[Machine transcription]
Jesus says, with what can we compare the kingdom of God?
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear saints, it is surprising to me that Jesus asks, well, it’s not surprising that he asks this question. The surprise is how he answers. He’s sitting on a boat and he’s teaching, and he’s teaching parables about the kingdom, and he says, what should we compare the kingdom of God? And I think it’s nice to contrast it with what the answers would have been. I think most of the people gathered there should say, well, the kingdom of God is like a king who leads his army to conquer his enemies and sets up a throne. That’s the kingdom of God. Or maybe, because Jesus is sitting on a boat, he would pick something else, like the kingdom of God is like a great sailor or a fisherman. In fact, we know the kingdom of God is like a net that catches all sorts of fish.
But here’s the surprise. Jesus answers from the boat. He says, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds that grows into the biggest plant in the garden and the birds can make a nest in its branches. And then, and this is the one I want to put our attention on this morning, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like a farmer, a man who sows his seed and then goes to bed. In fact, I want to think about this, and I think there’s kind of two, I suppose, layers of wisdom that Jesus wants to teach us in this parable, that there’s a wisdom that I want us to have as a church, as a congregation, and Jesus is teaching us that wisdom, and then there’s also a wisdom that I want each of us to have as individuals, as Christians.
Because on the church level, when we think about the kingdom of God, which is His church, where he rules in the hearts and consciences and the minds and lives of people on this earth, that we want to think that we have something to do with the coming of the kingdom of God, or that we can figure out how the kingdom of God comes to us, or we can figure out how it grows. There’s a real temptation here. In fact, it’s just to state it really specifically, we can think that when the church is shrinking and getting smaller and smaller, we think we got to figure out how to grow the kingdom of God. Or if the church is growing, then we think we’ve figured it out how to grow the kingdom of God.
And here’s what Jesus wants to un-teach us today. Normally the wisdom, the parables are revealing wisdom to us, but Jesus in this parable wants us to make sure that we don’t know something. He wants to hide something from us in the parable. He says the kingdom of God grows, and you don’t know how. The kingdom of God is like a man who sows the seed and he goes to bed and he sleeps, and the seed grows up by itself. The Greek word there is automatically. It’s hidden. It’s under the dirt. You can’t know how the seed grows; it just does. You plant the seed and then you wait and you sleep and then comes the leaf and the stalk and then the grain with the wheat on it, the corn in full bloom, and the farmer doesn’t know how it happens.
Now when Jesus tells this parable, He wants us to know that we cannot know how the kingdom grows. In fact, I’ll say even more than that. He wants us to know that we cannot know how the kingdom of God grows, and he wants us to avoid all temptations to try to figure it out or act like we’ve figured it out. Now this is, I don’t know if it’s just especially on my mind because, I don’t know, the last five, six weeks a lot of things have come across my desk, and this is, I mean, it’s not anything new in the church. Pastor LeBlanc, Pastor Davis will tell you that all the time that we’re getting stuff as pastors on how to grow your church, how to make the church grow, how to revitalize your church, and we can give you ten reasons, ten, what was this, twelve things that the church is doing wrong causing it to shrink, or five things that the church should do right to grow. All of this is ungodly, all of it is wrong, and all of it is dangerous.
Jesus says you cannot connect the dots between the planting of the seed and the growing of the plant, and to do so is wrong. Now this is helpful because again there’s kind of two temptations. There’s the temptation to despair, which is to say, well if the church is shrinking then something really is going wrong and we’ve got to figure it out and fix it. Or there’s the temptation on the other side in saying, oh the church is growing, we figured out how to do it. You’ve got to have a nice building with nice music and three good-looking pastors. I don’t know why that was so funny. But do you see that there’s a temptation there to say that there’s something that we’re doing that’s causing the church to grow? Jesus says, no, no.
Paul says it like this. He says, I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth. Our business is not the growth of the church. Now neither should we say, you could do this on the other side, that the church is growing as a sign of faithfulness; neither should you say that the church is shrinking as a sign of faithfulness. What we have to say is that the growth of the church is God’s business. It happens underneath the dirt. You can’t see how it happens. You can’t know how it happens, and if you try to figure it out, if you go digging up in the dirt to see how the seed is growing, then you kill the seed. The very act of trying to gain this hidden knowledge is in itself destructive. It’s the, what, it’s the dissection problem, right? As soon as you dissect something to figure out how things are working inside, then you kill the thing that you’re dissecting. Jesus says you’re not supposed to know. Paul says, I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth, and that’s how it must be. God, it’s God’s business to grow the church and not our own. Our business is to plant the seed, to be about the business of the Word of God, to throw the seed out there.
And here’s the second thing, because when the farmer is sleeping, that indicates for us two things. Number one, that he doesn’t know what’s happening, that he’s not doing anything, that he’s laying in bed, that the seed is growing on its own, that the Word and the Spirit are at work, that it’s not our business. But the other thing that the sleeping of the farmer indicates is that he was absolutely confident in the power of the seed. In other words, he didn’t plant the seed and then stay up all night worrying if it was going to grow. He wasn’t anxious. He wasn’t troubled. He was sleeping. He was resting. And this is a call to us. It’s a call to the church. It’s a call to our congregation that the business that the Lord has given to us is the business of sowing the Word, of letting it go free, of putting the Lord’s Word out there into every heart and every ear and every place that we possibly can and then to take a nap, to rest, to rest in the confidence that God the Holy Spirit is at work, that Jesus is in fact sitting on the throne, that this is his kingdom, it’s not ours and that he is the one who does the work and that we are to rest in that confidence.
Now this is, I think, first, and we said it, that first this is wisdom for us as a congregation, as a church. That sometimes the Lord will cause the church to grow, that sometimes He’ll cause the church to shrink; sometimes the church will stay the same. This is His business. Our business is to be faithful with the Word. And this also is wisdom for us on an individual level. I mean, when we wonder about the mystery of our own faith, I mean, how is it that you believe in Jesus when your friends and your family and your neighbors do not? How is it that you trust in the Lord? How is it that the Holy Spirit is working in your heart? Is it something that you’ve done? Is it a decision that you’ve made? Is it a promise that you’re trying to keep or a commitment that you’re trying to fulfill? No, it has nothing to do with that at all. You are the recipients of God’s Word and it’s the Word and the Spirit that’s created faith in your heart and mind. There is no claim that you have on your own faith or on the salvation that the Lord has done. It’s completely by his work. The seed grows automatically and that means again in our own lives our business is simply to give our attention to the Word, to open our eyes and read the Scriptures, to open our ears and hear the Scriptures, to open our hearts and let the Holy Spirit minister to us by His Word and teach us repentance and faith, sorrow over our sin and faith in His Word of promise. And by this, the seed grows automatically. First the leaf, then the stalk, then the wheat, and then the harvest, when the Lord gathers us up to our eternal home.
It’s funny for us because we think that all knowledge is good. If you can know something, you ought to know it. But the Scripture warns us that this is not the case. Some things we are not supposed to know. I was trying to think of a good example for this. The best example I can think of is the answers to your chemistry quiz before you take the test. If you go and look at the answers, you’ve cheated. Some things we’re not supposed to know. That’s according to the Lord’s will. And this we are not supposed to know. How does the seed grow? That’s the Lord’s concern, not ours. But the word which sprouts and brings forth the harvest of eternal life, the Lord has revealed that to us, and in it we rejoice.
So may God the Spirit grant us through the word this wisdom, the farmer sowed the seed and he went to bed and the seed grew in the field. God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
