The Mysterious Growth of the Kingdom
And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mark 4:26–27)
We do not understand the things of earth. How then can we understand the things of heaven? (See John 3:12) Christ said, “The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). The kingdom of God grows because of his mysterious work in people’s lives. And his kingdom shall last forever. Every earthly enterprise shall one day crumble, but God’s work will stand for eternity.
His Spirit also moves in a mysterious way — touching hearts and lives, reviving souls. We cannot anticipate what God will do or when and where he will do it. He is unpredictable. We can simply expect the unexpected from him. Growing a church or reaching people for Christ, or serving the Lord in any capacity, is not to follow a series of steps that will guarantee our success. We humans have not mastered ourselves the growth of the kingdom of God. It is his work, and though we learn things that he blesses — specifically the teaching of his word — the precise way that he achieves his goal is mysterious to us.
Christ likened the work of the kingdom of God to the work of farming. The farmer knows that certain activities help to bring a harvest, but the exact process, the science of it, he does not understand. He knows that he must plow and plant, cut back the weeds, keep the ground moist enough. He knows that some things are beyond his ability to control — early or late frosts, droughts, invasions by insects, destruction by birds, or floods. It would be a foolish farmer indeed who thought that his own work alone was the sole considerable factor in the development of his crops.
But, yet, his work is the only thing he can truly control. God invites the farmer to cultivate the land, and without his activity nothing will grow. So he must work hard to plow, and plant, and harvest. Any farmer can tell you that this is no idle profession. Though seasons come and go, when there is work to be done it is hard, physically-demanding, time-consuming work.
We may say much the same thing about the work of God. There is much work to be done for Christ. Christ invites us to join him on his mission, and our work for Christ as Christians is important — not just the pastor’s but every believer’s. So we teach, and pray, and serve, and worship. We love, and give, and send out missionaries. We visit the sick, we publish and distribute the gospel, and we call on people. We study and write and preach. We encourage and strengthen souls. But at the end of it all there remains a great mystery of the work of God in human hearts. Like the farmer we know that some things are helpful, even essential, but the precise spiritual science of the conversion of the human heart we know only in broad terms.
Like the farmer, we see things on the horizon — great movements of the Spirit that brings revivals, and spiritual droughts that come and go, and demonic oppression that springs up from time to time like a horde of locusts. We still must work but we note that sometimes there is more response than at other times. And all of this the Christian accepts as the farmer does, that it is part of a mystery that is beyond us.
Just as all around the farmer there are hidden principles at work — the condensation of moisture, the high and low pressure weather systems, the periodic floods and burn-offs of vegetation — and these are seeking some type of balance in the environment. So for the Christian we know that there is a spiritual conflict that goes on in the world, with the work of the Spirit of God advancing, and with the opposition of the devil and his kingdom opposing him. We cannot understand either the thinking of God or the thinking of the devil at all times. Though we know that God desires to bless us and the devil to destroy us, though we are confident that God shall win in the end, that he alone is Creator and Redeemer, the exact timings of these movements of God, the spiritual realities and specific conflicts behind the things that we see and experience, the Lord has sought fit not to explain to us, except in broad terms.
Albert Barnes wrote:
We can mark the change; we can see the need of prayer, and examination, and searching the Scriptures, and the ordinances of religion, but we cannot tell in what way the religious principle is strengthened. As God unseen, yet by the use of proper means, makes the grass to flourish, so God unseen, but by proper means, nourishes the soul, and the plants of piety spring up, and bloom, and bear fruit.
Matthew Henry wrote:
Thus we know not how the Spirit by the word makes a change in the heart, any more than we can account for the blowing of the wind, which we hear the sound of, but cannot tell whence it comes, or whither it goes. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; how God manifested in the flesh came to be believed on in the world.
“Great is the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16). The very process of the incarnation is unknown to us. And the same is true about the transformation of the human soul. We can observe that the seed of the gospel grows and develops in human minds, that the Spirit convicts hearts and converts souls, but there remains a mystery surrounding the process that God uses.
Yet we are called to continue to plant the seed. Let us avoid taking pride for the principles of spiritual growth that God created, that he begins in human lives, and that he sustains by his will. The work of God is mostly done by God. Let us also avoid false guilt when great spiritual droughts are present, when we serve in areas and times of rejection and coldness in hearts toward Christ.
Let us also avoid the sin of laziness, of thinking that our actions do not matter at all. Just because the farmer cannot understand the process of germination and growth, he still knows that he must plant. And we are called by God to do all the things we should do to spread the gospel. Better an arrogant worker who claims too much credit for himself, than the lazy do-nothing who wastes his opportunities by philosophizing away his contributions to the work of God.
But let us also realize that the Lord does invite us also to pray. For all the things that we do not understand, there is One who understands all, to whom we can talk. Prayer is an essential part of service, for it invests in the power and knowledge of God.
