Spiritual Growth and the Work of God
Mark 4:26-29
4/26/26
26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Who in here likes to have immediate results? Every guy just raised their hand. We want things now, and we live in a world that has lost its patience.
-If a website doesn’t load immediately, we close it and move on.
-If a video buffers for three seconds, we’re annoyed.
-We order something today and get frustrated if it doesn’t arrive tomorrow.
-If a message isn’t answered right away, we assume something’s wrong.
We don’t want to wait—we want it now.
And that mindset doesn’t stay out there in the world—it follows us right into our spiritual lives.
We want instant growth.
We want instant maturity.
We want instant change in ourselves—and in other people.
We want that for ourselves. We expect it of our kids. Come on: “we did the study on anxiety you should be over it by now!”
-We want to read the Bible once and be different.
-We want to pray once and see results.
-We want to have one conversation and see someone’s life completely turned around.
And when that doesn’t happen, we start to wonder: Is something wrong? Is this working? Should I try something else?
But then Jesus comes along and tells a story in Gospel of Mark 4—and it cuts directly against everything we expect.
Spiritual growth is a process with multiple stages of God gradually working in a person’s heart, and we want to do everything we can to help position people to experience that growth.
In this chapter of Mark 4 Jesus teaches about the coming of the kingdom of God. There are three parables about the kingdom and each involves seeds being planted.
Our parable teaches what growth is like. Here are three things about spiritual growth.
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Spiritual Growth is a Process
What does spiritual growth look like? In sports it's all about bigger, faster, stronger and immediately. In business its get the business built, the website up and the sales will begin.
Here Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God and spiritual growth, and the analogy he uses is of seed and plants. There is nothing exciting or radical about the growth of plants!
You put it in the ground and go out the next day— nothing. A few days later. Nothing. A few days later some tiny specks of green leaves emerged. A few days later. Same thing. A week later those specks are a little bigger, taller.
Growth is slow and change unnoticeable.
“God did not design His kingdom to come like a tidal wave or a bolt of lightning, to come quickly and disappear quickly. No, God planted it in the coming of a Galilean peasant, a homeless man from Nazareth, who gathered about Him a bunch of nobodies. The ways of God are mysterious indeed, but He will be successful.” Danny Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark.
I am impatient with plants. Want them to grow. Not growing– add more water. Water is good. More water is better. Fertilizer is good– more is better. May the ground over there is better and i should transplant. My impatience will kill the plants.
Need to be patient. Not mushrooms. Not as jonahs vine. But the rural pace of God.
Can’t coerce. Can’t force the gospel into anyone's heart. All you can do is lay it on top of their heart so when their heart breaks the gospel falls in.
Want kids to get it. Want your wife or husband to get it, and get it fixed! It takes patience. Faithful sowing and speaking, times to rebuke, but often being patient and waiting for the growth.
Patient ferment. A slow rewiring of the mind, changed by thinking and doing.
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Spiritual Growth Has Stages
Many pastors and churches have used this parable to point out how we foster spiritual growth. Stages: time to sow. a stage of the seed being in the ground, then the stage of the blade, then the stage of the ear, then full grain. Each of those stages requires different things for optimal growth.
28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
It’s a way to recognize the need to have different things to help people grow.
Need nurture in the beginning. Seed is sown in the spring before the harsh full sun. It’s not yet ready for those hard environments. Once its roots are established and the leaves full and hardy then bring on the full sun. The plant is going to take all that energy and develop into grain and corn and beans and tomatoes. But don't bring the full sun on those delicate little sprouts.
I'm going to come back to this, but for now just know its important to recognize where people are at. Where you are at.
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Spiritual Growth is of the Lord
One of the comforting points of this parable is the encouragement that God is at work. We put seed in the ground and step back and the seed does what it is supposed to do. Same thing here with the word.
In the parable of the sower that preceded this passage, the seed is symbolic for the word of God. That parable emphasized our responsibility in receiving the word. Jesus explains this parable in detail and by understanding it, we are able to understand the others parables.
The parable shows how some hear the word, receive it with joy but never grow any depth so they quickly fade. Some hear it but the cares of life choke it out, like thorns choke out seed. That parable emphasizes the need for us to make our hearts a soil that receives the word of God.
**The connection there is that your receptivity to the word of God is indicative of your place in the kingdom of God.** Those who receive the word show a reception to the kingdom of God. Those who are disinterested and detached from the word of God are detached and disinterested in the kingdom of God. Doesn’t mean they are barred forever, but does mean unless your heart changes you are outside the kingdom of God.
I plead with you to humble yourself and put your trust in Jesus and in his word. Bring it to bear in your life. Come to a place to say, "I'm sorry. I won't keep going my own way.” Until you do that you are stiff arming God.
I want to highlight the point of the parable of the sower, because it balances the point of this passage. The point here is that we sow the word of God and then trust God to work.
Sometimes we don't even know how. I know how seeds work, but I don't understand it. They are dormant but then you put them in the soil, moisture and light, and they just sprout all of the sudden. God brings it about. And it is the same with us.
27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.
In the parable of the soils, the focus was on the necessity of sowing and the receptivity of the soils (vv. 3–8). Here the emphasis falls on the innate power of the seed.
28 All by itself the soil produces grain
The word here is: automatns
It is automatic. The seed gets in and it begins to do what seed does. We are to make sure the word of God gets into people's hearts and lives.
-If we get those seeds in the soil then they do what seeds do.
-if Get the word in peoples hearts and it begins to have an effect.
The seed has within itself the power of its own generation. James, the half brother of Jesus, wrote in James 1:21, “Humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save you.” Plant the word in a receptive soul and off it goes!
Will you receive the word? Will you allow it in and to have its way in your life?
Encouraged disciples who were experiencing rejection of their message and little growth, frustration at their lack of understanding of God’s mysterious purposes that God’s kingdom would surely come
Consider how the kingdom comes. Jesus took a group of twelve men with no education, lived with them three years, sowing and cultivating and then they take the gospel to the ends of the earth and scattered seed. It is powerful. It is slow, gradual.
God brings the growth.
God also brings the Harvest. Harvest is when the crops are completed and grown. It is symbolic of the end of the age. This life is not all there is. This life is preparatory for what is eternal. A farmer harvests crops and keeps what is good and the bad is thrown away. One of the things that drives our growth is we want to stand before the Lord blameless.
The farmer does not bring the harvest, but he does prepare for it. God will bring the harvest, and we must prepare for it. Are you going to be found ready in that day.
The seed of the Word of God tells us that God is preparing for a great harvest—a day when He will gather all people and bring everything to account. And in that moment, what is truly there will be revealed. What is good—what is righteous, whole, and pleasing to Him—will be gathered into His kingdom. What is not will be cast away.
But here’s the problem: none of us, on our own, are worthy of that kingdom. Not one of us produces the kind of righteousness God requires. That’s why the gospel is such good news.
God doesn’t leave us to produce something we never could. Instead, He sends His Son, Jesus, who lived the life we failed to live—perfect, righteous, without sin—and then went to the cross to take the judgment we deserve. He was “cast out,” so to speak, so that we could be brought in.
And now, through faith in Him, God does something miraculous: He plants new life in us. He begins to grow something in us that wasn’t there before.
So when the harvest comes, our hope is not that we were good enough, but that God has done a work in us through Jesus—changing us, growing us, and making us fit for His kingdom. We are to grow ourlives around the seed of this truth. This is what he calls us to do. This is what preparing for the harvest looks like.
Application For Radiant Church.
- We are centered on the word.
We want people to know and hear God’s word. You are going to hear God’s word read, taught and explained. And we are going to do everything we can to get that word watered and fertilized. You can tell people going to church is like getting manure spread all over yourself. That is what we want church to be like– Amen!??
God’s word strengthens you. God’s word refreshes you. God’s plan give hope. There is salvation in Jesus and that changes how we do everything. Root yourself in it now when conditions are good because hard times are sure to come. He has promised us that. Heed his word. Go deep.
Garden with chickens.
- We need pathways for people in different stages.
Connect: People are coming to us. Coming mildly interested in Jesus and church. Not all but many.
Give some time. When I first met Amanda she was mildly interested in me. I was sold hook line and sinker. If I proposed on our first meeting she would have said get out of here creep. We needed to get to know each other. Many people will need a season of connecting, getting to know before they come back or get involved. The seed is in the ground and thinning about coming out.
Sometimes you just need to share a meal with a person and get to know them. What is true of those coming into our church is true of those you want to reach. Grab a meal.
Grow: This is our goal as a church. We want people to know and respond to God’s word.
Are you a member? In some churches you can't join a group until you are a member. I just want to say that if you want to grow in your relationship with God we will work with that. Get people moving and everything else will come. Life’s a mess, but willing to learn… lets go. Will take that any day.
Foundations: we want to create ways to get people into the word and reading it. More and more people are in this place. We can sit back cross our arms and say, “Why aren't people joining the church?” Because most don't know they need to or that it is even a thing. They would just assume not to come. Cant sit back and complain people are not serving. Many don't know they should. There is a longer “checking you out” time than ever before.
I believe if we get people interested in the word, reading the word, conforming to the word, everything else will come. We begin to inform, develop conviction, and strengthen those so people stand strong in their walk. I don’t need to pressure or force people to do or believe anything. Just let them soak in the word and trust the Lord.
Charles Spurgeon “"The Word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself."
We need to give people the word of God. Most today just dont know it. If we help them read it, discover it, God just might change their lives.
We need a strong and robust pathway for people who are new to Christianity. For people who don't know much about it. It is messy and it requires patience and long suffering.
Get a second date.
We started out with Discovery studies and have morphed this to be more of our own. We get people reading the Bible and covering the six basic marks of being a disciple. We are going to do this on Wed night but want others to
Life Groups. People are going to want to do some different topics. Do studies on parenting, marriage, work and vocation, counseling. We need people growing in those areas and want to provide suggestions on these.
But one of the things that we want to be present in all of our groups is growth, and growth happens in community, Bible Study, and mission.
Groups reach people when we as individuals are reaching people. Bringing people into our lives, into our groups. Helping them grow into what the Lord has for them.
Engage: This pathway is about going out to sow. The seed being returned. We want to make sure we don't have a view of discipleship that says you have arrived and now you are done.
Spiritual Trophy. We won. Now just look at this trophy. Don’t touch it! That is not Christian maturity. That is self serving religion.
We want to create spiritual leaders. Leading in their home. Leading in their business. Standing strong in the world.
We need people to help in this. We need the whole church to take some steps.
Equipped class: train people for ministry inside and outside the church. Lead a Bible study, share their testimony, host an outreach event. Share what God is doing in their lives. Feel competent to teach people.
What are we doing to reach people who are not believers. The fabric of our society has changed growing churches are churches that are reaching and discipling people.
Cyclical
- We want to spread the word.
Go: Position yourself in a field. Can't grow crops on a highway.
Jesus said he would make his disciples fishers of men. You aint go’n catch no in your living room! We are to go out and spread the word.
He showed seed in the fields. That is the place for seed to go. So also if we are going to sow the word of God we should get around people.
Which is Most Important?
I certainly feel that we need to get the top. If we are connecting and engaging in embryonic stages of growth, if you can get that seed to sprout much comes from it. This is where many churches fail. They swing and miss and don’t even get a second date.
I have things that I believe are most important for our church, but I honestly believe the most important one, is for you to take the next step God has for you.
Maybe you need a season of intentional Connecting, where you start to take seriously God’s call to be in a church.
Maybe you need a season of starting to read God’s word and better understand the Christian faith. Being honest with your reservations about Christianity, life, or anger towards God.
Maybe you need to get some friends around and connect in the word, community, and mission.
Maybe you need to move from being a student to a teacher, an observer to a doer, a consumer to a producer. Where is God challenging you? What are you willing to do differently?
Small Group Discussion Questions
- Where do you see impatience showing up in your spiritual life? What areas are you growing faster than others?
- What are the stages of seed growth? Which stage of spiritual growth do you think you are in right now?
- What do you need to do to move to the next stage? What would our church be like if everyone moved to the next stage?
