After the great flood had subsided and the ark had come to rest on dry ground, Noah and his family came out of the ark, and he built an altar to the Lord and offered sacrifices upon it. As the smoke of the offerings rose to heaven, God smelled the soothing aroma, and made a promise that He would never again curse the ground on account of man, and never again destroy every living thing as He had done in the flood. (Genesis 8:21) Then, in Genesis 8:22, God made a statement regarding the earth and its seasons – a statement which would affect every man, woman and child throughout history:
"While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and
cold and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night shall not
cease."
Obviously this statement affects us all at a natural, physical level, since we all must eat, and everything we eat ultimately comes from something that grows. But there is another deeper level at which this statement impacts us all as well – and that is spiritually.
In several different parables, Jesus used seeds to illustrate how the kingdom of God works. Consider the following examples:
31 “He presented another parable to them, saying,
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed
in his field;
32 and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.’” (Matthew 13:31-32)
26 And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a
man who casts seed upon the soil;
27 and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and
the seed sprouts and grows -- how, he himself does not know.
28 "The soil produces crops by itself; first the
blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.
29 "But when the crop permits, he immediately puts
in the sickle, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-29)
The kingdom of God works like a seed growing in soil because this natural, physical realm was actually patterned after the spiritual realm. And the promise that as long as the earth remained there would continue to be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night applies to the spiritual realm as well. The words of God are the “seeds” in the spiritual realm. (Luke 8:11)
We must plant these words – found in the form of promises
God has made to his people – in our hearts.
Then we must be vigilant to keep them there, until they produce the
fruit of God’s will done in our lives.
To do this will require the strength to make it through the spiritual
growing seasons – enduring the heat of summer, the winds of fall, the snows of
winter and the rains of spring. But for
those who will endure, there is the guarantee that we will bring forth “much
fruit” (John 15:8), which is what we are called to do!