Christ's Call for Incremental Revival Part 2
Eric Durso
The Gospel of Mark • Sermon • Submitted
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There’s a story of a woman on her deathbed. She found an old crumpled piece of paper that had been used for wrapping paper. The old paper was one of Charles Spurgeon’s printed sermons, and as she read it, the word convicted and converted her before she died.
Spurgeon had preached the sermon in England, it was printed in America, shipped to Australia, and then sent back to America as wrapping paper, where the old dying woman found it and encountered Jesus Christ.
Stories like this abound. If you are not a Christian, I am glad you’re here, and I would encourage you to do all you can to listen to the message of Jesus Christ found in the Bible. You will discover the good news that has changed lives for centuries - and it just might change yours.
Every Christian here testifies to the power of God’s word. We have seen and experienced that the Bible is no dead book. But rather, we have come to see that God’s Work is accomplished through God’s Word. God’s work always starts with God’s word.
We’ve been studying some of Jesus’ parables. The parable of the sower teaches that God’s word goes out like seed upon the ground. Every human heart receives it in one of 4 ways: they ignore it, they respond temporarily and then leave it, they embrace it for a while, before it’s choked out, or they’re good soil. The good soil represents a person who responds to the word of God with faith, accepting it as true, and adjusting life accordingly.
Now at the point of our text, Jesus is helping the disciples understand the nature of kingdom work. We may well wonder if they thought they might parade into the kingdom like princes on white horses. What is clear is they often misunderstood what Christ was doing.
So he began to teach them in parables. Last week we got from our text three principles that help us understand kingdom work in this age.
First, kingdom work starts as we hear the word. Verses 21-25 that those who hear the word rightly are like seeds that bear fruit or like lights that shine. The more we hear the word with faith, the more we bear its fruit in our lives. We ought to feed on the word, feast on the word, ponder the word, meditate on the word, memorize the word.
I just want to drive this point home: that Christians are people of the book. Turn to
Deuteronomy 17:18-20
Deuteronomy 30:9-13
Deuteronomy 32:44-47
Joshua 1:8
Before we spread the word, we must be immersed in it. This is the sea we swim in all the days of our lives. This is the field we plow every season of life. All our lives we must marinate in God’s Word.
Second, kingdom work continues as we spread the word. The seed in us bears fruit. We shine the light. We sow seed (vs 26). Third, kingdom work in this age seems insignificant. That is, Jesus is teaching that the kingdom will not come like a marching, iron-clad army, with waving banners. Rather, in this age, we labor for the kingdom by sowing seed.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9. 4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
But I think the same paradigm works in all ministry. Word-filled people living word-filled lives having word-filled conversations with friends, family, church-members, neighbors.
This is the Colossian 3:16 paradigm: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.”
Third, kingdom work seems insignificant. Both parables highlight this: it’s like a guy throwing seed. Nothing special about that. And it’s like a mustard seed - which is small. By faith, embrace this season of sowing. The harvest is not yet come. It seems insignificant.
We summarized these ideas with the words “Incremental Revival.” Incremental revival describes how we prayerfully give ourselves to the small, seemingly insignificant acts of faithful witness, and trust, that over time, God uses it for great and glorious purposes.
Well that’s all a review. But I want to point out a couple more principles of kingdom work. It’s found in this first parable: 26-29.
Draw your attention to the farmer. Farmers are usually associated with hard work. Farmers aren’t the ones saying, “I’ll get to it when I get to it.” A farmer is typically the one up before the sun, cultivating, working the field. They work all day, and then do it again tomorrow.
That’s what you’d expect from a parable that includes a farmer. But it’s noticeably absent, which means, of course, that Jesus is purposely moving your attention away from the farmer and his work. In fact, all we see is that the farmer, after sowing seed, sleeps and rises. He doesn’t water. He doesn’t cultivate. He doesn’t irrigate. He sows and he sleeps.
Why does Jesus move our attention away from him? I think the answer is obvious, given the context. Because the point is not about the farmer. It’s about the seed! It’s about the word. The seed is sown, and once it’s in the ground, apart from any help from the farmer, it begins to grow.
Notice that crucial fact: apart from any help from the farmer, it grows. Here’s our fourth principle that guides how kingdom work advances, how we work for incremental revival:
# 4 Kingdom work relies upon God’s sufficient word. The word does the work. God created the universe with his word. God called Israel to himself, revealed his law and character through his word. When Israel under King Josiah had fallen into depths of sin and rebellion, it was the rediscovery of the “Book of the Law” that brought revival and reform to Israel. God gave Ezekiel the prophet a vision of dry, dusty bones and told him to speak to it, and through his prophetic word, the bones regenerated into a fully formed army.
God’s chosen instrument to create, to convert, and to conform his people has always been his word. Isaiah 55:10-11 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
The New Testament continues to highlight the primacy and power of God’s Word. We’ve already seen it in Mark. John the Baptist comes preaching. Jesus comes preaching. Every chance he gets, he’s teaching. And then these parables crystallize a principle that has always been true: the state of your soul is revealed in the way you respond to God’s Word.
So the word is acting upon us, even now. It is a living and active word. It’s a lion, when released, devours lies and attacks our doubts. In fact, consider what the word does:
1 The word causes the new birth. 1 Peter 1:23 “since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God”
“Born again” is a phrase used to describe the inward transformation God brings about when he saves someone. Think about your first birth. You didn’t bring it upon yourself. Forces outside of yourself caused you to come kicking and screaming into the world.
Your spiritual birth is the same. Forces outside yourself - namely, the “living and abiding word of God” - caused your new birth.
James 1:18 makes the same point: “Of his own will be brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
God uses means to accomplish ends. You use a hammer on a nail, an axe to chop wood; God uses his word to bring spiritually dead people to life. The best visual of this is Jesus speaking to the dead man Lazarus and saying, “Lazarus, Come forth!” His word causes the new birth.
2 The word gathers his people. So God speaks into the world, and all his elect hear and respond. Jesus expressly teaches this in John 10:16 “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” Vs 24-30. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
What distinguishes Christ’s sheep from the world? The sheep hear his voice. The sheep-ness, saved-ness of a person is revealed in how they respond to Christ’s voice.
3 The word sanctifies his people. In John 17:17, Jesus prays and says, “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.” The word of truth sanctifies Christians. What does “sanctify” mean? Simply, it means to “make holy” to “set apart from sin” to “consecrate for God’s purposes.”
The word causes the new birth. These people are given new life and then gathered together where the word of their shepherd is. And then they continually hear God’s word to be sanctified.
In The Magician’s Nephew, one of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, it describes how Aslan created the world. He creates it through singing - as he sings darkness disappears, light shines forth, creatures come into existence, hills and valleys and forests spring into reality. And after he’s done, the once empty void is a beautiful land teeming with the sounds and smells of life.
Let that picture illustrate what Christ’s word is doing: just as it brought forth creation, so now it brings forth spiritual life. It is the means through which God gives the new birth; it is the means by which Christ gathers his people; it is the means by which he makes them holy.
It’s no wonder that when Paul urges Timothy to “preach the word” he prefaces his charge with such weighty, somber, words: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.”
The word does the work, so preach it. The word does it all. Remember - the word is active. God’s work is accomplished through God’s word.
Martin Luther is one of the most influential men in world history - God used him to spark the Reformation. He was simply trying to oppose the false teachings of the Roman Catholic church, and he did so by teaching the word. Toward the end of his ministry, he wrote:
“I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
Grace Rancho must be a standing monument that testifies to the power of God's Word. It must not be a standing monument that testifies to the ingenuity of man, the charisma of a personality, the innovative strategies of great minds. We want to purposely tone down anything
The seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. In other words, it’s not a technique he’s mastered. It’s not a strategy he’s developed. In a way, he’s baffled by it. He doesn’t know.
Church, there’s a mystery to all this. I don’t know why some respond to God’s word and some don’t. I don’t know why some sermons bear fruit and others don’t seem to. We can’t know. God knows. We sow his word, and he uses it for his purposes.
Last, Kingdom work looks forward to the glorious unveiling.
Verse 29 describes a harvest: “But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
The harvest is the end of this age, when all God’s elect have been gathered in through the spreading of God’s Word. Our unstoppable shepherd has rescued every lost lamb. The full number of God’s chosen people are brought home. And when it’s all done, we’ll see.
Look at the mustard seed. It’s small and insignificant, yet it grows larger than all the “garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
Look at that phrase “the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Seems like a random detail, except for the fact that this is a repeated phrase in the Old Testament. Several times, when a nation is great and mighty, it is described as putting out branches that birds nest in.
Jesus is saying when the kingdom is revealed in all its glory all the nations of the earth will be blessed by it. This is the great kingdom that God designed the world to be, the one Adam was given and lost, the one Israel was intended to become but failed. The church is not the kingdom, but we are servants of the kingdom. We don’t build the kingdom, but we advance its message. We are preparing citizens for the kingdom. And this enterprise - the spreading of the message of the kingdom - is the greatest enterprise a human being could participate in.
Are you a discouraged church member, wondering if God could ever use you? Are you frustrated at your own ordinariness?
J.R.R. Tolkein wrote a short story called “Leaf, by Niggle.” The story is about a painter has to go on a journey soon - the journey represents death. He has in his mind this great, glorious painting he wants to complete. In his imagination he say “a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow.”
His name, Niggle, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, to “niggle” means to work in a fiddling way, to spend time unnecessarily on petty details. And that’s what this painter is like. He starts working on a leaf. Getting the shading just right and the dewdrops.
As he’s working on this leaf, he is constantly distracted. His neighbors keep asking him for help, and, because he has a kind heart, he does many things for them and is distracted from his work.
One night, his wife gets sick and he goes out in the cold to get a doctor for her, but he ends up getting chilled, coming down with a fever, and a Driver appears to take him on the journey he must go on - the journey of death. When he realizes it’s his time, he begins to cry. The story goes: “Oh dear!” said poor Niggle, beginning to weep, “And it’s not even finished!”
And he leaves, with his project unfinished. The painting he had spent his entire life on is put up in a museum for a little bit, seen only by a few people, and then forgotten.
But the story doesn’t end there. As Niggle enters the heavenly afterlife, he gets on a train going to the heavenly country. He’s let out, jumps on a bike, and is riding when he sees something so shocking he falls off his bike.
It’s the tree - the one he was working on all his life, only it’s real. He ends up going up to the big, sprawling tree, bending in the cool breeze, and he puts up his hands, and says, “It’s a gift!”
Up in the tree is the little leaf he had worked his whole life trying to complete. During his life, it never felt final, it never felt complete, it always felt unfinished. But here, in this new country, he saw that he was contributing, in his own small way, to the great and glorious permanent reality.
All your work, church, is like painting a small leaf. It feels insignificant. We feel distracted by other things. We feel we’re never doing enough. And we will all die and be forgotten.
But Jesus reminds us this morning the seemingly insignificant work we do for Christ’s kingdom will matter for all eternity. It’s part of this kingdom he will establish. The kingdom that will not be shaken. The kingdom will endure forever. There will be no weeping in this kingdom. There will be no pain in this kingdom. There will be no sin in this kingdom. No riots in this kingdom. There will be no elections in this kingdom - our great king will rule forever.
And when we get there, we will know that our labor was not in vain.
If you’re not a Christian, I want you to know that you’re invited. The word comes to you: though your sin has offended a holy God, he is willing and able to pardon you. He loves the save sinners. Christ died on the cross to pay sin’s penalty for all who believe. He rose from the dead, and he’s alive right now. Repent and believe his word.
And if you already follow Jesus: Sow seed today. Embrace the ordinary. Dive all in, even if it seems insignificant. Sow seed at home, with neighbors, with friends, with family. Sow seeds of truth with one another. And as you do, just know that it’s likely that nothing big and glorious will happen. Until the end.