Growth in the Kingdom
This year, I’ve been trying to keep up with a weekly reading schedule that takes you through the Bible in a year. To be honest, some weeks I do better than others, but a recent week’s reading was the story of Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal in I Kings 18. It’s a great story - a familiar story. It was always one of my son’s favorites. What an amazing victory for Elijah, and in verse 39, the people all fall down and proclaim that the Lord is God. There’s no question at the end of the chapter that God's undeniable power has been displayed.
And yet, in the very next chapter, Elijah is on the run, and he says that he is the only one left who is trying to do what’s right - he feels alone and asks God to just let him die.
In a sermon on this topic, my brother-in-law, Russ, pointed out that the problem for Elijah was that things hadn’t gone like he thought they would. He expected that this stunning defeat of the prophets of Baal would restore Israel immediately…and why shouldn’t he assume that? The people fall on their faces and praise God, the prophets of Baal are defeated and killed - but Ahab is still living, and Jezebel is bent on seeing Elijah dead. He had anticipated immediate change and growth, but when it doesn’t come, he runs for his life feeling dejected and alone.
Elijah tells God that he’s done everything he’s been asked to do - he’s been zealous when everyone else rejected God - tearing down His altars, killing His prophets, and rejecting His laws. Elijah must feel like he’s been beating his head against a wall trying to talk sense to a defiant nation! He’s been following God’s commandments, and now, as a result of his obedience, they are trying to kill him. That was not how it was supposed to go.
However, in verse 18 of chapter 19, God tells Elijah that he is, in fact, not alone. There are 7000 others who have not knelt to Baal in worship. Whether Elijah knew it or not, there has been spiritual growth in Israel.
I don’t know if you can relate to Elijah, but I have often been frustrated when I felt like I was working in the kingdom, but nothing was happening. It’s discouraging sometimes to work really hard and not be able to see results. And it’s easy, then, to feel alone.
In Isaiah 55 verses 6 - 10, God speaks to Israel through Isaiah and explains that the thoughts and ways of God are not the ways of man nor can they be understood by man. God reminds Israel that He is God; in verses 10 and 11, God says that just like He sends the rain to water the Earth and bring forth growth, “so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
God’s kingdom will grow when and how He determines it will.
Jesus addresses this issue again in Mark 4 in the parable of the seed. In the parable, Jesus notes that how the seed grows is a mystery to the farmer. The farmer can’t cause the growth nor can he explain or understand it. The growth happens in a way that is outside of the farmer’s control.
Jesus is helping His disciples to see that although the kingdom hasn’t come as they had expected it to come, it was being sown, and it was already growing even though they didn’t understand how this was happening.
For us, the application is obvious. We are now the farmers, and we continually sow the seed. However, like the disciples, we cannot understand the way the kingdom grows.
Jesus emphasizes this point in Mark 4:28 in the parable when he says, “For the earth yields crops by itself.”
One commentary discussed that in the Greek, the phrase by itself is the word automatos - that’s the English word automatic, and it refers to something that happens without a visible cause. In the original Greek, this phrase is placed at the beginning of the sentence which is an emphatic placement. So the phrase could translate “For by itself the earth yields crops.”
Jesus saying that the seed grows “by itself” means that there isn’t anything we can do to cause the seed to grow...it’s not that NO ONE causes it...we must understand that God causes it.
We are the sowers, and we must continue to faithfully sow the seed, but I think it’s an encouraging thought that the success of its growth does not really depend on us. The sower doesn’t need a doctoral degree in theology to spread the seed, but one does need good seed. If my seed isn’t good seed, then I won’t just be ineffective, I will do damage. But I can’t determine the heart of the hearer…the soil in the parable of the sower. The farmer plants, cultivates, tends to the seed by nourishing and planting, and then moves to the next row.
This is a lesson that we need to internalize lest we begin to think that we have new or better ideas of ways to spread the word in order to bring about our own anticipated results. The idea that we can make worship more appealing, more relevant by making it more as we would have it, encourages us to change, modify, and depart from God’s pattern for worship and Biblical authority.
By the way, this “departure” creeps into Christ’s church on a regular basis because we have “good ideas” and we like to think “outside of the box”. This way of thinking is directly dealt with in the parable; we are not the ones who decide the way the seed grows. If we aren’t careful, we will have seed that is no longer the word, and we can find ourselves in the wrong field - scattering seed that isn’t what we’ve been given to sow. The only GOOD seed comes from God, and we must make certain it’s the good seed that we are planting.
My father always said that when it comes to spiritual matters and the structure of the church and our worship, our job is to “think inside the box”. God has given us the box; He provided the seed. We may not understand it, and we may have different ideas, but thinking outside of His box is not what we’ve been called to do. We are to sow God’s word free and clear of the corruptible, shallow thoughts of our own: “My ways are not your ways nor are my thoughts your thoughts.”
Once the seed is planted, the farmer waits for it to grow. We may be frustrated by the work, and we may not initially see any growth, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The purpose of God will be accomplished. It is automatos.
God’s plans for the nation of Israel weren’t clear to Elijah, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t being accomplished. There were 7000 other people waiting on God, staying faithful, refusing to bow to Baal. God’s purpose always prevails. We just have to do the work.
In verse 15, God tells Elijah, “Go…” God directs Elijah to get up and get back to work. In the parable, the farmer in the field just keeps sowing the good seed. Likewise, even when we are frustrated and feel alone, we just have to keep working and teaching, realizing that this isn’t about us. I am not responsible for the growth of the kingdom - in fact, I can’t even understand it.
In his book Glimpses of Eternity: Studies in the Parables of Jesus, Paul Earnhart notes, “...what happens to the planted seed does not hinge on our skills or the lack of them but upon the word of God itself. We don’t have to be fine tuning things all the time, always trying to pick up a stitch we think we may have missed. We simply need to say to others what Jesus has said, and that powerful eternal word will be working while we are sleeping!” Yes, I have responsibilities to work and teach and love, and I have the responsibility of making certain what I’m teaching is what Christ taught, but I can’t make the seed grow. That is done by God.
We play our part. We work while we can, and in His time, and in His way, God causes His kingdom to grow. We just have to trust the process and patiently wait - even when things don’t turn out the way we think they should. We aren’t alone, and growth is occurring. It is satisfying when we can see it, but even when we can’t, His seed is accomplishing His will, and God’s kingdom is flourishing.