(The Aggressive Holy Spirit) the Mystery & Method of Kingdom Growth — Jim Elliff

I thought New York City was in New York, but I guess it may not be. It's its own place. All right. Well, thank you, men, for a great job you've done in listening to the messages that I've been allowed to preach.

It hasn't been a great week. It's really been wonderful to me. I'm going to go back. I told Fred last night I'm going to go back and write down the names and addresses of several friends of mine who need to be getting on the list to the Bunyan Conference and try to encourage them to come.

I think it would be a great idea if we all pitched in and did that. We could increase this mailing list considerably. I think that would help and expose more people to this kind of conference. It's unique in many ways.

So I want to encourage you to do that when you get back home. Now, I want to admit right off that my message today is a bit more anecdotal than I normally do, but I want to be very practical with you today and stimulate us in the issue of evangelism like I was supposed to do the last two sessions.

The Parable of the Growing Seed and the Expansion of God's Kingdom

So let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Mark. Mark 4. Mark 4. I wonder if we could bow our heads again and pray and ask for the Lord's blessing on this and help. Father, thank you again for this great privilege.

What a joy this has been to be together and to hear the Word preached. There is no better thing, Lord, than this as far as we're concerned. We appreciate the way you've stimulated us to action and encouraged us, helped us with problems, helped us discern things that we were confused about, gave us broader relationships.

We're just very grateful for the many things that you have done. We pray now these last couple of sessions that they will be particularly meaningful to us for your sake. We ask you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now in Mark 4, we are in Mark's collection of the parables that Jesus Christ gave. We had already looked at the parable of the soils, but in a moment we're going to look at the parable of the seed found in verse 26 through verse 29.

You know that when you look at some of the parables, in particular I'm thinking of three of the parables here that Jesus gave, there's a very, I think, marked theme in at least three of them, which goes something like this.

The kingdom of God is a living thing that grows. The kingdom of God is a living thing that grows. And you remember the parable, of course, of the leaven and the parable of the mustard seed. The smallest of all seeds becomes the greatest in the garden.

And then this parable, which is the parable of the seed. So words like expansion and permeation and multiplication, those kinds of words are appropriate when we think about the nature of the kingdom of God.

So let's read this passage here and see what we find. Let's read it together in verse 26. And he was saying, The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil and goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts up 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.

Now, we know that there is a lot of empirical data that the kingdom of God is alive and grows. If we just go back to the time of Christ and look at those eleven disciples and think about where we are now, even with all of the false converts mixed in, we still would have to say there are millions of people who are believers in Jesus Christ.

So there's lots of data for us just to look at. If we just open our eyes and look, we know that this is exactly right. This is the way it is happening. We also have a lot of information in the Scripture.

The Spirit's Witness and the Certainty of Kingdom Growth

From the outset there, when Jesus Christ, before he ascended, told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would come upon them. They would be witnesses. They would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them.

They would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. He wasn't giving them a command, really. That's not a command to evangelize. It's a declaration. It's a declaration.

This is what will happen. And, of course, we see the unfolding of that in the book of Acts, so much so that the apostle Paul actually says the gospel's been preached to the known world. And then we see the continuance of that.

You get to the book of Revelation, chapter 5. You find people in heaven from every tribe and nation and tongue. Great missionary idea, isn't it, that God has got his people in every tribal group. And they will be in heaven.

So we are somewhere, of course, in between that beginning prophecy about the work that would happen through the church and the final fulfillment. And it's an interesting thing. You never see the disciples in the Bible kind of worried about the statistics.

We use the statistics a lot of times to stir up people. We say, well, we've got 24 ,000 people groups, 12 ,000 have been evangelized, and we have a great need. But they never seem to be fretting about that, do they?

Rather, it appears to me that they see themselves in the vein of the prophetic fulfillment of what Jesus Christ declared would be true, that they get to be part of this great enterprise that will end well.

And in my view, you can answer that. That's the devil calling. That's your wife. Don't tell her I said that. But we are there, aren't we? We're in the middle. And we're in an enterprise that is a winning enterprise.

And so we don't really need to fret. God is not one soul behind in what He is accomplishing. He's exactly on schedule. But it's a thrill, isn't it, to be part of that? We don't work out of a sense of defeat about all of this.

We work out of a sense of optimism. God is carrying out His great purpose. He has told us ahead of time what it would be. He gives us a view from the end. We have every reason to be rejoicing that the work of God is being done.

In fact, we can see such marvelous results already, can't we, over these 2 ,000 years since Jesus Christ said those words. Now the question is, of course, how does it happen? And I believe that this parable gives us some answers to that, a couple of answers to that that are very simple answers.

The Mystery of How God Grows His Kingdom

And the first one is this. Look again at the parable. He was saying the kingdom of God is like a man. Here I think of the corporate man or the church who casts seed upon the soil, goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts up and grows how he himself does not know.

So the first answer to the question, how does the kingdom of God grow, is this. It's a mystery. He doesn't know, and you don't have a clue. You don't have a clue how it happens. This is a fascinating idea, really, that it just seems like it all happens by itself.

That's what he says. The farmer goes out and puts his seed out there, and before you know it, you've got the blade and then the head and then the mature grain and the head, and it just seems to happen by itself.

That's the terminology. You can't really figure it out. Now I'm not a horticulturist, and I'm sure we've made advances in trying to understand these things, but it appears to me still to be quite a mystery, even in the realm of horticulture, that you could take a seed and it dies in the ground.

You know, it's just an amazing thing. You take corn, by the way. I believe I heard the other day that you get 16 ,000. Well, I better not say this, but the results of putting corn in the ground is certainly greater than the investment, right?

So you sow that seed, and a huge number of seeds, a huge number of kernels of corn result from that one seed. It must be true that this is going on. It's easy to see as we look at it. But how it happens, we really have to scratch our heads and say, you know, I don't really know how God is carrying all this out and getting it done, but it's obvious it's being done.

Let me illustrate to you how that might happen. Let's say that you teach a class of 10-year-old boys in the church that you're part of, and you have one kid that is incorrigible, and he never makes eye contact with you, and you try your best to get the gospel into that kid's heart, but he is just not paying any attention whatsoever.

In fact, he's only there about two or three months, and then the kid leaves. He moves out of town with his family, and you never see him, and you never even again, you never even think of him again. He's gone out of your life.

Now, down the line, however, this boy goes to college, and while he's in college, he gets depressed. Things are not going right. His girlfriend shafted him, and money's not right, and this, that, and the other.

The grades are not good, and he's depressed and down. But he remembers one night when he's thinking about it all that he knew somebody who seemed to understand life, and he knows it has to do with Christ, and maybe he remembers a verse of Scripture or an idea or a concept that was taught in that class.

And God uses that little bit of seed in his life to bring him to the place where he actually puts his trust in Christ. Of course, you never hear about it, but he put his trust in Christ. He joins a Christian club, marries a Christian girl.

They have children. They raise them up in the fear of God, and a whole generation of kids go on. Those kids walk with the Lord. All the kids in his family are solid and vibrant Christians. They marry other believers.

A third generation goes on. You're dead and gone a long time ago. Fourth generation comes in there. Let's say we're four generations down the line, and there has been a great impact to the gospel generationally throughout this family.

And in this fourth generation, one of the young men who's now a businessman, married, fine member of the church, out of this family, attends a mission conference, and he hears about somebody wanting to publish a book, let's say, that he thinks will be helpful for leaders in New Guinea someplace.

And so he listens to that, and he says, Well, you know, I've done very well financially in my business. I'm going to contribute to that. He goes up to the fellow and says, Look, can I put a couple of thousand dollars toward that book?

And the man receives it graciously, of course, and he publishes the book, and it's stuck off in the libraries of little Bible institutes around New Guinea here and there. And it sits on the shelf in one library for 40 years, and nobody touches it.

Dust is built up on it. Finally, a young man who's away from his family walks into that library searching for a good book to read, and he sees that book, and he pulls it off the shelf for the first time in 40 years, blows the dust off of it, checks it out, and that book revolutionizes his life.

And he becomes the instrument. Through the stimulus of that book, he becomes the instrument to open up a whole new tribal group to the gospel. Now, you didn't know when you were teaching that Sunday school class that you were doing global evangelization, did you?

But you were. But how it happens, you have no idea, right? If I can just use my family a little bit, my grandfather, we have his written testimony. My great-grandfather in the 1800s was converted on a train outside of Little Rock.

He had gone to Indian Territory from Tennessee. He and his bride, they had two kids. One of them died. Had a little girl left. The woman got sick. She got so sick that she wanted to leave Oklahoma or Indian Territory and go back home and be cared for.

Needed to go back home and be cared for by her mother. But on the train outside of Little Rock, she passed away. And before she passed away, she was a believer in Christ, but her husband was not. Before she passed away, she pled with her husband that he would put his trust in Jesus Christ and he would rear this little girl in the Lord.

The man got on his knees and he prayed for a long time while the train was rolling down the track. When he got up, he was a believer in Christ. The next Sunday, he was there in the church with the girl in his arms giving the testimony that we have.

Eventually, he married a second time. He had children. About half of them died, but two of the boys that were left, one my grandfather and then another great-uncle, they became preachers of the gospel.

My great-grandfather had those children. Then my grandfather had two children, just was able to have two, a girl who became a fine Christian and lived for the Lord all of her life. Then my father, who became a minister of the gospel, my father had four children.

All three of the boys are in the ministry, preaching. My sister, my only sister, married a preacher. Now in the fourth generation, almost every boy, at least, is in the ministry, some missionaries, some preaching in churches or whatever.

That's a strange kind of family to be in. I'm telling you, we have some interesting theological discussions. I'm kind of a nothing in the family, but my brothers have been rather prominent. They've preached all over the world.

I've had the privilege of preaching many places in the world. Do you think that little sick lady on the train had any concept how many tens of thousands of people would hear the gospel generationally through her family?

Do you think she knew that? She didn't have a clue, did she? She didn't know anything. She didn't even know if her husband would become a Christian. But you see, the Bible teaches us, or Christ teaches us really, that He will build the church, and He's putting it together.

And I can guarantee you it's a mystery. And we delight, don't we, in hearing about that. And it's a great hope and encouragement to us. Now, there's another answer, however, in this text of Scripture.

The Method of Kingdom Growth: Sowing the Gospel Seed

Look at this parable. It says, he was saying, the kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil. Well, there's something else in there. It's not only a mystery. There's not only a mystery to this thing.

There is a method to it. And what is the method? Well, the method is profoundly simple. You sow the seed on the soil. It's a sower, to put it like a preacher should put it. It's a sower sowing seed on the soil.

That's it. There is a method. And evangelism and the growth of the kingdom will not happen without the method being carried out. I'll just turn to Acts chapter 2 for a moment, if you don't mind. By the way, let me just say this while you're turning.

I think one of the things that we have done wrongly in evangelicalism, in my view, oh, it's not totally wrong. It has mixed, maybe it's mixed in a way. But one of the things I believe that has frustrated a lot of believers and made a lot of true Christians anxious about this area of evangelism, and I'll bet, you know, it's just mentioning the word evangelism to most pastors even makes them break out in a cold sweat because most of us feel like we're not doing a very good job at this.

Would you agree with that? And I don't have any pastors who have told me, Jim, we have a great church. We just have a weakness in the area of evangelism. They usually always say that. And most believers feel that a lot, and I think one of the reasons we got into this mess perhaps is our mentality about packaging the gospel.

What we've done is we have said that the gospel is a set of propositions with transition statements and scriptures attached, and that creates kind of a fear in the believer. He memorizes the plan and does his best to get it down.

We'll have our courses in evangelism and so forth, and occasionally that's effective, but in the long run what happens is it creates a fear in him because he realizes somebody might just ask a question in the middle of this presentation, and I really don't know what to say.

If a guy gets me off track, how am I going to get back? Because evangelizing has to do with sharing all these things and getting all the transitions and scripture verses in and then asking the big question at the end, and we package that.

You see how that can create actually a frustration. It works negatively for you, I think, in the final analysis. Really, it is far better to talk about evangelism the way Jesus does, and that is to sow the seed.

In other words, with the personality that you have, in the ways that you could possibly do it, in any possible little or big way, depending upon the opportunity, get excited about just planting the seed, throwing the seed out there in any possible way you can.

God's building His church, but He says there's a method. The seed has to get out there. We have to throw it out there, so cast the seed. Cast it every place you go. Well, we're finding in our church that this is a very exciting thing, and it's the most evangelistic church I've ever been in, but I think one of the reasons is because we're emphasizing this way of evangelism rather than the packaged way, and people feel much more liberty, and we get very excited about the slightest thing people say.

Oh, I had just an opportunity to say a little word here, or I was able to put this piece of literature in somebody's hand, and I think they're going to read it. Well, great, you're evangelizing. You're doing what we are supposed to be doing in evangelization.

There's everything to be excited about, nothing to be ashamed of in that. In other words, you see the encouragement level is far greater, and you need that, by the way, in the area of evangelism. I think that's a real piece of wisdom for pastors to think about this issue.

I really believe I've told you something important right there, and I really believe that will help your folks. You probably have to get over some of that old mentality to get to that place, but if you can get there, I think it's going to help you in a great way.

Pentecost, Joel's Prophecy, and Evangelistic Witness

Now, let's look here at the passage in Acts 2, and I just want to walk through a couple of places in Acts with you a moment to show you something about the kind of mentality we ought to have about the method of sowing the seed.

Look at the prophecy of Joel. Of course, at Pentecost, Peter is using the prophecy of Joel, and he's explaining what has just happened, and in particular he is explaining, if you notice in verse 12, it says, As they continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, What does this mean?

This particularly follows, I think, the idea of the tongues that Luke has just talked about in the chapter before this. So Peter answers. He raises up his voice in verse 14. He declares to them, Now, I always thought that was a strange way to put it, as if they would be later.

Surely that's not right. It must be more Presbyterian than I thought. But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. Here he gives these. We have five verses here of this prophecy of Joel. Now, if you can think of the prophecy of Joel here like this, it will help us in evangelism.

Think of the first two verses as a description about what has just commenced. Think of the second two verses, 19 and 20, as what will happen at the end of this period of time and the day of the Lord is coming, before the great and glorious day of the Lord.

And then think of that verse 21 as a summary verse about this whole period of time. Now, this is just my take on it. You may have a disagreement about it, but this is the way I see it. And to me, I'm always right.

All right. Look at what he says. It shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour forth of my spirit upon all mankind. Of course, we know that that means not everybody, every person. That means all kinds of people, as is illustrated by the passage before it, with all the people, the Medes, the Persians, from Crete and so forth, the Arabs, the Jews that he's mentioned just before.

All kinds of people. I will pour forth of my spirit upon all kinds of people, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. You young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. That did happen.

And then verse 18, he gets back to the subject. Even upon my bond slaves, both men and women, I will in those days pour forth of my spirit, and he adds, and they shall prophesy. And then at the end of the age, he says, look, I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness, the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come. Now, I'll leave it to you to figure out whether those are actual cosmic signs or that it's apocalyptic language about political events and changes.

There are different ways to look at that passage that conservatives consider. And then we have this great verse at the end, and it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

By the way, that is not about praying. It's not about praying a prayer to be a Christian. Calling on the name of the Lord is evoking the name of the Lord or calling upon the merits of Christ on your behalf before the Father.

It's tantamount to the idea of faith or believing in the Lord. So it shall be that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, here, as you know, there's been a cataclysmic change in the world because what's happening in this passage is that Peter is declaring a huge difference from the Old Covenant.

In the Old Testament, the Jews, though they were to be an object lesson to the world, were not evangelistic. Really, were they? And the focus of God's attention was on the Jews, it seemed. It certainly didn't seem it was true.

And then when we come to this place now, in the history of the world, everything explodes in every direction because now the gospel is going to be preached to all kinds of people and God's Spirit is going to come upon all kinds of people and those people themselves will be the propagators of the gospel.

Both men and women, my bond slaves, shall prophesy. And everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, that's a new statement, you see. That's a new idea in a way, isn't it? In a sense, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

This is the declaration he's making here that is an explanation for what's happening. And it's an explanation for their tongues here in this passage because he's describing, when he uses the word prophecy here, that's a loaded word, especially in our day, isn't it?

The word prophecy. But he mentions it twice and it's really this, I think, very heavy theme in this Joel passage here. He mentions it twice because I believe he's explaining. You see, on one side of the Pentecost event, Jesus gives the prophecy where he says, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be my what? My witnesses.

And then on the other side of it, he gives the explanation from Joel. This is what this means. It is about prophecy. Okay, now, the idea of prophecy here, as I'm sure many of you know, it's a looser use of, more general use of the idea of prophecy.

It's almost the same as saying they shall evangelize. They shall speak forth the things of God. You see, both men and women. You say, Jim, do you believe in women preachers? Yeah, I do. I don't believe in women pastors.

But women preachers like this? Yeah, yeah, I believe. Men and women, my bond slaves, shall prophesy. They shall speak out the things of God. And it is the characteristic of this new age, really. It is a new thing about this new age, I believe, that we live in, before the great and glorious day of the Lord, that men and women shall proclaim and speak out the things of Jesus Christ.

In that sense, yes, I believe it's true. I believe men and women can preach like that. Amen? Good, I was hoping you were with me because some of you were looking kind of strange and pale there for a moment.

Now, my grandmother was one of the greatest women preachers I ever knew in this respect. She would have never been a pastor of a church. That would have been repulsive to her. She thought it was not biblical.

But she was a great gospel presenter. And she was a little different now than I believe in some of the decisionism that she had. But I have to say, there are many, many people who come to Christ through her life.

I never went to her house. She didn't have a list on the wall with the butcher and the guy over at the filling station and the name of this person, that person, the mailman. She had that list up there.

She would pray for them. She would talk to them boldly about Christ. She was really a remarkable lady. And one time, there's a little legendary story that gets bigger every year about my grandmother. But years ago, they never had any money much.

And my granddad was a pastor. And they lived by the tracks. One day, when hobos used to ride the trains, a hobo got off the train there in that little southern Arkansas town and knocked on the screen door in the summer and wanted some food.

She came to the door. My granddad was gone. And so she was obliging. She wanted to give him some food. She says, you wait right here, and I'll go get something for you. And she went back into the kitchen.

She opened the ice box. Do you use that term? She opened the ice box, and she got out a big piece. She got out her cheese. She took a big butcher knife, and she went to the counter and sliced off a big chunk of cheese.

And she had the cheese in one hand, the butcher knife in the other hand, and she was walking across the kitchen into the living room thinking to herself, how am I going to witness to this man? And when she got to the door, she shook that knife at him.

She said, are you prepared to meet the Lord? And they said he outran the train. I don't know if that's true or not. The last part may not be true. But at any rate. But she, in a way, was a preacher of the gospel.

Ordinary Believers Preaching the Word

Do you remember the passage? Look over in Acts chapter 8 for a moment. Look at Acts chapter 8. I think this is the kind of preaching we need to recover in a way, don't we? In Acts chapter 8, look at this great passage.

You know, after the stoning of Stephen, when the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, right? And in verse 1, the people were scattered throughout the region. But the apostles, except the apostles, it says in verse 1 at the end of that verse, because of this persecution.

So these are just the regular people, not the super people, the apostles. But look at verse 4. Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word. In my view, it's probably men and women.

And they were going about preaching the word. Everybody was preaching the word, you see. This is the kind of preaching, I believe, really needs to be recovered, especially among our churches who have, I think, a purer view of the gospel itself.

We need to recover this. In Acts chapter 6, do you remember that? And you don't need to turn to it because I think you'll remember that when the apostles, who were the first leaders of the Jerusalem church as well, but when things got really busy with all the people in town because of Pentecost had been converted and were staying over for training and whatever, and they were hanging out there still until the persecution of Stephen.

You may remember that there was a lot going on in terms of the feeding scheme that was being carried out, and the apostles were heavily involved in that. So they asked the church to choose six men. We typically think of these as the prototype of deacons, six men full of faith in the Holy Spirit and so forth, full of wisdom.

And the reason for this was that the apostles might give themselves to the ministry of the Word and to prayer. Now probably when it says prayer there, he's talking about personal prayer, but it could be like Acts chapter 2 where the article is used, the prayers, and it might be kind of a synecdoche for worship.

But regardless of what that means, let's think about the first idea, the ministry of the Word. What does that mean? Now immediately when we hear the apostles gave themselves to the ministry of the Word, what do we think?

We think as we apply it to ourselves, I've got to hole up in my study for a lot more hours than I've been studying before. I want you to understand the balance I'm going to give this, but just think about this.

That's what we think normally, right? I've got to get down. I've got to spend an hour for every minute that I stand up in the pulpit so I can knock it out of the ballpark on Sunday morning. I've got to work harder.

I've got to work much harder at dividing the Word of truth, studying the Word, and knowing what's in it. But what do you think that meant to those apostles? I don't think it meant that at all. In fact, when you look at their lives, did they ever have any time to study?

You know what it meant to them? It was the serving of the Word. It was the ministry of the Word. In my view, as I look at the Scripture, I think this bears this out. They were so active in being with people.

When they'd meet believers, they would try to present them complete in Christ and grow them up in the Lord. When they'd meet nonbelievers, they'd tell them the gospel. They were busy day in and day out among people serving, serving out the Word.

They had been caught up in serving tables, but they needed to be busy about serving the Word. They needed to give that out, you see, wherever they went. Now they had, of course, the perfect society or a better society for it in the sense that, if you've ever been to third-world-type countries, you know it's just people are more communal, everybody's milling around, and you have opportunities that are great.

And I realize we're isolationists here and insular, and in our lifestyles it's more difficult. But this has made a dramatic impact on me, this idea, that they were actually serving the Word. They were out among people.

They were actively giving the Word out among people. Now, don't mistake the other fact that we find in the pastoral epistles that we do need to be diligent about the study of the Word. If you're a pastor of the church, you've got to shuck the corn and get it ready.

You've got to do the work that you need to do. But there's something missing in most lives of pastors that I know and other leaders. They don't really get out among the people very much. They're not really out.

I'm not talking about scheduling meetings in people's homes. I'm just talking about getting out among people. One time I did a—well, I'll get to that in a minute. I'll be practical with you in a minute.

But keep that idea in your mind. They never—the early preachers, Jesus himself and the apostles, never stood behind a podium like this, to my knowledge. They never had rows of chairs or pews out there in front of them.

That's not what they thought of when they thought of preaching the Word. The apostle Paul, if he went from one city to another city, and it took him four days to walk between those two cities, and somebody said, Well, what did you do during that time?

He'd say, I was preaching the Word. I believe there were weeks that went by, probably, where Paul never talked to more than a handful of people at a time. But he was preaching the Word all the time. He's preaching the Word, preaching the Word all the time.

Do you see that? One time a new seminary—a new preaching professor of Southwestern asked me, What would you do with a group of guys that you're going to teach down there about preaching? I said, Well, at different times of preaching, I understand.

And you've got men who've learned to be pastors of churches. But I think I'd say to them right from the outset, If you're not preaching several times a week already, you probably don't even need to be here.

You know, there is preaching that is to go on all the time. You understand what I'm saying? Are you doing that? That's the question. Are you really doing that? And are you being a model to the rest of your church about that kind of thing?

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch: Preaching Beyond the Pulpit

Look at Acts chapter 8 real quickly. Then I want to try real fast to do some practical things with you. Look at chapter 8. Do you remember the Ethiopian who received Christ? And Philip went out there and he ran up to him.