Category Archives: Seeds
Understanding Seeds! Planting Financial Seeds! Part 12
(Ver 2.2) Today is now Part 12 of a very important series of lessons on Understanding Seeds in the Bible. We have covered a lot of very significant information that will not be repeated so I would highly recommend that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1”. I almost purposely left this part of this subject of seeds out of the series because it is so popularly preached on TV that it gives many a negative perception on a positive subject. However, money and finances are clearly found in the Bible so I will touch on it today. I believe if you study the Gospels you will see that Jesus taught on money more than any other subject. I have heard many preachers, especially TV preachers, jump all over this subject and it appears to come across that they do it because they are only after your money. Of course I do not judge them because I do not know their hearts, only God knows a man’s motivation for doing what he does. It could be that God told them to teach this subject with great emphasis and I would sound like a fool if I would criticize what God does. So, I cannot say or will not judge if this is true or not, I just said it just appears to many to be this way because of the emphasis that they are placing on a minor part of a much greater subject about seeds. It would seem to me that to only pick one part of a subject and teach that causes the wrong perceptions to be given and to many people it is true that perception becomes reality and this is not a good image to portray to the world. So far, I have given you eleven different lessons about seeds in the Bible and have not mentioned money or finances even once. I guess since I do these Bible lessons for free and never ask you for money, is the one reason that I can include this lesson on money in the series today.
In searching the Bible for any form of the word “seed” I found approximately 257 verses in the KJV that directly mentioned this word. Out of this total I counted less than 20 verses that speak about money or that can be applied to money directly. Of course this is a subjective number of verses depending upon your desire to try to apply verses from one topic to another. This is certainly a legal method of Bible interpretation; God does it all the time. You can find that God used the same word seed to describe at least 10 different things in the Bible and the laws and principles that govern them are universal truths that cross over into each topic area. But, it is always difficult to teach some subjects like money and not sound like you are asking for money, especially in light of what the Bible says on this subject. That is just the inherit problem with this subject and I will do the best that I can in spite of this appearance. I hope that you can see the difference in what I say since there are no names or ministry names attached to this website and no donate buttons anywhere that allows you to give money to me. If you are a Christian you should be giving your money to where you go to church and are being fed spiritually; we’ll see more about this as we go into this lesson.
So even though seeds of finance are a minor part of this subject in this entire seed topic realm, it is still a valid concept that applies to your money. First, off think about this, farming and agriculture were common methods of income in Bible days. The seed concepts of sowing and reaping applied whether you planted corn or raised sheep. If you farmed then you raised crops or animals that could be sold or traded to others. So the seed concepts found in the Bible about farming must also apply to modern day money and finances directly, also. Farmers used seeds to grow crops and these crops produced more food than the originally planted seeds. So the principles of sowing seeds into good ground, seed increase and multiplication are clearly applicable to our modern money. In the world of finances money would represent the seed. Today we can take money and invest it in the stock market or whatever expecting it to grow over time. This is a seed principle that works when you plant your seeds in good ground. You see good ground in the financial world are the companies that are going to be profitable. If you place your money in a company that is foolish then it can go out of business and you lose your investment and that is the definition of planting your seed into bad ground. In America we have many people who buy lottery tickets. These are people who are hoping to hit it big and win millions of dollars overnight. I have not found that concept in the Bible. In the Bible if you want millions of dollars you must start with what you have and plant it to cause it to grow into millions of dollars. This is the Bible concept of financial seed planting and reaping an increase. These are clear Bible farming concepts that you need to learn and to apply to your life and what you do in the world. If you are expecting to hit it big and get rich over night the odds are that it will not happen. Yes, the lottery does occasionally reward someone with a large payment that gives the appearance of the possibility that it can happen to anyone. However, mathematically speaking the odds of it happening to you is extremely low; in fact it is more likely that you will get hit by lightning and die than to think that you will win the lottery. So let’s examine some scripture that can apply to money and finances in relation to seeds.
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
While this scripture does not directly mention money it can be applied to money very easily. This verse states a Bible law that establishes the concept of planting seeds and reaping harvests as long as the earth exists. This would seem to imply that this principle will exist in the new earth to come also, so it seems to me to be a concept that we need to learn. God tells us that our world was designed to be a seed world of sowing and reaping. If you plant your seeds in good ground you will always harvest an increased crop or return on your initial investment. Your seeds sown are always your initial investment that you risk losing. The same enemies that you find in the natural world of natural seeds also apply symbolically to the financial world. The concept of weeds, insects and the birds of the air that eat your seed; these are all symbolic enemies to financial dealings. Before you can invest money anywhere you should first determine if this is good ground to plant in. Too many times people put money somewhere and then change it to something else before they make anything where it is planted. This would be like planting corn seed in the ground today and then digging it up tomorrow to take it to another field that you heard was better ground. If you think this is stupid to do, you are right, but in the financial world people do it everyday.
Lev 26:16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
What I wanted to do was to show you that every seed sown can have an enemy. Here we have God telling the children of Israel that the seeds they have sown will be eaten by their enemies. This was usually caused by a reckless disregard for obeying the Word of God. Whenever the children of Israel disobeyed God, this would open the door and allow enemies to come in and take what they had worked for. So this is a lesson for Christian to learn from as a bad example of what not to do.
Deu 28:38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.
So you can see another verse where insects can come and eat your seed. Here God says that you will take a lot of seeds into your field and harvest very little of them because they were all eaten by an enemy. In our world today, financial enemies abound all around us. There are false investment schemes that take your money and you can lose everything. A man in the U.S. is serving jail time right now for taking billions of dollars from people and spending it on himself and his family. His lavish lifestyle lasted for several years until it finally caught up with him, but most of the people that put their money in his false funds all lost their money. These are some of the potential enemies to financial transactions and many of them are backed by satanic influences that causes you lose your money.
Deu 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.
So here is another verse that does not mention money directly, yet clearly applies. The word tithe means to give a tenth. The word increase is a numerical financial term of positive results. This verse also says that your field brings forth year by year. So this is a principle of being faithful to do what you know to do in a consistent manner. Being consistent is a seed principle. There are many factors to planting seeds in the natural that apply in the financial world. For, example, one key factor of correct seed planting is timing. Did you know you can plant the right seed in the right ground at the wrong time and totally fail and lose everything? So knowing when to plant is a key to getting positive results. There are of course other seed concepts that also apply to money. You can under seed a field and not reap what you should have. You can over seed a field and also cause your crop to be unprofitable. There are really too many factors to consider about seeds that apply to investing that I cannot go into them all. It is not my goal to teach you how to invest your money; it is only my goal to introduce you to Bible concepts and to note the things that God has created in the world that give us views into spiritual laws. I’ll take you to one more Old Testament verse before I move to the New Testament:
Isa 55:10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
Here is a verse that is speaking of natural things and spiritual things simultaneously. It can also clearly be applied to financial things. The blessings of God are many times manifested in the natural realm in financial blessings. You can see this concept in the Book of Job when God blessed Job in the end with more than he had in the beginning. You can also see the concept repeated in the life of Abraham when God blessed him exceedingly and abundantly so that his herds could not coexist with his nephew Lot’s herds because the land would not sustain them both since they were so blessed. You can see the blessing of God on the life of Jacob when he worked 7 years for Rachael and his father-in-law tricked him into seven more years. Jacob’s father-in-law saw that he was blessed because of Jacob’s presence and tried to manipulate his income and cheat him out of his blessings from God. So we can see this pattern repeatedly found in the Bible that God blesses people financially with an increase in the natural realm. So the verse in Isaiah can be applied to natural seeds, spiritual seeds, and financial seeds and so on. If God gives us seed and bread these are clearly symbolic of financial things that represent income producing and life sustaining factors. Let’s look at some New Testament verses about seeds and money:
2Co 9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Here we again find a verse that crosses subject topic boundaries. This verse applies to many things and it represents a spiritual law of God. The basic law presented to you is this; you will always reap what you sow. If you sow a little bit, you get a little bit back. If you sow a lot you get a lot back. These are just basic seed laws found in the Bible. You can see that this verse does not mention seed directly, however to sow is to plant seed; therefore the seed is indirectly related. Let’s see what else this chapter says about seeds of finance:
2Co 9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
What is a cheerful giver? You can again apply this to many things, including money. Being a cheerful giver involves primarily your attitude. If you have a right positive attitude you will be blessed in what you do. Have you ever read the story of Joseph in Genesis? Here is a man that was handed some very rough set of circumstances in life and he maintained a great attitude through them all. Joseph always expected God to fulfill his words that were spoken to him, so even though his brothers sold him into slavery he continued to believe in the best outcome. Joseph spent a great amount of time in prison, but wherever he was, the blessing of God was upon him and he was raised because of his attitude. This is a very powerful example for Christians today. It tells us that we do not always have it exactly the way that we would like it to be all the time, but we can still expect God to work it all out to cause it to be good for us in the end. So this verse is all about your positive attitude and your faith in God. You can read the other verses in this chapter and hopefully see the connections to money and finances, but I’ll end this chapters’ discussion with this one more verse:
2Co 9:10 Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;)
As you can clearly see the term seed sown is self-evident. The term increase is also self-evident. The “fruits” of your righteousness is of course symbolic of your harvest. So this verse clearly applies in the spiritual realm to our effort to grow in spiritual maturity. However, this verse will also cross over in the context of the natural realm and must be related to our financial blessings from God. It can also mean emotional blessings. It can further apply to our seeds that we plant in the lives of other people that allows God to grow them and produce fruit in their lives. There are just a wide variety of applications for almost every verse on seeds. This is why I teach that money is just a small part of the bigger picture of seeds given to us in the Word of God. So let’s examine another chapter of the N.T. about seeds:
1Co 9:7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?
As you can see from this verse, God is comparing several similar concepts of financial matters. God says nobody finances their own war. God says nobody plants a crop and not also eats from it. Nobody raises sheep and not drink the milk of the flock. These are all symbolic representations of a spiritual set of realities found in the Bible. We the church are in a spiritual warfare with a spiritual enemy named Satan. Then Paul was a sower of the word of God and he says that anyone who sows will eat from that which he has sown. Then sheep are a widely symbolic representation of the people of God in the Bible. So the clear implied meaning is Paul fed the sheep and the sheep fed him back. This is not rocket science so grasp these simple concepts and learn to live by them.
1Co 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
Here we have a Bible concept that is very profound being explained. Many times God writes a Bible verse about natural things that cross over into the spiritual realm and this is a prime example of this. Paul is saying that God wrote about oxen and corn but that these apply to him and to us. In other words God did not write this verse for the benefit of the oxen, it was written for our benefit so that we can learn from it. Oxen when treading corn are said to be partakers of the corn and this is a Bible principle given to us from God. If the oxen are working then they should eat from their labors of work.
1Co 9:11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?
So this is a popular TV preacher verse found in the Bible. However, Paul is not writing this asking for their money he is only explaining a very powerful concept of sowing and reaping. Paul was sowing spiritual seeds into their lives and Paul said it was good for them to give back carnal or natural things back to him. In this verse Paul is claiming to be like the oxen that was working and that he should be a partaker of his own labor. However, what we see here are two principles being exercised simultaneously. To give to Paul would cause Paul to receive a harvest from what he has previously spiritually sown from the Word of God. For them to give financially to Paul is a concept of them planting back natural seeds into good ground; therefore they can also expect a harvest for what they have planted. In other words if they wanted Paul to continue to bless them with spiritual things it was good for them to give to Paul of their natural things like money, food, etc. so that Paul could live on the earth to continue to preach and not have to work to eat.
1Co 9:13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?
As we continue to read in this chapter, Paul and God is giving us a key principle that ministers of the gospel are partakers of those which they minister to. In other words this was a designed system of church government by God. It promotes a minister who is focused on you and not himself. If your minister had to work for a living in the world, you and the rest of the church would be a secondary thought to his primary time taker of working for a living. However, if the church pays for his wellbeing and financial needs then the minister can focus on God and the church and ministering to the sheep of God and not have to worry about where he will eat tomorrow.
1Co 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
God again says what I just tried to say. The minister of God should be paid by the people who he ministers to. This is clearly the concept of sowing and reaping for both participants. The minister should minister in faith that the people will meet his financial needs and the people should give to the minister in faith that the God of their salvation will give them increases from the seeds that they have sown. So here is the flip side of the coin that also goes with this subject of sowing and reaping:
1Co 9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
God in this verse clearly says that anyone who preaches and charges you money for the information is being an abuser of God’s designed plan. Paul very clearly says that he should not charge anyone to preach what God has given to him for free. This is what discourages me about many TV preachers that I listen to. While they say good spiritual things for 20 minutes, they end their show with a request for you to buy the rest of the message on CD or DVD and it always costs much more than it does to produce these and to send them out. A DVD can cost $20 plus postage and handling fees and this is clearly outrages for a piece of plastic that costs maybe 20 cents in bulk. Clearly these ministers of God are looking to your purchases of their messages to fund their TV ministries. So I understand and I am not stupid that TV cost a lot of money, but yet in what they do and the way that they do it, it gives the appearance of being an abuse of power that God says was not acceptable. It also promotes a philosophy that only the rich can afford to know the truth of the Gospel and that is not a fair thing to do. As you can tell this bothers me a great deal and I think it is very wrong. Here is what Jesus said on the subject:
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
Jesus tells us that God did not charge us for the information that we learned to preach, so we should not charge others to hear it also. That is why I do a free blog on a free website and I never ask for money or request you to send me a donation. Money is not a motivational factor and why I do what I do. However, that does not mean you should not do what God says to do either. Wow, this is a very complex subject that involves the participation of everyone doing what they should do, when they should do it and then everything works according to God’s designed plan. So that is why I did not want to include this lesson in my series about seeds, because it can very easily be taken wrong. I probably ended this lesson and sounded like you should give me something for the spiritual seeds that I have given to you; and that is not what I said at all. I said that I do these lessons for free because I love being a blessing to others. So I try to do the right things according to the word of God and you should do the same. If you noticed this blog is called the “Agapegeek” Blog and not my name. That means I am anonymous and you do not know me or my address to send me anything. I do this on purpose also. How you can bless me is to tell a friend about what you have learned and increase the traffic on my web site. That would be one of the greatest ways that you can be a blessing to me. If you learned anything about giving and sowing financially then you should give to your local pastor to help support your church to grow. We have just briefly covered a much broader subject of sowing and reaping financially from the Word of God. This is a complex subject and one that is not easily understood by many. Many people find it very difficult to relate their money to be like a seed that can be planted into ground to grow and increase. However, you can certainly find this concept in the Bible therefore you can personally choose to participate in it or to ignore it. Thanks for reading my Bible Study and God Bless!
Understanding Seeds! Seeds and Weeds! Part 11
(Ver 1.4) Today is Part 11 of a very important series of lessons on Understanding Seeds in the Bible. We have covered a lot of very significant information that will not be repeated so I would highly recommend that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1”. Today is a follow up to some concepts that I have talked a little about before. However, today we will get into the aspect of weeds in a much more in depth study from the Word of God which will certainly challenge you to think. I will probably introduce you to several brand new concepts found in the Bible on this subject so be prepared to learn. Let’s start by stating the basic concepts of weeds. Weeds are plants that you did not plant! This is the basic concept that is critical to understand. If you wanted thorns and thistles growing in the front yard you would have planted them. But, if you are like me you put out weed killer to eliminate these types of plants so that your grass will grow and be healthier. Weeds grow in the same soil as plants from good seeds and in fact weeds also come from seeds, but just not the seeds that we plant intentionally. I personally believe that weeds are a result of the sin of man and God’s curse and we will probably talk about this more as we go. I would venture to say that weeds are a caused effect. Nothing happens by accident in the world. There are always causes and effects to everything. These are basic laws of physics implemented by God’s design. If you see waves in a pond of water you know that something caused the waves. So you must realize that God when He created our world and looked out on it and said “It was very good”, that God did not create weeds. I do not consider weeds to be good, but maybe you do. It is a highly subjective topic. Regardless, if weeds are present we know that something caused them to be here. So let’s review some things that we covered before and then go into more details in other parts of the Bible.
If you recall we covered several parables on seeds and one that Jesus taught that said the Kingdom of God is like a man who planted wheat seeds in his field. This parable is often called the parable of the Wheat and Tares. In this parable, while the man was sleeping an enemy came and sowed the seeds of tares among the seeds of wheat. It is interesting to note that by only looking at the ground at this point in time you cannot tell this was done. The implication was given to us that this was done secretly when the owner was away from the field and the owner only finds out about these weeds after time goes by and both kinds of seeds come up and grow together. In this parable the owner of the field is clearly God. The field can be viewed as the mass of humanity which is a type of the soil of the earth that we live in where seeds are planted. The good seed is again the Word of God. The weed seed was sown by God’s enemy Satan and these are the words not from God. The good seed produces the desired crop of righteous people on the earth; these are those who have chosen the narrow path and the weeds are those people who have been deceived and chosen the evil wide path to destruction. In this parable the servants (symbolic angels), go and ask the owner if they should pull up the tares, but the owner says let them grow together, or when you pull up the tares you also take out some of the wheat. So the harvest is representative of the end of the age that we are currently living within and the time for this harvest is extremely short. The harvesters are the angels of God who will gather God’s crop into God’s barn in heaven and then cast the weeds into the fire to be burned. You can read this parable in Matthew 13:24-30 if you would like to, but I covered the greatest parts of it in enough detail that you should understand these concepts pretty well. What we learn from this parable is a fact that God did not plant the weeds. God did not cause the weeds to be planted and in fact this parable states that God had nothing to do with the weeds. That is one of the key pieces of information from this parable to understand, so get a hold of that.
In the parable of the Wheat and Tares God introduced us to the concept of both seeds and weeds and this is my primary subject today. How are they related, where did they come from and who is responsible for each. It is clear in this first parable that the weeds are the evil people who have bought into Satan’s deceptions and are not saved. The wheat plants are the good people who have been saved by accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior and these are called the righteous seed in the Bible. So in this parable the concept of weeds is related to people. However, in another lesson the concept of weeds is potentially something completely different. Maybe you recall in the Parable of the Sower that Jesus taught us some more seed concepts that were extremely important to know. In the parable of the sower, the soil was the hearts of men and women in the earth. The good seed was of course the Word of God still. The sower was the preacher that would proclaim the Gospel of Christ and the Word of God. This parable also contained the concept of weeds being introduced in it, but this time the weeds were not specifically people, they were the things that caused people distractions in this world so that they did not produce fruit unto to God. It is critical to understand the difference in these two parables and to also put them together correctly so that you understand the similarities and the differences. Both parables are about the primary subject of seeds and both parables contain the concept of weeds. However, if you look at the first parable you could attempt to claim that the weed people were predestined to be weeds and the wheat people were predestined to be God’s harvest, but that interpretation contradicts the information given to us in the parable of the Sower. We must balance both parables to understand the subjects being taught. In the Parable of the Sower, everyone had the same opportunity to hear and understand the word of God, but clearly only three out of six soil types produced any fruit unto God. Here was Jesus’ explanation of these weeds:
Mat 13:22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
The first thing that you need to understand from this verse is that thorns are weeds; something that was not planted by the original farmer. So we can see that Jesus calls seed among the thorns to be those people who care more about things in this world than they do the eternal things that God says in His Word. Part of the root of this problem is given to us as being the deceitfulness of wealth and money. Often when people get a hold of money on the earth, they think they are in need of nothing including a savior. You can read about this parable of the sower in Matthew 13: 3-9. So we have two different parables with seeds and weeds using two different perspectives. However, they have more in common than you can imagine. They are actually the same people from two points of view. Those who are the tares in the first parable are those who have let the weed seeds of Satan dominate them. In fact the first three types of soil are all tares in the first parable that we looked at. These are those who have rejected the truth, refused to hear the truth, let others in the world talk them out of the truth or as we have seen love things in the world more than they love the truth. Both of these parables resulted in the same two separate groups of people, those who are weeds and are burned and those who produce fruit unto God and are harvested into heaven by the angels. So let’s examine this subject in other areas of the Bible and see what else God says to us about weeds and seeds. Where is the first mention or implied reference to weeds in the Bible? I will give you a clue and tell you that it can be found in the Garden of Eden.
Gen 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
Here we have the description of God’s creation. God planted a garden and caused to grow every tree that was good for food the Bible says. This subject so far sounds very similar to the two parables that we just read about where Jesus told us of God’s attempts at planting seeds into His gardens from two different perspectives. Both of these parables involved planting good seeds that came from God to produce good crops and an enemy comes into the garden to cause weeds to try to overcome God’s garden. Isn’t this what happened in Genesis 2 and 3? I believe that it is exactly what happened in these two chapters and we will begin to see that more clearly as we go. In Genesis 2:15 God describes the man’s purpose for being in His garden was to “dress” it and to “keep” it. Both words denote delagated human resposibility and accountablity. The first word is a word that means “WORK”! To work a garden implies one thing, that there are potential enemies and weeds that may come in and therefore you must do something about them to keep them out. Work involves two aspects in gardening, first caring for the plants that are good by feeding and watering them and eliminating the enemies and the plants that are bad to protect the good. The next Hebrew word translated as “keep” is very similar to work and it means to “watch” and “protect” the garden. A watcher or protector is someone who is given the task and responsibility to not only work the garden, but is required to protect it from any enemies who could potentially come and destroy it. Wow, two words of instructions was all that is necessary from God and they say so much to us in light of the parables that we have just seen about seeds and weeds. What we begin to understand now was that it was not God’s responsibility to keep the enemy out because that was given to Adam for him to do.
Gen 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Here in chapter 3 of Genesis we now are deeply into the subject of an enemy coming into God’s Garden where he should not be. Therefore, we are currently entrenched in the middle of the parable of the wheat and tares that we have looked at in the beginning of this lesson. We see this enemy, the symbolic “serpent” coming to Eve and he begins to plant weed seeds into her mind that caused the doubts of deception to grow. These are examples of the weed seeds of the enemy that God was teaching us about in the two parables we just reviewed in Matthew 13. God places a man in His garden and then leaves him in charge and goes away and now the man is responsible to “dress” and “keep” it. Satan brings the evil seed of the tares to Eve and she speaks them out for her husband to hear and he willfully hearkens to the voice of his wife and they are now captive to the deception of their enemy. Adam had the opportunity to guard and protect the garden of his heart, but he allowed Satan’s words through his wife’s voice dictate his decision to intentionally sin. I hope you understand what I just said as an overview of this story. If not, you can go and read my detailed lessons on Genesis 3 and hopefully you will grasp these subjects more clearly. I will drop down in Genesis to help you see a part of what I just said:
Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Here is a key verse that reveals to us God’s actions for the intentional sin of His man Adam. You can clearly see that God says Adam listened to Eve’s voice and not to Satan’s voice. There is no mention that Adam ever heard Satan speaking directly. Do you understand this? Probably not, because of the erroneous teaching of many tells us that there was a physical talking snake in the garden and if Adam was there he would have heard it all. However, that is not what the Bible says at all. You should go read my lesson on “Was there a Talking Snake In the Garden?”. Then you can see that God says something else about the ground being cursed for Adam’s sake. God then says that Adam will eat from it all the days of his life in sorrow. What was “IT” that Adam is said to be eating from. You can potentially say the ground that God just cursed, but I do not see it this way in the light of other verses found in the Bible. I believe God was saying because you Adam chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will eat from it all the days of your life. Isn’t this what Adam was just found guilty of partaking from? So what was the ground in the two parables that we looked at? The Garden soil was clearly the hearts of men and women. So what does all of this mean? If you search your Bible and read the references for this Hebrew word that is translated as “cursed” they almost always have something to do with someone who disobeys the Word of the Lord. God says something for them not to do and they do it and a curse is brought upon them as a consequence for their sins. However, curses are just the opposite of blessings. So how does God or people for that matter bless someone or curse someone? If you have read my other lessons you know that you bless people with the words of your mouth and you also curse people with the words of your mouth. James 3:10 said “blessing and cursing from the same mouth, this ought not to be”. So curses are spoken words that produce negative results in our lives or in the lives of those the words are spoken to. I think I will continue to the next verse in Genesis just to show you the connection to weeds again in this story.
Gen 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
Thorns and thistles are clearly both weeds produced from evil seeds. They are not produced by the Word of God so we can assume that these are produced from the seeds that Satan has just sown in God’s Garden of man’s heart. In the parable of the sower God repeated “thorns” for us to make the connection to this story in Genesis. What were thorns in this parable? God said thorns represented “the cares of this world” and the “deceitfulness of riches”. Do you think these apply to Adam in this story? I certainly do. I believe that God had just given the man and his wife the earth and Adam now believed that he was self-sufficient and did not need God’s help anymore . Adam at this time thought he had everything under control, but soon he would find out that he did not have anything under control when his Son Cain would kill his first born son Able. This was the beginning of Adam’s realization that what he had done was not so great after all. The sin that Adam introduced into the world was only beginning and the evil seed influence was only going to get worse before it got any better.
So God tells Adam that “IT” will produce thorns and thistles. So let’s back up and determine what “IT” is? If you recall the Bible says that Eve spoke words to her husband and God said that Adam “hearkened to the voice of his wife”. To hearken means to obey or do what she said to do. If Adam did something that he should not have done because his wife said for him to do it, what was this thing that God is talking about? Let’s back up and see what the Bible says Eve said.
Gen 3:2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
Gen 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
These are the only spoken words of Eve recorded in this chapter. So either this is the key to what she said or it is not. I believe that it is! If Eve said to the serpent then she spoke words that potentially her husband could hear. These words were partially correct but yet they contained some subtle differences to what God had said. God did say you could eat of the trees of the garden, but God never said that you cannot touch it. God simply said you shall not eat it or you will surely die. So how is the middle of the garden different than the garden? If God plants a garden and tells Adam every tree that is good for food I have given you for food but says this one in the middle of the garden is not for you, what is God saying? If you read my other blogs you already know this answer, but I’ll go into some new perspectives to help you see it a new way. I believe God was differentiating between two gardens in these statements. There is a major difference between natural things and spiritual things and you should understand this if you are a Christian. God gave man natural things as food and Jesus said that it is not what you put in your mouth that makes you unclean, so we know it was not anything that Adam physically ate that caused him to sin. If you do not understand this you should go read my lessons on “Does Eating Fruit Kill You”. So where is this middle garden that God is talking about where the tree of knowledge of good and evil is present? Let’s do a word search for the Hebrew word translated as “midst” and see what we find. I’ll start with one that I like in Proverbs because it is definitely related to my subject today:
Pro 4:20 My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.
Pro 4:21 Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.
Remember that the Word of God is the Good Seed of God. So what does God tell us to do with this seed? God starts by saying “attend” and this is a critically related word that can mean to “hearken”. Sound familiar? This is an intentional act of listening, hearing, understanding and doing. God then follows this up with “incline” your ears unto my seeds (words). Then God says for us to keep them before our eyes and then to keep them in the “midst” of our hearts. The word “midst” is the exact same Hebrew word used to describe the location of the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2 and 3. Do you get a hold of what God is trying to say here? It is the heart of man that is the location of God’s garden. It is the heart of man where God wants His seeds to grow. It is also the heart of man where weeds grow from the enemy of God, Satan. You can read about the heart of man being the middle of man in Psalm 22:14, 40:8, 40:10, and 143:4. Some of these are difficult to see because the same Hebrew word is translated as “within”. But, you should be able to find it if you look for it and see that within you is the spiritual heart location of God’s garden. Knowing this fact you can now begin to see that where spiritual fruit comes from as well as where spiritual weeds are also grown. These are spiritual concepts of seeds and weeds and are completely relevant to our discussion today.
Please allow me to take you to some more words of Jesus that are clearly and directly related to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden and hopefully this will help us to see the connections a little clearer of seeds and weeds. You might recall that I spoke these next words in connection to two groups of people in the world and here is what Jesus said to us about them:
Mat 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at:
Mat 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
So we can clearly see that these two groups of people are traveling separate paths. Those who are not of God are going down the easy path through the wide gate and the broad way to destruction. Those who God calls saved are those that are traveling down the narrow path and way through the narrow minded gate of righteousness. These are two distinct groups, two ways and two paths; one leading to life and the other leading to death everlasting. These are symbolic representations of either seed paths of good or the seed path of evil. There are many more opportunities in the world for evil seed than there is for the good seed. God only wrote one book of Good Seed and the internet, libraries and book stores are full of millions of books that you can choose to read that distracts you from the good seed. So let’s examine the next verse and see how it fits with what we are talking about in this lesson:
Mat 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Here is a word of warning from Jesus our God that we need to watch out for certain types of people in the world. The people specifically mentioned in this verse are called “false prophets”. A False Prophet would be the opposite of a True Prophet. A prophet is always someone who prophesies so we learn that not everyone that prophesies is from God in this verse. What are prophecies? These are spoken words aren’t they? Spoken words are a type of seeds, get it? God says beware the seeds of the false prophet and do not allow them to grow in your heart. These types of people will come in the form of harmless looking sheep, but they will secretly be wolves. So they disguise themselves to appear harmless and this is the first part of deception that you should become aware of. Now learn the connection in the next verse that I was attempting to get to in the previous 3 verses of Matthew:
Mat 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Jesus says you will know people by their fruit. In other words when people come to you in sheep’s clothing and speak subtle words to you, stop and observe them for a time period to see what kind of fruit they are producing in their life. In this verse Jesus connects or technically disconnects real fruit from weeds. Jesus says that you do not get grapes from thorn bushes and you do not get figs from thistles. Why did God use the exact same words in speaking to Adam that ‘it” would produce for him? God clearly tells Adam that thorns and thistles would result from something that he has done and now we are clearly given the location of these weeds and as we can see from what Jesus said these are spiritual weeds and they are the opposite of bearing spiritual fruit. Are you beginning to see and understand the connection that God is making to us in the Bible? Do you understand spiritual weeds better today than you did before you read this? I pray that you take this and continue to study the subject and go and find more verses that reveal and confirm this spiritual reality. I hope you enjoyed my advanced Bible lesson on Seeds and Weeds and please go and tell a friend what you learned. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on Seeds you can go to “Part 12“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! We Are the Seed of Abraham! Part 10
(Ver 1.3) Today I am writing Part 10 in the series of lessons that I have been doing on the spiritual concepts and laws surrounding God’s designed Seed planting principles. If you have not read this series from the beginning, I would strongly recommend that you start with “Part 1”. If you have been reading this series, then welcome back. When you get a hold of this teaching it will change a lot of what you think and know about God and the Bible. The concepts given in the Bible about seeds cannot be overly simplified because they are vastly complex in how God applies them throughout the Bible. The concepts of seeds are overlapping and run in parallel at the same time. Seeds concepts are truly woven threads in the fabric of God’s truth found throughout the Bible. The subject of seeds is a common theme given to us in every part of the Bible. You can find seeds mentioned in the beginning of Genesis 1 all the way to references to seeds in the last chapter of the Bible in Revelation 22. Seeds are everywhere in the Bible if you know what to look for and if you understand the concepts behind them. You see in Revelation 22:2 God speaks of the “Tree of Life” on each side of the river flowing from the throne of God. These “Trees of Life” produce 12 kinds of fruit. If you recall we learned that Fruit comes from planting seeds, naturally and spiritually. You plant a seed, you get a tree and then it produces the fruit to produce more fruit trees. It is a simple concept, yet so profound. So who are these symbolic fruit trees in Revelation 22? Do you recall reading back in Genesis 2 about the first mention of the Tree of Life? God created a Garden for man. In the garden God placed two trees, named Adam and Eve, I mean the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. It would appear to me that God’s plan was for man to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever, since this is the way it is described to end up in Revelation 22. So what can we learn here? We learned from the Parable of the Sower that the Word of God was the seed of God. We learned that the hearts of men and women in the world were the soil where seeds are planted. Let’s stop right there and analyze that statement. What is a Garden? A garden is where you plant your seeds to grow your fruit. Genesis 2 describes vast amounts of seed principles being applied by God. We have a symbolic Garden and we have 2 trees that are symbolic of something also. One tree is OK to eat from and one tree is not OK to eat from. Sounds like a good time for making the right decision. Since Adam did not make the right decision we still see that God says I will make the right decision and it will end up the way that I planted it to end up. After all it is my garden and my seed. Are you beginning to see the concepts being given?
When you begin to understand just a little bit about seeds you can begin to see that God is smarter than us all put together. I am a firm believer that God’s stated beginning in Genesis 1 & 2 was a symbolic representation of how He wanted it to end up when our time on this planet is completed. We know that God is the giver of the “Good” Seed. We know that we (the people) are God’s Soil or Garden. That would make God the Ultimate Farmer! Do you understand this?
Jas 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
Here is an amazing verse of scripture that describes God’s Farm System. The Lord God is described as being the “husbandman”. This Greek word translated as husbandman in the KJV Bible means “a worker of land” or literally a “farmer”. We can again see in this verse that Fruit is the desired anticipated outcome of God’s laborious seed planting. God sowed the good seeds to produce the good fruit from the earth. This verse is very symbolic in nature. The “Husbandman” is the Land Owner who Works the Soil to plant His seeds in. We can clearly understand that God owns the Earth, but that is only natural soil. God is not talking about a natural crop of corn in this verse. God is referring to a spiritual crop of fruit. But, realize that seeds do not produce fruit, seeds produce trees that produce fruit. This is a very critical part of the seed principle. This is why I called Adam and Eve trees that had no fruit in Genesis 2 and 3. Adam however, chose the wrong seeds and allowed the wrong fruit to grow, sinned and died. Adam in effect sold his birthright for some wrong fruit to Satan. We (the church) are now the purchased possession of God, by the redemptive price that He has paid with His own blood. Christians have been purchased, redeemed without money the Bible says. So we are God’s gardens that have allowed His Seed into our hearts to grow and produce fruit. We produce the Fruit that God is after. So when you read Revelation 22:2 and see the Trees of Life on each side of the river flowing from the Throne of God, we can understand that we are these trees producing this fruit every month of the year for an eternity to come. That is pretty cool stuff, if you ask me. If you can see it you will think it is pretty amazing also. Only by rightly dividing the Word of God have I come to these conclusions. By letting the Bible interpret itself and by understanding simple spiritual concepts like Seeds, Soil, Gardens, Planting, Sowing, Rain, Watering, Fruit, Reaping and Harvests.
So that was a quick introduction to an overview of how to apply the knowledge that we have gleaned from the Bible subject concerning Seeds. Like I told you before there are over 250 scriptures in the KJV Bible that directly mention the word “seed”. In many modern translations the literal meaning of the word “seed” is translated as offspring, children, or some other word that loses the true meaning that God was trying to get you to see. So while I do not try to tell you what to do, that is why I do not read many translations. They take too many liberties with God’s Word and change it too much. The best translation would be no translation, but since I do not speak Hebrew or Greek, I just look up the words in the dictionary and do the best that I can with God’s help. So the best translation of the Bible is the one that is the most literal and I can’t tell you which one that is, I just know some that they are not. People need to realize that God could have used any word that He wanted to and He picked “Seed” to describe these things we have been talking about. I guess translators think that God is stupid and He did not know the right word to use. Plus I use the KJV version because it is a FREE version of the Bible that is readily available to everyone without charge, limitations or restrictions. Jesus said freely you have received so charge the heck out of everybody and get all that you can. I think that is what some Bible manufacturers think, because this is the way that they act. It is only for the money they think. Oh, well I guess I’ll get off my soap box and keep teaching on the subject of seeds. Let me briefly review two concepts that I have touched on before, but this time using some new scripture verses.
Heb 11:11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
Hebrews chapter 11 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible. But most people do not see what it says. The chapter is dominated by one Subject and that is “Faith”. We can learn that even though God did not reveal “Faith” in the Old Testament, He definitely made it a determining factor to what people received in their life. This chapter goes through many examples of Bible faith and in this verse we are told of Sarah’s faith in God’s Word. Sarah believed that God was faithful because He had promised them a child. Now she was 90 years old when this child came, but yet God was not too late was He? Many times God’s timing is not your timing, but yet we should not question God, just believe that it will happen like He said. In this verse there is the direct mention of “seed”. Sarah was able to “Conceive” Seed. Did you know that this is how that Mary got pregnant with Jesus also? These were examples of conceiving two different types of “seeds”, but yet the end results were both the same. Sarah conceived natural sperm of her husband Abraham’s natural seed. While Mary conceived the “Word of God”, God’s also known as spiritual seed. Both women were required to believe that it would happen like it was told to them. Both women heard the message, before it actually happened to them. Neither woman had any evidence or proof that it would ever happen, did they? There was no proof? This is a pattern of how to receive anything from God. If you want a baby and have not been able to conceive a child, here is your answer. God does not show any favoritism to anyone! God is no respecter of person! What God did for Sarah and for Mary, He will do for you if you choose to believe also.
So I got off the subject of the Seed of Abraham. That is what this lesson was supposed to be about when I started. I guess God wanted to talk to somebody out there and tell them there was hope. before I more on completely I also want to point out that God can exachange one seed type for the other by the lessons of Sarah and Mary. What God has created in the natural can still happen by an equivalent type of substance usage or exchange from the spritual realm. A spiritual seed can replace a natural seed and still give the same result. Let’s move on to an example of this using the seed of Abraham. The Bible clearly tells us that Jesus Christ came into the world as the Seed of Abraham. Let’s prove that statement by reading this verse and see what God reveals:
Heb 2:16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.
The Bible is so complex, that it is impossible to teach everything that just one verse says in a short lesson like this. Why would God mention that Jesus was not born or created as an angel? That is a much more complex subject that I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned because I cannot talk about it in this lesson. It only gives you something new to think about. Learn to ask God questions when you read the Bible and you just may be amazed when He shows you the answers. So Jesus was not an angel, just load that basic fact into your mind for a future reference to a new unkown question. However, Jesus was born the “Seed of Abraham”. We need to review the basic seed concepts again that we have previously learned that should be firmly established in you by now. We learned that a man is a physical being that has “Seed” within himself. I showed you several times now that when Abraham paid tithe, his future descendant Levi was reported to have also paid the tithe at the same time. This was because the physical future seed Levi was in his great grandfather Abraham. If you do not recall this you should go back and review the earlier lessons, because this is a very critical piece of spiritual information to fully grasp. The principle revealed to us in this lesson was that every natural descendant of Abraham did exactly what Abraham did because they came from Abraham’s physical seed. Now that would be really good information if you were a natural seed of Abraham and I’ll tell you why soon. What about the rest of us on earth? We were called Gentiles by the laws of flesh in the world that were not born from natural seed of Abraham? Are we all left out because we were not born from the natural seed of Abraham? We will find out as we continue.
Keep in mind that the Bible is so much more complex than you give it credit to be. Also keep in mind that God is smarter than you and I are. His ways are not your natural ways, so it makes it very difficult for us to grasp these very spiritual things being taught to us. Let’s turn to Galatians and learn something brand new about seeds:
Gal 3:19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
You can see that this is a verse with wide seed applications attached to it. We talked earlier about that the word seed can either be singular or plural and you really have a very difficult time in determining which one it is by only reading on the surface. The word in this context is clearly singular. Jesus Christ is again called the Seed of Abraham as we can see. This verse tells us clearly of all the natural seeds that were “IN” Abraham, only one of them carried the hope of the promise that was given to Abraham. This was a very literal one in some several millions of future natural seeds, type of prophecy. God singles out and separates “One Seed” to be the “Chosen Seed”. We know that this Seed was God Himself. Knowing this now doesn’t sound very good for all the other natural seeds that came from Abraham. Can you see how the Bible presents us with puzzles and paradoxical predicaments? We read in one place that being a seed of Abraham seems to be a good thing, but now we read that only one of the seeds actually carried the promise. Wow are things getting complicated or what?
Gal 3:18 For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Let’s back up one verse in Galatians and see some of the context of what is being discussed around this subject of the “Chosen Seed”. I’ll try to stay on subject, according to what we just read in verse 19, we are talking about the Seed called Jesus Christ who we can see in this verse was promised the inheritance. So the inheritance was not promised to every seed, just the One! That is a pretty complex thing to think about and it can become a point of confusion, if we are not careful. What is an inheritance? Do you understand this concept? Have you ever seen or been to a lawyer’s office who reads someone’s last will and testament? Someone had to die in order for there to be an inheritance available to anyone. Do you understand this? This will certainly get more complicated than you can imagine when I tell you who died. Who died to leave an inheritance to the Chosen Seed? If you guessed that the Chosen Seed died you would actually be right! God gave Himself to be the sacrifice for man’s sin. God became the Chosen Seed of Abraham. This Seed died and was planted into the natural ground for 3 days and rose up spiritually alive again forever. God is the only one that I know of that is capable of experiencing death and then coming back to life to inherit that which He had left as an inheritance. I don’t know if you understand these concepts or not, but I know they are staggeringly powerful spiritual laws in action. Do you see how God used seed concepts and laws in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
What does all of this have to do with you and I? How does it affect us personally in the church? How do I apply seed information to me if I am not a natural seed of Abraham? I think that is what interests many people, what is the bottom line for me today? That is where I want to get to now. If you are a true Christian, a born again believer in Christ, then it has everything to do with you.
Gal 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
As you can see in this following verse of Galatians 3, the promise was by the faith of Jesus Christ that it might be given to us who believe. Do you see why I included the scripture about Sarah? Do you see how she was given a promise by God and trough her faith in His promised words, she conceived seed? God has implemented a system within Christianity that is based totally and completely upon faith and seeds. Let’s look at Faith in the terms of “Seed” concepts briefly. If you went to your garden and planted some seeds in it, did you have any faith when you plant your seeds? Do you believe that what you are doing is going to result in anything good in the future? You see if you did not have any faith in these seeds you would not have planted any of them in the first place. A seed is not a magic potion; you do not plant them and poof there they are like some magic bean stalk! Faith is never a Jack in the Bean stalk reality or fantasy. It always takes time and care to develop and produce that which was planted. So farming is a faith lesson. God planted a seed and expected a harvest. That is the definition of what faith is in a nutshell; believing in a harvest by only planting seeds in the ground. Remember that natural seeds are invisible substances when placed in the ground. You see nothing for many days and only believe they are there by faith.
Are you a believer today? Then you believe in God’s Seed principles. Even though you have never seen Jesus personally, you believe that He is faithful who has promised. The Bible says “Why stare ye into heaven? This same Jesus that you saw go up into heaven, will come back down in the same way” (Acts 1:11). Believing only in the words of angels written down in a book with no basis of proof and no physical evidence that you can take to court, that is what faith is. God’s Word is the Seed, remember? If you believe God’s Word it will conceive in your spirit the same as it did for Mary. No, you won’t have a virgin birth, God did not promise you that, but you can go into the Bible and see what He did Promise you and believe for that.
Gal 3:7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
This verse near the beginning of Galatians 3 makes a declaration that is not widely understood. As you can see this verse is addressed to the Church of Jesus Christ. How can a widely Gentile congregation of people be called the children of Abraham? If you look up the definition of the words, it actually calls Abraham our “father”. I thought God was our Father? Here is another perplexing puzzle given to us in the Bible. You see there is NO WAY that I am a natural descendant of Abraham. I was not born of the natural nation of Israel. But, yet God still calls Abraham my father. People obviously just ignore verses like these in the Bible, I guess? Since I am not a natural child of Abraham that only leaves me to be a spiritual child of Abraham. Do you understand this logic? There are only two realms of existence and these are the created natural realm and the original spiritual realm. If you are a living born again Christian on this earth you exist within both of these realms simultaneously. If you are not a Christian you only exist in the physical realm until you die physically. If you look at the context of this verse you can see that Abraham was justified by faith. Abraham believed God, Galatians 3:6 says to us. So this means that we have also been justified by the same faith that Abraham possessed. Not just believing in God, but believing God came to the earth personally and died for your sins and was raised from the dead. This is faith in God’s personal accomplished works and His Words.
Gal 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
You should make a valid attempt at understanding every verse in this chapter of Galatians. It describes who you are and reveals how you became what you are in very clear in-depth terminology. Let’s start by realizing that Abraham was extremely blessed by God. The natural descendants of Abraham have always been extremely blessed by God. The natural nation of Israel has controlled vast amounts of the world’s wealth ever since they left Egypt and took all they could carry. But, this verse says that the blessings of Abraham should come upon us, the Gentiles. How did this occur? It could only occur by you getting born again by your faith in Jesus Christ. Now that makes you of the same faith as your father Abraham. Again we see a principle of the seed within itself concept being given. Whatever our father spiritual Abraham did, that is also what we who believe God have done. Faith is a spiritual force of the human spirit. So you cannot see Abraham’s faith unless he does something to demonstrate his faith to us. When the lame man was brought to Jesus at the house where they tore the roof up to lower him to Jesus, the Bible says that Jesus could see their faith. So faith can be seen depending upon what people do. So what did our father Abraham do to demonstrate his faith? If you recall you might remember that God changed his name. When God changed his name from Abram to Abraham, Abram could have said that is not who I am and refused to go along with it. The name Abraham means “father of nations”. So by Abraham going around saying his name he confirmed that he was the father of nations even without having the promised child yet. This is another faith lesson that is an excellent story to show you how God works with people. But, this verse also says that the promise to Abraham was for us to receive the Spirit of God by this same faith. I honestly do not know how to explain that verse of scripture, so I just accept it by faith for now and trust the Lord God to reveal it to me later. Let’s skip down to the end of the chapter and see the last verse to wrap this lesson up:
Gal 3:29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
This chapter of Galatians ends with another seed concept and statement. If you are Christ’s, meaning that you belong to Him, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise. We again see a reference to the promise of God made to Abraham and to his seed. God promised the Seed of Abraham that He would be the heir. This seed was Jesus Christ. But, now it calls us this same seed at the same time. Since you and I are not Jesus how do we explain what this verse says? That is a very strong question that many people do not fully try to comprehend how that we in the church have become an equal heir with Christ. God again exhibits His extreme intelligence in how He designed these things to work. We are joint heirs with Christ by marriage covenant. The church is the Bride of Christ and if you do not understand this, you should read the series of lessons that I did on this subject. By being joined to Him by marriage covenant we have become one with Him. The law of Genesis says that the two shall be even as one! We have just seen another paradox being presented to us. We have one body or seed but two heirs. We can only resolve this paradox by studying how Eve came from the one body of Adam to make two. So the Bible is complex I know and you may struggle with many of the things that I teach. I hope and pray that you at least go and read all of these verses in your Bible and look up the definitions and meanings of every word you can find and see for yourself if they are true or not. Do not ever take my word for anything, I am a man that makes mistakes, I am capable of failing since I am an imperfect growing Christian just like you are. So the bottom line of today’s lesson was the Church was called the Seed of Abraham. Did you know you were a seed? I bet you are beginning to see that you are a seed in more ways than one. I apologize for covering too much in one lesson and making it so long today. God Bless You, until next time.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on “seeds” you can go to “Part 11“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! How are Spiritual Babies Conceived? Part 9
(Ver 1.4) I have been doing a series of Bible lessons on the significance of understanding how Seeds work. Only by understanding how natural seeds work, can we really ever focus on how spiritual things operate. God gave us the natural things in our world to teach us about the unseen spiritual things using the wisdom of His intelligent design. Using many Bible verses and the Seed laws from Genesis 1 I have explored several subjects applying the knowledge of seeds to other scriptures in the New Testament. We have discovered that the Bible says there are multiple things that are all referred to by the title of a “seed”. This is just one of God’s techniques of concealing the truth in plain sight. God calls many things by the same name, title or description. This makes it more difficult for the reader to determine what type of seed He is talking about. From our study we have seen that there are natural seeds, like fruit seeds or grass seeds mentioned in the Bible. We have seen children called seeds all over the Bible. We have seen the male sperm called his seed. We have seen spiritual spiritual things like God’s Word being labeled as the seeds that are spread by teachers in the spiritual soil of man’s heart. We have discovered that there exists two types of seeds in the Bible; one is the Good Seed and other is called the Bad or Evil Seed. By pattern association we can conlude these can be representative of the good words from God versus evil words from Satan. The Good seed was always sown by God exclusively and the evil seed was always sown by his enemy Satan. These are such important concepts to fully grasp. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning you should stop and go back to start reading with “Part 1” first. If you haven’t read from the beginning you have just missed more than I can possibly teach you in my simple introduction.
Today I want to discuss the previous seed concepts and seed laws in more detail to apply them to how a person becomes a Christian. I have alluded to this subject before in other lessons, but I will address it more completely today filling in some gaps. We have already seen that Jesus told us that the most important parable to fully understand is the Parable of the Sower. From this parable we should now know that God’s Word was the seed that the sower was spreading. We also learned that the soil in this parable was always the hearts or spirits of the men and women in the world. There were 6 revealed types of soil presented to us in this parable; 3 types of soil did not produce spiritual fruit and 3 types of soil did produce spiritual fruit in varying degrees of multiplication. This parable demonstrates Salvation to us very clearly and fully describes how you became a Christian. Those that hear the Word of God and allow other factors (spirits, natural attartions, etc) over rule their decision to be a Christian are those that were not saved. Those that hear the Word of God, understand it and choose to believe it, they are the ones that are saved and born again. All of this is really not that complex to me but I guess many people have not understood it and therefore do not apply it to the subject of how people become Christians.
So based upon the intimate knowledge of this parable of the sower, it would appear to me that the more Word of God we know the more fruitful we will become. Conversely the less you know about God’s Word seals your fate to hell. You do understand this don’t you? Jesus teaching the parable of the sower was Jesus spreading the Word of God to the entire world. Every man, woman and child born from Adam represents the symbolic soil that is responsible to allow or permit God’s seed to be planted. It is much more the human rejection of the Word of God (the Seed) from the soil (the spirit) that causes people to go to hell than anything else that they will ever do. People like to think that sin is the key factor for going to hell, but this is simly not the case based upon the Word of God. The Bible says that everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom 3:22). If everyone is a sinner there must be another factor for who is saved and who is not and it basically boils down to what type of soil we each choose to be. Do you realize that only you make the choices in your own life and for your life? I can’t do it for you, your wife can’t do it for you, your mother can’t do it for you and even God can’t and will not do it for you either. Do you also know that you have a spiritual enemy that is helping you to make the wrong choices? Only by studying the Bible can we better recognize the devices, plans and traps of this spiritual enemy. Only by continuing to study in the Bible are you able to grow and mature to being the overcomer that God has designed you to be. God is expecting to come back for a victorious church and not a defeated church.
So the Parable of the Sower gives us the basic overview for the whole plan of God for our Salvation. Jesus told us to “Go into all of the world and Preach the Gospel AKA the Word of God” (Mk 16:15). By preaching the Word of God you are sowing the Seed of the Word of God into the hearts of more people who can choose to let it grow. This is salvation or damnation in action. The soil decides its outcome and what kind of fruit that it produces. Let’s look at this in action in the Bible:
1Co 3:6 I have planted , Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and to you and I. Paul says that He has planted. So what does it mean to plant something? What was planted? As you can clearly see these are seed concepts that are repeated for us. Maybe you do not understand these concepts fully because you have never planted a natural garden in your back yard, but I have. You always start the process by putting seeds in the soil and you then conintue the process by watering the soil and they grow over time into something that you desired to have. If you look back at the previous verse you will see that Paul and Apollos were “ministers”. A minister is anyone that sows God’s Word by God’s design. If you hear someone speak in church that is not teaching from the Bible they are not a minister of God. If you go to a church and the speaker is teaching from a Reader’s Digest you need to find another church that works like God said it should. Paul sowed only from the Word of God to the people in Corinth and they believed it. Then there came along another preacher named Apollos and he watered the seed that was in the hearts/spirits of the people with more of the Word of God and this helped the seed to continue to grow. But, it says that it was God that gave the increase. In other words God caused His Word to Grow! Therefore only God gets any glory in the salvation of any man. Do you understand that no farmer can take credit for what is grown in his field? Does the farmer understand how corn is produced from seed? Did the farmer create the seed that produces the corn crop? I think you can see that he did not. Neither a farmer or a minister created the seed they are sowing or invented the growth process that takes place, only God did this. They just plant the seeds, water them and watch them grow like it was magic. However, this is just the designed seed process from God using His created Seed. This is a really amazing concept of how the spiritual New Birth process works. It is a partnership effort with God working through men and women who preach to spread the Seed of the Word of God. So the man that is planting the seed is not that important, it is only the word of God being planted that is the critically important part of the process. It is really a paradox and a puzzle, without men and women sowing the word of God no one would ever be saved. However, without the Word of God no one is saved either. If you are sowing seeds of Buddhism no one will be saved no matter how much you teach on it. If you are sowing the seeds of Islam you are sowing words that never produce salvation. If you are sowing the words of Judaism you are also not going to be saved. It is not very good news for any world religion out there; God made only One Way into the Kingdom of Heaven and that was through His Son Jesus Christ. So do not throw stones at me, I’m just a farm messenger. I did not write the Bible!
1Pe 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
So I think I have given this verse before in another lesson on seeds, but it bears repeating for our current discussion on how people are born again. The fact that we have been “Born Again” is attributable to us receiving the incorruptible Seed of the Word of God into our spirits. There are two terms given to us by God in this verse that are critical to understand. These are “Corruptible” vs. “Incorruptible”. The term corruptible means able to “decay” and you can state this to be equivalent to a man’s mortal body. The natural realm is a temporary realm of decaying particles. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that everything around us is decaying and not reorganizing like evolutionists like to believe. If you build a new car today and never drive it; it will become a pile of rusted metal in the course of time. The opposite of mortal is immortal. We have been born again from an immortal seed. You may recall that Jesus said “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mat 24:35). So the Word of God is immortal, and not capable of being eliminated. The Word of God is the incorruptible SEED that causes us to be born again spiritually.
Corruptible seed can be viewed as either a physical or a spiritual type of seed. The sperm of a man is a corruptible natural seed. But also the spiritual words (seeds) of Satan are also considered to be corruptible towards the human spirit. Jesus never says that the words of your enemy Satan will stand forever. So every false teaching and false religion will be eliminated someday. So we now have a dilemma of sorts of how to discuss natural things so that we do not offend anyone by comparing them to spiritual things. You see if being Born Again is s comparable pattern to being born in the natural the first time, then how are natural babies conceived? You can begin to see my difficulty, can’t you? God created sex for a reason and it wasn’t just to make you feel good. Sex is a part of the reproductive pattern of new life on our planet. So sex must be related to new spiritual life also. So how does natural sex relate to the spiritual New Birth? That is where we are today in this discussion. Get ready for a new concept that you may have never though of:
Gen 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
We are informed that Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she conceived his physical seed. This is God’s definition of natural sex in the Bible. By the law of first mention, God again gives us the definition of what it means to conceive revealed in terms of spiritual information and descriptions. God could have described this act differently, but He specifically chose this Hebew word translated as “knew”. The definition of this word is therefore very critical for us to understand in order to see how it applies to spiritual things like being born again. The Hebrew Word translated as “knew” means “to ascertain by seeing”. This is truly complex because men are visual types of people, they like to see. Women are not visual people and they do not want to see anything generally speaking. There is a widely used term for natural sex that is called “carnal knowledge” and this phrase is more in the line with the spiritual realm information that we need to apply correctly instead of thinking of the human term “intercourse”. We need to correctly transfer God’s definition of sex as “knowling” into the spiritual New Birth process. We should be able to see using our knowledge of the Parable of the Sower that in order for any human to be born again, they must have “spiritual knowledge” with the Lord God’s Word (Seed). This is not sex as you are thinking right now is it? However it is still spiritual sex according God’s definition of the act. The human ability to “see spiritually” God’s Words causes them to conceive it. However don’t forget there still exists an enemy to that salvation process trying to steal the seed from being sown. The success or failure of the salvation seed process is completely dependent upon the fact that some people understand the Word of God and some people do not. This enemy’s method of causing some people not to understand is revealed more clearly in the New Testament scripture that says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not” (2 Cor 4:4). You see spiritual blindness is the inability to see or literally understand spiritual things. If you recall in the parable of the sower, Satan came immediately to steal the Word of God that was sown in their heart and he was able to do this only because they did not understand it (Mat 13:19). Therefore, spiritual eyesight is the key to having spiritual knowledge and understanding. I could talk a lot more about that part of the subject, but I’m running long in this lesson. I do pray that you are following me on these points and beginning to understand how people are born again. Let me end this lesson with one more verse from Paul:
Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
So here we have another very difficult complex deep scripture to try to swim through. The apostle Paul is not a natural female yet he speaks in the terms of being a spiritual female. Can you see this? Only females give birth, yes? According to what I have seen in the Bible God created only females to give birth. So what exactly is Paul talking about? Paul is saying I have spread God’s seed into your hearts by teaching God’s Word to you and I am now waiting for Christ to be formed in you as a result. What is the key to this spiritual birth happening? It was the spiritual ability to see or the “spiritual knowledge” of the person who heard the word of God that will determine whether they will conceive Christ and be born again. Paul can sow all of the seed he wants to, but none of it will grow unless the soil of the hearer allows it to stay by understanding what was said. You can easily see how that you can read verses in the Bible and totally miss what is said, can’t you? You can also see that there is an implied reality that Paul is a part of a spiritual woman, called the Bride of Christ. So the complexity of the Bible is so great that it causes many people to stumble. People will never see the spiritual truth of God’s Word trying to figure it out using only their natural minds. What we can see is that Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was not the be all and end all for his Christian experience. He was now responsible for getting more people born again by sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God. Getting more people Born Again of the Incorruptible Seed, that is the goal of every Christian. This is the expansion of the new spiritual family of God and the multiplication of the Spiritual Seed of God by sowing the Incorruptible Seed into new soil. Today’s lesson has been some of the basic Bible ideas of how people are born again using the laws and concepts surrounding Seeds in the Bible. I know I did not cover everything that I could have, I know I left out many verses that could have been included, but I did the best that I could in a limited time and space forum. God Bless you to see and to understand His Word! Thank you for your time in studying the Bible.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on seeds you can go to “Part 10“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! If You Abide IN ME and My Words Abide IN YOU! Part 8
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 8 of a series of lessons on the concepts and laws surrounding seeds found in the Bible. The Seed is a natural divinely inspired design principle revealed in creation that demonstrates vast complex spiritual revelation. In the previous lessons I taught on the laws surrounding seeds and demonstrated some of their applications given to us in the New Testament. Today I will be doing another one of those lessons about seed applications using the New Testament. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”. Only by following the series from the beginning will you have much of a chance at understanding what is being taught. Let me review briefly the Major Seed Laws from Genesis 1 that we have already covered:
- Fruit with Seed within Itself!
- Every Seed produces after its Kind!
- Seeds Produce Trees that Produce More Fruit!
- You Always Harvest more than You Sow! Seed Multiplication.
Seed concepts are not widely known in modern America. Very few people plant gardens and grow their own fruit, vegetables and crops. The farm concept was a widely known principle in early Bible days. This is one of the key reasons Jesus taught using these principles so often in the parable lessons that he gave us. In Jesus’ days on earth, if you wanted to eat you better grow it. Today modern children just think everything is magic that appears at the grocery store or at the market and they probably do not even have a clue how it is produced. As a result of this they have lost the essential concepts and laws of planting seeds and getting harvests. To lose sight of these concepts is to lose sight of God’s designed ways. The Seed concept is still a vital part of the End Time Plan of God. God has never lost sight of what seeds are and how seeds work. That is one of the key reasons I have spent this amount of time on this subject. I believe it to be absolutely critical to understand how God works in the spiritual realm and since we do not have any personal experiences in this realm we must rely on the natural realm that God created as a pattern of information for the unseen spiritual realm. Of course you do not interpret nature, you interpret the Word of God, using the Word of God to define the things that you find in nature and this is the key to seeing these Bible truths and hidden spiritual things.
Today I am going to expand on the topic of the “Seed within Itself” Law of Genesis 1 using some fresh New Testament verses. In earlier blogs on this subject we discussed how that Levi had paid tithes in Abraham, because he was a seed of Abraham (Heb. 7:9). Levi was a future descendant of Abraham, yet God counted what Abraham did as applying to what Levi had done. This is one of the most profound truths in the Bible that I have ever seen, yet I have not heard hardly anyone teach on it. The concepts behind this teaching are far reaching and apply to many things in the spiritual realm. Today I am going to give you an example of these concepts. Let’s start the lesson with a verse found in Galatians:
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
There are verses like this one in the Bible that will totally confuse you unless you understand the Seed Laws and apply them correctly. How can Paul have been crucified with Christ, when he was not even there physically with him? I hope that you are beginning to see how this is possible. Paul was not there physically, but he was there spiritually as a future spiritual seed of God. If natural children are natural seeds in the Bible, then spiritual children are also seeds, but of a spiritual kind. Remember everything produces after its own kind. Jesus was called the Seed of Abraham and the Seed of David in the Bible. Paul was calling himself a seed of Christ Jesus. Whatever happened to Jesus is what happened to US who are born again. Since the spiritual birth is a spiritual process that is patterned after the natural birth process we can very easily begin to see that Paul considered himself to be a spiritual descendant of Jesus. Paul looked at Jesus as being his spiritual father. Paul looked to Jesus as being the head of a new spiritual family of God as you and I are also in this family. Here is another verse that use to boggle people’s mind:
Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
As you can see this verse says that we have been raised from the dead with Christ and that we now sit with Him in heaven. Have you ever been to heaven? If you have then you probably died or saw a spiritual vision of heaven. No, again we see the application of the “Seed within Itself” Law being applied to us in the spiritual realm. Whatever our father Jesus accomplished we accomplished because we were “IN HIM” when He did them. Wow, that is so awesome! That is just a totally RADICAL concept to try to wrap your mind around, isn’t it? Everything that Jesus did, we did if you are born again! This is why in the New Testament you can search and find so many verses in the Bible that describe how we are IN CHRIST, IN HIM, IN WHOM. By finding out what Christ did, you find out what you DID!
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
There are just too many scriptures in the Bible that repeat the “Seed within itself principle for me to give you them all. I think I gave you this one before, but it is so good that I will briefly go over it again. Because the human race was “IN” Adam all must die. Adam’s death passed death to every one of His Seeds. This is the natural picture of the seed within itself concept being described to us very clearly. Then there is a spiritual contrasting truth that is now revealed to us that Jesus who is the Last Adam and that He is the spiritual procreator of a new people that will live. Because Jesus was raised from the DEAD, we have been raised from the dead because we were IN HIM! As in Adam all died, so those IN Christ will all live. You better make sure that you are IN Christ if you want to live spiritually in God’s family!
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Being IN Christ is essential to understanding your position today in the spiritual realm. Those who are spiritually born again have become a NEW CREATION of Almighty God. This means that we are something that never existed before. Adam had a spirit within his body, but did not have the Spirit of God in union with his spirit. You can see in this verse that translators have added 3 words that are not in the Greek. If you take these out, they basically say the same thing, but review it without these words:
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man in Christ a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
You can see a subtle difference now. The fact that we are IN Christ has not changed but only because we are IN Christ makes us a new Creature with Christ! God the Almighty Creator became a part of His creation by His designed purpose. I could try to elaborate why this was necessary but I might just cloud the current subject with too much extraneous information, so I’ll pass by that for now. What I want you to focus on is the fact that a man is now IN Christ and that is what also makes him able to participate as being a New Creature!
2Co 5:19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
Now we can see why Jesus Christ was so different and why Satan did not know what to do with this man. Jesus was born a human male that had the Spirit of God within His Body. This is the SEED within Itself Concept being repeated. God provided Himself the Seed for our reconciliation. These seed concepts are so important for you to understand. It truly helps you to see what was accomplished by God and how He did them. God was IN Christ; the church was IN Christ so we are now IN God. Christ IN Us, the hope of Glory! Now the reverse concept is also applicable in the New Testament Bible. You can see that not only are we IN Christ, but Christ must also be IN us! It is a two way seed street reality. How do you get Christ in YOU?
Joh 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it Abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye Abide in me.
More seed concepts are given in this verse statement of Jesus Christ. You can see the concept of fruit being given. Fruit is the end result that God is looking for in the lifes of every Christian. This fruit will always contain seed to produce more fruit. This is again the seed within itself concept. But we can also see the two way street that I just referred to and how that this works. While the SEED of God is in us, we are in the VINE of God. The VINE represents Christ and we are in Him. We the church, are the branches that produce the fruit as long as we abide in Him, Christ the Vine! But, we the church are also the ones that have the Word of God in Us! If you recall from earlier lessons on this subject, the Word of God was the Seed of God. We have been born again not of corruptible seed, but of the incorruptible seed, which is the Word of God (1 Peter 1:23). So we are beginning to see how it is a full circle concept of Seed Salvation. Everything starts with the Word of God and everything continues to exist with the Word of God.
Joh 15:7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done untoyou.
Do you see what Jesus is telling you? Do you see how the seed concepts and seed laws are affecting what you get in life? Do you see how that if you abide in Christ the Vine (the Spiritual Seed of God) and if you allow the Word of God (also the spiritual seed of God) to live in you a natural seed (the Seed within Itself) that you can not only produce fruit but that you can also get your prayers answered by God? Everything hinges upon the Word of God which is the Seed of God that produces the results that God is expecting to harvest very soon. Seeds are everywhere in the Bible. The concepts of seeds are everywhere in the Bible. Different Seed types and seed patterns are repetitious, overlapping and intersecting with each other and this can make them vastly complex to understand. The intelligence of God is so much greater than our minds and therefore we are challenged to come up to a higher dimension of how to think about these spiritual things and God’s Word. May the God of Peace enlighten your minds so that you can comprehend these Seed Principles! God Bless, until next time!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can now continue with “Part 9“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! The Seed of Resurrection! Part 7
(ver 1.2) This is now Part 7 of a series of lessons on the concepts and laws surrounding seeds found in the Bible. The Seed is a naturally divinely inspired designed principle that demonstrates vast spiritual revelation and today will be another example of that. In a previous lesson I taught on a parable that Jesus spoke on concerning the seed concept that if a seed ever produces fruit, it must first die and be planted (buried) in the ground (John 12:24). We looked at Jesus being this seed, but of course He was also a man like you and I in the world. The Spirit of God raised the man, Jesus Christ from the dead and He became the first man ever to be resurrected from the dead. We know that the man Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross in Jerusalem. We know that He hung there and died. We know the Roman soldier pierced His side and His blood and water from His body flowed from His side onto the ground. We then know His body was taken down and placed in a tomb. We can now begin to understand the seed concepts being presented. The body of Jesus was a seed. This seed died and was buried in a earthly tomb. But, after 3 days we know that God raised this man Jesus back to life in His own physical body. So far I’m just stating things that you should already know, especially if you have been reading this series. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
Let us today start by discussing some basic seed concepts using a natural seed. Did you know that a seed contains 3 main parts? How many main parts does a man have? A man also has 3 man parts; man is a 1). spirit that has a 2). soul, who lives in a 3). body. So man has 3 main parts. I believe the parallels to natural things and spiritual things are quite amazing. God is also described as a 3 part spiritual being. God the Father, God the Word and God the Holy Ghost are the three parts that comprise the One True God. So what are the 3 main parts of a natural seed? They are the 1). Seed Coat, the 2). Endosperm and the 3). Embryo. These are the 3 major components of a natural seed. Let’s compare the makeup of a man to the makeup of a seed. The outer portion that we can see would be the “human body” and this would correspond to the “seed coat” which is the outer shell membrane. Then man’s next layer going from least important to most important would be his soul. The soul of the man is his “mind” and this component corresponds to the seed “Endosperm”. The final most important part of a man is his spirit. The “spirit of man” corresponds to the most important part of a seed, the “Embryo”. God can be very tricky to understand. As you might have seen God calls the children of humans their “Seed”. So God describes the human makeup of a man to be designed after a seed. As you can see from the natural description of a seed this information corresponds very closely. However, in another parable Jesus spoke of a man being the “Ground” that the seed is planted into. However, this time the seed is the Word of God. Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower that man could be 6 different types of ground or natural earth. This is the part that makes many people scratch their heads and say “how can we be both”, yet God clearly calls us both of these. I believe it depends upon your perspective and the application that you are attempting to use it in. Clearly there are different types of seeds and this is part of the difficulty of interpretation, being forced to determine the context and the correct type of everything being discussed by God. No body that I know of says Bible interpretation is easy, if you think it is you have been deceived.
So I have gone through a long introduction, introducing some new things along with a review of some basic seed concepts that we should have all previously learned. Today I want to show you something new in the Bible that applies to God’s design of us being a type of seed. The subject of the resurrection is of course a potentially controversial subject, since not to many people know much about it. Some believe in it and some do not. It is no different today than when Jesus walked the face of the earth. You may remember in Matthew 22:23 that a group of people came to Jesus to ask Him a question. These people were members of the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. So it is really no different today, we still have people who do not subscribe to what the Bible teaches. So let’s discuss resurrection and what it is briefly. The “Resurrection of the Dead” is a basic foundational truth taught in the Bible (Heb 6:2). The Greek word in the Strong’s dictionary means to “raise up”, to “stand up again” or “to raise to life again”. These are those which were once alive who are stated to have died and behold are alive again. That is the concept of resurrection being described to us and this is a seed concept being clearly demonstrated. A seed lives, a seed dies and is raised again to a new life after being planted. So if a man is a seed and his makeup or design resembles a natural seed we should be able to see how God plans to use this concept in the resurrection of our physical bodies.
1Co 15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
In this verse Paul is writing to the church at Corinth and answering some basic theological questions. There must have been some raging debate on the subject to cause God to respond in this manner. Of course it also helps us to learn what was being taught since we were not present when Paul taught it to them personally. Two questions are presented to God. First, how are the dead “raised up” and second what kind of body will they have? I think these are two very good questions and we will see if God answers these questions.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Backing up in the chapter we see some contextual verses that are also in reference to the seed resurrection principle. Adam caused all men to die because we were all “in” Adam when he sinned. Christ will cause all men to live again because we that are born again were in Christ when He was raised from the dead. This is not a universal salvation, meaning that everyone will go to heaven however. You see there are people trying to deceive others using these types of teachings where they only use the parts of the Bible that they like and then reject the parts that they do not like or that don’t fit what they desire to believe. Here is a verse that Jesus gave us on this subject of resurrection.
Joh 5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
To “come forth” is a Seed concept. You dig a hole in the soil, sow a seed in the ground, cover it with dirt and in the process of time it “comes forth” out of the ground. Then Jesus tells us that some who have done good things will be resurrected into life and these are the good seeds that God planted. However, then there is the bad news for the bad seeds, those that have done evil will be resurrected to damnation. Wow, not very good news for some people. Everyone is prophesied to be resurrected from the dead and come forth but there are two types of seeds being described and they are very different, even completely opposite. We learned this concept when Jesus taught us the parable about the man who sowed good seed (Mat 13). The enemy came and sowed tares among the seeds of wheat and they both came to bear fruit simultaneously. What we discover is that the resurrection for the dead is a reality that everyone will face in the future; it is really dependent upon what type of seed you are in to where they end up. Some will be very happy and some will be extremely sad.
1Co 15:32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die.
Here is a verse that I thought I would include simply because this is a common attitude found in the present evil world that we live in. People are massively consumed with self-indulgence and have a self-centered attitude towards life. If you have something and I want it I’ll just take it. After all there are no consequences to life, we are just the same as every other animal on the planet, they think and have been taught. If we evolved from monkeys and monkeys die that is the end of them so it is with us. There is no God, no Judge, no hell, no way are we going to bear any responsibility for our actions so live it up and be all that you can be for tomorrow you may die. People are so focused on themselves they do not know what they are doing to others. That is really going to be the hardest lesson to learn when it comes to judgment day.
1Co 15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
So let’s get back to finding the answers to the two questions being asked by the skeptics. How is it possible that this resurrection will occur and what will I look like after it does occur?
1Co 15:36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
God begins to answer the first question using the seed principle. To quicken something means to be made alive. This is a changing or reversal from death to life. What God is describing is the basic seed concept we previously discussed. A seed is useless unless it first dies. Only after the death of a seed, can the new life come forth. I like Paul a lot. He is very straight forward and stands firmly behind what he teaches. He says that those who are ignorant are fools because they purposely reject the truth. You need to decide if you want to be a fool today or change to accept the wisdom of God. God is revealing to us seed principles that are very profound and they apply directly to us in this subject of the resurrection of our physical bodies. We wouldn’t be able to live again if Jesus did not die for us and plant the seed for our salvation. Here is the next verse so pay close attention to what it says:
1Co 15:37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
God almost gives us a contradiction of terms. One of the seed principles from Genesis is every seed produces after its own kind. An orange seed will produce only an orange tree. But, now we see another extension to the puzzle. You plant a seed and you get a tree and not just another set of seeds. In other words you do not plant a tree and get a tree. Or you do not plant a seed and just get more seeds. No the basic law is that you plant a seed and you will get a new living plant. God is saying in this verse in 1 Corinthians that the physical body that you have right now is nothing but a bare grain of seed. What God is alluding to is that your physical body you have now is not the spiritual body that you will have after the resurrection.
1Co 15:38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
While wheat seeds only produce wheat, God is saying that every human is still a uniquely designed individual. So while we are all human seeds, we look differently and have unique natural features like individual fingerprints and DNA. These unique features will produce a similar design in the resurrected us. In other words everybody will not be clones in the resurrected spiritual realm. You can clearly see in this verse God is calling us each a seed, but at the same time also calling us all unique seeds. That makes our seed discussion a little bit more complex, but yet same seed principles and laws still apply. So let’s go through some of the other information revealed to us:
1Co 15:42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
I skipped down to verse 42 because it seemed relevant to our seed discussion. God says He will take the corruptible natural part of us and sow it to produce the new incorruptible part of us during the resurrection. That is pretty cool stuff, if you ask me.
1Co 15:43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
What was dishonorable and weak will become glorious and powerful. God is giving you a clue comparison of the difference between the old and the new. That which will become a new is highly better than that which was sown. This is a result of being born again of the incorruptible seed of God and not the corruptible natural seed of man.
1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
Our natural bodies will be planted as a seed that will produce the spiritual resurrected bodies. God clearly declares that our future spiritual bodies are not the exact same as our current physical bodies. The new spiritual body will not get sick, or grow old, will not fail, or even grow tired. There are just too many new features to describe this new body. The new body will certainly have many of the same features of the old body and still be able to do many of the things that old body could do. The best of the old will continue to be present in the new. Jesus after being resurrected from the dead would still eat natural food with his disciples. So eating is a future good thing to look forward to and all the church people said amen! So I think I have gone long enough on the subject of the “Seed of Resurrection”. I hope and pray that you enjoyed the lesson and derived some benefit from reading it. God continue to bless you until the next time.
If you like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 8“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Seed Laws Applied to New Testament Truths! Part 6
(ver 1.3) This is Part 6 in the study series about seeds in the Bible. In my last few lessons on this subject, I have been going through some of the parables of Jesus concerning the subject of Seeds. In these lessons we learned some very valuable spiritual information that apply to every Christian believer and unsaved non-believer. Jesus used these natural Seed concepts and laws to describe vast complex spiritual realities that we have never seen or could even attempt to understand. The Bible contains more than 200 direct references to seeds in the KJV Bible and certainly many, many more indirect references on the subject can be found. If you have not been reading this series of lessons from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with Part 1 first. Today I want to teach you some New testament truths by reviewing and applying some of the basic seed law concepts that we learned from Genesis. We will read and study several New Testament verses that we have not discussed up to this point and learn how seeds apply to them.
THE SEED WITHIN ITSELF LAW
One of the first seed concepts that I gave you was the “Seed within Itself” law and concept revealed in Genesis 1:11. If you do not understand correct Bible interpretation, one rule or law of correct Bible interpretation is called the “Law of First Mention”. By going into the Bible and finding the first occurrence of a subject you are introduced to some basic concepts that are usually critical to understanding the entire subject. So Genesis 1:11 says that the earth brought forth trees with fruit “whose seed was in itself”. We understand this to be a natural law which applies, to fruit as well as to the natural man and woman. This law represents a self-sustaining reproductive system that was designed and created by God. God created one thing and this thing contained the built in capability to reproduce indefinitely, sustaining the existence of the species.
1Jn 3:9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
In reviewing the parable of the Sower we learned that the Seed of God was the Word of God. It was the Seeds of God’s Words that produces the spiritual fruit in our spirits. So this verse in 1 John 3:9 tells us that we are born of God. We should be able to clearly understand that this is a spiritual birth and not a physical birth and we can confirm that by reading the words of Jesus in John 3. We have previously seen that the human male sperm was called “seed” in the Bible and we can now begin to see a spiritual application taught from the pattern found within the naturally created reproductive process. This verse says that when we are born spiritually, and it came as a result of us accepting the truth of God’s Word. Now God’s Seed is in us and this is a spiritual repetition of the “seed within itself” law. The more of the Word of God you learn, the more of the Seed of God you have in you and the more fruit of God is potentially produced. It is a very basic concept, but yet very profound.
1Pe 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
So here is another New Testament verse that describes the spiritual Seed of God to be the Word of God. This Spiritual Seed is compared and contrasted with the natural seed of the created man. The sperm of a man is called the corruptible seed. The Greek word translated as corruptible means “decaying” or “perishing”. This is interestingly enough related to the laws of thermodynamics that states everything is in a state of decay around us. Humans are in a state of aging from the moment they are conceived. However, we the body of Christ are Christians that are spiritually “born again”. This birth is not a natural birth, but is a spiritual birth that came as a result of us hearing the Spiritual Words of God. This would be symbolically analogous to our spirits being like the womb of a woman with the fertile egg present. By us lending our ears to God’s Word and hearing it and then understanding it, God’s Word becomes one with our spirit and then God’s Spirit becomes one with our spirit (1 Co 1:16). 1 Peter 1:23 teaches us that God’s word/seed will now “Abide” within us. Abide means to indwell and live in our spirits. This is clearly the seed within itself law from Genesis 1:11. If you have heard the Word of God and have accepted it and know it you have His spiritual seed on the inside of your spirit. Always remember that the Seed of God is in you!
EVERY SEED PRODUCES AFTER ITS OWN KIND LAW
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
God is talking to us about another law concerning seeds in this verse in Galatians. This law is also revealed to us in the first chapter of Genesis 1 in verse 11. However, here God is telling us about the seeds that are sown by a man. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? God says that every man will reap whatever kind of seeds that he sows. This is a basic spiritual application of the first law of seeds that every seed produces after its own kind. When I talked about this law originally, I told you that an apple seed will produce only an apple tree and an orange seed will produce only an orange tree. So what you get in life is determined by what you plant. This verse also says that God is not mocked by those who say this is not true and by those that say that this does not apply to them. In other words God is saying this is the way everything in the world works whether you believe it or not. That was a very strong statement from God. You should be beginning to understand a little better about the power of the seeds that you sow, if you have read this entire series of lessons. If you decide not to believe what you just read, God says you are not mocking the messenger Agapegeek, you are mocking God and I would be very concerned about doing something foolish like that.
Gal 6:8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
The next verse in Galatians is just more conformation to exactly what God has said before. This verse reveals to us that there are two types of seeds that every man can sow in this world. The first type of seed is a natural or carnal seed type and this is another example of a corruptible seed type that will reap only natural death. Then there is a spiritual seed type that can be sown and this seed reaps life everlasting. So let me stop right there and ask you this, what is life everlasting? This certinaly does not mean that you will never die physically if you sow to the spirit. It also does not mean that you will ever cease to exist, if you do not do this. Man was created as a spirit being that will never cease to exist, after we die physically; our spirit will either go to heaven or to hell based upon our current relationship with Jesus Christ. The problem with most Bible interpretations is that people do not attempt to get God’s definition on any of the words that they are reading. They read every word and assume they know what they mean and then miss what God is trying to teach them. Here is a verse in the Bible that gives us God’s clear definition of what “eternal life” is in His eyes:
Joh 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
To me this definition changes the meaning to what I thought it meant to live eternally dramatically and it causes me to shift my thinking differently than I had ever thought before. Eternal life is not living forever; eternal life is your ability to know the True Living God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent forever. That is just a radically different perspective of life eternal. Those who die without this spiritual eternal life will never know God or Jesus Christ and will probably not have a clue why they went to hell. I guess they may have some idea since God speaks of a coming time of judgment and there will certainly be some discussion to the charges against them before judgment is passed if God’s court is like our courts. I guess that last two statements was just my opinions so please do not take them as scripture. I also briefly got off of the subject of seeds to define a term that I think is important for you to know.
SEED SINGULAR OR SEED PLURAL?
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
I alluded to this seed concept in an earlier lesson on this subject. I talked about the fact that the word “seed” can be taken as either plural or singular and that it is only determined which one it is referring to by the contextual usage of the word and even that can be very difficult figure out. This is just one of the intentionally designed methods of God used to conceal the truth in the Bible. In this verse in Galatians God is referring to the promise made to Abraham. Since Jesus was in Abraham when God made this promise Jesus was the “Seed” within himself that was to receive the promise. Abraham naturally fathered several children. Ishmael and Isaac are the two obvious sons that everyone remembers from Sunday school. However, Ismael was cast out of the house by Abraham’s wife Sarah and is not the promised child. Isaac was the promised child, the future grand-father to the nation of Israel. But, yet Galatians say that Isaac was not the seed that was to receive this promise. However, again Jesus was also in his father Isaac as the seed. Then the two sons of Isaac were born, Jacob and Esau. Esau, the firstborn was not the selected path either, but the younger son Jacob was. Jesus was in His father Jacob as a seed. I could go on and on through every generation from Israel to Mary and see that Jesus was in each parent. But, none of these were the selected “seed”.
Galatians 3:16 says that the promised “seed” that was in Abraham was only Jesus Christ. This was clearly a singular occurrence and not a multiple pattern of seeds being referred to. Hopefully you can better understand how God can look at Abraham and make a promise about his seed, when God was speaking about Jesus Christ who was in Abraham. The Son of God was the promised seed able to fulfill the requirements of God’s conditions, to fulfill the law, to live a sinless life, to die and shed his blood for you and I and to be raised from the dead so that we could forever go and live with Him. To me that is just an awesome display of the wisdom of God. I think I will end this blog today right here. I have just selected a few New Testament applications of the Seed concepts and laws and tried to show you how God used them to fulfill His plan of redemption. Hopefully you are deriving some benefit from these lessons. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you may go to “Part 7“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! The Kingdom of God is Like a Man that Sowed Good Seed! Part 5
(Ver 1.2) This is now part 5 of a series of lessons on seeds in the Bible. Hopefully if you have been reading this series you have started to understand the importance of knowing and fully understanding this subject. Jesus seemed to indicate that this subject was the key to understanding every other subject in the Bible. God has designed and implemented a wide variety of natural objects and laws as views into the spiritual realm that we do not know very much about. The natural laws concerning “seeds” are just one prime example of this revelation. God believes that you can plant just a single seed and expect a vast harvest. God planted the man Jesus Christ as a seed and He has been waiting for all of the fruit of this sown seed for the last 2000 years. Since I can not fully explain everything or repeat everything that is said in every blog, I would strongly suggest that you go back and and start reading with “Part 1” if you have not read from the start.
In the last lesson we discussed that Jesus was a seed. As you may also recall I also implied in a previous lesson that Adam was a seed. However, Adam was a natural seed and Jesus the Last Adam was a spiritual seed. In Genesis 1, God spoke to Adam and told him to be “fruitful” and to “multiply”. These are seed concepts that we have already discussed in some level of detail. Fruit comes from seeds and the fruit has the seeds to produce more fruit. This is the natural law of multiplication. Most seeds that you plant in the ground always produce multiple or multiplied new seeds. If you plant a seed of corn in the ground it will grow a new plant that can have anywhere from one to eight new ears of corn on it. Each ear of corn can contain anywhere from 200 to 400 new seeds. So doing simple math, we can say one kernel of corn seed is potentially multiplied into as many as (8 x 400=3200) new seeds. If you take these 3200 new seeds and plant them; potentially you get 3200 x 3200 new seeds that is more than multiplied growth, it is now becoming exponential growth. This represents the power of a single seed in the Bible. It only takes one seed to have potential explosive growth. God started with just one man named Jesus and this has resulted in a very large number of believers today. This is exactly why Jesus could say the Kingdom of God is like a man that plants a seed.
Today I want to explore some new concepts of seeds in the Bible using another parable that Jesus taught us. In this parable the Kingdom of Heaven is again being spoken of and a man is again planting seeds into the ground. It seems that Jesus used this seed analogy repeatedly to try to teach us new spiritual things. So let’s see what Jesus is saying now:
Mat 13:24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
So while Jesus is declaring another parable about a very similar subject, He is at the same time giving us additional information about the spiritual laws of seeds. In the last parable, Jesus qualified the noun seed with the adjective “mustard” meaning he limited the scope to a specific type of seed. In Matthew 13:24 Jesus does the exact same thing, but this time says this is “good” seed. With the addition of a simple adjective of “good” Jesus teaches us that there are also “bad” or “evil” seeds in the world. In my front yard I sometimes call these weeds, because these can be thorns and thistles and they are never anything that I planted. What we immediately conclude is that not every seed is “good”. Remember what God said was the “good” seed. Jesus taught us in the parable of the Sower that the seed was the “Word of God”. Obviously the Word of God is the Good Seed that potentially produced the Good Fruit. So what is “bad” or “evil” seed? I think we are about to find out:
Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
It is important to note that God’s good seed is planted to produce “wheat”. Wheat is a very specific crop with a very specific purpose. It is critical for you to see if God would have wanted corn, He would have planted corn, if God would have wanted potatoes, God would have planted potatoes. What we learn is that God’s seed is specifically designed to produce a very specific crop for a very specific purpose. Wheat is normally ground up and we create flour with it and this is the key component to making bread. It is interesting Jesus talked about He was the bread of life. We can clearly see an association between Jesus the grain of wheat seed being sown to produce the future bread. After Jesus arose, the explosion of the Word of God grew very significantly. This growth was in both the new written words of the New Testament and the increased understanding of the Old Testament.
Many will try to interpret this parable and say things that it does not say. According to the Bible, God does not sleep or slumber, yet Jesus as a physical man certainly slept. However, now we are not talking about just God anymore. We must recall what the soil represented in the Parable of the Sower. The soil represented people in the world. Now that changes everything. People do sleep both physically and spiritually. Natural sleep is a pattern for spiritual sleep. We all normally sleep at night and work during the day. These are symbols and typology for the hearts of man also. Those in the night are those in darkness and they are spiritually asleep. God has given to us the “Good Seed”, the True Word, but yet God is not here personally to give it out and teach it to us in the flesh anymore. So this is a parable about the good seed creating the new spiritual Kingdom of God. Where exactly is the Kingdom of God located? Many will try to say it is in heaven, but this is not what Jesus taught. If you read in Luke 17:21, Jesus told us that the Kingdom of God is now “within us”. We therefore know that this Kingdom of God is within our spirits, right here and right now. So what do you call those that have the Kingdom of God in them right now? You call them Christians, those that are in the light! The opposite to those in the light are those who are in the darkness. These are those who spiritually sleep and slumber. These are the men who slept that Jesus is talking about in this parable. God didn’t begin to give us the Bible (good seed) for over 2000 years of human history. The Bible has grown over the next 2000 years from a few books into our current 66 books of the KJV Old and New Testaments. This is another example of the multiplication of seed. While men were in the darkness and spiritually asleep, Satan came and sowed tares. We clearly see that the tares came from a false, bad, evil set of words being spoken. You can call them lies, falsehoods, deceptive words, deceits, fabrications and you can even call them “leaven” even though we have not really discussed what symbolic “leaven” is yet. Leaven is something you mix with wheat and it changes the bread makeup. This is a spiritual principle that Jesus taught us to beware the Leaven of the Pharisees. The Pharisees would constantly take the word of God and add their own rules and words on top of the true words. Thus they diluted the truth with lies. I hope that you do understand who this enemy of God is? It is certainly Satan who has sown the seeds of the tares. Satan is a spiritual being created by God who was found to have sin in him. As we have learned that field represents the hearts of man. So we have seen that an enemy has come and planted “bad” seeds into the hearts of people in the world today.
Mat 13:26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
What we have clearly learned from what Jesus taught us is that God has enemies. Spiritual forces that manipulate and deceive people into believing things that are not from God. God has given to us the “Good Seed” and this implies that Satan has sown “Evil Seed”. That means that not everything that comes along being taught is what God said. We can clearly see that false religions in the world are a trick of the enemy to distract and deceive you. We can also understand that false teachers will also come along and try to deceive you with enticing words.
All of this is just the practice of people teaching right or wrong things. The sowers are the teachers in the world today and the seeds are the words spoken. It is very rare that any man on earth teaches the pure Bible concepts without tares. Why is this? It is primarily because no man knows the entire Bible and everything that is in it and everything that it means. There is no man on the planet that is God who knows everything. So therefore, we must all become tolerant of each other’s ignorance and strive to come up higher and learn the truth. We are all on the paths of learning, or at least we should be on these paths. If you are not still learning new things then you are stagnating in a cesspool of ignorance. God tells us all to “Get more knowledge, but with all of your getting, get also understanding”. Jesus taught us to “continue” in the Word. To continue is an ongoing process, a never ending state of learning. Only by continuing, Jesus said you could be called His disciples and only then would you actually know the truth and be set free.
This parable continues to discuss many things concerning the Kingdom of God. God tells us that the seeds of the Kingdom will continue to grow with the tares of the enemy as long as it is not time to harvest. God tells us, if he would have torn out the tares, he could have taken out some of the wheat because the roots can be entangled with each other. However, there is coming a harvest time and I believe it is very near. It would appear to me that those in the darkness are growing stronger in their evil ways. The evil in the world is running rampant and unless God does something soon this will not be a good place to be.
Seed concepts are critical to understand for every Christian. I believe that if you grow spiritually you will be able to know the times and the seasons and be able to recognize the times of the impending harvest.
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 6“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Except a Seed Fall into the Ground and Die! Part 4
(Ver 2.3) This is now Part 4 of a series of lessons on seeds. Seeds are a vast complex subject found in the Bible. God uses natural seed concepts and applies them to spiritual things in repeated references found in the Bible. Today I will show you some more of the references that Jesus used to describe why He was here and how that He was both a physical and a spiritual “seed”. In the last lesson we reviewed the parable of the Sower and examined the symbolic elements to gain an understanding of what Jesus called the most important “parable”. In learning the concepts of this parable we can transfer much of that knowledge to other parables that Jesus taught us. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning, I would suggest that you stop and go back and start reading with “Part 1”. I have been going through the Bible showing you several different things that God calls seeds. Here is the original list again:
- Natural Grass Seeds
- Natural Fruit Seeds
- The Seed of a Man, His Sperm
- The Seed of a Woman, Her Children
- The Seed of a Man and a Woman, their offspring
- The Word of God
- The Seed of your Mouth, Your Words
- The Body of Jesus Christ
- The Church
- Your Body
These are of course not every type of seed mentioned in the Bible, only some of the ones that I wanted to show you. We have gone through and reviewed some verses about natural seeds in Genesis and learned some applicable laws that apply to every type of seed. The first law was that a seed always produces after its own kind. The second law of seeds is that the seed is always within itself. Both of these concepts transfer to many other types of seeds revealed to us in the Bible and you should understand them. If you recall I showed that every future generation or descendant of a man, is said to be in the man. God shows us that whatever the father did, is what their descendants did.
Today I want to show you another parable that Jesus taught us about seeds. After reading this you should become aware of why it is so important to know and to understand this subject. Let’s begin by reading in Matthew 13:31:
Mat 13:31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Again, Jesus refers to the Kingdom of Heaven as being like a man who planted a seed. However, this lesson while very similar is very different than the previous lesson of the Parable of the Sower. Both are about a man, both are about seeds, and both involve planting seed in the ground to grow something. But, this time the seed is said to be singular. This is a new perspective on an old subject about a new type of seed or a new concept about the nature of seeds. In the Parable of the Sower the seed represented the Word of God (Luke 8:11). However, in this parable the seed is something completely different while being completely the same thing at the same time. Hopefully you will understand why I said that as we continue to learn. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like a man that plants “One” seed and it grows into a massive tree in a field. Jesus is referring to a specific seed and qualifies it to be a “mustard” seed. Any time you qualify a noun you limit the scope of the noun and narrow the meaning. In other words, you exclude every other seed, for the type described. What we can see is that Jesus was teaching that NOT just any seed will work; it has to be a mustard seed. The mustard seed is not widely used in the Bible, but perhaps we will look at some more references to it later. What we learn is a symbolic meaning that not just any type of seed will work for what God wants to accomplish. God selected a specific seed to accomplish His plan and we will soon discover that Jesus was this seed:
Mat 13:32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.
Jesus calls this type of seed to be the least among all seeds. Jesus could be referring to the physical size of the seed, but yet I believe that is not what He is saying. We know today that there are many seeds that are smaller seeds than a mustard seed in the world. So Jesus must be referring to something else, a symbolic characteristic and not a physical attribute of the seed. What we should learn from this verse is that most great things have very humble beginnings. It is the classic analogy of the fact that the greatest oak trees come from little acorns. I know of practically nothing that starts big and just stays big. We are being presented a new perspective of the seed concept that all great things usually start as very small things. This goes against human nature, doesn’t it? Everyone wants to hit the lottery and win millions of dollars and then think that will solve all of their problems. However, God is teaching us a different lesson using seeds. This is part of the message that Jesus is attempting to get over to us. This is some of the key reasons of why the natural nation of Israel missed the first coming of their Messiah. Jesus did not come how they expected him to come, nor did He do what they desired Him to do. They were looking for a great and powerful savior and not a humble man that would not even save Himself. The disciples would ask Jesus “are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel now” (Acts 1:6). Israel was looking for the grand restoration and not for a small beginning. This is a classic example of the misunderstanding of the importance of how seeds work. Israel did not recognize the Seed of God as He walked among them. Jesus came to the earth as just a small, insignificant humble man. Jesus was God almighty who became like the least of all the men on the planet. Why would God almighty take the time to wash the feet of His disciples? Why did Jesus do this? It all goes back to seeds. God was planting a seed that would grow into a great spiritual Kingdom and not a physical Kingdom. This Kingdom did not come with a natural conquering mighty force, this Kingdom did not have a natural army with natural weapons, and this Kingdom did not come with much pomp and exalting circumstances. In fact this Kingdom cannot be physically seen at all, unless Christians choose to display it to others. Here is why Jesus said that He came to the earth:
Joh 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
Wow! That is a very deep statement about the reality of how seeds work. Who is Jesus talking about? Who is this seed? You should be able to see that Jesus is this seed that He is referring to. Jesus prophesied His death, His burial and the resulting fruit that would spring forth from that planting. Jesus predicts that there will be much fruit that will come from His death. How was Jesus able to do this? It was because Jesus understood the concept of seeds. Plant a little seed and get a great harvest. From little humble beginnings can grow great and mighty things. This is a key seed principle and law that applies to what God was doing on the earth through Jesus Christ. In John 12:24, Jesus says that a kernel of corn (a seed) will be alone if it does not die. I believe that God is trying to teach us that the Seed of Jesus has been planted to produce more people in the world like Jesus. This is just a basic typology of how the seed produces more of itself in the earth. Just ONE little seed planted can produce a huge harvest over time. Let me show you some prophetic verses in the O.T. concerning Jesus:
Jer 23:5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.
You can read the Bible without studying and totally miss what is said. In this verse if you do not look up the definition of the key words you will breeze right over what God is trying to teach you about. The Key word that I want to look at is “Branch”. It is qualified to be a righteous Branch so we know this is Jesus. The Hebrew word “Branch” in this verse is a word that mean “sprouts”, “springs up”, “buds”. These are all “SEED” concept words. You plant a righteous seed, and you get a righteous harvest. That is what God is attempting to get you to see. The coming Messiah was a SEED man! Let me show you another verse of prophecy about this seed of God:
Eze 34:29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.
Here is another verse about the coming Messiah and Israel missed it. God is saying I will “raise up” a “PLANT” of character. This word for “Plant” in the Hebrew means something that is planted in a garden. Sure sounds like a seed to me, how about you? I just wanted to show you some O.T. examples of this coming seed so that you would not think that I just make this stuff up. It is really amazing what the Bible says when you can see it.
What have we learned? We learned that God planted a seed, and this was a lowly humble man called Jesus Christ. But, through this humble beginning we see the growth that has transpired over the course of 2000 years. The church of Jesus Christ is now greater in strength and numbers than at any time in the past 2000 years. I am a firm believer that Jesus is expecting a triumphant church, a great church that has made herself ready. God planted the original seed, and it has grown over the course of time and developed further into this great prophesied tree that the birds of the air can now build nests within.
So maybe I should explain a little better the difference between the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed. You see in the parable of the sower, the seed is the Word of God. The Word of God is being spread by the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ throughout the Gospels. But, if you have studied the Bible you also know that Jesus Christ is the Word of God!. According to John 1:1, “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”. By simple laws of mathematics we can substitute “Seed” for “Word” in this verse and see that it now says this:
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Seed, and the Seed was with God, and the Seed was God.
From the laws of mathematics, we can apply the truth that if A=B, then B=A and “Word” = “Seed” and see a new simple truth, that God is the Seed and that God had the Seed within Himself. Then we can learn from reading down in the chapter the following:
Joh 1:14 And the Seed (Word) was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
God’s Seed takes on flesh and lives and walked among us. We can now better understand how Jesus can call himself the Seed. We can also better understand how God can plant this Seed Jesus and expect a spiritual harvest. Jesus was a spiritual seed of God and God now expects a harvest of more spiritual fruit. God believes that you can plant a seed and get a harvest. The ending of a matter is always greater than its beginning. I think where people get confused is in the fact that Jesus is multiple seeds simultaneously and this certainly makes our life more complicated in understanding the differences. Let me give you a list of the types of Seed Jesus is Associated with in the Bible:
- Spiritual Seed = Word of God (Parable of Sower)
- Natural Seed of God (Mustard Seed)
- Spiritual Seed of God (Son of God)
- Natural Seed of Mary (Son of Man)
- Natural Seed of David (Son of David)
- Natural Seed of Abraham (Son of Abraham)
- Natural Seed of Adam (Son of Man)
This is probably not a complete list, but it is all that I can come up with right now. If I locate other reference, I will update this list. I will end this blog here and hope that you have learned some new things from the Bible. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! The Parable of the Sower! Part 3
(Ver 1.4) 
This is a very advanced set of Bible lessons about the concepts, laws and information found in the Bible about “seeds”. As we study this subject we discover how these principles apply both to the natural realm as well as the spiritual realm. This is now Part 3 of the series and if you have not read from the beginning, I would suggest that you go and start your reading with “Part 1”. We have already covered a lot of information found in the Bible, some of which you may have heard before, but certainly a lot that is new to you. Studying the Bible on any subject is very difficult. Because God has chosen to hide information, and finding every reference to a subject is very challenging. To study the subject of “Seeds” we really need to search the Bible for every verse with that word in it and determine what it is saying. Since there is more than one thing in the Bible called by the name “seed” we must learn what each one is and determine if they are related to any other. But, that is not all of the verses on the subject. What we must realize is that there are related subjects that go along with it, such as soil, earth, rain, water, light, warmth, planting, sowing, fruit and on and on I could go. Then what about enemies to seeds, such as birds, insects, weeds, drought, rocks, heat, cold, floods and again on and on I could go. There are a vast number of dependent subjects that you should learn to see how they apply to what we learn about “seeds”. I am trying to demonstrate how complicated studying the Bible can be and why so many people do not know what the Bible actually says. In order to study the Bible correctly, you must dig and research the subject as thoroughly as possible. This also involves you doing a significant amount of work to find what God has hidden for you.
Today I am going to continue teaching on “seeds” in the Bible with a new perspective that is certainly very important to know. Jesus taught us many things when He was here physically on the earth. However, He placed an extraordinary emphasis on a certain subject as being a key to understanding all the other subjects found in the Bible. Jesus said that this one concept that He taught was more important to understand than any of the others found in the Bible. This critical subject was based upon “Seeds”. You can find this teaching in three books of the Gospel; in Luke 8, Matthew 13 and Mark 4. Let’s start our lesson by reading Mark 4:26:
Mar 4:26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
Apparently the lesson is about the Kingdom of God, so right off of the bat we know it is of great importance. We also understand it is a spiritual Kingdom and not a physical or natural kingdom. At least I hope you understand these types of Bible basics. What does God tell us the Kingdom of God is like? God clearly says it is like a man who plants seeds into the ground. Jesus is teaching using the format of a parable that contains natural things that we can see, to help explain spiritual things that we cannot see. Then consider this, is Jesus a man? Is Jesus THE man that this parable is referring to? I think back and believe that when Jesus was on the earth, He was exactly this man. Since Jesus has returned to heaven, it gets more complicated. Jesus is still the man, but since He is not here physically anymore, He uses people like me who are here on the planet. So while I’m not God, I am a tool used by God. What I want you to see, is that God still uses people today to reach people. Now let’s go back to Mark 4:3 and discover the key Seed lesson that Jesus wants you to see:
Mar 4:3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow:
Jesus informs us that a sower went out to sow. When you sow, you are doing what? Of course you are planting seeds in a field or a garden. Sowing involves a spreading of seeds into the ground. So Jesus is discussing a farming lesson. I want to jump down to the explanation of the parable and interject the important stuff that we need to see while we are studying the actual parable about seeds. Here is what Jesus says about this parable being a key to understanding all the others:
Mar 4:13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
It would appear to me that if you can understand this parable, then you are at the crossroads of understanding every parable that Jesus taught. This has some vast implications attached to it, so pay close attention. So here is Jesus’ explanation of what the sower is and what the seed is:
Mar 4:14 The sower soweth the word.
Now Jesus begins to let us in on the secret, the sower is planting words. Not just any words, though these are the Words of God according Luke 8:11. However, we can also understand the concept that any words spoken can become seeds. The problem is that many of these words are lies and half-truths and thus plant wrong things. Only God’s Word is Absolute Truth. What we have discovered is that words are seeds. We can also say seeds are words. We can also see that a sower is anyone that opens his or her mouth and speaks words. How do the Genesis seed laws apply to words? We have clearly learned that seeds always produce after their kind. What is the Word of God a kind of? What kind does the Word of God produce? We have also learned that seeds are always in itself. Now let’s examine some more of the parable:
Mar 4:4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.
What Jesus does is give us some new related topics about the planting of these seed words. However, Jesus starts to shift the focus off of the sower and the seed and they are not technically mentioned after the beginning. Jesus begins to describe the types of soil or ground that are being planted in. Jesus also starts to reveal that the soil, the seed and the sower all have enemies. The fowls of the air come to devour the seed and thus render them harmless, non-productive or ineffective. Since the parable involves symbolic natural representations, we know that the birds of the air represent spiritual beings that we cannot see or perceive with our natural senses. So let’s examine the explanation of Jesus for these new symbolic factors given to us:
Mar 4:15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.
Jesus informs us that the soil is representative type of the hearts of people. The human heart is not the physical blood pump organ. The human heart in the Bible is their spirits. Jesus also says that Satan is the enemy that is trying to steal the words of God from our hearts. Ephesians 2:2 calls Satan the prince of the power of the air. The earth’s atomosphere is the current domain of Satan. This verse says that Satan comes immediately to steal the seed from us and that would be really bad news, if Satan could just take the word sown at will. However, by reading in Matthew we learn some additional details on this subject.
Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
This is why it is important to read every occurence of a lesson so that we can learn all of the details. This information in Matthew does not contradict the account written down by Mark, it only helps us to see what God is talking about more clearly. What are the potential outcomes whenever you sit to listen to anyone speak at a lecture or in a class room at school? I beleive that there are potentially three possibilities that can occur and your determination will cause the teacher’s words to either be effective or to be ineffective. You can ignore the teacher, you can hear and listen to the words only, or you can hear the words and get the understanding of them. Hearing anything valuable to know and not understanding any of it does you little to no good. In other words you derive no benefit of knowing the information.
There are a lot of people in the world that know Einstein’s equation of E=MC2, but very few that can actually teach you anything about what it means. So what we discover is that understanding what you hear is the greater key factor to whether the devil can come and take it away from you. That is a very important factor to learn. Understanding of any subject is the key to holding on to that subject. Keep in mind that we are talking about spiritual things here and not natural things. We have spiritual seed which are spiritual words being planted into spiritual beings, which are responsible to hear them and then to understand them or the spiritual enemy, will come and take them from you. Read through the rest of the parable and then I will discuss the symbols given in more detail:
Mar 4:5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth:
Mar 4:6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.
Mar 4:7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.
Mar 4:8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred.
As you read through the rest of the parable, you discover God’s goal for giving us His seed. God is looking for a people to produce spiritual fruit. The majority of the parable is a lesson of why people either produce this fruit or why they are unable to produce this fruit. If you know anything about farming, you know that the soil is not the master of the seed, but the seed is the master of the soil. Whatever is planted into the soil is that which is harvested. If you are the soil that Jesus is speaking of, then it matters what you allow in your ears. Do you understand why Satan has dominated the TV and radio air waves with lies and perversions? I guess we should stop and examine the soil in more detail. There are actually 6 different types of soil listed in the parable. They are generally representative of 4 different types of people on the planet and the list of soil types does not exclude anyone. If you analyze the list closely you can see that there are actually two groups of 3 that are being mentioned. There are three soils that are representative of saved fruitful Christians and 3 soils that did not receive the seed and let it produce any fruit at all:
| Type of Soil | Description |
| Wayside | These are those that can hear, but that do not understand what is said. Therefore Satan can steal the truth away from them very easily. |
| Stony Ground | These are those that turn away because of affliction or persecution. They lack any depth or foundational root knowledge. They are easily offended. |
| Among Thorns | These are those that care more about the things in the world, the distraction of riches, the natural lusts of the world. |
| Good Soil | These are those that produce fruit. A return of seed is multiplied to produce a bountiful supply. Some 30 times, some 60 times and some 100 times. |
We can learn a significant amount of information about why some people produce fruit and others are unable to. What have we learned? We have learned that God uses people to teach the Word of God and these are those that are sowing “good seed”. However, we have also learned that this good seed has many enemies. These things are designed to keep you from hearing and understanding the truth. Satan is hard at work trying to keep people from bearing spiritual fruit for God. God is looking for the spiritual fruit of the earth and that is one of the key factors that is keeping Him from returning for us today. God sees the harvest field is potentially great on the earth and God wants everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth of God’s Word (2 Peter 3:9). The Bible says God has long patience for this spiritual harvest of fruit (James 5:7). Here are the key symbolic elements listed in the parable and the descriptive meaning of each:
| SYMBOL | DESCRIPTION |
| SEEDS | Spoken Word/Words |
| SOWER | One who teaches with Words |
| Sowing | The process of teaching people |
| SOIL | The hearts/spirits of the people |
| Wayside Ground | Those who are easily deceived, they have no understanding and barely hear it at all |
| Stony Ground | Those that are easily tricked, those that have only a shallow understanding, those that cave to pressure, those who are easily offended |
| Good Ground | Those that hear and understand the Word of God and do not allow it to be stolen from them. |
| Evil Ground | Those that are deceived, lost and asleep in the darkness. |
| Roots | Those who have a strong foundation of the Word of God and are able to drink and partake of the Spirit of God. |
| Birds of the Air | Spiritual enemies that try to take the truth from you. Satan and his demons. |
| Thorns | Natural and Carnal things that take your attention away from the truth. It can be money, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, fame |
| Unfruitful | Those that are spiritually barren, unable to produce spiritual fruit, those who are nigh to burning |
| Fruitful | Spiritual Growth and Maturity, those who are doers of the Word of God and NOT hearers only. |
| Fruit | Spiritual results of those which God is seeking to find and harvest into His barn |
As you can see there are many valuable things to learn from this parable. Seeds play a key role in the spread of the Kingdom of God. Seed laws play a key role in understanding this teaching. God’s word will always produce more people like God. Those that let God’s word in, will grow and mature to be more like the one that gave us these SEED Words. It is the spiritual seed law of Genesis repeated in the spiritual diemension. A seed will always produce after its own kind. The planting of God’s spiritual seed will always produce a spiritual harvest. I think I will end this lesson here for now and expand it in my next lesson.
If you would like to continue reading this series, you can continue by going to “Part 4“.
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Plant a Seed, Get a Harvest! Part 2
(ver 1.5) This is now Part 2 in a series of lessons on the subject of understanding seeds in the Bible. The Bible contains a vast amount of information on the concept of seeds. There are actually several things in the Bible called seeds and I listed a few of them in the first blog on this subject. If you have not read this from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”. In the first lesson I talked about the first mention of “seed” in the Bible being found in Genesis 1:11-12. What God gives us by the law of first mention are some general concepts that are relevant to the entire subject of seeds. One of the concepts given was the fact that the “seed” is said to be “within itself”. This is a concept with complex implications attached to it. What we discover is that an apple tree produces apples that contain seeds. These apple seeds produce other trees to come into existence which produce more apples and more seeds. This represents a self-perpetuating system of apple reproduction. No matter how many apples come from the seeds produced, they all originated from the one. There is an old saying that goes “Only God knows how many apples are in an apple seed”. I want to take this concept and expand it to show what the Bible says about how this relates to people and other concepts found in the Bible. As you recall in the first lesson we also talked about children being seeds. We saw Seth being called the seed of Eve.
Now let’s talk about the natural human seed of a man. This is commonly referred to as sperm or semen in our world, but in the Bible God also calls it “seed”. Why does God use the same word to describe something that we have other words to describe? Either God didn’t understand any other words to use for this, or God is trying to teach us something new. That is a common mistake that modern Bible translators and interpreters make constantly. They take a word like “seed” and change it to “descendant” or a “child” and think they are helping us to understand what God said. What they do is lose God’s intended lesson on what a seed is and therefore we do not learn what God wanted to teach us. What we must do is be smart enough to realize that God could have selected any word to describe a subject and if He selects “seed” to describe the semen of natural man, then it has a purpose. Could it be that the seed concept of planting and harvesting is a truth that occurs when a husband and wife have physical sex? I think that we should see what God says:
Lev 12:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.
The Hebrew word translated as “conceive seed” means “to sow” seed. To sow seed is a farming and agriculture type of term and represents a metaphor for a concept that God says is related. I doubt very seriously that many couples think of sex in these terms. It could be that a few do, if they are trying to get pregnant and to have children.
Lev 15:16 And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.
It is sometimes difficult to discuss every subject found in the Bible. It seems that God did not leave out anything. I assume since this is the way He created it, then we can assume that it has a purpose for existing. In this verse in Leviticus we again see the sperm of the man being called his “seed”. The term “copulation” means simply a sexual act like intercourse. I have heard narrow minded preachers teach that since a man has seed, a woman cannot. However, in the first lesson we saw that Eve called Seth her seed. So we must conclude that there are different types of seed, and different definitions for seed. This is truly one of the most complex factors of correct Bible interpretation that we are faced with. We can learn one definition of “seed” and then must realize that there exists other definitions of the same word and they may or may not be related to each other. So we have learned that the definition of a word can change based upon the usage and the context of the word.
We have now touched on the first five examples of the term “Seed” found in the Bible. We have seen physical and natural plant seeds in Genesis. We have seen the sperm of the man being called seed in Leviticus. We have seen the children of natural parents being referred to as “Seeds” in Genesis and Ruth. We have also seen that the offspring of other species of animals are also called “Seeds” in Genesis. We have learned that every seed reproduces after its own kind from Genesis 1. So dogs only produce dogs. Orange seeds only produce orange trees. Now I want to start discussing one of the most important concepts of seeds given to us in the Bible. This concept is a spiritual law that God has revealed to us using these natural examples. We have gone through the 5 natural examples, although not in a complete teaching but more in an overview high level pass of the subject, so that we can now focus on some spiritual applications.
We have learned that God calls the sperm of a man, his seed. We have also learned that Adam “knew” his wife Eve and she had a seed named “Seth”. What we see is a pattern of creation that God has designed to teach us. Adam and Eve were the first two humans in the world that we live in. They originated every other human being on the planet. So from 2 people we now have almost 7 billion people on the planet. That is what God calls being fruitful and multiplying. But, I want to demonstrate a seed law to you from the Bible. According to God, whatever happens to your parents is what happened to you. You probably do not understand what I am talking about right now, but you will soon.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
It truly amazes me how smart God is. You can see many things in the Bible and then you can read right over them and not even know what they mean or how they apply to other stuff that you just read. Did you notice that God says that YOU and I were “IN” Adam? I don’t know about you, but my father was not named Adam, but yet God says I was “IN” Adam. As you recall from Genesis 2, God told Adam do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you do, you will surely die. Adam ignored God’s command and ate and we all die because of what he did. Is that fair? I do not know, but yet it is what God says happened.
What we see is a demonstrated application of the seed law of Genesis, that the “Seed is in itself”. In other words Adam was walking around in the garden with the “seed” in his body that was everyone else in the world. Did you understand what I just said? God says that when Adam sinned, not only did he die, but he caused everyone that came from him to also die. That is an awesome revelation of the Word of God, for you see it also tells you how we will live in return. This verse ends with the statement “Even So in CHRIST shall all be made alive”. So by the law of the “Seed Concept” from Genesis 1, if you are in Christ, you have been made alive. We’ll talk about this more and how this works in a later lesson, but for now let’s confirm what I just taught you.
Heb 7:9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.
When I read this verse and studied it for the first time, it truly amazed me. God clearly shows us another conceptual application of the law “the Seed Being in Itself” in this verse. So did you read the verse and did you see what God said? God clearly states that Levi was “IN” Abraham. So let’s figure out what God is talking about. Who is Levi? Levi was one of the 12 sons of Jacob and the head of the tribes of Israel. That would make “Levi” a great-grandchild of Abraham. We have Abraham who begat Isaac, then we have Isaac who begat Jacob and finally we have Jacob who begat “Levi” and his 11 other brothers. What we see is a clear concept of family lineage being established. Your ancestry represents a research into your past relatives that you descended from. While not everyone on the earth can trace their natural ancestry to “Levi” or “Abraham, we can all trace our ancestry back to Adam. What we are learning is some seed concepts describing our human family tree.
Heb 7:10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.
Now we have still further revelation of the seed mystery, Abraham is said to be the father of Levi, but yet Levi doesn’t come along for another couple of generations. Do you understand how that applies to us and Adam? Even though Adam was not our nearest father, he is by default the father of us all. That also means that every father in between Adam and us is also called our father. As you can clearly read God informs us that Levi was in the “loins” of his father Abraham. The loin is defined to be the pelvic region or the sexual reproductive organs of Abraham. That tells me that out of the millions and millions of sperm cells in Abraham, God knew which one that Levi would come from. That is some amazing attention to the details, isn’t it? This is God’s clear definition of the “Seed being within Itself” law from Genesis. So now pay attention to what this says. Levi is said to have paid tithes in Abraham, because he was in his father Abraham by God’s definition of a seed. Do you understand this concept? Whatever your fathers did, according to God, you did. That is not always very good news for most of us. You see a newborn baby, having just been born into the world has already done everything that their fathers have done even before they do anything themselves. Not really good news is it? I wish I would have learned this concept as a very young child, I might have done a few things differently as I grew up. Oh well?
Lam 5:7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.
What we begin to discover in the Bible, is the law of seeds. We can then better understand how family curses, generational abnormalities and physical diseases are often times inherited within a family tree. Doctors constantly want to know if your parents had any diseases, because they want to see if they are appearing in you. Why is this? Why are some diseases contagious and others are more hereditary? It would appear that what one parent does, is passed down to future children and this is the basis for the existence of these hereditary diseases.
Mat 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.
You see the seed concept again being alluded to in this verse of the Bible. The people of Israel are in the process of killing the Son of God and they say “Let His blood be on us and our children”. In other words whatever they were doing was being handed down to every generation that would come after them. That is not very good news for the children who were not there, is it?
The Genealogy of Jesus is given to us in Luke. Have you ever wondered why God thought this was so important to include in the Bible? You can clearly see every generation of Jesus going all the way back to Adam. There around 74 generations listed. Seventy four names of fathers of Jesus. If you are a little bit intelligent you realize that God did this on purpose. You can clearly see from what we have learned about seeds, whatever every father of Jesus did, Jesus is said to have done the same. So Jesus was in David, Jesus was in Abraham, Jesus was in Adam and every other name mentioned. This has far reaching consequences for Jesus, doesn’t it? Let’s briefly explore a couple of the references in the Bible as Jesus being a seed in his natural fathers.
Rom 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
Jesus was born of the seed of David. This is telling us that Jesus was in David when he was king of Israel. Being a seed of David qualifies Jesus as an eternal ruler that will sit upon his father’s throne and that is pretty cool.
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
We can clearly see that Jesus Christ is called the Seed of Abraham. This verse tells us that the intended usage of this word “seed” meant a singular example of the usage of this word. In other words, this seed is not plural. So now we can better understand the seed of Abraham being within him when God came to cut covenant with him. It is very interesting to note that if Jesus was in Abraham his father, then was God making a covenant with himself? I believe that is exactly what we can see happening.
Mat 26:64 Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Jesus called himself the “Son of Man” more than he called himself the “Son of God” in the Gospels. Why is that? Part of the reason why is to overcome the difficulty of man’s inability to accept God coming to the earth in the form of His creation. Jesus Christ being a physical man on this planet was also informing us that He was the Son of Adam. You know that Jesus was a Hebrew, yes? Did you know that the Hebrew word for man and Adam are the same words? This is why I can say that Jesus walked around and called Himself the son of Adam. Do you realize what that means based upon what we have learned? That means when God created Adam, Jesus was already in Adam as a future descendant of this first man. Jesus Christ was a future seed in the physical man Adam. What we can see is that God had a plan of salvation for man, even before man was created. God had already designed Himself into the body of Adam. God already knew when He was coming , how he was coming and where he was coming when He created Adam. God could look at Adam and see 74 generations down his family tree and see Jesus. That is some amazing forethought and planning. That is some incredible attention to detail. That is an amazing plan of salvation.
So what have we learned, since Jesus was “IN” Adam, whatever happens to Adam, now transfers to Jesus. Since Jesus was born the Son of Adam, he must die the death that Adam passed upon all of his descendants (SEEDS). These are the seed laws given to us by God in Genesis. Everything produces after its own kind and the seed is always within itself. Whatever happens to you happens to everyone that comes from you. Whatever you did, is what your seed did. I hope that you enjoyed learning some new concepts from the Bible on “seeds”. I pray that you will learn to apply them to what you do going forward. In my next blog in this series we will further explore spiritual seeds found in the Bible.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lesson on seeds you can go to “Part 3” now!
Understanding Seeds in the Bible! Plant a Seed, Get a Harvest! Part 1
(Ver 1.6) This of course is a difficult subject to cover, yet one that I believe is very critical for every Christian to understand. God said in the Bible some things that are very profound about seeds and if you can understand them, you will gain vast amounts of spiritual knowledge and understanding of how almost everything in the world works. I know that sounds like a very broad statement but, you obviously do not know very much about seeds right now or you would have to agree with me. Seeds represent concepts that apply both to the natural realm and the spiritual realm simultaneously. When you begin to understand them, you will begin to understand why things have happened in your life and how to affect or change your future results. Too many Christians think that what happens to them in life is predetermined by God. If it is God’s will I will live to be an old man, if not only God knows. While God does know your future, it is definitely wrong to say that you can not change it. If you do not believe me you should read your Bible more often. When you read in the Bible in 2 Kings 20, you will see Isaiah the prophet coming to King Hezekiah and telling him that the Lord says for him to “Set Your House in Order, for thou shalt Die and Not Live!”. The prophet of God tells the King what God has already told him will happen and these are the sayings of the almighty God. King Hezekiah ends up praying to God and as a result God tells Isaiah to tell the King he shall live 15 more years. What would have happened if Hezekiah had not prayed? He would have died. Who changed, God or Hezekiah to cause him to live 15 more years? The Bible tells us “I am the Lord and I Change Not” (Mal 3:6). So obviously God did not change his mind, so what happened? That certainly is a mystery that too many Christians do not understand. It is not totally up to God what happens to you, it is more up to you than it is up to God. However, since that is not my primary subject, we will continue learning about seeds and see if you can figure this mystery out for yourself. Here is one of my foundational scriptures for this series of Bible lessons:
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
What God is revealing in this verse, is that there are established laws in the earth. These laws consist of physical laws as well as spiritual laws. These laws are representative of established natural patterns within creation and even reveal the hidden qualities of God. These laws represent established cycles that will not cease unless God causes them to change in the future. However, it is clear that God says these laws will persist as long as the earth is here, so they are not going away anytime soon. God mentions 3 of these cycles and laws in this verse. The first one mentioned is that of the law of seeds and harvests. You plant a seed you reap a harvest. The next cycle mentioned is that of our established pattern of annual seasons. Winter and summer are just two of the 4 seasons mentioned. Next we have the cycle of Day and Night and again this is representative of a 24 hour cycle of time that the earth revolves in every day. What I want to focus on is just the subject of “Seeds” in this series of lessons. You can read about Understanding Night and Day in another blog series that I have already done.
Planting seeds and getting harvests are a part of the essential design of God’s creation as well as being an essential part of God’s hidden nature and character. Hopefully you will better understand this as we go through the Bible on this subject. But, here is a challenge from God, there are multiple things in the Bible called “seeds” and this is one of the complexities found while studying the Bible. God calls multiple things by the same name and we are required to figure out which one He is talking about to correctly understand each verse. While the overall concepts behind each occurrence of the word can overlap, they are certainly not the same entity. Let me give you some examples of seeds found in the Bible:
- Natural Grass Seeds
- Natural Fruit Seeds
- The Seed of a Man, His Sperm
- The Seed of a Woman, Her Children
- The Seed of a Man and a Woman, their offspring
- The Word of God
- The Seed of your Mouth, Your Words
- The Body of Jesus Christ
- The Church
- Your Body
So I just gave you 10 examples of a thing that the Bible calls seeds and that is certainly not a complete list of all of them. Just for grins let’s start by looking up a dictionary definition of the word seed in a noun form:
A mature fertilized ovule of angiosperms and gymnosperms that contains an embryo and the food it will need to grow into a new plant. Seeds provide a great reproductive advantage in being able to survive for extended periods until conditions are favorable for germination and growth. The seeds of gymnosperms (such as the conifers) develop on scales of cones or similar structures, while the seeds of angiosperms are enclosed in an ovary that develops into a fruit, such as a pome or nut. The structure of seeds varies somewhat. All seeds are enclosed in a protective seed coat. In certain angiosperms the embryo is enclosed in or attached to an endosperm, a tissue that it uses as a food source either before or during germination. All angiosperm embryos also have at least one cotyledon. Many angiosperms were created with specific fruits for dispersal of seeds by the wind, water, or animals.
There are too many things in this description to take note of them all. Also I changed the last sentence to state that seeds were created and did not evolve as some deceived scientists have theorized. According to this definition a seed is a self-contained unit designed for the reproduction of a species. A seed contains specific qualities that enables it to work even after extended times outside of the normal environment that they like to grow in. We understand this because we can buy seeds at the farm and garden store to plant in our backyards to grow whatever we would like.
Seed is a unique word that can either be taken as a single unit or as a plural word meaning multiple instances of the same reproductive unit. In other words if I said that I have a package of watermelon seed, we do not know how many I have in the package. It is more than likely several and logically more than one, but yet it would be legal to just put one in the package and sell it with the same name. The plural word for seed can also be stated as seeds, so the complexity of the words can be significant. If you are a type of person who is into the details you will certainly get into these Bible lessons.
The first mention of seed in the Bible is within the context of the first chapter of Genesis when God creates the world that we all live in. In Genesis 1:11 God says “Let the earth bring forth grass yielding seed”. This is the first mention of seed and the first mention of the reproductive system for propagating the further existence of future plants in the world. Within the same verse, God also tells us of “the earth bringing forth Fruit Trees yielding fruit after its kind, with the seed in its self”. These are very important concepts being given to us from creation. Some have called this the “Law of Genesis”. Everything will reproduce after its own kind. In other words a cat doesn’t come from a dog. A watermelon doesn’t come from an orange. Everything that God created comes from and reproduces after its own kind. That means there was no evolution that took place at any time on the earth. Evolution is a fantasy embraced by ignorant people who deny the design of God. Everything that God created is self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. Today on the evening news I watched a humorous story about which came first the chicken or the egg? This has long been a debated controversial subject in the world. However, according to the news, and a group of scientists in England who studied the subject, they have concluded that the chicken had to come first based upon scientific evidence. They discovered that the shell of the egg comes from a protein found only in the ovary of a chicken. Since this protein does not exist anywhere else in the world, they have concluded that the chicken had to come first. But, they certainly did not say where the chicken came from. Isn’t that interesting? I can tell them where the chicken came from, but maybe another day. I’m sure if you search the internet you can find more information on this scientific discovery and why they concluded this.
There are over 250 verses in the Bible that speak directly about seeds in the Bible. I will not even attempt to go through all of these. Then there are many other indirect references of seeds in the Bible so the total number of verses on the subject is by far greater than that. We have already touched on the first occurrence in Genesis 1 of natural seeds from plants, so let’ move on to the second occurrence of seed found in Genesis 3 and it goes like this:
Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
I have written a blog on this subject, so I will not attempt to repeat that information again. If you want to learn about it you can go and read “The Seed of the Woman, the Seed of the Serpent!” It is noteworthy to see that the woman has seed and so does Satan and I’ll leave it at that for now. It is implied that these seeds are children, and we will find out more about this as we go. The third occurrence of the word “Seed” arises in Chapter 4 of Genesis and this is Eve speaking and she says the following:
Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
Eve tells us that “Seth” is her Seed. His brother Cain had killed his other brother Abel and now she has given birth to another “Seed”. Obviously the implication is given to us that all of the other children are also her “seeds”. So we see a clear pattern that children are called seeds of their parents. Let’s find a confirming scripture to this fact from the book of Ruth:
Rth 4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
We can clearly see that God refers to children as seeds. The term is related to a concept of planting and harvesting. This concept was first introduced in Genesis 1 when God said to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. You see two descriptive qualities of planting seeds, you always get a multiplied increase and it is always related to bearing fruit. What we discover is that each child produced has the built in capability to reproduce more of its own kind in the earth. The females carry the eggs, the males carry the sperms and they are joined together to produce more of the same kind as themselves. What we have in the world is an exponential growth seed pattern of the population of the world. From Adam and Eve, who were just two people on the planet just around 6000 years ago, we now have well over 6 billion and getting closer to 7 billion people on the planet. That is God’s idea of a plentiful harvest field. These are God’s plans and God’s designed laws of increase being demonstrated. All of these are basic seed concepts, seed principles and seed laws. I hope that you understand them. Let’s look at the next occurrence of the word “seed” found in the book of Genesis. You will find this one in the story of Noah and the flood:
Gen 7:3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
What we have is a reproductive biology lesson from the story of God’s creation. The stated law of how God can create the original pairs of each species, both males and females so that they reproduce and multiply and still be here today for us to enjoy. God informs Noah to gather and place on the ark, the male and the female of every species so that their “seed” would not vanish from the face of the earth. What we learn from this verse is that all we have to do is kill every animal of a particular species and that species is not coming back. That kind of kill’s evolution doesn’t it? Man is doing a pretty good job at eliminating species on this planet so what will the results be?
Gen 12:7 And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Obviously “seed” is a very important subject to understand. God in speaking to Abram tells him that his seed will be given the land. God is speaking about children or as we can read later in the N.T. God is speaking about a specific promised child. Too many times people like to read a verse in the Bible in isolation and try to interpret it without using God’s helpful commentary and definitions. This causes people to come up with erroneous teachings that results in confusion. You see you can take this verse in many different ways. Some try to take it literally and naturally and interpret it using their own human reasoning. But, later we will discover that God gives us more information and we should always use the Bible to interpret the Bible.
Gen 13:15 For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
Again we have a great mystery presented to us. Is the land given to a natural seed or to a spiritual seed? You will notice that God did not tell Abram that it was his forever, because obviously Abram died and is no longer here to possess it. What we have to conclude is that whoever this seed is that will be given the land, must be an eternal seed or a seed that will live forever. That certainly changes the interpretation dramatically doesn’t it?
This has been an introduction to the subject of “Seeds” in the Bible. I hope that you have learned something that you can begin to apply to your life and to your understanding of the Bible. In the next lesson we will talk further about the other types of seeds that I have listed in the top of this lesson.
If you would like to continue reading this series, please go to “Part 2“.
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