Life In The Seed

S

everal years ago I was looking at the garden seed rack in a store. While observing the many varieties of cucumbers, there was one that caught my attention. It was called, “Salad Cucumbers.” In only a few weeks after purchasing and planting these seeds, I had healthy vines climbing a large circle of wire. When the first fruit finally appeared, it was the mildest tasting cucumber that I had ever eaten.

However, in the following spring, I returned to the same store, but could not find the “Salad Cucumber” seeds. About five years passed, and in the spring I found some seed in the freezer marked “Salad Cucumbers” that I had saved from a large yellow cucumber about five years earlier. I anxiously planted them, and to my surprise, each seed produced a tiny plant.

After returning from vacation, I went to the garden and found a six-inch, dark green cucumber. It had the same shape, color, and taste of the ones I had planted five years earlier. When I cut it open, it had rows of beautiful seeds, ready to mature. My conclusion was that there is life in the seed!

“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth’; and it was so” (Genesis 1:11).

This verse is the key of God’s creation, and it has been performed successfully in all the past centuries.

However, this principle becomes even more amazing when studying the realm of the spiritual. Jesus used the principle that there is life in the seed to produce its own kind, to set forth His church or kingdom.

In one of His parables, He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field;” (Matthew 13:24). Also, when explaining the parable of the sower, He taught, “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11).

Before Jesus returned to His Father, He promised to build His church, and to give Peter the keys to the kingdom (Matthew 16:18,19). He promised that His kingdom would come with power.

“Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power” (Mark 9:1).

These promises were fulfilled, and in (Acts 2) the power came, and His church or kingdom began! How was the kingdom spread to the world? It was spread by the same kind of law that God had made when he created all the living things of the earth. The seed was sowed by preaching the word just as Jesus had commanded them to do (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15). Those who received the word into their hearts and obeyed it were born into the kingdom. Jesus spoke of entering the kingdom of God by being born into it (John 3:3,5). What is involved in being born of “water and the Spirit?”

The apostle Peter explains it in these words: “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).

Therefore, when the seed of the kingdom (the word of God) was sowed, those who obeyed it were saved through the blood of Jesus, added to the church (Acts 2:47), and became citizens of His kingdom.

There is an example in the Book of Acts that illustrates how the seed of the kingdom was sowed. “But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized” (Acts 8:12).

Twenty centuries have passed since Jesus began His kingdom (church), but the same seed, the word of God, will still produce after “its kind.” Just as each cucumber seed retained EVERY characteristic of the original, so does the seed of the kingdom! Yes, man has come along and sowed impure seed mixtures, but ONLY the true seed will produce God’s kingdom. The word of God teaches us how to be saved to enter the kingdom, how to live godly lives like Jesus, and how to worship God ”in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).

Please do not ever forget that there is life in the seed! —BBBristow