Sow the Seed

I was both encouraged and convicted by pastor David’s sermon this week concerning our responsibility to share the Gospel. This responsibility was commanded by Jesus Christ just before His ascension, Mark 16:15 says, “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.’” He also explained this throughout his ministry with His teaching and parables.  

This should be encouraging to all of us because, as David explained, we are not responsible for saving anyone. That is not our job. It is simply to sow the seed, share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If God requires this of us and has equipped us by giving us the Holy Spirit who is constantly dwelling within us, we have all that we need and need to trust that He will guide and direct our thoughts and speech. Even the apostle Paul recognized where the power to save came from as he explained in 1 Corinthians 1:17. “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect.” As one of the old hymns teach, there is power, wonder working power in the blood of the Lamb. It is God who prepares the hearts, convicts people of their sin and gives them the desire and ability to be saved. If we need more confidence builders for sharing the Gospel, Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” He not only prepares the hearts of the lost, He prepares the entire process, including the work for us. How often do we wait for everything to be perfect according to our expectations before sharing the Gospel? We convince ourselves that the timing may not be right, or they may not be ready to hear it, and we shy away from it. Sharing the Gospel may seem difficult, and we may even experience hardship or criticism for doing it, but we need to persevere. Paul instructed Timothy on how to approach this same attitude in 2 Timothy 4:5, “But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.” We need to have the boldness to fulfil what we have been called to do.

The convicting part of the sermon for me was the fact that we have been equipped to share the Gospel. As I mentioned earlier, God has already prepared the harvest for us. If we are concerned about persecution, can anyone do anything that God can’t protect us from? Our only part and really our responsibility is to go out and sow the seed. God determines the soil that it will fall on and do the work that only He can do. We have all the seed that we need and just need to keep sowing. We can never run out of seed. The seed supply is unlimited. My concern is that many of us will stand before God one day with bags and bags of seed that we just hung on to and never sowed. This is explained and warned about in Jesus’ parable of the talents we find in Matthew 25:14-30. We don’t want to be the man who buried his talent because of fear. He didn’t want to lose the talent and wanted to be able to give the talent back to his master. God doesn’t care about how much seed we sow, or if they are sown without the results that we desire. It is God who controls the results. God doesn’t need our seed back and will give us all the seed we need. We need to be bold and courageous about sharing the Gospel, regardless of our fears and concerns.

Put another way, consider being on a ship and watching someone fall overboard. There are life preservers hanging on a wall behind us. We grab one and then decide not to throw it out to the drowning victim because we’re not good at throwing. We might not throw it right and miss our target. We may also convince ourselves that the person in the water may not be a good catcher. I run the risk of looking foolish and the drowning person may get upset at me for trying or not doing it right. And what would the captain of the ship do if he found out that I wasted 10 life preservers? Is that an acceptable thought process? Yet we talk ourselves out of opportunities that are put before us. Life and death opportunities…for eternity! Keep throwing seeds out there, we’ll get better at throwing over time.

Pastor Bryan