Greg Ryan teaches on the power of God's Word as a supernatural seed, connecting the Parable of the Sower in Mark 4 with 1 Peter 1:22-23 and Romans 10:17. He emphasizes that faith comes by hearing the Word, and urges listeners to examine their hearts and treat Scripture like a seed that will not return void.
Welcome to episode 36.
John 1:1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Welcome to episode 36. If this is your first time here, you are getting in right in the middle of the play. We have been talking about the power shortage or the power problem with the church, and we're discussing the power of the seed. So if you have not, uh, listened to any previous episodes, I would suggest go back 4 or 5 episodes. I think 31 is where I kind of introduced it, and then we've been moving on from there. But I want to kind of change gears a little bit. It's same concept with the seed, but I want to go back a few verses, back in Mark 4:1, where Jesus starts talking. He says, again, he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him. And he got into a boat and sat on the sea And the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. So this is where he starts talking about the sower and the seed. And we have talked in the previous episodes about seedtime and harvest, and about how the man scatters, and how we don't know how it grows, but when the harvest has come, then we— the man goes in and puts the sickle to it. Well, Jesus, in, in a previous parable, he talks about the seed and the different grounds that the seed falls on. And so I want to— I kind of want to change the teaching a little bit. It's— we're still talking about the power of the seed, but now instead of talking about the natural seed, we're going to talk about the supernatural seed that's in the word— that's the word of God. Now, when Jesus was teaching this parable, the Holy Spirit had not come or fallen to all men. And Peter hadn't got the revelation that the word of God was the incorruptible seed. But Jesus teaches about this seed. But before we talk about that, I want to go to 1 Peter, and that's— it's in 1:22-23. Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever. One of the great things about having your Bible is that you can take all of the things that are written in the Bible and bring it all together. So when you take what Peter said about the incorruptible seed, and then you go back and you read with that in your mind, you read about what Jesus is talking about in Mark 4, the first part of Mark 4. It starts in verse 3. He had already sat down. We read verse 4:1, but in 4:3, listen, behold, a sower went out to sow, and it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. 26 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. 27 And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. 28 But other seed fell on good ground, and yielded a crop that sprung up, increased, and produced, some 30, some 60, and some 100. 29 And he said to them, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Now I know that's a lot of scripture to read, and I don't do a wonderful job of reading, but if, if you're driving or working out, I just want that as we're talking about the incorruptible seed. And, and Jesus goes on to teach his disciples that the seed that was thrown or sown was the word of God. So when the word of God— if you take this into context with the word of God— when the word of God is thrown out, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. That's in Romans 10:17. Before I start teaching about the different grounds, I want to read one more scripture in Mark. It's Mark 4:13. And he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables? Now I believe Jesus is teaching a very important lesson right here to his disciples because they asked him about, teacher, what did you mean by the throwing out of the seed and the hard ground? So when they asked the question, Jesus said, look, you don't understand this one? How are you going to understand any of the parables? So I believe Jesus has kind of given us a key that, look, we need to understand this one parable before we move on. So when we tie in to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you, and then we talked about in Mark 4:26-29 where he talks about the kingdom of God is like in the seed, and, and I'm not going to rehash all of that But Jesus is teaching about the kingdom of God. And the cool thing about the Bible— see, Jesus was teaching and talking and they wrote this down. You know, his disciples didn't have the written word. They actually wrote the Bible. So we have the benefit of having the Holy Spirit here with us and have the word of God that we can look on, you know, in a book, in the Bible, or on your phone, or laptop or iPad, wherever you're reading the Bible. But we have the ability to look through the whole word of God. That's why I went to Peter, I went to 1 Peter, and I went to— in this teaching, you know, this series of teachings, I began in Mark 4:26, where, you know, you could act— you could argue that we probably should have started at 4, you know, 1 or 4:3, where he talks about sowing the word. But I kind of wanted to get you in the mindset of how powerful a seed was before we started talking about how powerful the Word of God is. So, I mean, I have jumped up and down, I've talked about how powerful the Word of God is, so you already know my stance on the Word of God. I think it's so much more than just a seed, but it is also a seed. And when you start throwing this Word of God out, and when you start listening to teachings like when I open up the Bible and I tell you what I see, or when your pastor— when you're at church and you're listening to what your pastor says, as long as he's pulling out of the Word of God, then you're, you're getting fed. The Bible says— it's pretty clear that the word, the word will not come back void. So God said, whatever I send my word out to do, it accomplishes the thing that I sent it out to do. Now whether you or I are prepared have prepared our heart. And that's what we're going to get into probably in the next episode, because I want this to be kind of short. I want you to think about the word of God and why it's so important that we understand this, this one parable. We have got to understand this parable before we move on. And that's kind of why I decided to teach the power of the seed first, because I believe that if we don't understand the power of the seed, then you're not going to understand any of the other stuff that I even talk about. I wish someone would have said, hey, dig in on this one right here. This is a good place to start. And I've got 2 or 3 other really cool things I think that God has shown me through his word that I'm going to continue to teach on. There's some other firsts that if I had to start all over again, you know, I see— I hear a lot of people talk about, well, if I had— if I had to start all over again with nothing and what would I do? Or if I had to start— and I kind of, when I started this podcast, I went back to thinking, you know, don't think about how you are now, 28 years, but how you were when you first got saved and you had all that garbage and junk and fear and all of that stuff. And that's kind of where I'm coming from. I'm trying to remember back to when I was first saved and I was just real hungry and digging in And so I want to, I want to go back to that time. And if you have, if you haven't dug into the word of God like you think you should have, well, this is a really good jumping off point to get started. It's the word of God is like a seed. And we're going to pick this up on the next episode. I appreciate you being a part of this podcast, and I look forward to talking to you tomorrow.
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