What is a yield of a hundredfold?
Living in the life of god’s kingdom Luke 8:4
Christ Church, Wednesday 21st February 2001
What I want to discuss with you is what is this good soil? What might it might look like? What will our lives look like if the word of God bears fruit of a hundredfold in them? What should we be aiming at? What is the word that comes from God meant to achieve in our lives?
There are two kinds of kingdom we
need to think about. The first is God's
kingdom. God's kingdom is not a place,
but it is his rule, his reign, his sphere of influence, anywhere his will is
effectively carried out. In heaven
God’s rule is absolute, but on earth it is not. That is why we pray "Your kingdom come on earth as it is in
heaven."
We get two ideas of what God’s
kingdom on earth might look like from the Bible. The first is at creation when we see God looking over the earth
and saying it's a good place. There is
no disharmony between God and man, no death, no pain. The second is at the end of the Bible when we are given the
vision of the time when God will rule fully over heaven and earth. Again, there is no pain or death as God
wipes away every tear from our eyes.
But it is also a time when his way of being, his life, his rule fills every
nook and cranny of our lives. He will
be the world’s light, we will walk in his glory. This is God's kingdom on earth.
But the message of the Gospels is
that God's kingdom, God's rule is already breaking in to our lives. When Jesus began his ministry he said
"God’s kingdom is among you."
He was drawing people’s attention to the fact that God’s rule was
available for them-they could live under it, they could experience it. It is now available.
Jesus would have been thinking of
the passage in Isaiah where God promises that “The word that goes out from my
mouth shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I
purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it?” His word is like the seed that is scattered
on the ground. But what was God's
purpose in Isaiah? Was it to only make
his people morally good? Was it just to
bring them forgiveness? It was those
things, but it was much more than that.
The word that was sown in the people of Israel would result in this:
“For you shall go out in Joy, and be led back in peace; and the mountain and
the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field
shall clap their hands.” What God
wanted to do was this: to bring his people back from exile. He wanted to bring them back from a place
where they did not know his rule, to a land where they were at one with
him. This is what Jesus understood as
the purpose of God's word-to enable us to live in his kingdom once again.
I said there were two kinds of
kingdom we need to think about. The
first kind is God's kingdom, but the second kind is ours. Each of us has a kingdom- we are kings and
queens. Not, unfortunately, in the
Windsor sense, but in the sense that we have a sphere of influence, a dominion,
a place where what we want goes, how we shape things effects our lives and
other people's lives and the world.
Like God’s, our kingdom is not a place, although we each have
houses. But our kingdom covers our
work, our relationships, what we create, our hobbies, our politics, our
families, our church life (only a part of it), our thoughts, our words, our
choice of what we do with every second of our time. That is our kingdom.
Jesus was saying we have a
choice. We will yield a hundredfold
when our kingdom becomes part of God's kingdom. We will be good soil if every aspect of what we influence becomes
governed by God's will for his creation and our lives. God wants to bring us out of exile. He wants to lead us home. That's what his word came to do. The life of his kingdom is available, all he
asks us to do as he brings us his word is to plug into it in every aspect. That's is the full yield of our lives.
I heard of a man who grew up in
America at a time when electricity was available only in the form of
lightning. But when he was at school
the electricity company extended its lines into the area where he lived, and
electrical power became available to households and farms. When those lines came by his farm a very
different way of living presented itself.
People’s relationships to fundamental aspects of life-daylight and dark,
hot and cold, clean and dirty, work and leisure, preparing food and preserving
it-could then be vastly changed for the better. But they still had to believe in the electricity and its
arrangements, understand them, and taken the practical steps involved in
relying on it. But many of the farmers
did not want to. They heard the message
that there was a new way of life available that would affect everything, they
heard if you like "Repent, for electricity is at hand." But they preferred kerosene lamps, and hand
powered washing machines, they did not want their lives to be affected in every
dimension by this new way of living.
So as we pray about our response to
God's word, we are not praying simply to be good inside, or to understand the
depth of his forgiveness, but we are asked by Jesus to open our lives in every
aspect to the electricity of his rule.
We are asked to put our little kingdoms in all their entirety into the
life of God's kingdom.
How do we go about this? It is a question of making a conscious effort to make God's rule
part of everything we think, and do, and say.
Frank aLaubach tried this by an experiment of moment by moment
submission to the will of God. In
January 1930 he began to cultivate the habit of turning his mind to Christ for
one second out of every minute. After
only four weeks he reported, "I feel simply carried along each hour, doing
my part in a plan which is far beyond myself.
This sense of co-operation with God in little things is what so
astonishes is me, for I have never felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it
waiting for me. I must work to be sure,
but there is God working along with me."
To my mind that is not something I have achieved, but something for me
to aim for. Notice how he says “doing
my part in a plan which is far beyond myself”.
He has let his kingdom become part of the bigger kingdom. That is the aim of the word that comes down
from heaven, of the seed.
My ten-year-old
son informed us that part of his tooth had
come out. We checked and, sure enough, a piece had broken off.
Trying to lighten the moment, I asked my husband, "What do you
suppose the tooth fairy gives for half a tooth?"
"Nothing," he replied, "She wants the tooth, the whole tooth,
and
nothing but the tooth."
One day when the earth is as full of the glory of the
Lord as the waters cover the sea, every aspect of who we are will be lit by
God's presence. But he wants us to tap
into the reality of his kingdom now, and then we will have life in all its
fullness, a rich yield which will make our lives shine for his glory. Amen.