Plant A Seed, And See What Happens

6.23.24 Colossians 1:3–8 Trinity Lutheran, Bay City

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints 5 because of the hope that is stored up for you in heaven. You have already heard about this in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that is present with you now. The gospel is bearing fruit and growing in the entire world, just as it also has been doing among you from the day you heard it and came to know the grace of God in truth. 7 You learned this from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. 8 He is the one who told us about your love in the Spirit.

Plant a Seed and See What Happens

There’s a foolish saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” What a lie! Words are actually very powerful. A husband and a wife get into an argument. In the heat of the moment they utter the words that they know will hurt the most. “I never should have married you. You were always a loser.” Words that etch into the heart and the brain to be replayed over and over and over. Yet words can also be very therapeutic. During Covid sympathetic words of comfort and encouragement were needed to take people out of their fearful shell and give them courage to live again.

If mere human words can be so powerful, think then of divine words, spoken or written by God himself. God created the world through words. Hebrews 1 states that Jesus is “sustaining all things by His powerful word.” Hebrews 4:12 states, “the word of God is living and active.” In today’s epistle, Paul stated that the gospel is BEARING FRUIT and GROWING. When I go on a bike ride down by the Saginaw River, they have a nice four foot wide pathway paved with a couple inches of blacktop. Hundreds of people walk and ride on it daily, and it holds up just fine. But while you are walking on the path, you can see certain portions of the pathway that have been ruined by plants that have grown up through the blacktop, a couple inches of blacktop - they grow right through. That’s what the power of what a seed can do.

Think then about the human heart and the brain. It’s tougher than asphalt. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jesus said in Matthew 15:19 that, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Your heart will convince you to do things that you know are wrong, harmful, and just plain evil. Your heart is full of YOU. It doesn’t want to listen to anything negative, anything against what IT wants.

What can crack into the heart? Will a hammer do? Think of how hard Pharaoh’s heart became, even when facing all kinds of plagues like frogs, lice, darkness and boils. No matter how much God hammered him with pain, he kept on hardening his heart further and further and further. Years ago there was a cult called the Branch Dividians who had holed themselves inside of their compound, and for some reason the government wanted at them. They tried to talk with them for 51 days, during which 35 people were released. The FBI got tired of waiting, so they went blasting in with tanks and tear gas. Well, the whole place went up in flames, and 76 people, including 28 children, died as a result. The sledgehammer approach only ended up with a lot more dead bodies.

So how do you crack the heart then if force doesn’t work? Even though force doesn’t produce faith, that doesn’t keep God from striking hard at times. He hammers with sickness and pain. He calls us things like wicked, sinful, rebellious, and ignorant. He tells us to repent or perish in hell. He uses the LAW. And that doesn’t make people too happy. Sometimes they hate God all the more. But not all the time. Sometimes those harsh words and actions soften people up and at least make them realize they need some help.

But after He softens us up, what is it that actually produces the miraculous change in people? What actually brings life within? It’s not the hammer. It’s the Gospel. What is it that makes the Gospel so powerful? Think about the wonder of it all. God came down into our world in human flesh. He chose to be born through the virgin Mary. He CHOSE to come down into this sinful world. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bit claustrophobic. Tell me to live in a woman’s womb for 9 months? No way! Jesus was willing to come into this world, like that, for me and for you! If you and I were to become a worm to save worms, that is nothing compared to God taking on flesh.