Fairy Tales Sometimes Come True

Mark 4:26-32

There are many stories I remember from when I was a child. One of the ones that fascinated me was a Grimm Brothers Fairy Tale, The Shoemaker and the Elves.

It is a story too long to tell, but worth reading later this week. You can find an abbreviated version of it on the internet. The centerpiece of the story is that a shoemaker and his wife are very poor and one night before going to bed they put out their last piece of leather with which to make a pair of shoes the next morning. When they wake up, they discover to their astonishment that the leather has been made into a beautiful pair of shoes.

They sell that pair and have enough money to buy more leather and that night, while they sleep, someone makes two pairs of beautifully stitched shoes. And on it goes, night after night. They sleep and while they sleep someone takes the leather and makes shoes.

After some time, they decide to stay up at night and see who it is who is doing this wonderful thing for them and it turns out to be elves. Read the story and find out for yourself what happens next.

I think what attracted me to this story was that someone did the work of the shoemaker while they slept. There were many times I wished I could go to sleep and someone would write my paper or do my homework while I slept. But that only happens in fairy tales. Or does it?

When Jesus spoke his parables, he used images that were familiar to his audience. Jesus lived in an agrarian society and so many of his parables and stories concern sheep and shepherds and farmers who sowed seeds and harvested their crops.

We have passed over the parable of the sower which focuses on how people respond to the gospel when they hear it and will look at two parables that also use the image of sowing seed and reaping the harvest but talk more about the process of sowing and reaping.

We know the progression in these stories. We sow seeds, we water what we have planted and then we wait. We wait with hope for the harvest and when it comes, we have the privilege of reaping what has grown.

We sow.

This is familiar ground so I don’t want to spend too much time on this. We sow seeds when we share our faith with others. We may be on the train and someone next to us begins to talk with us. We discover where each of us lives and from where we each have come and then we are asked, “Are you a Muslim?” When the answer is, “No. I am a Christian,” the next question is, “Why aren’t you a Muslim?” and a discussion ensues in which you have an opportunity to share what and why it is you believe and a seed is sown.

Seeds are sown in many ways. Some people watch TV or listen to the radio and seeds are planted. Some read a copy of the Bible that made its way from one of the ports in Spain to a book table in the Medina where it was on sale. Others watch a film of Jesus they bought in the Medina.

Sowing seeds is a blessed action, worthy of praise. Those who sow seeds may not get the glory. Albert McMakin is not a name known to most people but he planted seeds. He had a friend he invited to come hear an evangelist who had come to town. In heaven we will hear more about Albert McMakin but on earth we all know the name of the person he invited to come hear Dr. Mordecai Fowler Ham preach. Albert coaxed his friend into coming and offered him the incentive of letting his friend drive his pickup truck and that is how Billy Graham came to hear the evangelist and give his life to Christ.

In Romans 10 Paul sent out a clarion call for seed sowers:
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

How beautiful are the feet of those who sow seeds.

We sow and then we water.

Seeds are sown and then we have the responsibility of watering the seeds that have been planted. In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth (I Corinthians ), he wrote that he planted but Apollos watered.

How do we water seeds? Who was Apollos and what did he do that made Paul say he watered what Paul had planted?

Apollos was an Alexandrian Jew who came to Ephesus while Paul was on his third missionary journey. He was a gifted teacher, well educated with a heart for God. He came to Corinth after Paul had established a church there with Aquila and Priscilla and began to teach about Christ and the way of salvation and life.

On an individual basis, the teaching of Apollos watered seeds that Paul had planted and planted seeds in the hearts and minds of those who came to hear about the gospel of Jesus for the first time.

But in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he is talking about the church and in that sense, Paul planted the church and Apollos watered the church.

Paul came to Corinth and brought news of the gospel of Christ. Seeds were planted and then Apollos came and continued to teach the gospel, reaffirming the message Paul had preached.

Sometimes we plant seeds and then water ourselves the seeds that have been planted. We have a conversation with someone and a seed is planted and then we continue to talk with our friend, sharing our live with him, sharing with him what we are learning as we continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus and as we do so, we water the seed we planted.

But there is a way of watering that does not involve the words that we speak.

In between the parable of the sower and the two parables we are focusing on this morning is the parable of the lamp on a stand. Why did Mark put this parable here? Was it a mistake? I don’t think so. In this discussion of planting seeds, this parable shows us how to water the seeds that have been sown.

He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?  22 For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.  23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

When we enter into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, the light of Christ enters our world and lights up the darkness of our lives. That light is meant to be shared with others, not put under a bowl or a bed.

When we water the seed that has been planted in a friend, that friend begins to look at us with new eyes. The friend begins to look at us to see if what we said is true. The friend watches us to see how we react to difficult situations. He watches to see if we have spoken words of an empty philosophy or if we have spoken words that change a life.

When I had my company in the US, I had 25 employees. They knew I was a Christian and several of the employees were enthusiastic atheists. They knew what I believed and watched me to see how I reacted when we had a decline in sales and we had to make cutbacks. When I cut my salary and the salary of the top management rather than lay off the lower paid workers, they saw the gospel in action. When an employee left to work for the competition, they watched to see how I treated the one who left. Would I be mean and vindictive or understanding of the one who left?

They saw me when I was on top of the world and they saw me when I was discouraged and in watching me, they saw me lean on God for strength and in that way, seeds that had been planted were watered.

Often times watering seeds takes a long time and therefore…

We sow, we water and we wait while God does the work.

Mark 4
He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.  27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.  28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

This is the parable that led me to title this sermon, Fairy Tales Sometimes Come True. The seed is scattered on the ground and the man waters the soil, but the seed is growing night and day, regardless of whether the man sleeps or attends his field.

Just like the shoemaker set out leather each night and slept while the elves stitched beautiful shoes, so does God do the work in people’s souls that allows them to come forward and accept his gift of salvation.

Why did Mark include this parable but not Matthew and Luke who worked from Mark’s gospel when they wrote their gospels? Mark wrote the stories Peter told about Jesus and this was one of those stories Peter told. Peter felt this parable was significant enough to include it among the parables of Jesus he told others about. Why?

I think Peter’s experience made this parable significant for him. After his denial of Jesus and restoration when Jesus told him to “feed my sheep,” there was a humility about Peter that made him realize that when something significant happened in his life, it was the work of Jesus that had accomplished it.

On Pentecost after the Holy Spirit had come on the apostles, Peter stood up with the other eleven and addressed the crowd. Upon hearing Peter’s message,
they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”  41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

That was quite a start to Peter’s ministry. He preached his first sermon and about 3,000 were added to the number of Christians that day. How did that happen? Was it the eloquence of Peter’s preaching? Did he have some nifty stories to catch their attention? Was it Peter’s charismatic personality?

Hearing the disciples speaking in tongues so that each person there could hear them speak in the language of their home country had something to do with the response.

It was the work of God that brought those 3,000 believers into the kingdom that day and Peter had been humbled enough that he knew it. That’s why I think Peter liked this parable of Jesus and why he told that parable of Jesus so often that when Mark wrote his gospel, he included that parable in his gospel.

Waiting while God works can take a long time. Dwight Moody in a book on prayer talked about a mother who prayed for her son to come into the kingdom of God all her life and it was not until the end of her life in her eighties that her son gave his life to Christ. Waiting can take a lifetime.

I’ve talked before about a Dutch chemist who worked in my company and who at the end of his life when he learned he was going to die of cancer, finally relented and opened his heart to
Jesus. He had grown up in a strict religious family in Holland and spent the rest of his life in rebellion against his upbringing. His parents no doubt prayed for him. Other family members prayed for him. People in the church community prayed for him and after they died, he came to faith. Waiting take time and because it is taking time does not mean the battle has been lost.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, (I Corinthians 3:6)
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

We sow, we water, we wait while God does the work and we hope.
Again [Jesus] said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?  31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground.  32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

A mustard seed is so small that it takes about 700 seeds to make one gram and yet when planted, in just a few weeks the shrub that grows from that seed will be 4 meters high. What seems small and of little consequence can become very quickly large and of great consequence.

Do you know what the population of the world was at the time Jesus taught this parable? 250,000,000. The population of Palestine was 2,500,000. If there were 1,000 followers of Jesus at the time he taught this parable, that means there was one follower of Jesus for every 2,500 Palestinians and one follower of Jesus for every 250,000 people in the world. That is a very small start indeed. Jesus came so that the world could hear the good news of salvation and there was only one person for each quarter of a million people on earth at that time.

Today with a world population of 6,000,000,000 there are 720,000,000 Bible believing Christians. That means we have gone from 1 follower of Jesus for every 250,000 people in the world in the time of Jesus to 1 follower of Jesus for every 8 people in the world today.

A tiny seed has grown into a giant bush.

Here in Morocco there are about 1,000 Moroccan believers who go to a house church each week. With a population of 30,000,000, that is 1 Moroccan believer for every 30,000 Moroccans. That is a much smaller seed than the 1 follower of Jesus for every 2,500 Palestinians in the time of Jesus but we do not despair.

If Peter were here this morning, he would tell us to be encouraged because while we sleep, God is at work.

Pentecostals, charismatics and evangelicals are together the fastest growing group of all world religions. They are growing at a rate of 3 ½ times the growth of the world’s population.

This mustard seed bush that began to grow 2,000 years ago is still growing and so we have hope and we have reason for hope.

We sow, we water, we wait while God does the work, we hope, and if the privilege is given to us, we reap.

Jesus spoke to his disciples in John 4:
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.  35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.  36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.  37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.  38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Reaping is the fun part of the farm process. When I was growing up we had a garden that supplied our family of 8 plus my grandmother and from time to time one or two others who lived with us. We canned and froze fruits and vegetables so that we only had to buy fruits and vegetables from the store for maybe one month out of the year.

My favorite crop to harvest was potatoes. Putting the pitchfork down in the ground and pulling up the earth to look for potatoes was like digging for buried treasure.

We planted them in the spring, looked eagerly for the sprouts to come up out of the ground and then waited for the fall to see what had been produced. We planted, watered, waited for God to do his work and then had the joy of harvesting. (And one of the great parts of this was that I was allowed to drive the tractor with all the potatoes in the back up to the cold cellar where we stored potatoes and onions for the winter.)

There have been a few times in my life when I have had the privilege of being with someone when they have prayed to accept God’s gift of salvation. A couple summers ago during the filming of Blackhawk Down here in Rabat, the voice coach on the film began to come to church and spend her Sunday afternoons at our house resting on our hammock and listening to music. She came to see me one morning to talk about a few things and then she prayed with me to give her life to Christ.

There were several people in her life back in England who had planted seeds and watered those seeds, but I had the privilege of being with her when it came time for the harvest. As Jesus said, Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.

I keep on my wall a picture of Zewar Mohammed Ismaeel, a Kurdish convert to Christianity who was killed last year because he refused to renounce his faith in Christ. In dying he planted many seeds and there are those who are having the joy of reaping the harvest for which Zewar laid down his life.

We see so little of what is going on in the kingdom of God here on earth. I am convinced that one of the delights of heaven will be to see how God was at work in us and in the lives of people around us. We will see how God used us to sow, water and reap the harvest of what he accomplished in the lives of his children. We will be surrounded by those with whom we had contact and in whose lives we played a part as we offered ourselves to the service of God.

So this morning I want you to be encouraged. You may have given up hope that God will work in the life of a friend or family member. Wait and keep hoping while God does his work.

You may be frustrated because you do not see that your attempts to be a witness for Christ are accomplishing much. Be encouraged. By faith believe God is at work in and through you.

You may be discouraged because it seems the odds against the church growing are too large. Be encouraged. The church is growing and even if in this country the seed is very, very small, because God is at work, the plant that is emerging will soon be becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.