Fruitfulness

"Nothing holds the seeds back from fruitfulness but our failing to plant them, failing to tend the soil, failing to pull the weeds."

WHAT DO YOU see in the barren ground? Isaac planted a barren field and reaped a great harvest (Genesis 26:12). Not a fruitful field, a barren one. This thought applies to money and substance, but also to people’s lives. We read the gospels and see the anger of the Pharisees, the desperation of those seeking healing, the questions of the disciples. We overlook Jesus’ view of the people. What reads to us like a rebuke is, in fact, the Father speaking to the heart. Seeing Him, they didn’t see Him at all. Hearing Him, they didn’t hear what He said. What was a parable of seeds sown into types of ground was a personal statement, Jesus saying who He was. Seed, Sower, and in the numbers (thirty, sixty, hundredfold) a picture of His death and Resurrection. But what did He see when He told it? Lives changed. Eyes opened. His heart for people hasn’t changed. It is greater even now than it has ever been.

A man says to Him, “I will follow you anywhere,” and Jesus replies, “I have nowhere to lay my head.” What did Jesus mean by this? The expected answer that we preach, that He had no home and land that He returned to. He was on earth for a reason. But when He said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests,” He was not making a reference to animals. These were demonic powers working through men and around men. They had a place here which He’d come to disrupt. Look back at the parable of the Sower. When the seed was sown on hard ground, birds of the air stole the seed from people. Then in John 10, He describes the sheep and how the wolves will kill the flock.

The next man, Jesus asks to follow Him. The man replies, “I must go bury my father.” We think this is a dumb answer. But what Jesus replies is not a rebuke but encouragement. “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God (Luke 9:60).” Don’t get hung up on the temporary, Jesus says. Preach the gospel. This is not an unusual request. He sent seventy out to use His name to preach and lay hands on the sick, to cast out devils, just after these encounters in Luke 9. The last man says, “I will follow, but let me go bid my family farewell.” Again, we read Jesus’ reply as correction. But Jesus reply is not, “Put me first and leave your family.” That’s what we’ve read. No, what He says is, “There’s no reason to bid farewell.” Can God provide for that man and His seed? Of course, and He can multiply the blessing of God to them.

What did Jesus see when He faced the multitudes? More than once, He was trying to get alone. After his cousin, John, died, for example. But instead, He’s surrounded by people. There’s a verse I came across the other day that says “Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you (Colossians 3:13 BSB). This should be our heart. Yeah, Jesus was (is) human, and He might have been physically tired at times and was obviously dealing with His emotions when John died, but there in front of Him was a barren field filled with a harvest. He didn’t see the sticks and stones, the thorns and thistles. The complaints. He saw grain and bread for the eater. He didn’t see leaven, mixed in to adulterate, to aerate the dough with criticisms and hatred and strife, but the oil of the Spirit and the fire of His presence creating from these who heard Him, who saw Him, a new and better Israel.

We’ve made Jesus Caucasian. Many drawings of Him are English in appearance. He condemns no one for these, nor any other artists’ work. Creativity comes from God. But in the temple, Jesus entered and taught in were religious leaders more caught up in their power in Rome than their power in the Holy of Holies (John 11:48). They knew the stories of their people, of waters parted and bodies raised and prophets who performed miracles. They settled for doctrine and personal gain and applause. The feasts and sacrifices weren’t for God’s heart, to worship and to cry out to Him, but to check off all the boxes and say they’d done them. The apostle Paul a Pharisee, a man born in Rome, was zealous for the Jews, protective of the Jews to the point of murder, then Jesus spoke to him from heaven, and his life changed. He died giving his all for the Gentiles. He called all he’d learned, all he knew before then “dung (Philippians 3:8).” It was less than nothing to him. He no longer saw the anger and the hatred as goals but as evils.

Here is Jesus’ point of view. He saw not the barren field, not an empty man consumed by emotions and false truths. He saw an apostle. He saw a brother and a friend. We’ve taken the God of John 3:16 and misapplied Him to the Old Covenant, where in our heads, He’s throwing lightning bolts at nations. Where He’s punishing His own people. No, read it carefully. He was defending His name. He did what He did “for His name’s sake,” because the Gentiles who would come to believe in the Christ were looking at the God of Israel as any other god they worshiped (Ezekiel 36:22). They’re looking at the people of covenant and seeing themselves. Why be like them? When, God saw Abraham. God saw Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and David. When God saw Mary and Joseph and a stable and a manger. When God saw a cross on a hill and a crowd surrounding it crying out “Crucify,” egged on by their leaders who should have sought peace. Who should have cried out for mercy. They could quote the psalms but couldn’t hear them.

All around us is a barren field not stuck forever in its barrenness. For the seeds we plant through our actions, through the love of God in us, through us, can multiply and multiply and multiply again. Nothing holds them back from fruitfulness but our failing to plant them, failing to tend the soil, failing to pull the weeds. Through prayer, through generosity, through faith. And what is faith but that we know God’s love so well we believe He will do for us as a Father would? I will give up whatever is needed for my daughter’s sake. I will do to my utmost for my parents, for my aunt. How much greater then is the love of God which came to die so that the barren field would become a nation and from that nation would come sent ones and from the sent ones would come the church? All of us: Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free. His.

“What, then, can we possibly say in response to this? Don’t you realize that God is on our side? And if God is for us, who can be against us? God does not need convincing to be good to us; No! It is we who need convincing that God is good to us! If he did not withhold his own Son—but gave him up for us all—don’t you realize that he will withhold nothing good from us? But along with his Son, he will give us all things that are for our good!” (Romans 8:31-32, Remedy)

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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com