Does it sometimes feel like our faith is useless? Like it’s not big enough to be effective? To enable us to trust God? Also, do we often feel like we should be perfect, but we’re not? Like sin continues to conquer some areas of our lives, regardless of our best efforts? In Mark 4, Jesus tells two parables that can reassure us that we shouldn’t lose heart when we feel this way.
The first parable is about how the kingdom of God grows from small, scattered seeds to a full and bountiful harvest. This short parable has a lot to say, and makes (among others) these two points, just in verse 28: “The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Jesus says that from the seed, “the earth produces by itself.” The phrase “by itself” in the original Greek is automatos, where we get the English word automatic. Like we don’t know how literal seeds grow, we also don’t know how the seed of the kingdom of God grows, but Jesus tells us that it grows automatically, meaning not by our own effort. In the life of a believer, faith and obedience to the kingdom of God will grow because God causes it to grow. When we feel our faith has failed, God can and will use that failure to grow our faith more than we could imagine.
The second point is made by the phrase “first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” In Jesus’ day, many Jews expected the Messiah to come and immediately implement His kingdom, overthrowing Rome and restoring Israel to its glory days under King David, but better. However, the phrase “first the blade…” points out that the kingdom of God comes slowly and in stages. It first comes to individual believers, then spreads to others, then “when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come”(verse 29).
Jesus was referring to the kingdom as a whole, but I believe it also refers to the life and growth of each believer’s faith. First, our faith is only enough to restore our relationship to God and He grants us salvation by His mercy and grace. Over time, our faith grows into a “blade,” then an “ear” in the different areas of our lives. In some ways we may be faithful, but in others we may continue to struggle, even for very long periods of time. But someday, when “the harvest has come,” He will bring us home and perfect our faith forever in every area of our lives. When the time comes, the kingdom will come suddenly and completely, but until then it grows slowly, both in aggregate and in each individual.
The second parable is the parable of the mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds. “When sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants.” Again, Jesus is speaking most directly about the entire kingdom of God, but the truth is also lived out in the life of each of us. Sometimes our faith seems as small as a mustard seed, but that faith is destined to be perfect and complete. As pointed out in the first parable, it’s not our own effort that causes our faith to grow, but the power of God that causes it to grow “automatically.” Everyone’s faith seems small at first and also may seem small at different times and in different ways, but like the mustard seed, it’s not the size of our faith in the beginning or now that really matters, it’s what that seed is destined to grow up to be that’s important. We might not even notice our faith at some times because it seems so small, but the size of our faith is not what matters, it’s the power of the One we have faith in.
So, does your faith seem useless and small today? Does it seem like you can’t trust God enough to follow Him in every area of your life, or to overcome some habitual sin (or sins)? Remember that faith as small as the smallest seed, the mustard seed, will grow so that it overcomes all of our failures. God will cause it to grow, in ways that seem “automatic” to us. If He has given us any faith at all, He will see the growth of that faith through to the end. As Paul wrote in Phillipians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Amen.
