comprehension
and control. And in both the cultivation and
in the work of grace, life is manifest gradually by degrees. The leaf, the stalk and the head
don't look anything like the grain sown or harvested, but
always everything needed for the grain is there. and it's been grown and nurtured
as the plant grows and the plant to grow up must grow down, must
grow down into this cultivated soil to break up this soil to
have itself established by deep things and not by shallow things
like the soil on the rock which looked so wonderful as the crop
came up sprang up vigorously and quickly and then when the
heat of persecution came it just withered away. Plants survive
because they have deep, deep roots that go down. And we need to be mindful, as
the Lord Jesus is bringing this message to his apostles, who
would be inclined to look at each other, as we are inclined
to look at each other, and often cry out, why isn't that person
growing the way I think they ought to be growing? So often
when we look at the flesh of people, all we will see is flesh. We need to look at our brothers
and sisters through the eyes of faith. Has God planted a seed
in someone's life? Then that growth is going to
be according to God's purposes and it won't ever be in accord
with human wisdom and human ways of doing things. We trust God
to do His work. This week I had a wonderful experience
of seeing a prayer answer that I've been praying for 12 months.
And it's just wonderful to see God working in the lives of people
that we love and care for. That should be the greatest thrill
that we have, isn't it? That we know the Lord Jesus and
then we see Him working in someone's life. And in this particular
situation it was just wonderful that just one simple little word
from God was a seed that had been in the soil of this believer
for so long and God brought it to life. And all of a sudden
what was dead, so many of God's words sit in our lives and they
are dead. Suddenly this word sprang to
life. and there was just new revelation of who the Lord Jesus
is and what He is doing, and it's exciting. It should excite
us to see. We're asked in Ephesians to pray,
aren't we, expectantly, that God's going to do more than we
can imagine or ask. Heavenly seed is sown. God's
work is being done, and God's work is going to always be done
in God's way. and at God's time. And we're
often in that situation, aren't we, where we agonize over what
we see going on around us, and then we wait, as the Lord shows
us how helpless we are, and we wait, and then we see God doing
things. Isn't that so much better than
all the human activity that we are so used to getting other
believers to do? If there are problems, we want
to give them a program, we want to tell them to do this and do
this and do this and do this, And so often, all of those doing
things just cause people, rather than looking to the Lord Jesus
who provides everything, to look into themselves. So God's seed
has God's life, and it grows in God's way. And we can be confident
that God has promised, if He's begun a good work, He'll carry
that through until the day of the Lord Jesus. So the soil left
to itself soon returns to its original state. You don't have
to plant weeds. We are, in our Father Adam, just
dust. From dust we came, and to dust
we will return. But we have a treasure. We have a treasure in earthen
vessels. So the whole work of grace in
the heart of believers is a work of grace that's performed outside
us and in us, and it's God's work. Repentance is a gift from
God. Faith is the gift and operation
of the grace of God. Love is the fruit of the Spirit. Joy is the result of God's work
in us. Peace is the product of grace. Sanctification is God's work
in us, not our work for God. And all these things come from
the Spirit and the power and the grace of God. Men are regenerated according
to the abundant mercy of God and watered by the Spirit, by
the word of truth. and all this through the sovereign
will and pleasure of God. They were dead, like the dead
bones in Ezekiel 37, just dead. And then a word comes, a word
of promise from God, and life comes, and it's all the Lord's
work. So faith in the Lord Jesus is
not from ourselves, it's the gift of God. All of these things
are the gift of God. Sanctification, which is in a
sense what this passage is talking about, is called the sanctification
of the Spirit. It is through Him the deeds of
the body are mortified. Indeed, without Christ, believers,
according to the Lord Jesus, can do nothing. even cannot perform
good works or do any action which is truly and spiritually good. John Gill says, the design is
to show that as the earth without human power, without the farmer
under the influence of the heaven brings forth fruit. So without
human power, without the gospel minister, the word having taken
root under the divine influence through the son of righteousness,
the Jews of divine grace and the operations of the blessed
spirit, it rises up and produces fruit. But God's work As this
parable says, it's a gradual work and it happens in various
individuals at God's time in their lives. And so the roots
have to go down, the shoot has to come up, the stalk has to
be developed, the leaves have to come out, the head has to
be produced before the grain is filled. And it's one of the
reasons why churches where God is really active are sometimes
places where there's discomfort because God is working in the
lives of people and where God is breaking up the hard ground
of human hearts and He's growing His people together and growing
them at different rates, there's tension and there can be difficulties. But where God is at work, God
is going to do wonderful things. There is a growth that he promises
which is from God. And so none of God's children
are born full grown. None of them are born with mature
and perfect faith, hope, knowledge and love. And it takes some of
us a while to realise that there is a process of growth. So our
beginning is a day of small things. We see in part, we know in part. But as John Newton's hymn said,
we see some of our sinfulness that the Lord has an infinite
depth of it to reveal in us. We see Christ's fullness, but
we see some of it, but only in a small measure. There's an infiniteness
in the fullness of the Lord Jesus. We know, according to God, that
His grace is sufficient for us, but we have no idea of how sufficient
it will prove to be. So we see and we experience His
faithfulness and then He takes us to His Word and see that He
is just being wonderfully faithful to His promises again and again. So wherever there is true faith,
just like a mustard seed, there is life. And it might be weak,
it might be infirm. It may not look the way we would
want it to look, but if it's God's life, it's real life. If
the seed of grace has come up in the heart, it might be a tender
plant. It might be a tiny blade shooting
out of the ground. The Lord Jesus talked about people
being bruised reeds. God's children are bruised children. They are wounded by their own
sin. They are wounded by the world
and the devil and the enemies that are around and the enemies
that are within. And bringing the gospel of the
Lord Jesus is the comfort that we bring to each other, that
it's not about us, it's all about Him. And so, when the crop permits,
according to verse 429, He immediately puts in the sickle because the
harvest has come. And so, The Lord Jesus looked
around when the Samaritan woman came to saving faith as he gathered
this chosen object, this trophy of his grace, and he said to
the apostles, look around the fields, a white underharvest. There is a great harvest coming,
but it will come at the time of the Lord Jesus' choosing,
just at the right time. God will gather each grain to
Himself. And then there will be a great
harvest at the end, when all things are gathered together.
There is a great harvest coming. The Lord Jesus' victory is a
huge victory. But what's harvested? The roots
aren't harvested, but without the roots there would be no grain.
The stalk isn't harvested, but without the stalk there would
be no grain. The leaves aren't harvested.
The head is harvested, but it's harvested to get something out
of it, the grain. And this is the wonder of this
parable about spiritual growth, isn't it? That what comes out
at the other end, after this painful process, What comes out
at the other end, remarkably and wonderfully, this is the
Gospel again, isn't it? What comes out at the other end
is what was sown there in the first place. What comes out,
what the harvest is, is people who have been made
by God's grace to be like the Lord Jesus. 1 John 4, 17 says,
As He is, so are we in this world. And that's where love according
to God is made perfect. And that we have boldness, we
have confidence in the Day of Judgment. We look forward to
the Day of Judgment.