The Parable of Automatic, Spontaneous Growth
(The Parable of the Secretly Growing Seed)

Only in Mark 4:26-29

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now Jesus uses another way to talk about much the same thing he’s talked about the last two parables. What is planted into us (i.e., good gospel seed), grows automatically and spontaneously.

I like to call it synergistic and centrifugal. The parable says we don’t know HOW it does — it just works. The parable says the farmer just plants the seed and then goes to bed and sleeps and the seed grows while he’s sleeping. Then it says: “He does not know how.” So, this works a lot like the mustard seed and the leaven.

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The point is we don’t need to understand electricity to feel the shock of it. 

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The gospel is God’s way to produce results in us. All we have to do is (1) to believe it, and (2) to receive it.

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It’s best to also understand how it works, as the Parable of the Sower says (Matt 13:19). If we understand how something works, we’re much more ready to believe it and receive it. But we don’t have to understand. When we do these things, we see good results: we live it and we release it to others. Jesus says, “As you have freely received, so freely give” (Matt 10:8).

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It is important to Jesus that we see that the gospel works automatically in us: spontaneously and centrifugally. We don’t have to work. It’s not a JOB we have to do, but rather a JOY we experience.

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It’s God’s Kingdom process in us, if we will only believe him and do things his way. Thus Paul calls the gospel ‘the power of God’ (Rom 1:16). It is God continuing to perform the good work in us that he has begun (Phil 1:6). It is God working in us to fulfill his good pleasure (Phil 2:13).

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If we get off onto what we lawyers call ‘a lark of our own,’ it can take us anyplace – down ‘A Garbled Road’ rather than ‘The Gospel Road.’ The Garbled Road is a road full of ruts, potholes and detours: laws, rules, principles and precepts to follow. It’s usually taught by ‘Instructors in Christ’ we talked about, not by Fathers of the Gospel (I Cor 4:15).

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Gospel Fathers always point to the Father and his Son, what they have done for us, what they are doing in us, and what they will do in the future. This is how we experience spontaneous, automatic growth, as this parable says. Instructors always point to us, and what we should do next. And there is always a next. It’s a never-ending treadmill.

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The gospel is a divine reality that is authored and finished by God himself working in us. We often aren’t even aware of what God does in us. The gospel is automatic and spontaneous because it is God’s power and process causing us to live better.

Go to Parable Video 6: The Wise and Foolish Builders

For Wikipedia’s viewpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Growing_Seed