December 2, 2008
I remember walking through fields of seeding dandelions when I was a small boy. I would pull the plant and blow the tiny fluffy parachute like seeds into the air and watch them float away. I discovered later that some could travel several miles away from the parent plant before finding enough soil to germinate, producing more dandelions.
This is small in comparison to what happens on the eighth day after the first full moon in August each year. Every coral reef in the entire Gulf of Mexico explodes at precisely the same moment shooting millions of eggs into the deep looking for the necessary ingredient to bring life.
Throughout the generations of human history, the Lord Jesus Christ has unleashed the seeds of His word into the world. God’s Holy Spirit has guided these seeds, depositing them into the soil of human minds all over the earth. These tiny seeds may be read directly from the Bible, preached from a podium, read from a printed page, or even sung.
Sometimes the seeds lie dormant for many years, maybe wrapped in an old dust-laden Bible tucked away on some bookshelf or in a small crevice in a grass house hidden in a remote jungle of the world. Or they may be lodged in the memory bank of someone’s mind for years. God moves heaven and earth to get the seeds precisely where He wants them to be. When He is ready, the Holy Spirit germinates those seeds and a brand new life occurs.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to go to Vijayawada, India, to teach the Bible to Indian pastors. Hundreds of pastors attended our Bible sessions. I was surprised to learn that missionaries were not allowed into the country. So where did all the churches come from, represented by these pastors? I was told that Bibles written in the language of the people had been smuggled into India and distributed throughout the land. Those who had come to faith in Jesus Christ did so through reading and listening to the word of God. Churches sprang up and grew based solely on the ministry of God’s living seed. What an amazing glimpse!
One of the recipients of God’s word was considered to be the most dangerous man in all of India. His gang attacked, plundered, and terrified many of the villages of a certain area. He was wanted, dead or alive. While ransacking through a room in one of the houses in a village, he found a small black book. At first he started to throw it away, but he noticed that the pages were very thin, just the right thickness to roll his cigarettes.
Each evening after a meal, Ramad would relax with a smoke. He would take out a page in the little book, fold it, and roll it around his tobacco. One evening while rolling up the paper he noticed that the writing was in his own language. So each evening he would read the words on the page before he rolled it to smoke. The small black book was the Bible. One evening he knelt down and trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. Ramad had been born again from the living seed of the word of God. Ramad then gave himself up to the authorities. They quickly tried him and sent him to prison. The prison became his personal mission field. The Holy Spirit had moved the amazing seed of the living word of God into that prison through this bandit turned prisoner of Christ.
God’s spiritual seed will always accomplish its divine purpose. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah around 700 B.C., God said, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
God’s thoughts tower high above the thoughts of this fallen civilization. He does not think like us for one very simple reason: God is not like us! To our human way of thinking, strength is strength, weakness is weakness, intelligence is intelligence and foolishness is foolishness. But in God’s mind, the strongest things are the weakest, and some of the seemingly weakest things are the strongest, and some of the wisest things are the most foolish. God delights in turning human wisdom inside out and upside down. The world promotes great wealth, superior intelligence, extreme popularity, and high position. These are things that God places on the bottom. God continues, “For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater” (Isaiah 55:10).
God sends the rain and snow down to the earth and then He returns it to the sky as vapor. But it does not return until it accomplishes its purpose. It causes the earth to bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. The water always accomplishes that which God has ordained. God then says, “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” (Isaiah 55:11).
God’s word comes down from Him – generation after generation – and it does not return to Him without accomplishing its appointed task. God does not arbitrarily cast His seed into the winds, allowing it to fall where it will. Nor does He hope that someone by chance will respond to it. The Holy Spirit directs the spiritual seed to minds from every nation, kindred, and language group. Generation after generation, God determines both the path and the performance of His spiritual seed. If the gospel is faithfully preached for years and only a few trust in Jesus Christ as Savior during that time, then that is God’s design. God’s word will never return to Him without completing its heavenly mission. Jesus said, “He who is of God hears God’s words” (John 8:47). Christians become Christians because we are born by means of the word of God.