A Top Down Faith – From The Tiniest Seed is the fourth sermon in our summer series on the wonders of God’s teaching. In our text from Mark 4 Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God. What is it like? We have before us two parables. For this blog post we’ll just talk about the first one.
Last week I was at our District Convention and there was a pastor who offered a brief devotion on this parable. He called it the parable of the bad farmer. The guy is terrible. He does no ground prep. He casts the seed. Doesn’t pull a weed or fertilize, but he does come and get the harvest. The focus is on the seed. A man scatters the seed, but it grows all by itself, independent of the man. All by itself the seed grows and matures into a plant until it is harvested. The point of this parable is simple – God makes the seed of the gospel grow. All we do is scatter the seed.
You’ve heard it said, “Don’t just stand there; do something!” Churches can become consumed with activity – if we stay with the agricultural illustration, we aerate and till, remove the crab grass, put down lime, but if we don’t scatter the seed the gospel won’t grow. If you understand me correctly, maybe we should change the slogan to, “Don’t just do something; stand there!” Scatter seed, share the gospel with a reckless abandon, but leave the results up to God. Our second lesson is a great example how the seed of the Gospel spreads. We don’t know how God’s Word creates faith, but we trust that it does.
When you talk to people don’t be afraid to use Bible stories that you’ve known your whole life. Tell the story of Jesus. Many people don’t know it the way you do. Don’t ever think, “What if I get the words wrong?” That’s like asking what if I put the seed in upside down?
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Mark 4 – A Top Down Faith – From The Tiniest Seed.
Book(s): Mark
Series: A Top Down Faith
Tag(s): evangelism
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg