Fire On Your Head

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Mark 13:28-31 ESV)

We’ve been looking a lot in my articles lately about the kingdom of God, the Word of God specifically in the context and imagery of seed,  which is the Word of God (Luke 8:11).

In my studies and meditations on this concept of ’seed’, I was compelled to think even further on how seed–including sowing and reaping–works in the natural realm.  Even though fruit for example, is delicious, and different ones have different uses for our healthy diets, the primary purpose of the flesh on a fruit is not to add potassium or fiber to the human body, though that is obviously a good use for it.  But at the core of an apple, you find more seeds.  If the fruit were left on the branches of the tree, eventually the fruit falls to the ground, rots, and the seeds are sown into the ground.  Those seeds don’t give forth life or reproduce after their own kind until a death has taken place.  Only when the seed dies, and a rupture happens, leaving the seed to give forth life and take on a form it wasn’t previously, will a new plant emerge, and produce fruit again.  And in the next generation of fruit, will be contained therein the same DNA of the seed that was sown.  This cycle perpetuates itself indefinitely until or unless something stops it.  When nature is left to its course, the seed is never lost or destroyed despite the death and decay around it when the fruit falls to the ground off the branches and even if the tree itself rots or is intentionally destroyed by an outside source, the seed will remain.

Likewise, the Word of the Lord never perishes even though heaven and earth will pass away (Mark 13:31).  I was recently talking to a missionary friend of mine telling me how much he’s upset other missionaries and other established Christian ministries in the area he’s called to.  When he leads people in the baptism in the Holy Spirit, casts demons out of the oppressed, or heals the sick with the power of the seed implanted in him , other Christians get nervous and tell his disciples and followers to ‘be careful’.  We’ve had no problem passing on doctrines and dead works down through the ages of the Church, but those things are usually that which rots and decays–the flesh.  But he notes that whenever people need a miracle or a devil cast out of someone, they don’t hesitate to call on him.  The law kills but the Spirit gives life, therefore it’s this life we should be imparting.  Not the flesh that protects the seed, but the seed itself.  People will notice and be able to tell the difference.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

It is this living word that is intended to be passed on.   Genesis 1:11 mentions how the earth sprouts vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.  If the church can exist in certain areas of the world and all that’s being produced is dead works and dry religion, then it’s because that’s the seed that’s being sowed.  As a leader of mine in Holland says, we can’t give what we don’t have.  If the living breathing Word of God is not resident in us, it won’t come forth in others.  If we’re not seeing The Spirit move in others, it’s because He’s not moving in us either.  Simple as that.  Many theologians can write books, blogs, or just plain be armchair critics about what is the proper way to minister this or teach that.  But the fruit they are producing tells what they really sow.  We can all teach what we know and think, but we reproduce who we are. So who are you?  And what seeds are you sowing in others?  What fruit are you reproducing?

Don’t hinder others’ seeds from sprouting

A rut we believers tend to fall into when sowing the seed–the Word of God–into peoples’ lives, is to not let it do its own work.  I’m not against, nor am I contradicting the efforts made towards discipleship and helping other believers mature in Christ.  I’m not even against confrontation and rebuking where specific sin is present that the Bible admonishes us to deal with in both our lives and those of each other.  What I am talking about is digging up the seed to see if it’s doing anything under the surface or to see why progress we may be expecting hasn’t happened yet.  Sometimes when we lead new believers to Christ, we tell them all the things they now can’t do, but don’t teach them what they can do.  We start accountability structures and relationships that are fear-based and revolve around consequences if one messes up, because deep down we’re afraid the Holy Spirit really isn’t going to bring other people into maturity as well as we believe we could.  Of course we don’t admit it to ourselves or even believe that’s what we think.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout,  giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;  it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55: 10-11)

God knows what He’s doing, and if we’ve been faithful in sowing the seed of His Word, we don’t need to add extra fleshly rules to that soil, of what we can and can’t do as believers.  Another friend of mine was just chatting with me on MSN and reminded me that there are fewer basic non-negotiables to the Gospel and the message of Christ in the believer that most of us like to admit.  However, we have made up lots of other stuff that boils down to personal convictions (personal preferences) that we’re not willing to die for in order to ‘be right’ but that’s another blog entry or podcast show altogether!  The Spirit of grace inside us, along with the implanted Word of Christ will bring forth the fruit if that’s what we’ve sown in them, and had sown and watered in us.  If the seed has the basic elements it needs to grow, then it will.

One time as a child, a buddy of mine and I were at our other friend’s house on a hot summer day to go swimming in his family’s above-ground swimming pool.  I can’t remember if we were 8 or 9 years old, but we somehow got the brilliant idea that we’d do this friend’s mom a favor and water her flowers in the backyard.  We didn’t realize that using the pool water was actually bad, as it contained chlorine and such chemicals designed to neutralize and kill certain bacteria to help keep the pool clean.  What was good and healthy for that pool’s usage, was NOT good and healthy for my friend’s mom’s garden plants and flowers.  In our immaturity, we had good and well meaning intentions, but it was a deadly idea, and his mom saw us out the window and came outside and stopped us and explained that though she saw the intention of our hearts, our effort would actually kill, and hinder any fruit from being produced.

Sometimes we do likewise when we try to water other peoples’ seeds using conditions and standards that aren’t applicable to every plant in the garden.  We actually spread death when we try spreading certain religious concepts onto each others’ lives from the outside, instead of letting the Holy Spirit within water the implanted Word of Christ.  We are only overcomers of the flesh (soul) when we are strong in our spirit.  We are just picking rotting fruit off the tree when we try fixing problems using fleshly/soulish and external solutions, rather than going to the root:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— ”Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”  referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:18-23)

Usually the self-made regulations we add in order to try watering that seed are of no use in actually doing the work we’re attempting to accomplish with it.  If we understand that flesh in Scripture doesn’t just specifically and only represent the more obvious and outrageous sin, but categorically those seemingly ‘good’ deeds, though noble, but not birthed of the Spirit, then we can chalk up good intentions and personal disciplines to that which leads to death like Paul talked about in Romans 8:

“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (v. 7-8).

The solution is found in the two verses preceding it:

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

A lot of works of ministry and a lot of personal disciplines are just works of flesh, and not of the Spirit.  If you want to overcome the deeds of the flesh, then sow to your spirit and whatever you sow you will reap (Gal 6:7).  If all flesh is like grass and will fade away, then why use that fleshly grass to enhance our personal disciplines and water the seed with substance other than the Word which abides forever (1 Peter 1:24-25)?

When we eat a fruit, say an apple for example, the fruit’s flesh itself that we eat is useful for food, but itself is of no use toward reproducing more apples.  It protects the seeds found in the core, which are then used for reproducing more apples.  The human male body’s flesh substance itself won’t produce new life, but the seed inside him being protected by his body used in the reproduction process will.  Therefore if it’s so in the natural, why do we operate in the opposite fashion so often in the spiritual, and as Colossians 2 states, do things that in and of themselves are of no use in stopping the gratification of the flesh?

That being said, whether you’re a leader in the church or someone who edifies others in the Body of Christ, you will reap what you sow, and can only give what you have.  Let’s fan into flame the Spirit in the lives of one another, and not the deeds and not self-made religion, and other such things we think are of living water, but are actually loaded with poisonous chlorine and hinders growth and life.

Attached is a humorous video I found on YouTube of the effect I’ve seen some Christian ’sheep’ have on others in the Body of Christ that although not specifically related to this topic shared, I thought was amazingly accidentally profound in showing the same concept, for what is a skeleton mask representing other than that which is dead and lifeless?  Well, you get the lighthearted point.  I think like this sheep, we have the same effect on others in the flock of God when we are trying to spread our ‘dead’ works.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.  In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.” (Psalm 1:1-4)

A tree–and pretty much all plants and vegetation in general–need several things in order to grow and produce their corresponding fruit: proper soil, water, and sunlight. If you water it too much and/or only give it water, then it will get waterlogged and die. If you don’t give it any, and it only gets heat and sunlight, also, it will die.  But the soil also needs to be in correct condition.  For example of this, the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 ) details the different outcomes of having the seed fall on different types of ground.  In Psalm 1 we’re given a few contrasts between the righteous and the wicked which I’d like to focus on.   The man who delights in the law of the Lord is contrasted with the man who doesn’t, but walks in the counsel of the wicked and sits in the seat of the scornful.  Here we’re told not that the man who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night is not like a seed, but how he’s like a tree planted by streams of living water.  The man of wickedness, like a leaf that withers.

It stands to reason that if the righteous man is the one who grows, and prospers, it would be necessary to know how the he does so.  Therefore we need to be delighting in the law of the Lord if we’re to prosper and be blessed in all areas of righteousness–through both the rhema revelation and the logos written Word, studying it, getting into it deep and sinking our roots deep into it.   Only from having these conditions in place in our own lives, will we be able to extract the image from the seed, the Word of God.  The man who does this, yields fruit in season, and in all that he does he prospers.  It’s also necessary to realize is that one must to do this regularly, as indicated in the words ‘day and night’.  As the saying goes, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but not if you only eat one apple and nothing else in the course of a day!

First, a little bit about my approach to reading/studying/interpreting the Bible:  since all Scripture is God-inspired,  then the meaning of one passage is tied into the one before it and breeds the meaning of the one following.   All the parables, teachings and stories are like the strokes of a much larger painting.  All of it ties together.  Therefore, passages like Psalm 1 don’t require a lot of scholarly study to understand, and if we just read the whole thing in context we can understand the individual verses contained therein.  As good as it is to memorize individual Scripture verses, I think it’s even better to meditate on entire chapters of Scripture and entire stories or parables than just individual verses.  Doing so helps avoid accidentally (or intentionally) lifting sentences out of context.

So let’s have at it:  if a blessed man walks not in the counsel of the wicked, and all the things detailed in the first two verses, then that means the unrighteous man does the opposite.  If a righteous man is like a tree firmly planted, then a wicked person is not (I know, deep revelation, but bear with me).  And if an unrighteous person is not getting his counsel from the law of the Lord then by necessity he’s getting his counsel somewhere else –as James 3:13-18 explains, from below.  And by ‘below’, I don’t mean the ground, but the pit of hell.

We read in passages like Luke 6:43-44 that no good tree bears bad fruit, and vice versa.  There’s only two options, good or bad, fruitful or unfruitful, righteous or wicked, good fruit or bad fruit.  That which is below or that which is from above.  A wicked person who is not firmly planted near the streams of living water is not going to yield fruit as though he were firmly planted in good soil.  Verse 45 goes on to say that the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.   Therefore, it’s no wonder the very next thing Jesus proceeds to teach here in Luke 6 is about building your house on a rock so that it withstands the storm.  The idea of building and construction is linked to sowing, reaping, growing and harvesting in this context.  The fact Luke writes them one immediately following the other in his Gospel allows us to assume they are a part of the same flow of thought Jesus was teaching here.

“Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:47-49)

For years I read that passage of Scripture as though it were talking about the believer and the unbeliever, the righteous versus the unrighteous.  However, both individuals heard, but only one did what he heard, the other didn’t, and the storms and cares of this life knocked the structure down.

So why am I saying all that, and how exactly do we extract the content of the incorruptible seed of Christ in us?  Those passages then being a loose framework for us to work with provide some steps for obtaining revelation knowledge and extracting the image from the seed :

1) Put into practice what you learn from the Word of Christ

This is of the utmost importance in growing in Him and extracting revelation knowledge from the seed.  In receiving the implanted word, James 1:21-25 talks of making sure to be doers of the Word of Christ, which would be building your house on the rock, versus being a listener only–building on sandy foundations.  One person extracts the image from inside the seed BY obeying what Christ teaches and the other didn’t and the ruin of his house was great.

“But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (James 1:25)

2) Submit to fiery trials in your life

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

Under circumstances like heat, and fiery trials in life, we’re capable of having squeezed out of us just what’s really inside our hearts. It is these moments that reveal our true character. Sometimes the greatest opportunity for our faith to grow, is from under pressure, and remember, your faith has no perishing point (1 Peter 1:7).  The light of the sun is vital and a crucial component to the growth of any vegetation–the same way muscle doesn’t grow except under resistance.  But your true, tried, and tested genuine faith will survive the heat, and you will be refined and made purer, and steadfastness is produced in your life the way fruit grows from the tree planted by that stream of living water.

3) Create the right conditions in your life for the growth

Like I’ve already mentioned, certain conditions need to be right for the seed to sprout and germinate properly.  We see this exact same concept exemplified in the parable of the sower where the same seed is scattered in each instance, but the conditions are different, and the seed that sprouted up immediately is the one that withers and dies under the heat–the pressure and trials of life.  The soil of our hearts has to be right, or else the seed doesn’t go deep and develop any roots.  You can’t have too much sunlight, and yet can’t have too little.  You can’t have too much water, yet you can’t have too little.

Likewise, if you have too shallow of soil, the roots can’t grow deep.  Several years ago for my birthday when I was living as a missionary in Holland, some dear Dutch sisters gave me a vetplante.  I’m by no means an expert on plants and flowers, but it had very thick leaves and had an interesting ‘rubber’ like texture.  They gave it to me in a small pot, and told me it could go weeks without being watered, so that way I wouldn’t have to worry about watering it every day or having it die if I left for a few days.  Not only that, but if I put it in a larger bowl or pot, the plant would grow even larger.  Such is the case with our lives–we can only dig our roots as deep as how much room we have to grow in, and without deep roots, we’ll not have much fruit to blossom where we’re planted.

I could write a whole post on just what is needed to break up the fallow ground of one’s heart, but I think this article here that I stumbled across does an excellent job.

4) Don’t fragment the seed

The seed itself also has to be left in tact.  Nobody who knows a thing or two about farming would take a seed and split it into pieces smaller than it already is, and then sow each piece and expect a bigger harvest.  Nor would they expect partial incomplete harvest, because none would be obtained.  Why?  The image in the seed would have been destroyed by splitting and dividing it.  You can’t sow just the part of the seed responsible for leaves, and then just the part of the seed responsible for fruit, and just the part of the seed that will be responsible for wood, and expect to grow any of those components independent of the other. They are all a part of the same package.  Likewise it is with the heavenly seed, the Word of God.  We can’t add to it or take away from it.  We can’t split up any of its aspects and over-emphasize one component over the other. It all works and accomplishes something together.  We sow it as it is. The Holy Spirit will work with the written text of the Bible He authored.

5) Confess and Speak the Word

To repeat, Luke 6:45 states that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.   There’s a correlation between what someone believes & thinks in their heart, and what they choose to speak out.  Simply put, confession is a statement of your beliefs.

Ephesians 5: 18b- 20 states:

“Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

So what are you saying with your mouth?  I recommend this previous article for further Bible study on speaking and meditating on the Word of God.  If you’re storing the Word of God in your heart, you’re off to a good start in terms of stuff that you’ll be able to pull out of it and confess with your mouth based on both memory and from the Holy Spirit having something in you to draw upon.

6) Pray in tongues & Allow the Holy Spirit to work Through You

Jesus said Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ’Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ (John 7:38)  He was talking about the Holy Spirit, who ‘waters’ this seed–Word of God in us, and supplies the power to bring it to fruition.  All that you need to live holy and grow in Christ is contained in that seed.  Again, the Holy Spirit will work with the written text of the Bible He authored.

In conclusion, this list is by no means exhaustive, nor are spiritual disciplines in the Word walk limited to just these things listed, but I thought those things would help you out with unpacking the content of the faith seed.

If you’ve stumbled across this article and have never visited this site before and would like to go deeper into some of the material covered in this post further–besides the many hyperlinks throughout this article–the following are some previous posts that go into more detail:

What are You Feeding Your Tree?,  Treasures of the Heart, How’s Your Connection?, The Spirit of Truth

And please forgive me if my posts lately have had more links than a Polish sausage factory.  I just feel that these issues of personal discipline are of significant importance and I want to draw attention to other places where I covered this stuff so my individual articles aren’t too long.

“But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matt 13:23)

Recently I had heard about a number of tombs being found in Egypt in recent years which contained mummified remains of people.  In the tombs they also had jars which contained seeds that had been preserved in that state for thousands of years. Someone got the idea to sow them and harvest the corn and such contained in the seed to see if there was any significant difference between what they sowed in Egypt over 2700 years ago, compared to the seeds of those types of crops harvested today.  There was no difference, it yielded the same exact thing.  It didn’t matter how old the seed was, because apparently the seeds we’ve passed on from generation to generation, still contained the same crop as those from thousands of years earlier.  It didn’t expire or reach its ‘best before’ date.  All of the image of what that seed was intended to yield remained intact inside it for over 2700 years until it was harvested.

I thought this was simple yet amazing enough of an example of God’s kingdom worth adding to my series on the ‘imperishable seed‘ lately. I highly suggest going over those posts for the benefit of this entry if you’ve never read them before, as many of the Scriptures I’m referencing or taking for granted in this post I’ve been covering more in depth in previous posts for the foundation I’m building on in this one.

Another way I thought about this: I remember as a teenager the days when I used to make mix tapes – long before we had digital mp3 players and iPods (which I thank God for!).  I would take songs on CDs of mine that I wanted to make a mix tape with, and listen to the tape on my Sony Walkman while delivering newspapers.  The quality of the songs–because they were only a copy–would be degenerated compared to the original CD I obtained them from.  If I wanted to make a copy of that mix tape for somebody, I’d have to go to the original CDs again, because if I copied the tape–which itself was just a copy of songs–then the quality of that next tape would be even worse than mine was.  Such was the quality of copying using analog–it gets worse and worse the more you reproduce it from one copy to another.

Natural seed is not like such, and this is certainly not the case with the imperishable seed either (1 Peter 1:23)–it doesn’t diminish, lose anything, or degenerate from one generation to the next as it’s passed on.

The same seed of Christ planted in a believer who was changed by the blood of Christ having put their trust in Him 2000 years ago does the same work in a believer’s heart today.  The seed has not gotten worse the more it was spread.  Kingdom seed is not analog.  Its ‘DNA’ doesn’t change when it’s passed on from one person to another.  If what’s true of the natural seed is true of the spiritual imperishable seed of Christ in us, then it shines light on passages like when Jesus said in John 14:12  “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

We are capable of doing at the very least the works, signs and wonders Jesus did, because His imperishable seed–perfect image of His nature–has been implanted in us (1 John 3:9).  But Jesus didn’t stop there, He said we’d do greater works than these.  Whenever I talk to people of certain evangelical persuasions or denominations who don’t believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit–tongues, healing, and what have you–as being for today, I no longer go to the book of Acts to point out that there’s no reason to believe such activity was to stop in the Church, but I point to this aspect of Christ’s character.  If He did certain things, and said we would also and more, AND has planted His seed in us, then nothing of the image in that seed has depreciated over the centuries or degenerated in quality since.  Nothing of His has been lost or diminished in us. He didn’t even say we’d do at least the same He did, but greater works.  I know that sounds blasphemous to some, and is an abused concept by some people, but it’s still what the Word of God teaches and shows.  So the idea it’s arrogant to say believers can heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons or do things Jesus did and said we’d do (Mark 16: 16-18) is strengthened, and “only He can do it” is nullified, because the very nature of Christ is implanted into us as believers when we’re born again.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24)

Jesus, our ultimate example, left His abode in heaven, and entered our fleshly earth realm, and lived as a man.  He ‘fell into the earth’ and died, that He may be raised from the dead and conquer sin, and in a sense, plant a new work in mankind that would blossom and flourish and that work itself would overcome the sinful, carnal death nature.  Jesus died in order to be gloried, much like a seed.   Seed gives forth after its own kind, and Jesus’ likeness is reproduced into those of us where His seed is implanted.  Who He is, is spread and reproduced in us as we mature and grow and spread the kingdom of God with evangelizing and manifesting the nature of Christ through healing the sick, and giving freedom to the oppressed.

Likewise, in order to obtain the Christ seed, we ourselves die.  We have to give up our life and no longer be in control, or no longer own ourselves, in order to be a part of this spiritual realm.  In order to manifest this heavenly Christ-ruled kingdom, we die to ourselves, and live through Christ.  There can’t be any ounce of self left, because Christ’s nature abides in the believer.  He was not like ‘us’ in our sinful fallen state.  Therefore such sin nature must die–that nature must no longer be nurtured–but the seed of Christ in us watered and nurtured, and cultivated.  The seed of Christ on the inside of us is as holy as how sinful Adam’s seed inside us is evil–the nature that must be killed in order to mature in the nature of Christ.  Galatians 6:7-8 states “For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” All opportunities for this flesh nature to grow, or be nurtured, must be cut off.  I encourage reading a previous post for more about the importance of that.

What Exactly is IN the Seed?

“The seed is the word of God.” (Luke 8:11)  This being the case, I’m going to use the word ’seed’ interchangeably with ‘the Word’ of God, and by no means is the following list exhaustive, but I just want to share a few ideas to drive the point home.

“And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.” (1 Cor 15:37-39)

• It contains what it is to reproduce after, as we’ve already been establishing.

“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. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”(Mark 4:26-28)

• It contains the kingdom of God.  All that is necessary for revival and the kingdom of power spreading is found first in the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear…

“He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.  You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” (2 Cor 9:10-11)

“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21)

“I write to you, young men, because you are strong,  and the word of God abides in you,  and you have overcome the evil one.” (1 John 2:14b)

• It contains your righteous nature and ability to live holy, and to overcome sin and the evil one, and salvation for our souls.  See also 1 John 3:8-10.

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:3)

“For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God” (2 Peter 3:5)

• It contains creative forces which create and give life.  As you can see, faith is mixed in with this word of God in order to bring forth any creation.  The same properties as mentioned in Hebrews 11:3 are true of seed.  The wood and leaves and fruit and all such things itself are not present in the seed, but the DNA is and in the right conditions, those things come forth out of the ground when it’s planted and nurtured.

I personally believe this ’seed’ is where gifts, talents, skills, and our calling is located.  I won’t be too argumentative if someone disagrees with me, because I can’t completely ‘prove this’, but hear me out:  the same way each and every individual person has specific and unique DNA that makes them who they are, I believe the Lord does with this imperishable seed in all believers.  The same way that the seed in the womb of a woman contains all the information as to who the baby is and will become, its hair color, its personality, and other traits not just physical, I believe the spiritual seed implanted inside the believer contains all the spiritual versions of such DNA and it’s up to us to water and nurture that seed.  It’s up to us to edify, encourage and exhort each other as well (since we are all the collective Body of Christ) into maturity into such things as God has designed for us individuals to become in Him and in His Body.  That’s why some people are capable of not ‘realizing their potential’.  It’s not that some people fail, and others succeed because God is hyper-sovereign and picks and chooses some to be outpacing others, but because He’s deposited in us all we need, and allows us to be stewards of our own edification and growth.

The point of the seed is that it yields and gives forth after itself, and does not remain a seed.  Therefore in an upcoming post, I’ll share some more on how to extract that information from the seed and grow spiritually.

He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” (Luke 13:18-19) 

God’s intention is not that we remain in seed form, but grow in such a manner as to produce fruit some thirty fold, some sixty and some a hundredfold.

May it be so in our lives!

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:31-32 ESV)

God’s kingdom is established and started with imperishable seed. We’ve already established that the enemy scatters seeds (weeds) in with the good seed, and wherever the river flows, everything grows, both good and bad.  Only in the end time harvest, will the good be distinguished from the bad and the chaff burned up, but that doesn’t mean we wait for that day in order to sow seeds of the Kingdom of God instead of  to our flesh.

Galatians 6:7-8 states 

“For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

I want to draw your attention to the difference between building for the kingdom using imperishable seed, instead of perishable seed–chaff, weeds, wood, hay and stubble.  I think I’ve covered this extensively elsewhere, but this will be a bit more of review and looking at the difference between the perishable kingdoms of this world versus the kingdom of God–the heavenly imperishable realm.

Everything the believer does must be founded on the Word of God, not the flesh.  Usually we refer to the flesh when we think of sinning and not living a holy life, but Scripture uses it for other concepts as well.

“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you.“ (1 Peter 1: 25).

For our intents and purposes today, flesh is that which perishes, is not of God, is man’s strength, and that which can be accomplished without God’s help, or even accomplished in contradiction to His help. By default, this includes sin and living and functioning without Him.  But I want to take it further than the obvious.  There’s many ‘good’ works being done in our lives (in man’s eyes), but they are of the flesh, and like grass will wither and burn up.

Recall with me some of the things we know about seeds.  If you take seed, both good and bad, and sow them into a field or plot of land, both will grow and use up the resources in the ground.  The more you sow to the flesh, the more it will strengthen and develop, and the more you sow to the Spirit,  then the more you reap in that realm.

All flesh is destroyed eventually with the test of eternity.  If flesh is ‘like grass’, then thinking of things we know about grass is a good way of understanding what’s going to happen to the works of the flesh on that day–such as the imagery and analogy of seeds the Lord has had me writing about lately.  There will be much work that has been done by men, in the name of Christian religion, that will burn up on that fearful day and have NO significant eternal impact, because it was built with wood hay and stubble (1 Cor 3:12-15).  Therefore, allow me to challenge you by asking what are you building with?  What are you sowing with?  Are you building with perishable substance or imperishable?  It may look big and righteous now, but is it of eternal significance?  Will it withstand the fire of God on that day?

The difference Between Perishable and Imperishable

I mentioned how not all flesh is inherently spoken of as being sin, though it IS in that category by default.  The only two kingdoms the Bible refers to are the kingdoms of darkness, and the kingdom of light.  I’m not going to be harsh and specifically calling many of the works going on in this world as being sinful, but it IS true they are of no significant impact for eternity.  Jesus said it, and he said anybody not working for Him is working against Him (Matt 12:30). Many ‘good’ social programs exist today that take care of the immediate needs of people, and this is a good thing, not bad.  God’s Word says that pure and undefiled religion is taking care of the widow and orphan (James 1:27).  In no way am I knocking things that Scripture commends and commands.

However, unsaved people can also take care of their widows and orphans without the Holy Spirit’s touch involved in it, and spend eternity in hell despite having started good social programs.  A lot of ‘good’ people, who are doing ‘good’ things, are still going to hell.  It’s not our good works that make us right with God because Scripture says they’re like filthy rags anyway (Isaiah 64:6).  The Gospel of Jesus Christ and His Resurrection is the only way into His eternal kingdom (John 14:6).

The kingdom of man can invent hearing aids, without the Cross–or even WITH God’s help and motivation in the inventor’s life.  But Jesus, in His kingdom opens the ears of the deaf and they hear.  People can train seeing eye dogs, and come up with a language that involves touching the surface with one’s fingers in order to help the blind read and understand.  But Jesus Christ opens blind eyes and gives sight itself to the blind.  It’s a noble thing for men to enter the medical profession, invent or discover cures for diseases that ail the flesh–the temporary earthsuit man inhabits–but Jesus Christ heals all those things in both the earthly flesh realm and operates out of the heavenly imperishable realm.

Simply put, the difference between that which will withstand the fire on that day and that which won’t, is the stuff that can’t be done without the power of God in it.

Even of miracles the demonic realm has a counterfeit that looks just like the genuine.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matt 7:21-23)

For our context, that would be like ministers reminding Jesus that his name was on their ministry, or they accomplished many things as a charitable not-for-profit organization or even as 501c3 church status organization.  But what will His response be?  Will He know you?  Does He recognize you from the secret place as you’ve had personal relationship with Him, and repented of man-made efforts?  Remember in the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt 13:24-30), that tares look exactly like wheat in seed form but eventually by the harvest time their real DNA is made obvious, and their end result is destruction by fire, even if for a long time they looked alright compared to the wheat.  They are but grass…

The manner in which things are done in the flesh compared to how they are done in the kingdom of God is different in that the stuff that is birthed and originated in the flesh does not withstand the eternal fire, but that which is birthed in the heavenly realm can exist in the fleshly realm but not burn up when tested and salted with Holy Spirit fire.  The perishable–that which is flesh and not born of above doesn’t, and can’t exist in the imperishable Spiritual realm.  But the imperishable does and can exist in the perishable temporary realm, but it still exists and lasts in the eternal realm.

That being said, which realm do you want to be found living in?  Which realm do you want to build ministry and things that *look* like they are of the kingdom of God?  Which realm do you want your works to originate in?  Which type of seed do you want to sow–that of the flesh or that of the Spirit? Unsaved people can take care of the blind.  Muslims can care for their sick.  Hindus can look after their orphans.  What marks a difference with you and the kingdom you purport to be a part of, dear reader?  When the seeds have grown and harvested, which category will they be of –flesh or Spirit?  When the wheat and the chaff are separated at the end of the age, which side of the flame will your life and ministry be found on?

There is a lot of ‘good’ works being done, but that’s just the thing–they are ‘good’ and ‘noble’ things.  But if they can be done without the Spirit of God, their worth is NOTHING in eternity, and only matters in this ‘grass’ realm temporarily before being burned up.

Another difference between the two realms is the fear of the Lord versus the fear of man.  Whose praise do YOU seek?  Just recently I was listening to someone I respect and look up to weigh his options and use me as a sounding board about ministry he’s considering severing ties with because of how much more money-focused said ministry is becoming and losing its focus on spreading and sharing the Gospel.  It was this brother’s impression that this other ministry is more concerned about having a large reputation in the media and man’s eyes, but has left its first love that it was started on in the first place.  The ministry being referred to has no mention whatsoever on its website about the Gospel or that it’s supposed to be Christian in nature.  The idea is that it will not receive government grants and money from organizations that won’t sponsor them if they are overt in their Christianity, so they ‘tone it down’.  Friends, such a ministry is made of grass.  It may seemingly accomplish much in this realm in the short few decades or centuries it’s functioning today in this earthly & fleshly realm, but Jesus said  “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 10:33)  Whoever one fears usually determines what realm the ministry or work is birthed in and functioning out of.

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—  each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Cor 3:12-15)

Father, let us be a people whose works last and remain when tested by fire!  Let us be a people who are built on the cornerstone of Christ Jesus rather than be crushed by it and ground to powder from rejection of Him.  Make us into the living stones joined together into a kingdom of lasting significance and may you destroy all works of grass from our midst that we may be a pure and lasting kingdom of royal priests.  Let us not be ones who build with substance that doesn’t withstand the fire of your presence in eternity.

Amen.

For further meditation, here are other articles worth reading on our site that significantly overlap with what I covered in this post:

Separating Seeds of Righteousness & Wickedness, What Are You Building With?, Mixing in The Counterfeit with The Genuine

True & False Apostles – Bryan Purtle

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:6-9, ESV)

This post is very similar to one I wrote over a year ago called Mixing the Counterfeit in with the Genuine.  We’ll be dealing with the same passage of Scripture I used as the starting point in that article, only today I’ll be taking a different approach and making a different emphasis,  writing from more of a personal level and not so much a corporate level for the whole Body of Christ as that post.

Recently in one of our meetings at El Central De Fuego (The Fire Center) here in Lima, Peru, Ron Smith shared a message on this subject that I felt unlocked some pieces of the puzzle of what the Lord has been showing me in the past 15 months, so I decided to pen this article, which is very similar to a series I did on parables out of Matthew 13.  Clicking on that tag below to read the rest of them is highly encouraged for understanding the framework I’m working with.  I’ll try not to be repetitive, but some assumptions I’m making today are hashed out in more detail in those posts.

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said,’No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Matthew 13: 24-30, ESV

The devil always comes that he may steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).  It’s harder to steal a tree than it is to steal the seed of that tree in its early form.   One of satan’s most effective strategies, is to scatter lies and deception in seed form early on in the harvesting stage.  When you take two different seeds in the palm of your hand, you typically will not know what they will bear until you’ve planted them and seen what fruit is produced.  Obviously skilled and experienced gardeners and farmers would have a keener eye than the average person on what specific seeds are and what they will yield.  But for all intents and purposes, the end result or outcome is not obvious just by looking at the seed in the early stages.

In our parable out of Matthew 13, we’re told that the farmer sowed good seed, but it was an enemy who came in and ALSO sowed bad seed.  The strategy behind this is that the same water, the same nutrients from the soil, would feed both the good and the bad, and attempting to rid the soil of the bad weeds would be detrimental to the health of the good crop, and the two in this parable are allowed to grow until the same specified period, upon which time one is harvested and the other is destroyed. When you have the two different seeds absorbing the same nutrients, and dividing where the soil’s resources will be used, the good crop suffers in terms of how much of it could have produced.  If you had a whole field with only good seed, you’d yield more usable crop.  But when you take that whole field, half of it (the weeds) will be destroyed at harvest time, you’re going to suffer loss in terms of what good harvest you could have produced with the whole field.

Too many Christians live their lives that way: letting both seeds take root in their lives and then later having destruction come  to destroy works of the flesh, whether it be from sowing and reaping, judgment, or just plain suffering consequences of actions resulting in those seeds going unchecked and coming to fruition in other forms. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:15)

You can’t feed both natures without suffering loss to one or the other.  Scripture says you can’t serve two masters, for you will wind up hating one.

Romans 8:5-11 says

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

When it comes to struggling with the flesh, and trying to live holy, I’ve heard it likened to having two dogs at war.  One representing your sinful nature, and the other your new born again nature.  If you throw a piece of meat on the ground and let both dogs go after it, one would get it, eat it, and become stronger.  If you did the same thing the next day, the one who got it the day before has an advantage in that he’s got more strength and vitality after having eaten the meat it had previously obtained, and most likely will win the piece of meat this time as well.  Eventually the stronger dog will always overpower the weaker one and keep on getting the meat and feeding itself, continuing to get significantly stronger, while the weaker dog keeps on getting weaker and eventually dies.   Such, although not a perfect analogy by any means, is similar to the struggle we each are waging with our sinful nature, crucified and washed by the blood, but many of us have mindsets that haven’t changed and need constant renewal (Romans 12:1-2).

When a person becomes born again, they are not changed over night.  The old nature has been crucified, and God has transformed the believer.  But something interesting is stated here in 1 John 3:9–that God’s SEED abides in us.  The interesting thing about a seed, is that it in and of itself is clearly not the finished work of whatever that seed is going to produce and grow into.  There is a lot that we could discuss and meditate on in just thinking about this concept of the kingdom of God, and the articles I’ve already written and posted probably just barely scratch the surface of some other thoughts about this.  But one thing worth repeating or bearing in mind is that a seed basically contains the image, or the DNA of what its yield will contain.  But many of the passages I’m referencing–and other Scripture references we could look at–all have a common thread in that we are in charge of how much we ‘water our seed’, or cultivate our new nature in the Spirit.

Forgive my assumption that all readers of this are mature, but when a man gives his seed to his wife in the marriage act and a child is conceived, all that has transpired is a seed has been shared.  An actual full size adult human being is not implanted into the woman, but the image of what that human being will become is all contained in that seed.  Hair color, eye color, physical traits, but those things will be nourished and developed in the womb and eventually outside of the mother’s body when the child has been born.  Everything the child will become is not obvious just by looking at a pregnant woman who is expecting, or even from looking at the baby in its crib as an infant.  The same way that the groom gives his seed physically in the natural example of the marriage act, Christ, the Bridegroom has given us the seed of righteousness to the Church, His Bride.  For lack of a better way of describing it, He has implanted His nature into the born again believer upon salvation and regeneration.  But it’s not obvious right away.  It takes cultivation.

This moment is then the devil’s greatest opportunity to corrupt that seed–early on in the development stage.  That’s why, for example, tobacco advertizers aim their ads at youth and young adolescents.  This is why many corruping images are sent our way through television and media.  It’s a spiritual and even natural fact that we are most impressionable when we are young, therefore it’s the habits we develop early in life that lay a foundation and form us for the rest of our lives.  The same is true spiritually.  The young formative seasons of a believer’s walk with Christ are important for growth as this is the most easy time for the devil to scatter other seeds in the soil.

Consider other things Scripture tells us about sowing and seeds:

First Corinthians 15: 36-37 states that “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.”  This is consistent with the death to self that we are to be constantly engaged in in order that our spiritual nature matures and strengthens.

Sowing, whatever the seed may be, always results in reaping.  We usually hear this used in order to coax people into giving money in offerings when we hear passages like 2 Cor 9:6 which say whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Whatever seed you’re sowing bountifully, you’ll reap bountifully (the context of this passage is giving financially).

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:6-8)  Make no mistake about it, the negative sinful stuff we sow to the flesh will grow, build, and culminate, and if we’re not careful, dominate our lives.  It’s a spiritual principle that all too often I only hear about money (sow money and you’ll reap money), but if left unchecked, bad habits in our lives will grow to severe levels.  It’s better to deal with these issues in seed form early than to let them fester and germinate.

Even when the hoardes of darkness sow seeds of deception into the church or into your mind, it’s usually always mixed in with the truth.  We see this in the Garden of Eden when the serpent asked Eve questions about what God said, and helped confuse her as to what the truth of the matter regarding eating of it really was.  He even appealed to her desire to be good, to deceive her into disobeying what she was told.

Deception is usually always rooted in some form of truth, corrupting it.

In conclusion, the best way to deal with these issues of sowing to the flesh, is to sow the opposite–to the Spirit.  If anybody reading this has gone so far done a path that you are trying to overcome a sin that has snared you, even though you love God and want to overcome but can’t seem to, my best advice is to follow the same pattern that led you in that direction, but with spiritual seeds.  It’s true the power of the blood of Christ is enough to set you free instantly from any sin that entangles us, but for the most part the problem lies in our unrenewed mind.

Begin the same process with the Word of God and seeds of righteousness in your thinking that you led in an unregenerate way to get where you may find yourself now.  I remember Neil T. Anderson, author of The Bondage Breaker and other books about spiritual freedom, used an analogy that fits:  if your mind is dark and polluted from all sorts of sin and unregenerated thinking, imagine it like a coffee pot.  The pot is full of dark liquid, and you are taking the word of God and placing the equivalent of one pure ice cube into that pot every day.  A little bit of dark coffee will spill out, and the ice cube will melt and dilute into the coffee.  Change won’t be obvious right away, but doing this daily, eventually the coffee pot will get purer and clearer, until eventually no more traces of coffee are left, and eventually the whole pot is pure.  This is my opinion of what kind of things happen as we renew our mind with the Word of God (Romans 12:2), and it’s also necessary to get rid of and cut out of you life the things that caused that coffee pot to get so dark in the first place or else you’ll have these two different natures remaining at war with one another, rather than your spiritual nature dominating and ruling over your flesh.  If you need to avoid certain people who influence you, do so.  If you need to get rid of objects you have access to–such as internet or television, do so.  Cut the weeds out, they are not harmless.  In order to let in more light, you have get rid of the darkness.

Remember dear reader, you are an overcomer in Christ.  It is positional truth.  It’s just the battle is in your mind and takes some sowing to the Spirit.

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For other stuff to chew on, meditate on, and teachings to listen to:

F.Y.O.H. Podcast Episode 37: Is it Possible to Live a Holy Life?
Download mp3 (right click and save)

Dave Roberson Teachings – these have helped me a lot and made a tremendous impact on my mind renewing and holy living:

The Prison Is the Mind (4 part series)

Sin Shall Not Have Dominion (3 part series)

“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” Luke 6:43-45

In my last post, we started off with looking at this passage.  The context is trees. Bad trees don’t bear good fruit. Dare I say it this way; dirty hearts don’t produce wholesome speech either. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. You and I are in charge of what is in our hearts to be able to overflow out of our mouths.

A tree needs several things in order to grow and produce fruit. If you water it too much and/or only give it water, then it will get waterlogged and die. If you don’t give it any, and it only gets heat and sunlight, it will die also.

Sometimes I get asked how “I know so much about the Bible.” It doesn’t show on my blog, but in person I’ve been told I can just know where Scripture passages are found so readily, and what certain verses say–it’s been commented to me that my preaching/teachings are always well thought-out and well-prepared. But the thing is, I’m relatively extemporaneous, and spontaneous. I prepare a few notes, merely skeletal outline points and only to serve as an anchor to keep myself on some topic, but much of what I teach and preach comes to me on the spot. I’d say 20% prep and 80% ”go with the flow when it comes up” is how I do it.

Do you want let in on a little secret on how you can do it too? Reading the Word and speaking in tongues. Not one over the other, and not one without the other. It has to do with what I spend my time storing in my heart and spirit, and then what’s there to pull out of it. Also, certain topics are naturally an overflow to different people based on passion and studying and meditating on them more than others.

First, reading the Bible regularly. I will not specify an amount because we all have different reading levels and schedules, but it has to be a daily occurrence of quality time doing it. Not bites or snacks—but meals. It’s true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away–but not if you only eat apples, and only eat one a day!

Second, a whole lot of speaking and praying in tongues. Those readers who do this know from experience also know just how much this private prayer language helps ‘unpack’ the revelation into the things of God and the Word that you’re storing in your heart as a result of reading the Bible. Like with the tree, sunlight alone will not produce much fruit, and water alone will not produce fruit either, but will overdo it and kill the thing. Similarly, feeding and storing in your heart the Word of God, is like placing the minerals and such in the soil for that plant to feed off of. The roots are not just feeding off of the water, but also from the minerals in that soil. The Word of God is like precious stones. Jesus our Savior is called the rock (1 Cor 10:4)–which is a type of stone, and He is the Word (John 1:1-5). A rock is also solid, serving as a foundation for a building–so notice the very next few verses in Luke 6 have to do with building a dwelling place on a solid foundation so the storm doesn’t destroy the house that was built (verses 46-49). Likewise the tree needs its roots deep in the soil to withstand the sun’s heat and fiery trials of life.

You need to store the treasures of the Word of God in the soil of your heart, and the tongue praying acts like the water (symbolic of the Holy Spirit in our lives), and from constant and continual use and practice–at your own speed and your own initiative–brings this stuff out of the treasures of the heart, for good usage and fruit, the way the tree’s roots will draw its nourishment out of the soil, not the water alone.

I know many believers in Christendom who don’t like any talk on tongues and for some sad reason a large portion of the Church removes from their Christian experience the gifts of tongues and prophesying, and the gifts of the Spirit that involve miraculous speaking, and teaching others the same, but this is the most effective way to gain insight into the Word of God for our lives. The Holy Spirit, who wrote the Bible, who is living in you, brings it to life in your spirit. The prayer done with your spirit gets answered in your spirit. Speaking is directly involved in the unpacking of what’s stored in that treasure, as we allow Him to store those things in our treasure chest (heart).

I’ve noticed that reading and confessing the Word of God and praying in the Spirit are both vital to the Christian walk. People who only speak in tongues and aren’t in regular Bible study other than their token verses for positive confession, are usually flakes. The ones who only read the Bible (I know I’m going to be misquoted and misunderstood…) tend to back away or have alternative explanations for matters of the Spirit, and are generally (but not as a rule) more intellectual in their approach to the Scriptures. That’s my opinion anyway. The law kills and Spirit gives life. I kinda steer clear of both flakes and intellectuals. There’s a middle that I have no idea if I am located in (but hope so!), and both are vital spiritual disciplines that work off of each other in our lives.

Tongue praying brings to life the Word of God in our spirits in a faster way than intellectual understanding does, hence why your understanding/mind is unfruitful (1 Cor 14:14) when you pray this way, but your spirit is edified (1 Cor 14:4) when you pray in the Holy Spirit. Contrary to how a bad interpretation of this text would have you believe, your mind not being fruitful is not indicative of this practice being bad. It’s just people who don’t understand the benefits of praying in tongues usually accidentally come to this conclusion.  However, Paul said in this text he’d do BOTH praying and singing with understanding and with his spirit (v 15), not one to the exclusion of the other.

For computer experts reading: it’s like downloading zip files to your computer, and then it’s on your hard drive needing to be unpackaged. Zip files are faster to download than the whole file in its ”unzipped” state. The mental intellect alone cannot handle the revelation God desires to give us for our lives, hence a personal edification tool like the gift of tongues for individual use. Trying to understand the things of the Spirit using our own intellect alone, is like trying to unload an atomic bomb inside a soup can. It just can’t happen, so from praying in the Holy Spirit, God brings us up to His level to communicate things to us, in our spirits, and then the interpretation will be made to our minds when whatever He’s downloading to our spirits is completed.

For those who’ve never spoken in tongues, and don’t want to, or think it’s unnecessary and you’re skimming this part because you don’t think it applies to you let me just point out that the people who teach and preach it’s not necessary or that it’s demonic to do so, tend to reach that conclusion out of lack of experience doing it. It’s their lack of familiarity with this experience ultimately that leads them to this conclusion and interpret the Scriptures through that bias. Can anyone–”tongue talker” or not–really disagree with that observation? I find it’s as simple as that. You never hear tongue speakers and charismatics teach it’s not for today–why? Because they know better from experience as well as the Word!

If you’re one who as of yet inexperienced and are offended and resentful when it’s implied you’re missing out on this AWESOME experience–the only thing I can compare this to is like when you suddenly “get something” in the Word or from God directly and you just know that you know that you know that you now know something from God and not your own understanding. And the Scriptures back it up, and don’t contradict it. Well, with regular tongue praying–multiply that “getting it” experience exponentially! Oh if the whole Church would do this!! God is not withholding it and giving it only to some and skipping others–this is a tool that’s vital to understanding spiritual matters, and God does not give it to some and not others. It’s something all who want it can have. Lack of proper understanding is what inhibits many believers from seeking it.

I can totally understand Paul when he said “I wish you all spoke in tongues” (1 Cor 14:5) to the believers at Corinth. It wasn’t like his gift of singleness that He saw the benefits of and wished other people could share but not all would. This man was not one of the original disciples that got to interact with Jesus face to face. This was a man who was more zealous for studying the Torah than many others, and spoke in tongues more than the Corinthians (1 Cor 14:8) and look at the revelation he had from those two components–he wrote stuff that we canonized and put in the Bible! I don’t know about you, but I see totally how Bible Study and tongue praying are vital–especially if you’re called to teach anything to others in the Body, you best be doing both, not one over the other.

Bible reading provides the boundaries and the minerals for those tongues you’re praying out without your own understanding. Tongues waters and unpackages those treasures in the soil of your heart. To repeat and summarize: Bible reading & study, and consistent tongue praying work off of each other.

If you enjoyed this post or were blessed by it, then you may enjoy mp3s we have for free download on our podcast dealing with these same subjects:

Fire On Your Head Episode 21: Spiritual Disciplines
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Transformed into the Image of Christ – message by Bob Gladstone
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“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13:44)

I may seem like I’m going off on a weird rabbit trail and it might not be obvious at first why I reference the other passages that I do in this entry to talk about just this one verse, but bear with me. Remember as I mentioned previously that the kingdom of heaven being LIKE a mustard seed. “It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matt 13:31b-32) Right after that we’re told “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened” (v.33).

In both of these examples of seed and leaven, we’re given the image of something that starts off small, and grows and spreads and eventually fills all that contains it. When Jesus Christ set foot into this physical realm of ours nearly 2000 years ago, He planted the seed of the kingdom of God and it has been growing ever since. The tares have also been planted, and have been growing ever since in the same field (this world) both in linear history, and horizontally in our lives or relationships, and ministries.

Many believers understand the Gospel of salvation, but don’t often realize that the Gospel is about the KINGDOM of God manifested in all of creation, including the earth. The return of Christ draws nearer and nearer, and at that time He will begin to rule for 1000 years in a ‘tangible’ way—the full ‘manifestation’ of what we’ve been growing towards. He already rules now, and is seated at the right hand of God, but His literal kingdom doesn’t ‘exist’ yet. This kingdom of God keeps spreading like leaven, until it fills all creation—at His kingdom “finally” being set up—it’s part of the overlapping “not yet” and “already” ages we’re currently in.

The kingdom of God HAS come, through Christ, but is still “not yet here” at the same time. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19)—because it will be made manifest in that Day of Judgment—the wheat we discussed last entry will be separated from the tares and it will finally be obvious—the grey-headed tares will stick out from the rest of the true crop. We’re in a sort of overlap of two different ages—the ending of the old one that has been defeated and concluded by the work of Christ on the cross, and the beginning of the new one—simultaneously, that was ushered in BY the work of Christ on the cross.

While the kingdom of God–the wheat–grows and spreads in the field (the world)–likewise the kingdom of darkness keeps spreading until the tares are separated from the wheat at the end of the age and burned up. The verses following describe this, as Jesus gives the explanation of the parable of the wheat and tares that he had just previously shared.

There are not very many parables of Jesus’ that He explains in the Gospels, but in Matthew 13 there are two that He does as I’ve already devoted attention to in my last few entries—these parables are of utmost importance. Jesus says that at the end of the age “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” (v.41-43) This speaks of separation and distinction; the righteous separated from wicked, true from false, wheat from tare.

In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he told them:
“According to the grace of God, given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 (emphasis mine).

Wood, hay and straw are stuff that grows or is found above the ground. Gold, silver, and precious stones are beneath the surface, and aren’t visible–they are buried and hidden and require seeking.
If you went to Home Depot with several thousands of dollars, and you decided to buy piles of 2×4s, I’m sure you could get a good start on building a house. But if you were to take that same money and invest it in gold or silver, you would get a significantly smaller quantity amount with your investment. Wood on the one hand burns in fire. And when it burns, it’s gone, and all you have left are ashes.

Gold withstands fire and is purified. In order to get them from the ground, one needs to bow down and seek. When you put gold through the fire, you don’t diminish it or lose any of it. It changes form at a certain point from solid to liquid, but you don’t lose any of it when you put it through the fire, and the impurities are dissolved and the gold is given a purer quality by the fire.

I think gold is symbolic of your private and “unseen” devotional life; 1 Peter 1:6-9 says: In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (Emphasis mine)

When I read this passage, I think of the Persecuted Church in parts of the world where the kingdom of God is growing exponentially, and we don’t know about it because it’s leaders are not well-known and flying in private jets with flashy ministries. They live in constant persecution and even to the point of losing their lives in some cases. They live in a realm we have no understanding of, yet have a more pure and genuine faith.

Of silver, Proverbs 10:20 says “The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, but the heart of the wicked is of little value.” What are you saying? What do you spend your time speaking of? If you go back to Exodus and study the garments the priests were to wear before entering into the holy of holies, you’ll find it was embroidered with precious stones.

All of these items, gold, silver and precious stones are symbolic in one way or another of personal private devotional life in the believer’s life under the new covenant, while wood, hay and straw may be tall, large and mighty—looking great and standing erect above everything else,ultimately they don’t withstand the fire at the end time harvest.

**What materials are you building the kingdom of God with?**

In order to get them from the ground, one needs to bow down low, and seek for them, which is itself a posture symbolic of prayer and private devotion. This man described in the verse I began with (yes, I had a point in bringing up all that stuff about building to get to this), not only discovered this hidden treasure in this field, but feared lest someone else discover it also, and went and sold ALL he owned at once to purchase it. This seems to imply the treasure was not out in the open in plain site, but something that needed to be sought after in order for it to be discovered. And one that was purchased at no small cost.

When you put the fire to THIS gold, you don’t diminish it or lose any of it—but it costs you everything you’ve got to purchase it. It doesn’t look like a lot, but it will withstand the fire on that day of judgment. There’s not only going to be a lot of tares uprooted and thrown in the fire on that day of judgment, but there’s going to be a lot of public wood, hay and straw ministries going up in flames in that day also.

Why do you think 1 John 2:28 warns us not to shrink back in shame at His return? We wouldn’t be told this unless there was a possibility some of us would be, when we find out we have nothing left that has withstood the fire of His coming. If you’ve been building a self-glorifying exalted ministry in this lifetime, or doing anything that you may be seen for how spiritual you are, then don’t worry, that will be reduced to ashes at His appearing. You’d feel like a pauper and ashamed, shrinking back at His coming.

We are told not to be building with materials that won’t last—so what are you building with? The merchant in the next parable did the same thing when he discovered the pearl of great value and went and sold all he had to obtain it. Sacrifice is required of us in order to do works that withstand the fire on that Day of separation.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’“
(Matt 13:24-30)

All that I said in my previous entry regarding the parable of the Sower was in order to prepare for what I believe the Lord is saying in this passage, and for a message from the Lord that’s going to specifically be its most relevant for the Church living right before the return of Christ.

Before we get to that, I want to draw your attention to the fact that in the verses immediately following the this teaching on the tares, Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is LIKE a mustard seed: it starts off small, and then grows and fills the whole garden. Keep that in mind while we look at this parable, even though contextually it’s written after the parable we’re currently in.

Jesus teaches in this parable that the seed is sown in the man’s field, but that during the night while they slept, his enemy came and sowed the weeds among the wheat. There are a few things worth noting here: the soil was good in this parable. The farmer had nothing to worry about. But it was his enemy who came and sowed the tares in the soil after the good wheat had been planted there. We assume the farmer knew what he was doing and that knew how to grow a crop, or else he would not have planted here if the soil was no good. It is the same with any truth of the Gospel message: only after truth is established and built on a proper foundation–proper “soil” if you will–can deception come in and attempt to choke it out. You don’t have a tare without wheat, and wouldn’t have a counterfeit unless there was something genuine to imitate. It’s how the devil has always operated. Even as far back as the garden of Eden, that serpent satan took the truth and twisted it—what was the truth then? That man would surely die when he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Satan’s tare he sowed into that soil was the statement he made to Eve “you will not surely die.”

Many deceptions in the church today are usually a twisting of actual eternal truth–they are only a perversion of God’s original intent in something, whether it be sexuality, money, or Gospel doctrines twisted, and whatever else have you.

What is a tare?
It’s a wheat-like weed—it looks like the wheat, but is in fact of different quality and source, and only resembles the actual wheat. The enemy came in while the master was sleeping—he only comes in and plants his deceptions in areas where the Body of Christ has let its guard down or not stood alert. The Church must never be found asleep, but always vigilant and alert. It was only over time that both the wheat and the weeds were discovered (v.26) when the plants had come up, so did the weeds. Implicit in the word “discovered” is the fact the tares weren’t obvious at first until a later point—harvest time. As one grew, so did the other, both resembling the other initially for a time. In verse 28, one of the servants came to the master and asked how there could be weeds along with the wheat, because they planted good seed and expected to yield a good crop. The enemy only looks for good seed to corrupt, that he might confuse and twist the GOOD word from bearing proper fruit. This is how he’s gotten some ministries off track in distraction with other fruitless pursuits (like we mentioned, with extremes in the realm of financial prosperity for one example); the weeds grow in the context of the good—in the SAME field as the good wheat.

Look at Jesus’ explanation of this parable in verses 37-43: He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” (ESV)

As a side note, notice it’s the wicked ones that are gathered first, so how do you fit this into popular rapture teachings, if as this passage says, is at the close of the age? I digress.

What do the false look like, and how will we recognize them?
Unlike the parable of the sower where the seed was the word of God and the soil was the person’s heart, this time the seeds are people– sons of the kingdom and sons of the wicked one, and the field is the world. The false look very much like the true wheat for a season even though it has a different source. Source is the main difference between the true and the false.

Wheat and tares come from different seed and they look very different by harvest time. During harvest season, the wheat matures and gets a full, golden head on its stalk. The weight of the mature head causes it to bow or bend (symbolic in this posture of bowing down, humility). Tares are not so. In the early stages, the tares look very similar to the wheat, but at harvest they are seen for what they really are.

Translations that render this word tare as simply ‘weed’ miss a point that will be lost in the translation from the original text. The head of the tare, instead of golden is somewhat grey and it doesn’t bow (symbolic of stubbornness, and pride). It stands erect above the bowed over wheat heads and is easy to identify—but again, only by harvest time. False phenomena will look very similar to the true for a season and will show up within the same field of holy phenomena as well as in worldly, occult and new age environments. This will be a great opportunity for the church to grow in discernment.

When will the false phenomena appear?
Verse 26 offers us the answer to this question. “But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.” (emphasis mine). When you see true supernatural phenomena begin to manifest, you will also find the false. Again note: in the same field! Do not be surprised when this happens. Jesus said it would happen. The emerging of both will actually serve to identify the true for the Body. You can’t have counterfeits without genuine.

In our parable, the servant asked the landowner if they should uproot the tares when they became evident. The answer was “No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.” (V.29). We must be very careful not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, so-to-speak. The Lord will teach us how to respond to this WHEN it happens (note: not “if” it happens).

In the movie Batman Forever, Tommy Lee-Jones played the villain character Two-Face, and for every decision he’d make, he’d flip a coin and the side that it landed on determined for him which of two options he’d take. During the climax scene, while standing on a cliff-like edge, he tosses his coin in the air, and at the same moment, the hero Batman pulls out several similar looking coins and throws them at Two-Face at the same moment, confusing him. Tommy Lee-Jones’ character attempts to catch all of them not knowing which is the genuine, and doing so loses his balance and falls from the edge to his death—distracted by counterfeit coins while attempting to catch the the real one—which was lost in the mix. The devil is like this—throwing a lot of false and counterfeits at us, so as to distract us from the genuine article.

Living Waters Ministry, based out of California, USA, has an evangelistic ministry and reputation for producing quality Gospel tracts. One of them is of a million dollar bill, resembling American currency, and has the Salvation message written succinctly around the edges of it. On June 2, 2006, the United States Secret Service seized 8,300 copies of the “million dollar bill” tract printed by Living Waters Publications from the Great News Network (GNN) headquarters because a woman in North Carolina attempted to deposit the tracts as legal tender (despite the fake bills clearly stating “This is not legal tender.”) Apparently what got them off the hook, was the fact that there is NO such thing as a one million dollar bill, therefore they were not ‘counterfeiting’ it because there isn’t a genuine version of it in the first place. Friends, the devil also does not create anything, he merely counterfeits something already designed beforehand.

Back to our parable: the servants in this parable shouldn’t be faulted with desiring to remove the weeds. In some gardens and with some plants, this is a logical solution. Every summer as a teenager I’d pull weeds out of my parents’ garden for cosmetic reasons, and if I had waited too long before yanking some of those weeds out of the ground, they were more established in that soil than one would have liked, and you’d uproot more than you wanted. The master in this parable states something interesting; he says “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (v. 30) All causes of sin, and all law-breakers are removed—notice now—from the kingdom, not from the world–even though Jesus teaches that the field in this parable is the world, it’s the *kingdom* all these things will be uprooted from. Preaching or talking about what God will remove from His kingdom is not really as popular as preaching about “your best life now”.

What happens to these tares? “They are thrown into the fiery furnace, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, but the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”(v.43). On that note, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater over every claim of alleged signs, and wonders and miracles. There ARE genuine manifestations of God, and those will increase, but there will be an increase of false ones also—they grow in close proximity and let the church grown in discernment instead of suspicion.

In closing, remember that Paul warned Timothy “the sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.” (1 Tim 5:24) God will do the uprooting, He doesn’t need your help. Preach, teach and live out the pure Gospel, so that your genuine ministry may withstand the testing on that day, which will be the subject of our next study as we continue with some of the parables in this chapter of Matthew.

The whole Bible is the inspired Word of God (1 Tim 3:16). The Holy Spirit saw to it that this Book was written and the content was selected the way it was, and in the order things were put in there, for whatever reason He saw fit. I’m not a big fan of lifting things out of context and I try not to do it, but we all do it by accident or sometimes by faulty memory when recollecting nuggets or quotes from Scripture. That’s why I read and meditate the Word of God in chapters at a time, if not whole books, and when I stumble across individual verses, I back up and move forward and give careful thought to stuff surrounding it.

So I’m going to camp right here in Matthew 13 for a little while, because there’s a lot to unpack in it. There are a LOT of commonalities in the parables and stories here, and not only that, but they are all placed in this same chapter and many of us might not have ever realize they tie together or off the top of our head realized they were all in succession in the same chapter in both Matthew, and some of them in Mark 4. And not only that, but Jesus explains very few of His parables in the New Testament, but gives explanations to two of them in this chapter, so I think it’s worthy of our careful study.

Parable of the Sower

“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
“Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Matthew 18:3-9,18-23 English Standard Version

We begin with the parable of the sower. In Mark’s account of this, it’s implied that understanding this parable is the key to understanding any parable (Mark 4:14). Here Jesus tells them “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” (Matt 13:11) My paraphrase: knowledge is reserved for those who want it. That being said, it’s necessary to have at least some preliminary familiarity with this parable.

Jesus shares this parable in the first portion of the chapter, and in verse 10 His disciples come up to Him asking about this teaching, and want to know why He speaks in parables. Friend, Jesus doesn’t do it because He wants to be mystical, and keep knowledge away from people all the while looking like some spook-spiritual guru. The opposite is true, He does things in such a way where we need to take initiative and seek. Knowledge is reserve for those who want it, not for people who want to be spoon-fed the mysteries of the kingdom. God doesn’t reveal the mysteries of His deep to any passerby circumventing intimacy with Him.

In this parable, no matter what the result of each dispensing of seed (the Word of God), it becomes apparent that it’s always necessary for the soil (the heart) to be properly cultivated, for the best desired results and fruitfulness. The first instance mentioned actually has the seed above the ground or on the surface in this parable, and the birds of the air come and snatch it away easily (v.4). In Jesus’ explanation, He says the birds of the air are snatching away what was sown in the person’s heart (v.19). This throws a wrench in some “once-saved, always-saved” teachings I’ve read and heard that explain the only person to get saved in this parable is the fourth one in the end that bears fruit. Not so—at least, at the very most I will concede this is not the best portion of Scripture for proponents of that doctrine to base their teaching on. Each of the four ‘soils of heart’ in this parable RECEIVED the word in their heart.

The second person hears it but has no root or depth in that soil, because the soil is rocky (v.5-6). In our spiritual growth we need both depth and the ability to branch out & grow upward and outward, and can’t have one without the other. We need both the opportunity to deepen and mature in the things of God, as well as the occasions to put into practice what we learn, and have fruitfulness—depth AND application. As one of my team leaders in Holland says “you can’t give what you don’t have.” The natural result of shallowness of soil, is that this seed doesn’t spring forth or grow beyond its initial ‘sprout’. In Jesus’ explanation He states that this person immediately receives it and looks like they’re a solid enthusiastic Christian per se, but that it’s trials and tribulations because of the Word that choke out and hinder this person from enduring for very long (v.20-21). It’s interesting to note that 1 Peter 1:6-9 indicates that trials and tests purify a person’s genuine faith.

The third person–and the main one I want to show you something you might not have noticed before–is representative of soil that itself was fine, but that the seed was growing next to other things that drained the resources in the soil and prevented the good seed from obtaining life and vitality (v.7). Jesus says that the weeds that choked out the life of this seed were the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches.

Interesting that Jesus specifies riches (money) as a ‘choker’ of the good Word. This would probably explain how some ministers of the Gospel throughout the ages wind up becoming heavily engrossed with prosperity ‘name it and claim it’ Gospels—because of the cares of this life choking out the good Word.
Notice, it DOES NOT say in this account that this seed dies—it says the weeds (cares of this life and distraction of riches), choke the Word—which I always used to assume meant it was killed—but from just reading, we see that that’s not necessarily true. This ‘Word” stays alive, but is unfruitful because the nutrients and minerals in the soil that would’ve given life to it is not getting up through the stem or branches, because it’s being sucked out of the ground by these other cares, and giving “fruitfulness” to the weeds instead. I dare say, the nutrients are being wasted on other pursuits in this believer’s life.

Ever thought of that before—that you can’t serve God AND money? “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Matt 6:24) Put that in your Bible and read it! If you think I’m reading into the text, then follow along next time when we examine the next parable Jesus shares in this chapter—on the wheat and the tares. Consider how the seeds that fell on good soil in this passage bear fruit—the individuals who hear the good word and do it and are fruitful, and it’s typically understood then that they didn’t have these same “soil issues” as the seeds in the previous three examples.

Not so with the wheat and tares. More on that in the next chance I have to post an entry, which will go in a completely different direction than this one. But I find it interesting that some teachers out there can teach very well, and money doesn’t snare them become their focus. Gary Carpenter is a minister I believe this to be true of, and I highly recommend his series on “Stewarding the Pound”, and other such teachings found on his website (he totally corrects a lot of the false teaching on what we know as “the prosperity gospel”, but if you don’t stick around and listen to enough of his messages, you’ll accidentally assume he is one of them)
But without mentioning names, some of you reading immediately had thoughts of certain preachers where they teach and preach more on money and such–with what seems like an anointing–but hardly talk about the cross of Jesus Christ, or repentance from dead works or other essentials of the faith. It’s because the nutrients in the soil cannot support both the good word AND the cares of this life, including riches.

Jesus taught in other portions of the Gospels that the cares of this life can distract us from true faith and trust in God. To close off this entry, why not keep in mind what He taught in the sermon on the mount concerning the cares of this life and anxiety over them:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.“ Matthew 6:25-33, ESV, emphasis mine.

In the parable of the sower, notice that the cares choke the good word. But if we seek FIRST after the kingdom of God, then there is room for both the kingdom of God manifested and bearing fruit in th believer’s life, AND the needs of the believer being taken care of and provided for.

And THAT kind of prosperity message is Biblical.

Have you ever heard that statement “all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed and you can move a mountain”? The idea behind it whenever most Christians quote that comes from a misunderstanding that faith is not measurable, but we all have the same proportion. I hope in the next few paragraphs to show otherwise, and maybe we as a body of Christ could do away with that cliched saying that misinterprets Scripture.

Let’s look at one of the instances in the Gospel where Jesus says this. I will add emphasis, and when you read it try to pretend I’m shouting, because normally when I add emphasis, that’s all I am doing–just emphasizing something, but this teaching gets on my nerves when I hear people teach and believe this passage to mean they don’t have to do anything, and “faith the size of a mustard seed” is used to justify doing little to nothing, rather than provoking tenacity of faith to see the things of God. Here we go:

And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him,
said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.
Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:14-20 ESV

I’m not going to teach it here, but this passage even shows it was Jesus will to heal when his followers were unable to produce the healing, even though seven chapters earlier he granted them authority to do it and they did. Anyway moving right along.

Notice how in this passage, Jesus tells them it’s BECAUSE of their little faith that they were unable to heal the boy. This translation accurately avoids translating it “faith as small” as a mustard seed. You say, “Steve, isn’t that just your preference of translation? You can’t say yours is the right one just because it translates something to prove your point.” You would be right if you said that. However, the context shows it can’t be talking about the ’size’ of your faith, since he just rebuked his disciples for not having big enough faith. Jesus was not schizophrenic.

So where do we come up with this misinterpretation, and how did it become such a cliche we use often in Christian circles? I really don’t know. But now let me ask you something, if all it took was a tiny mustard sized seed to move mountains, then how come there is still lots the Church is unable to see take place in the way of miracles and logic-defying deeds? If all it took was a mustard seed, then I’d hate to be the devil when a Christian has more than a mustard seed of faith! Ah, now that is a good segue into what I would like to submit to you for your consideration as to what Jesus means when he teaches this.

Right now as I type this, My E-Sword program has open five times in the NT where the mustard seed is listed, each instance is in the Gospels. Luke 17:6 is almost identical, but is in a different context than the above quoted Scripture. The other three instances it comes up in a different parable–the parable about the kingdom of heaven. Matt 13:31 is almost identical to its counterparts in the other gospels:

“It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Mark 4:31-32.

He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” Luke 13:18-19

(Emphasis mine)

This passage gets confused in peoples’ minds with the teaching of Jesus concerning speaking to the mountain, and therefore the teachings get mixed together and you come up with this idea it’s ok to have little faith, but in context that’s clearly NOT what Jesus taught his disciples. Could it be, based on this explanation as to what a mustard seed is and what it does, that we can glean from this parable, which uses the same illustration, and learn something that can change our understanding of the other passage?

Sure, why not? Our faith is to be like a mustard seed. What is a mustard seed like? Though it starts off like a seed, it grows and our faith is to be like that seed that has grown and becomes larger than all the other plants in our garden. Larger than our ‘TV watching plant’, larger than our ‘worldly mindset plant’, larger than our other ‘plants’. In fact, it is to become so big, that everything else in our lives is dependent on it, like birds in the air able to make nests in its shade. If anything, our faith is to be like a solid tall tree, not a tiny seed. Seed is a good way to start off, but you don’t leave a seed like that, you sow it–ask any farmer if he wants just seed, or if he wants to sow that seed and reap more of the same.

Like any seed, it needs watering and feeding, as well as the right conditions for growth. Later if people tell me they want more Scripture to prove my point, I will write more about how we each have a measure of faith God has given us–’a seed’ if you will. And then it’s all up to us how fast, and how much that seed grows. Some, would you not say, clearly walk in more faith than others? They didn’t get that way overnight, trust me. But if you and I would do the things it takes to water our faith seed, with the Word, with prayer, with meditating on the things above and not on hours and hours of TV (can you tell that’s one of my soapboxes?–you’re never going to walk in total victory if you watch TV, movies, surf the internet needlessly, and other such mindless wastes of time— more than you read and pray).

Well that’s the end of my thoughts. I better stop here, now that you’re upset I’m meddling with you.

Steve