Genesis 8:22 (NLT) 22 As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”
(Please pray for my wife and I as we leave again for the world harvest field. We will be in Cameroon and Liberia, West Africa from June 13th until July 6th. If you would like to be a part of Living Word International, you can contribute by going to www.Livingwordgreene.com and click on Donate. Make sure and note that you are giving for missions or Living Word International. Thanks in advance. You can also purchase my books by going to https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Bill+Kiefer&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3ABill+Kiefer. The proceeds help with our missions travel.)
Some things just are the way they are. As much as things change, these things never change. In today’s verse we see that “as long as the earth remains,” there will be planting and harvest. This is a physical law. If this law ever stops working, there will be no way to sustain life on planet earth. I am not a farmer and I have no idea how this law works. I get my food from the grocery store. Nevertheless, if no one planted seeds and the seeds did not grow, I would still starve. There is no other way to have food in the earth.
Even if we did not eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, the meats and other things are still dependent on the law that planting seeds in good ground produces fruit of some kind. If seeds stop producing what they are designed to produce, life on earth will eventually end.
The natural laws that govern the production of food from the ground are only a few of many natural laws. We have learned how to use these laws to our advantage. We can manipulate them to alter certain results. When we transgress them it is at our own peril. What we cannot do is negate them. They will always work as long as the earth remains.
We understand this in the natural. We would not think of trying to grow food without planting seeds of some sort. We may grow them in a greenhouse or laboratory, but we know we cannot have plants without seeds. It would be foolish to think we could have a garden without planting something.
My wife loves tomatoes. For the first time in her life she managed to grow some the last two summers. She did not hope for tomatoes, pray for tomatoes and then complain if she did not have them. She knew that she had to plant tomatoes to get tomatoes. That is just the way it is.
If she planted peas she should not have been surprised there were no tomatoes. If she planted peas it would be because she wanted peas. Since she does not want peas because she does not like peas, she planted tomatoes. She loves tomatoes.
When she put those plants in the ground, she did not then hope if God loved her and happened to be pleased with her that summer that he might, please, grant her tomatoes. She knew she would get tomatoes. She had to keep the weeds away. She had to keep them watered. There was some work to do on her part, but she did not grow the tomatoes. The ground and the seed did that part. She had to wait a while to see them, but she knew that tomatoes plants produce tomatoes. She wanted tomatoes so that is what she planted!
If you know the natural truth of sowing and eventually reaping, you can trust it to work. You do not have to know how it works. I do not know if anyone really understands how the soil and the seed work together. I know I do not. However, if I put good seed into good ground, do a little work to prepare and nurture the seed and have some patience, I will get what I planted every time. At least as long as the earth remains.
We are talking about natural truth. We really do not question that natural laws will work. It is absurd to us to think they will not. Gravity works. Anyone who said they could override gravity would be considered a fool. We know how to manipulate other laws so we can fly, but we do not jump off of buildings thinking gravity will be suspended. Anyone who would do that needs to be put away for their own safety!
Natural laws work. Planting seeds produce whatever plant the seed came from. Planting seed in good ground produces a harvest assuming the conditions for harvest are met. There must be water, either rain or irrigation. Weeds, plants that would interfere with and take the life from the desired plant, must be removed. Beyond that the ground and the seed were designed to work together and they will.
The bible teaches us that there are other laws that also just work. The laws we know in the natural world are, in many ways, reflections of these other laws. They are the laws of the spirit. They are not legalities. They are truths that God set into motion which always works. If we learn what they are and to trust them and the God who created them, we will get predictable results. Jesus tells us this very thing in Mark 4.
Mark 4:26-29 (NLT) 26 Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. 28 The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. 29 And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”
The context of this scripture is Jesus great parable of the sower. In verse 13 and 14 Jesus introduces this parable by telling the disciples that understanding this is the key to understanding all of his parables. Then he makes a statement, “The sower sows the Word.” He proceeds to reveal that the ground is the heart of man. In verse 26 he completes the parallel by pointing out that the whole Kingdom of God works according to the spiritual law of sowing and reaping. The spiritual and the natural work in the same way only in different worlds.
If we want a certain crop in the natural, we plant that kind of seed. It is foolish to think we can plant one kind of see and get another kind of crop. You do not just plant any random seed and expect to get a specific crop. You plant what you want.
I heard a story of a man who had a small airstrip in the middle of his fields so he could land his private plane. He had a friend who also had a plane and would come and visit every year. The airstrip was in the middle of what had always been a cotton field.
One year he landed and there was no cotton! He got out of the plane and asked his host, “Where is the cotton.” After going back and forth he found that the host had planted soybeans instead. The friend could not quite reconcile that after all these years he had not landed in a cotton field. Almost indignantly he asked, “But why didn’t you plant cotton.” The farmer answered, “Because I didn’t want cotton.” What a revelation!
The Kingdom of God, and more accurately how the Kingdom of God affects the natural world, works in the same way that planting seeds in the earth works. You sow what you want, you cultivate the soil, you keep the crop watered and you wait. Eventually you will see what you planted and its effects on your life. You do not have to wonder. You do not have to understand how God is going to make it work. You just have to do your part and wait. The results are inevitable.
In the spirit we are always planting even when we do not know it. If you plant what you do not want, you should not be surprised that you get that harvest. What do you want? The farmer wanted soybeans so that is what he planted. What are you going to plant in your spiritual garden?
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