Mark 4:26-29

NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

‘And (Jesus) said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; … when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.’

Mark 4:26

The central thought of this parable is that God’s own Divine power is at work in God’s own Kingdom. ‘The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself’—not of herself apart from God, but apart from the man who sows the seed. He does his work; the seed springs up and grows he knows not how. So is the Kingdom of God.

I. The working of the Kingdom.—What hope have we that this Kingdom will come? What is our consolation in regard to it amidst all the discouragements of the time? The same hope and the same encouragement that the man has who casts his seed into the ground. The earth bringeth forth of herself apart from him. So that on the working of the Kingdom of God amongst men we fall back upon the same kind of forces as we do in the working out of our natural life. Everywhere men are dependent upon the great power which is working behind. In this day of material progress and trial we are apt to look rather at the organisations than at the spirit that breathes through them, at what men do rather than at what God does behind.

II. The need of patience.—In this great work of elevating the world the element of time must be taken into account, and we must wait with patience. The man sows his seed, but he does not see the harvest immediately. Corn takes time, but character is more precious than corn, and takes a longer time for its development. A man may be converted in a moment of time, but the development of his life must needs take many years. For the truth is, salvation means not merely delivering a man from sin and every evil thing, but building him into all nobleness. It is not merely the putting aside of what is weak and sinful, but the attainment of all that is noble and true. And you find that the attainment of power to a man of spiritual power is always a work of time.

III. The law of continuity.—Our Lord says that there is a natural law of continuity in the spiritual life as there is in other things. ‘First the blade, and then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.’ We can never do without any of the intervening stages.

(a) There is first the green blade trembling in the breeze, the stirring of spiritual life in the young disciple.

(b) There is next the green ear; and it seems sometimes as if there were very little value to be attached to it except for what comes afterwards. Sometimes a man thinks he is losing ground and going back, when, in point of fact, God is training him for higher service, and leading him to the heights of the Christian life.

(c) Then comes the time of the full ripe corn in the ear, the time which Bunyan sets before us in the picture of the land of Beulah. Beautiful the faith and love of the young disciple, but more beautiful still the faith and love of the aged Christian who has felt that Christ has been with him through the battle of life, has been with him in storm and in sunshine, and has brought him on his way to the city of God.

IV. The harvest.—If the principles at work in us, the powers that are most dominant, are Godlike, there will certainly come the harvest, and ‘then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’

Illustrations

(1) ‘This parable is found only in the Gospel of Mark, and is one of the most brilliant examples of the perfect naturalness of our Lord’s teaching, and of the way in which He shows the underlying connection between the two worlds, natural and spiritual. At first sight it might seem as if there were but few points of comparison between these two, between the work going on, for example, in a cornfield and the work going on in a human soul. For while trees and shooting corn have power to grow, they have no power to will, while man has both. And it is this real power to will which is the determining factor in character and destiny. You can have a fixed and determined science of natural forces, but not of the forces of a man’s inner life. You can measure to a point the pressure of steam, but you cannot tell beforehand what may be the effect of a single speech or a single book upon a nation’s history. You may predict beforehand the return or the transit of a planet, but you cannot tell beforehand when the hour of a spiritual conflict may come in the life of your child. And yet while these worlds are so separate there is an underlying unity, and it is this unity which really springs out in the parable.’

(2) ‘John Wesley’s dying words are words of comfort to the Church in all the centuries. “Best of all, God is with us.” If He were not, our hope would be scant indeed.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

ATTRIBUTES AND USES OF THE DIVINE SEED

The seed springs and grows up from its own inherent vitality; and, moreover, it does so apart from and independently of human aid and instrumentality. Thus we have in the text two attributes of the Divine seed: (1) its native vitality; (2) its sovereign independence.

I. Its native vitality.—This important principle lies at the foundation of all missionary and evangelistic effort. We may find the illustration of the principle—

(a) In the teaching of Christ. Consider the humble, lowly origin of the Man Christ Jesus. Yet at this moment the six or seven great Powers which control the destinies of our race are by profession at least the followers of Jesus Christ. This is a phenomenon which exists, not a theory, but a fact—a unique fact in the history of the race, and can be explained on no other assumption than that of the inherent and superhuman vitality of the Divine Word.

(b) In the teaching of the Apostles. The work of the world has been commonly done by few; the great turning-points of history have often been the work of one man, e.g. Mohammed, Luther, Napoleon, and many others. As a rule, such men left no successors; it was as if nature had exhausted itself in the effort and could do no more. It was not so with the personality of Christ; He, indeed, stands alone, unique and unapproachable; but He left behind Him successors, second only to Himself in their influence upon the world; and that because their teaching was the reproduction and illustration of His own. Every page of apostolic history is an illustration of this truth—the vitality of the Divine seed.

(c) In the experience of believers. The fruit is the product of the seed, and every true Christian is thus a witness to the inborn vitality of the Divine Word. ‘Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth.’

II. Its sovereign independence.—The sower is represented as absenting himself after he has committed the seed to the ground, and the seed as growing up without any action or intervention on his part. What does this mean? The Divine seed when sown can, and often does, dispense with the co-operation of man because—

(a) It contains essential truth.

(b) Sets forth a Divine revelation.

(c) It is attended always by the ministry of the Holy Ghost.

It is, so far as man is concerned, sovereign and independent in its action.

III. The uses to which this lesson may be put are many and various.

(a) Its evidential value should not be lost sight of in a day of bold criticism and sceptical doubt. The Bible has become the battlefield of Christianity; and we need to look well to our defences. Those defences are neither few nor feeble; but to the Christian there are none perhaps so assuring, so convincing, as the self-evidential character of the Word of God.

(b) Its personal value is another consequence. The Bible has a voice for all men: ‘Unto you, O men, I call; and My voice is to the sons of man’ (Proverbs 8:4); but it speaks to the individual.

(c) Its universal ministry. The Bible for the world, and the world for the Bible, is an axiom of all missionary enterprise, at home and abroad. The individual agent is necessarily local and limited in its action, the Divine seed is unlimited and universal. ‘The field is the world,’ and our warrant for believing in the efficacy of such sowing is not only the inherent vitality of the seed, but also its sovereign independence.

Rev. Sir Emilius Laurie, b.d.

Illustration

‘ “When a man preaches to me,” said Daniel Webster, the American statesman, “I want him to make it a personal matter, a personal matter, a personal matter!” And no doubt the more each individual can feel that he is the very person to whom Scripture addresses itself, that such is its versatility, such its wonderful adaptation to the ever varying needs of the human heart, that its eye, to use Keble’s illustration, like that of a portrait, is ever fixed upon us, turn where we will, the greater will be the profit we derive from it. “ ‘Thou art the man,’ ” writes Dean Stanley, “is or ought to be the conclusion, expressed or unexpressed, of every parochial sermon.” ’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

‘WHAT IS YOUR GROWTH?’

Men, women, take your true measure.

I. Is it towards evil?—Look back to days when you gazed on life with the bright, expectant eyes of youth. Remember those ideals of yours—those resolves, those pure purposes—which you know were the upward strivings of the spiritual life-germ within you. But what growth has there been through the years? Are you more hard and proud, more selfish and shallow, more careless and cold than formerly? Is there rock below the root, and are there thorns about the blade? Do the weeds choke and strangle the life? Then beware lest your soul shall never recover its lost growth. There was one brilliant man who at the end of life wrote thus miserably:—

My years are in the yellow leaf,

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone.

Beware, I say, lest the worm of vain regret and the canker of useless self-condemnation be yours in that day when the growing-time of life’s opportunities shall have gone by you into the irrevocable past.

II. Is it towards good?—Are you truer, kinder, broader, more just and generous than before? Is the self-love weaker and the care for others stronger? Are you less earth-bound, less earth-satisfied, more heavenly-minded? You hardly like to admit so much. And yet you do love your neighbour better than in former days, and you can look up to God with fuller trust. Happy man! You are God’s husbandry, His tilled field, His planting. His grace is sufficient for you. He Who fulfils His purpose of growth in every living thing will not fail in His purpose of growth in your soul.

III. We were meant to grow.—Nothing on earth is lovelier than a child. But a child which never grew would be an abortion which must shrivel and die. Would the mother be content to have her babe always such? Nay; she nourishes it that it may grow. She looks for the ripening of its powers and for brave deeds nobly done. And can you think that the Eternal Parent is satisfied with poor, dwarfed, shrivelled-up souls? Nay; but He would lay us on His breast and feed us with Himself—‘Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’

—Rev. C. H. R. Harper.

Illustration

‘Look into your own souls, and ask yourselves if the seed God has given to you has sprung up and borne fruit. The best of people will be the readiest to own how far the field of the soul has fallen short of the harvest-field, yet their lives are brighter and less unattractive than they once were; they know that they love where once they disliked, that they strive often to win those who dislike them to a better mind, that they strive to think well even of the unthankful and the evil; best of all, they know they have the power sometimes to draw souls, by the sweetness and gentleness of their lives, to Jesus Christ. They know what it is to be useful, too. They gladly comfort the sad, and try to raise the fallen; and they minister to the sick, and pray and watch by the bedsides of the dying. And, looking back over their lives, they can realise that there has been growth—growth in purity, in grace, in faith, in holiness.’