The Patient Farmer — Duane Troyer

The Parable of the Patient Farmer

I want to read a short parable this morning out of the book of Mark. If you want to turn there, it's in Mark 4, chapter, or verse 26 of Mark 4. He says, and this is Jesus speaking, he says,. And he was saying,.

The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil. And he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows. How? He himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself.

First the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. There's just a real short little parable that I've puzzled over quite a bit.

It's not found in any of the other Gospels, and so I don't have that privilege of hearing another one that is similar, yet maybe describes it just a little different. Sometimes that helps get what Jesus means in his parables.

The Farmer’s Work and the Mystery of Growth

He's likening the kingdom of God to a farmer, and there's some things that a farmer knows, and there's a lot of things that a farmer doesn't know. The farmer knows that he wants a harvest. Of course, what's a farmer without a harvest?

That's how he feeds his household. It's how he makes his income. And the farmer knows that in order to get a harvest, he must put seed into the ground. So he knows those things. But the farmer can't make the seed.

The farmer can't cause it to grow. It grows in a manner that he doesn't understand. The combination of the warmth of the sun, the moisture of the rain, the nutrients of the soil, those things together can take this completely dormant seed, a seed that has died, and can make it produce a plant that has life.

So as this seed sprouts and pushes roots downward and grows a stem upward, first the blade, and then the head, and then the mature grain of the head, it captures energy from the sun that the farmer can't see.

It captures nutrients from the soil that the farmer can't see, and converts it into a visible plant, and then into a visible grain of head, a head of grain. And he doesn't know how this happens. He doesn't understand even how this happens.

Much less can he make it happen. So day after night and night after day, he goes to bed, he gets up, he goes to bed, he gets up, and from day to day, he can barely even see that anything happened. But he just patiently waits, and waits, and waits, and waits, until finally the grain in this head is mature, and he gets down the sickle, and he thrusts in the sickle, and he harvests.

And as he fills his garner with grain, there's some things that he knew, and knows, and understands, and there is a lot that he doesn't. He knew that sowing seed would set into motion a spontaneous process that would lead to harvest, and he knew that he wanted to harvest.

But how that bag of seed turned into a bin of grain, he doesn't know. Now, Jesus is likening this to the kingdom of God, and I've puzzled over this parable, wondering if Jesus is referring to the man casting seed.

Interpreting the Kingdom of God in the Parable

Like, Jesus gave other parables of a sower, and of seed, and of wheat, and tares, and in a lot of these parables, his sower is the son of God, or the Lord himself, casting seed, and we're the soil, right?

And on what soil this seed falls depends on how it produces. And so I've wondered, is he saying the same thing again? There's a part, is God this farmer? And there's a part that he does, there's a part that he doesn't do, and he wants a harvest, and once the time is right, once the maturity that he's looking for is there, he'll put in the sickle, and he'll harvest.

Maybe Jesus is even referred to as seed. This could be a parable of Jesus, the seed, coming down to earth, which set into motion something that will then result in the fullness of the kingdom of God. It could be that.

The part about the farmer not really knowing how things work, maybe doesn't quite fit in so well. I don't think there's too many things that God doesn't understand how work. Or is this parable different?

Is this parable talking about the farmer being us? Are we the one casting seed? And the more I wondered about it, the more I thought, well, what difference does it make? Isn't the whole purpose of revealing God's character and his nature for us to be like that?

Isn't the purpose that we read the scriptures, and that we pray, and that we came together today, isn't the whole purpose behind us being a Christian, is it not to be like him? And if we can get something out of scriptures that reveal God's nature and God's character, then it's for us, too.

We want to be like that. And I think that the main purpose in this parable is God wanting us or expressing for himself and wanting us to have the right attitude toward the kingdom and toward the harvest, and that is patience.

Patience as Endurance in Waiting for God’s Promise

It'll come in God's time, and we are in need of patience, Paul says, that after we have done the will of God, we might receive the promise. See, we can do the will of God, but we wait for the promise.

Just like the farmer sows the seed, and then he waits, and waits, and waits for the harvest. Patience, and this is important, patience is not this careless, kicking back, doing nothing. As we just let time fly by, that's not what patience means.

Patience is endurance, patience is long-suffering, patience is hanging in there. The farmer doesn't just sleep from spring till fall, not at all. He cultivates, he irrigates, he perspirates, he does what is in his power to do till the harvest comes.

As limited as that might be, as limited as what is in his power to do might be, he still does what he can do. He does what's in his power to do as he anticipates, and waits, and does what it takes to get that harvest.

Paul says, patience works experience, and experience hope, and hope makes not ashamed. I want you to think about that for a little bit. Patience, if we have patience, we can have hope. And if we have hope, we can be patient, right?

If we lose our patience, it means we've lost our hope. If we lose our hope, we lose our patience. These things really go together. We are in need of this patience, and patience ends up producing hope.

And because of hope, we can just hang in there just a little longer, right? Recently, I read a very interesting thing. I thought it was very interesting. It said during a study at Harvard in the 1950s, Dr. Kurt Richard, Richard, he did an experiment with rats.

Hope and Perseverance in Trials

He took domesticated rats and wild rats. And they were the same breed of rats, but some of them were domesticated, some of them were wild. And he put them in water to see how long they could swim until they die and drown.

And whether he should have done that or not, that's beside the point. This was done, and here's the result of this experiment, is that the domesticated rats could swim for 40 to 60 hours before they couldn't make it any longer and drowned.

The wild rats swam for 15 minutes. They gave up and died. Now, here's the really striking part. When the wild rat, just at 15 minutes or just before it just gave up out of exhaustion and died, if they took it out of the water, held it for a little while, and petted it dry, and patted it dry, and put it back into the water, it could swim for 40 to 60 hours.

Whenever there's a little bit of hope, you can hang in there, right? When there's a hope that this might end, that there might be an end to this, we can endure, we can persist, we can persevere. We need patience.

We need patience like God has patience. Think about God's patience. We see it all through Scripture. His patience, his endurance with people who just continue to not get it. We need patience with our spouse.

We need patience with our children. We need patience with our brethren. And if we want that genuine fruit, that mature fruit, we're going to have to be patient. We are limited in our ability to just make that happen.

Patiently Bearing with Others Instead of Forcing Change

There's some things we can do, but there's just a lot that we can't do to produce the real genuine fruit, the real genuine mature grain, head of grain. You know, many, many times people know what's wrong.

We know what's wrong with our spouse sometimes. We know what's wrong with our teenagers. We know what's wrong with our brethren. It's evident. It's evident in their clothes. It's evident in their cars.

It's evident in their bookshelves. It's evident in all the things, all the ways they express whatever, a world, you know, a rebellion. We know it. We can see it. And it's pretty common for people and for churches to just decide to take action and decide, we're going to fix this.

We're going to fix these bad results. And we're going to, through force or some ungodly manipulation or bribery or whatever, we're going to change this outside form. And we're going to make this person into something that he's not.

And it doesn't produce the real thing that we want. It produces a synthetic fruit. And there's all kinds of ways to make synthetic fruit. We can have, we can just have one man just make decisions, call the shots.

We can have every man lean on his own understanding. We can vote. We can take majority rules. We can take all these things. But God is wanting us to patiently bear with each other. Of course, there's some things not permissible.

Of course, there's some things not tolerable. That's why Paul says, as much as possible, live peaceably with all men. He knows that it's not always possible. But still, that's God. That's the way God's nature is.

That's the way he waits with us. And we ought to be the same way. And recently, I read that the National Geographic does not sponsor a trek or a journey if the people going on this trek or journey, if there's an even number of people, they won't sponsor it.

Patience, Unity, and Genuine Spiritual Progress

Why? Because what if there's two people? There's got to be three, five, seven, nine, whatever. What if two people are doing some kind of a trek, and they come to a disagreement on how to cross this mountain?

And it can't be resolved because there are two different opinions. They need that third person for the odd man to yield, right? It's probably why the Supreme Court needs an odd amount of people on it.

Because that's how they vote. That's how they resolve things. But the interesting thing is, how did Jesus send out people? Two by two. See, Jesus is looking for something different. He's not just looking for movement.

He's not just looking for... Some people mistake movement for progress. And sometimes the real thing that God is wanting us to learn is something other than just getting across the mountain. He's also wanting us to learn to bear and to be patient and to hang in there and to suffer long.

Sometimes the genuine progress, the real true progress, looks more like that plant that grows day after night after day after night very slowly. But it's the genuine thing. And what we really need to get that fruit is patience.

Sowing, Reaping, and the Coming of the Lord

There's some laws of sowing and reaping that we can never get out of. We will reap what we sow. We will reap later than we sow. And we will reap more than we sow. Let me just close with reading a few verses in James.

Verses 7 to 11. Therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets the early and the late rains.

You, too, be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you yourselves may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing right at the door.

As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.

The Lord add his blessing. Open it up for comments or corrections if you have any.

Patient Continuance and Endurance in Romans

You may have already read this, but I got here a little late. But this, oh, I got my little girl right here, patient continuance. So it's a precious concept to me. I'm just going to read in Romans 2. God, who will render to every man according to his deeds, to them who by patient continuance and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality eternal life, but unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil.

And I, like, it's like the contrast, uh, that that's the opposite of patient, of patiently continuing is, um, is being content, being contentious and not obeying the truth and obeying unrighteousness.

And then I just thought, Brett knows, Brett knows Greek, but I, I just, this might not be the best, but I just click, when I click on that, it's just one word, patient continuance there. Something like that.

It says steadfastness, constancy, endurance. In the New Testament, the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings.

And then, um, down at the bottom, I like it says, um, it says cheerful or hopeful endurance.

Shackleton’s Endurance and the Role of Hope

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I probably will. Um, I, I've, I've made mention of that, um, testimony about the boat, the Endurance. Has anybody actually read that? Shackleton and the Endurance, they went to, um, they sailed to the Antarctic.

They were gonna be like the first guys to make it to the Antarctic. And the, the boat was named Endurance. It's, I mean, it's, I think it's in the National Geographic, but, um, too, but it's just an amazing story.

Um, I would encourage y 'all to maybe look into it, but something that you shared about the hope. So that, so this boat, the Endurance, it tried to break some record and make it to the Antarctic and it got frozen in the ice.

And, um, they were stuck in the ice for two years. And it's just this amazing story of just enduring. But one of the things that the captain did is he realized that in order for them to survive, their morale had to be high.

They couldn't lose hope. If they lost hope, they were gonna, it was gonna be, that was gonna be the end of them. So they would have, like, community haircuts and they would put on plays for each other.

And they would just try to really stay motivated. And, and, um, um, there's all these, like, things that took place in the story that are, that are really amazing. This, this guy Shackleton, he really knew how to be a leader.

But, um, they had eventually, just to make a long story short, they had, they had sailed the boat to an island. They were, like, halfway to being rescued. But, but the waters were so dangerous that they couldn't all go.

So just the toughest of the toughest guys got in this boat. And they just, they took, like, this shot in the dark to, to survive. But the guys that stayed back, the one guy would tell, um, he would say every morning to the guys that stayed back, he'd say, pack up your gear.

Today the boss is coming. And every day they'd pack up their gear in, in hopes that he was gonna return to save them. You know, the, the little boat that went to get help. And, and it had been a while, but finally one day, you know, they had, every day they had packed up their gear waiting for the boss.

But then one day they packed up their gear and the boss actually came. And it's an amazing story, though, this, what these guys endured. How they kept their hopes up. And I mean, it's a worldly story.

It's a worldly testimony. But you can just easily switch it over to being Christians. Anyways, I really appreciated that.

Patience, Self-Control, and Taking Up the Cross

Thank you. Hey, Brother Duane, yeah, thank you so much. That was, that was a really good message. Yeah, I was just sitting there thinking, uh, remembering, um, in years past when I went through this writing that Tertullian did, where it's basically on patience.

And how he makes the connection, which I never did before, to temperance or self-control. Um, and I just think he does a really amazing job making that connection. And then seeing that connection to the suppression of the flesh, the taking up the cross daily.

It's all connected to this idea of patience. And because it's only through that, that we can walk with the Spirit, which leads into the kingdom.

So I just thought I'd share that. But yeah, thank you, Brother. Uh, maybe just a question for you, Duane. The rat study. Is it because the domesticated rats were, like, they felt loved? And like, did it say in the study?

Just had to make a guess. I guess I have this feeling because it was a, that's because, because humans were doing it. Domesticated rats, that's that these humans were taking it. Or, or that there's hope somehow.

They've been fed by these humans. They've been taken care of by these humans. They've been held before. Um, it didn't say in the study. No, it didn't. Not in the, not in the one that I saw.

That's what I would have thought if it was a wild rat.

Hope, Psychology, and Persevering Through Trials

You would have, you would think they're all, like a wild animal is often more hardy and tough and used to danger and all that. But the whole, the whole study, the point of the study was that the amount of endurance we have is a psychological thing that would take us to here.

The same rat that thought he was exhausted in 50 minutes was, was actually changed his mind.

Yeah, like you said, it is psychological. That's probably why Paul says it. Like, set your mind on things about, set your mind.

Yeah, I think he'd be like, maybe even if the wild rat knew he could swim longer, like, why bother? Yeah. He's figured out this is a hopeless situation. And when they pulled him out, they taught him, like,.

There's hope. Sometimes people pull you out of the water, like, oh, maybe, maybe that'll happen again. It's pretty sad, actually.

Yeah, I, it was encouraging to me as well. Thank you for it, and amen. I even got a different thought about the rats, but I think the wild rat was more aggressive, and he was, he just tired himself out immediately, and he's gonna drown.

And when he got the relaxation, he was put back in, he relaxed. That's my idea about that. I don't think they psychologically figured that out, but humans will do that. But I don't think rats will. I think that the comma rats, they just floated around, and they took it easy.

This is why when you get caught in water, if you panic, you're gonna die in 15 minutes using that same story. Or if you relax and go along with it, you can make it a lot longer. And I think it had to do with panic, but anyways, that's an interesting story, whatever the reason.

I'm not, I'm not either, neither am I persuaded that rats have hope. Maybe they do, but it's, but I agree with the fact, in humans, it's, it's that way when we have hope, we can. Another thought I had about, about that whole bis, isn't it not often that God tests us to our limits?

It's, it's not really a test till He tests us to our limits. And, and how often is it when we surrender or we, at the time we think it's the end and then God, I'm not sure I'm saying the right thing here, but it's, it's just, we have, He has to take us to our, to limits because it's to be a good test.

And I'm not sure how that comes with the hope. It kind of confused me just a little bit on that, of some future thought, past thoughts I had. Anyways, I, it was encouraging.

God bless us. Appreciate it, what you shared. I'll just share my thoughts about the rats. When you started talking about the experiment, my first guess was that the domesticated rats survived longer. I don't know if this, the way I thought about it in my mind, as you were saying, was that these domesticated rats had a, believed in, in a higher power where they were, they were used to being, to being taken care of by someone else.

They didn't, they didn't live and die. Um, by themselves, um, the way the wild rats would have. And, uh, I just thought that would be the reason why, maybe one of the reasons why, why they'd have had, uh, not been, uh, well, whatever you want to call it, you know, why they would have had hope or, or at least, uh, continued swimming longer.

Um, but, uh, that was my thoughts.