THE KING’S .BUSINESS
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to publicly confess Christ and to unite with , the church. (No teacher should be 'satis fied 1 with less.) But God alone can make the seed planted by the teacher to grow in those hearts. “Oh! what shall the har vest be?” “He that goeth forth and weep- eth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:6). There is progress in growth—the blade, the ear, the full corn. It must come nat urally. Do not ’ be discouraged with nor scold the blade—¡the young Christian, for not being the'full corn—a mature saint of God. And do not-be- discouraged with yourself either, unless you knbw you are allowing conditions to exist in your life that hinder growth, or neglecting those things that are essential to growth—Bible study, prayer, service. Apply the parable also to the kingdom of God, in its* entirety, and learn the patience of God who sowed it, and learn, too, the certainty of the reaping time that He is going to have one of these days. There cannot be a harvest until the seed is ripe. III. T he Small Beginning and th e G reat Ending, vv. 30-34. The disciples did not get an opportunity at this time to answer our Lord’s question as to what the kingdom of God was to be like. But from other sayings of theirs we know what they expected—thrones, right and left hand places, Rome displaced as mistresp of the world and Jerusalem suc ceeding her. That was their dream. The reality as they faced it was sadly different. Instead of a magnificent, princely Messiah, He tore all the outward marks of a Gali lean peasant. Instead of ministers of state, they were twelve travelling evangelists, dependent upon the charity of those who would help them. Such was the beginning of the kingdom, represented at present on the earth by the visible church. How it has grown. By the end of the second cen tury the Gospel had been preached through out the whole Roman Empire, while today there are but a few countries where it has not been made known. And there are men
devil. I called up a party on the ’phone yesterday and got the “busy” signal several times. God gets a lot of “busy” signals from even His own folks. Sometimes in Los Angeles we have to call up “trouble” because the “busy” signal continuously. means line out of order. When the line between the believer and God gets out of order there is always “trouble” and it is always at our end of the line. Is your line working all right, reader ? Make use of what you hear. Abram was blessed that he might be a blessing. David’s cup ran over and-others shared it. What wbuld you .do without his blessed twenty- third Psalm? A man told the Lord in prayer that he couldn’t hold very much of a Messing, but that he could overflow a lot. When David was sitting in his kingdom he began inquiring for some descendant of Saul 'to whom he might show- the kindness of God, and he found poor, lame Mephibo- sheth (2 Sam. 9:3). “Have you had a kindness shown ? Pass it on ! ’Twas not given for you alone. Pass it on! “The soul of the diligent shall be made fat,” (Prov. 13:4), “An idle soul shall suffer hunger” (Prov. 19:15). “The'»more we do for our souls, the more shall we find God does for them” (Bp. Ryle). Give out, if you would have God pour in. II. The Mystery of Growth, w . 26-29. Ofily God knows the secret of the 'seed’s growth. The chemist may tell you the con stituents of a seed and weigh them out for you, but there is something in the real seed that the chemist cannot put in his counterfeit, and that something is the life of the seed. The farmer may. not know as much about the seed as the chemist doe's; but he prepares the ground, plants the mys terious seqd, and waits for nature’s God to do the rest, while he sleeps and rises and attends to his other affairs. After sowing time comes growing time, and after that comes reaping time. The farmer is respon sible for the first aim and the last, God alone can manage the middle. The Sunday School teacher can- plant the seed, and may have the joy of bringing those boys or girls
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