Seed Pt. 2

Last week we made the argument for the validity of the law of seedtime and harvest. This week we see what scripture says about what seed is and how it works. If you haven't listened to Seed Pt. 1, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it first so that you better understand what is being shared this week. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I was wondering why the Frisbee kept getting bigger and bigger. And then it hit me. What is the difference in people from Dubai and Abu Dhabi? The people from Dubai don't like the flintstones, but the people from Abu Dhabi do. This joke is called tidhing. There were two men shipwrecked on an island. The minute they got to the island, one of them started screaming and yelling, we're gonna die!

SPEAKER_01 0:40

We're gonna die!

SPEAKER_00 0:41

There's no food, there's no water, we're gonna die! The second man was propped up against a palm tree and acting so calmly it drove the first man crazy. Don't you understand? We're gonna die, the first man said. You don't understand. I make $100,000 a week, the second man said. The first man looked at him quite dumbfounded and asked, What difference does it make? We're on an island with no food and no water. We're gonna die. Second man answered, You just don't get it. I make a hundred thousand a week, I tithe. My pastor will find me. If you get stranded, you're on your own. Okay, we started talking about this principle of seed time and harvest last week, and our scripture is uh Genesis 822, and this was when Noah got off the ark and God kind of reaffirmed his covenant with man and with Noah and his offspring. And it says, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. And it's very interesting that the first thing that God mentions in part of this promise is seed time and harvest. Last week I started to make the supporting ideas of scripture behind this principle of seed time and harvest. And I was also noting that it is important that it is founded on Jesus Christ. He's the foundation, he is the purpose for which this principle exists. And we can operate in principles of the kingdom, principles of the world, without incorporating Jesus Christ. And I said last week that that is a form of witchcraft. Using something that God has created for your own personal gain, for your own advancement, over top of a relationship and a love for Jesus Christ, is the nature of the enemy. To use the good that God has blessed us with or is wanting to get through us for selfish gain, for your own promotion. That is a recipe for disaster, if you will. So in Genesis 1, we read through part of the creation story, and we see how God created trees and herbs and plants to bear fruit and seed after its own kind. It kept repeating that phrase over and over, by which they would repeat the genetic sequence, the aspects of that plant or that animal after itself. So God creates it, but after that, he's not creating over and over. It is now reproducing after its own kind. It says this also about the fish, the birds, cattle, it would say, and they would reproduce after their own kind. And then we see on the end of day six that God then creates after his own kind. After his image, in his likeness, he creates man. And now we produce that image as well in the earth. So this is the physical representation of seed, time, and harvest. This is kind of one aspect of that. But we also talked about how it is a spiritual principle. So in Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, of the knowledge of good and evil, they're not only eating of fruit, but the seed in the fruit. And when I'm talking about spiritually, they now eat of it, and it contains spiritual seed that they were never meant to reproduce after. But now we do. And we see that it brought upon us a curse upon the whole world, the earth, an affliction, and the fallen nature. The fallen nature of man. And we understand that that keeps producing after its own kind. We don't have to look very far to see the depravity of the human existence, evil, and its different manifestations in the world. And that is from that fruit. But it's a spiritual, it's talking spiritually, a fallen nature, a depraved fruit that is now reproducing after itself. Okay. So in Genesis 8.22, again, it clearly states that God has established this as an ongoing thing till the end of time, the end of the earth. Just as the sun will come up every day and go down every night, seed time and harvest will continue. So we're in the right industry, folks. Okay, so in the Hebrew, the word for seed is Zara. And in the Old Testament, it is common, most commonly used to refer to descendants or offspring of humans. I don't know. It's just fascinating to start to think from a different perspective about a topic or about like humankind. To think that we are, okay, we we come from our parents, we understand that. But it's just really interesting to understand that we're coming from steed. Like we're we're we're like the fulfillment of a life previous to us. And there's a handing off of not only genetics, but of disposition, mindsets, belief systems. Those things are also reproducing after themselves. We're a conglomeration of generations of people handing that down, handing to the next, to the next, to the next. It's really fascinating to start to think about that. Like we're the culmination of a lot of people's experience in life before us. And we are made in the image and likeness of God, spirit, soul, and body. Just as God is a trying being, so are we. So let's look at some of this. Psalms 105 verse 6. So I'm gonna start defining or unpacking what seed is, what the Bible refers to as seed. Okay. First, seed as people, Psalms 105, 6. O seed of Abraham, his servant, the children of Jacob, his chosen ones. So he's talking about the nation of Israel is a seed from Abraham. These are the again offspring, but not just single, but a whole people group is now a seed. Again. Let's go to Isaiah 55, 10 and 11. I've got a lot of scripture today, so if you want to write down references and go back over them, it's just gonna be a lot, but it's good. It's good stuff. Okay, seed as the word of God. 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, 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 which I sent it. Okay, this is talking very closely with seed, uh seed to the sower, bread for eating, this idea of rain, and it brings forth fruit, and that the word of God does not return void, just like the rain. And just like seed. Okay, so the word of God is another type of seed that we can plant in our life. These are all types of seed that are operating in this world and in our lives and around us. Okay, another one is Luke 8, 11. This one's really clear. Now the parable is this the seed is the word of God. And this is the parable of the sower, and we'll probably unpack that in another week. But it's pretty straightforward. The seed he was talking about in that parable is the word of God. Proverbs 18, 21. Death? Note that it says death first. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat of its fruits. We were talking earlier about being thankful about things that we take for granted. And then to kind of take those things away and imagine your life without it. Imagine your life without your tongue. Do you love your tongue? I do. Okay. You eat the fruit of the seeds, of the words that you're speaking. Fruit comes from seed, fruit has seeds, it reproduces after its own kind. Note that the difference between life and death is what you're speaking. The fruit, the difference of the fruit, is what is coming out of your mouth. This is important. Again, this is a principle of the kingdom. This is not something I'm coming up with or trying to create some sort of fear inside of your trepidation that this may or may not be true. Kind of like these articles that always are popping up on my phone. This is a great example to see. I get like push notifications of different news titles, right? And it'll come up. Five things that may show you have early stages of dementia. I bet you I have some of those. I don't have dementia, and I'm not gonna get it. But if it can create some sort of seed in your mind to think about, wow, I did. I can't really remember the address of two houses ago that I lived in. There's guys I worked with for years. I can't remember their names sometimes back in Virginia. I could, someone could probably start to convince me I'm losing my mom. But I'm not. I just have kids. Child-induced brain child. It's real. No, but I'm not trying to shotgun a bunch of information at you to make you feel as though this is true. It's true. And that's why we're going through these scriptures so that you can see for yourself. Okay, seed as Jesus Christ. I don't have this one up there, but Genesis 3.15, when Jesus is talking to the serpent after the fall, he said that there will be enmity, there will be fighting between your seed, the seed of the serpent, and her seed, the seed of the woman. And that seed is obviously Jesus Christ, because he said, You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head. Jesus Christ has total victory over sin and death and hell and the devil. But we understand that Jesus Christ has now become a life-giving seed that can replace the fallen seed that Adam and Eve partook of in the garden. Now he's a spiritual seed, again, like we've got to start thinking physical, spiritual. I'm not talking we go eat Jesus. We're talking about the heart and nature of God getting inside of us so that we can live from a different mindset, a different heart, a different motive, a different life that's been given to us by Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ is also a seed. John 12, 24. Jesus said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls in the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain. This is what he's speaking about himself. Now, if he is to die, he will reproduce after his own coming. He will produce more Christ-like ones. So it was necessary for him to die. Because if he remained alone, the Spirit of God would never be released so that we can live from a different spirit, a different seed. The spiritual seed of Christ. Alright, here's another one. Seed as the kingdom of God. Matthew 13, 31 through 32. Isn't it really interesting when you start looking for it? It's like all over the place. There's a lot more scriptures I'm not even sharing that go over this. But in this one, it says Jesus said another parable he put forth to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. The kingdom of God is another form of a seed. Because the kingdom of God is always a minority and it's always small. And yet it produces in a way that bring many people in, that become a house, the home, the source of life for many. That's the nature of the kingdom of God in a physical representation. So another form of seed is money. 2 Corinthians 9, 6 through 10. And this is a passage of scripture where Paul is directly talking about giving money. He says, But this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one of you give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. As is written, he is dispersed abroad, he is given to the poor, and his righteousness endures forever. Now may he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness. This is all talking about money. I believe that it could also talk about time, resources, energy, friendships. Like all these things that are aspects of our life that we can sow into, we can give our time, our energy, things that are limited, what we give those to, tend to produce after that. I think I've heard different numbers, but kids these days spend anywhere from four to eight hours a day on a screen. That's a lot of sewing. I wonder what kind of fruit that's gonna produce in 30 years. I wonder what type of fruit that's gonna produce in their children. We're raising a generation on screens. It's gonna show up. It's gonna have effects. Alright. And this is one that is, this is where I think it all really comes to a head. Seeds as thoughts. In Genesis 6, 5. And this was after the fall, before Noah and the flood. This is during the time when the world was really currying off a cliff. And it says, and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. I find it really interesting that he said the imagination of the thoughts of their heart was evil continually. He doesn't mention what they were doing. He's mentioning what they're thinking, what they're really meditating on in their heart. Why? Because that is the spring, their imagination, their thoughts, the spring of what they will do. He's saying the very seed of their thoughts, dictate their actions, was continually evil. They can't have negative evil thoughts and do good things. It's not possible. People who step into like major sin, they have thought about doing that before they ever did it. Do you know how you keep from ever cheating on your spouse? You never entertain any thoughts of doing that. You never have any thoughts of ever doing that. It never crosses your mind. You're never gonna do it. But I can tell you that person who has fallen into that has gotten into that cycle of imagining, thinking, of different ways of getting away with sin or evil. Because we all have those thoughts. They come through and maybe they find a place to land. I've heard people say before, you can't necessarily stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can stop it from making a nest. So thoughts may come in, but what we do with those thoughts will begin to dictate what our life looks like. Genesis 11, 6. This is at the Tower of Babel. The Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. The power of your thoughts is a lot more than I think we tend to acknowledge. The way in which you think will dictate your life, will begin to produce fruit and seed after its own kind. Joshua 1, 7 and 8. I don't know if I have that one. I'll just read that one. This is where G where God is telling Joshua, it says, only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you, do not turn from it to the right hand or the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. So he's saying, if you want to be prosperous, if you want to enter into this land and take it, you need to follow the law of Moses. Okay? I don't think he was trying not to follow the law of Moses, right? And so, so how? What's the seed before this? And God says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. You're not going to talk about this all the time, but you shall meditate upon it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. And later in Joshua 11, it says that Joshua did all that Moses commanded. He left nothing undone which Moses commanded. So he he actually did this. Of all the people in the scriptures, if you look at Joshua, he ended really well. He never seemed to trip up. Moses struck the rock and he couldn't enter the promised land, right? David had his Bathsheba. Gideon made an ephod out of gold at the end. Of his life, and people started worshiping it. Like all these other heroes kind of had these moments of deviating, but who didn't? Joshua. Why? Because he thought continually upon the law of God. He didn't have time for other thoughts. And that, what your thoughts create, is your reality. We've all seen people that have gone through hard situations. We have seen people who come out of those on fire and just full of life, and we've seen other people just go down into the depths of despair and stay there. The only difference is where their mind went during that time. What they meditate upon, what they believe is going to be the outcome of that situation. Proverbs 4.23. We started the year with this scripture. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life. But the really interesting, so my translation says, out of it spring or flow the issues of life. But actually, the Greek doesn't say spring or flow, it just says are. So out of it, out of that part, are the issues of life. What you have coming out of your life right now is directly from your heart. It's directly coming from the thoughts and intents of your heart. Now, maybe those things are great and good, and maybe those things are not. But what time and harvest starts to do is it actually empowers you to begin to live the life that God has called you to and leaves you with fewer and fewer excuses. And so that gets to be a little unsettling for some people. Because if you make yourself out to be a victim, a victim mentality, then it's always the problem of who's done what to you or the situation that you've come into, and you don't actually have to take responsibility for the seeds you've been sowing. And that's where this that's where this topic becomes challenging to folks. Because if this is real, which I hope I'm I'm fleshing out a good defense that this is true, that we have more control over the outcome of our life and what's coming out of it than maybe we previously thought. And it'll start opening your eyes up to situations and things that you've been involved in, or people that you may know that this has played out in their life, and it kind of starts to become real to you in real time. I want you to think of, for example, anything that you see in this room or anything you can imagine on your ranch or on your farm at your business, think of like machinery, inventions, and everything. And tell me one of them that didn't come first from someone's imagination. Can you think of anything that someone didn't first visualize and imagine in their mind? Somebody invented a light bulb. Edison had that in his mind before it was ever physically there. These pews and benches, the blueprints for this building, they first came from someone's mind. They first came from their thoughts and imaginations. Everything you see, everything that we drive, ride, it came from imagination. What we are living in and surrounded by is the fruit of someone's imagination. How about art? Other than the kite where they like splatter stuff on a wall, somebody first thought of what that was going to look like. And if you're into the splatter kind, like cool. Continually trying to find a face or a dog or whatever's in it, you know, it's like my brain's trying to rationalize it, right? Here's another one. If I want to get to your house, I've never been to your house, and you start to describe the way to your house. So you have a picture in your mind. Okay, I'm gonna go down this road, okay. You're gonna go out of town towards Sydney, you need to go 8.6 miles, and then you know, we're there on the right, and you're gonna go down, you've got to turn to the left, go to the shop. Okay, I am picturing something in my mind. I am then telling you with words. You're hearing my words, and then what are you doing? Making a picture in your head. Now your picture might not be accurate. If I say, take a ride at the blue house, the blue house might be baby blue, it might be royal blue, whatever it may be, it's a picture in your head. From that picture, you now then head out to find that house with a picture in your head. And that's what life's like. What directions have you been given? What picture do you have in your mind of what life's supposed to be like? What picture do you have in your mind of what God's like? Because that will dictate the life you live. That will dictate the relationship you have with God. Is God like a heavy-handed, all-powerful, kind of always coming down on you type God? Well then you're probably going to tend to not enjoy him as much and be afraid of making mistakes. Or do you believe that God loves you absolutely and he wants to be with you and he wants to be a part of your day and the decisions you have to make? Well, then all of a sudden, that God, you're going to be in fellowship with him. You're going to want him to be involved. You're going to invite him into the decisions and the day-to-day activities of your life. Paul even says this at the end of one of his epistles, he said, and my God is able to supply all that you need according to life and better. But he's saying, my God. Why? Because maybe their God wasn't able to do that. Does that mean that they're worshiping a different God? No. He's saying you don't have a clear picture of the true God because he is able to do this. And see, you might not believe that he's able to, but the God I believe in, the Jesus I know, he's able to do that. The media understands this. Hitler understood it, that getting people to believe something, whether it's true or not, will control them. And nowadays with social media, we have fear and lies that control, and then essentially we get into these loops now where the way we think and what we believe in starts to, the algorithm starts to just feed us that, and so we just start believing what we've already believed, just more so. And if you get onto somebody else's kind of algorithm, all of a sudden it's showing you other ideas and ways of thinking. So if you start clicking on flat Earth, or we didn't go to the moon, it'll start feeding you that all the time, and you'll really start to believe it. Because that seed is getting planted all over in your brain, whether you like it or not. And after a while you will believe it at some level. So all of a sudden, if I were to just fill you with all these facts about why the earth is not flat and it did go to the moon, after a while you would believe that. So it's very important what we feed ourselves and what we allow to be is sown in our lives. Because it will produce fruit. It's the law of seed town and harvest. So isn't it amazing that God has given us a book filled with stories and pictures of what life can and should be like? Like Joshua, if we were to meditate and think on all the time, would become our modus apparuntai, or the way in which we just do life. You know? Are you the first guy on that island that's afraid you're gonna die, or are you the second guy that knows his pastor's gonna find you? So when you think into the future, what do you what do you see in your mind? Do you see poverty? Uh do you see your body breaking down, sick, weak, you know, my generation, they're saying now uh one out of every two of us are gonna die from cancer. Do you see yourself dying of cancer? Do you see yourself breaking down? Oh yeah, you know, I hear so many people, oh yeah, you know, when you're getting 40, let's all go sideways. And it's like, mmm, it doesn't have to. I've seen a lot of people who aren't like that. And I choose to maybe think about that. Okay. Uh do you see your kids going wayward? Do you have poor eyesight? Do you have arthritis? You're hobbling along. How do you see yourself? If you're already there, and that's okay. But I'm just saying it's really important to know what seeds you are planting now that are going to give way to life later. Okay? You don't have to have bad eyesight. Why? Because it says in Psalm 1037 that Moses was 120 years old and his eyesight was not dim, nor his natural strength abated. What does that mean? He was still strong and his eyesight was good. So if God is not a respecter of persons, can I stick myself in that place of Moses and say, I'm gonna be strong, and my eyes are gonna be good all my life. Yeah? How about Caleb when he goes into the promised land, he's 80 years old, and he says, Hey Joshua, you gotta give me this mountain that Moses said I could have. There's a bunch of giants up there, and I'm gonna go kick them, kick their butts. Because I'm as strong today as I was 40 years ago. That's what he said. I'm gonna picture myself saying that. I'm 80 years old, guess what? I'm still as strong as I was 40 years ago. Why not? Or else I could just do the sum average of the world and just say I'm gonna be hobbling around with diapers on. I'm not. And so I filled my mind with things like that. How amazing that we have a God that has given us these pictures throughout the Bible that are seed that if you start planting them in your heart and mind can produce fruit. I want in thinking about all this, I thought of Proverbs, and so many times it's a word picture. It's like the righteous are like they're gonna prosper, and the wicked, they're gonna be like wayward children. You know, the righteousness of the righteousness of God is like a tree that's gonna flower and bud and be fruitful. Those planted by springs of living water. You know, all these pictures throughout the Bible that are promises, but they carry with them a picture. What does it look like that my life is flowering and prosperous? What does it look like that I'm planted next to a river and I'm irrigated instead of dry land? What does that look like? Double harvest, triple harvest? Why not? But what seeds are really there? What do you actually see ahead of you in life? You're just gonna get by, that's gonna be tough. You know, life's tough, man. Duel's father passed away last Sunday afternoon, and there was a lady who came in the week before and she was with hospice. First thing she said, she wants to be, you know what, dying is hard. And after she came, they called her manager and said, Yeah, nice lady, but could you send somebody different next time? Um, they prayed and they said, you know what? Death is not hard, and it's not gonna be that way. That lady had come into that room and sowed a seed. And if you don't watch it, if you don't come against that, it will produce fruit. Guess what? He didn't pass in a in a horrific way in any way. It was not hard. And and yet we tend to let things slide, come in and out of our life. People sowing seeds, you know. Uh flu is gonna be really bad this year, influenza, you know, a lot of people are gonna get it. I say right away, not me. I don't get flu. I don't do that. You're not gonna come into my garden and plant seeds around. Nope, I'm gonna plant my own. I'm healthy, I'm whole, I'm prosperous. You know, Isaac, it says in the year of drought, Isaac sowed seed and he reaped a hundredfold. Do you know what his dad did? He went to Egypt. And then he lied that his wife was a sister. And then that thing happened. But guess what Isaac said? Nope, I'm not leaving. I'm gonna sow, I'm gonna reap, and it's gonna be it's gonna be prosperous, and he did. He's not gonna sow if he doesn't think he's gonna get a return. But he sowed in drought. Can we sow in drought? Isaac did. I'm gonna think about that. These are just different pictures that we can think about. That when all of a sudden life rolls up on you and it feels really real. I don't even know if God wants me to live a long time. Psalms 91, 16 says, if long life he'll satisfy you and show you his salvation. Well, I'm believing God wants me to live a long life. How long do I want to live? I want to live into my 90s and I want to be strong and I want to be able-bodied and able-minded. And I'm gonna think about that. With my wife. She's with me. And so we say, I don't know if I really believe all this stuff. This sounds like a lot of like mental hoops that you're trying to jump through. And what I'm gonna talk about next week is, well, not next week, but next time, is this idea of time. Seed, time, harvest. Every seed has a germination rate, right? And a germination time frame. And the amount of time at which it produces fruit. Every type of seed is different. And that is what I want to talk about next week. There are seeds that you will plant now that only maybe your kids will ever reap the benefit of. But you have to do it in faith. And that's what this takes. There's faith involved with this. Because if you plant a little good, and then you plant a little bad, and then you get frustrated that the good's not growing, you dig it up, and it was starting to sprout, and it just killed it, and you go back and forth, your life is never going to be consistent. But this law was, and I believe it can change your life. And I have stories of how things have shifted in my life and things have changed over time, and things I'm looking forward to because I have that picture in my mind of what it's gonna be like. What if you imagine great things and something horrible happens? Isn't that worse? Yeah, it can be, but it's a lot better dreading the whole future and then it comes on you anyway. You can at least be grateful in the moment for what God's gonna do tomorrow, because he's already there preparing a life for you. But we are held responsible for that seed that we're sowing. Lord, I thank you for this time. I thank you for the seeds of truth that you plant in each one of our hearts through the Word of God, and I pray, Lord, that we would live by them, that they become more real to us than the reality that we're stuck in, and that the life and the hope and the peace that's offered to us through the gospel, through these scriptures, Lord, that we would start laying hold of them and believing for them. Not just in some sort of concept, but like in our life specifically, that we are loved, we are blessed, we are adopted, and that you have plans to prosper us and to bring us into wholeness, health, life, freedom, and peace. So we thank you, God, for your truth and for your word. In Jesus' name, amen.