GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 4:27
Lesson of the Green Chevrolet
My first car was a green Chevrolet Deluxe, which I purchased from my aunt for $50. I was proud of that car, but an oil line broke and leaked oil, seizing the engine. I found another engine, replaced the ruined one, and was again back on the road—minus a few days and dollars. While changing an engine was hard, it was not an impossible job. I worked with mechanics in a garage where truck engines were replaced—along with any other parts that needed replacing. I learned early on how to set spark plug gaps, points, condensers, and timing. I learned to take a carburetor apart, repair it, and replace it. A few cars later, however, I purchased a Mercury Marquis. I raised the hood and there was no carburetor, and a distributor unlike anything I’d seen before—no points or condenser. Oh, I knew the principle of the engine’s function, but I realized my days of “shade tree mechanics” were over.
br> As Jesus taught his disciples about the Kingdom of God, which stands for the reign of God, “And he said to them, ‘The kingdom of God is like a man casting seed upon the earth. And he sleeps and gets up night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, how, he himself does not know.’” (Mark 4:26-27) This is not the picture of a lazy farmer who never attends to his field. The farmer had to keep the weeds plucked out of the field, apply fertilizer if available, keep varmints away, and do whatever other work the field needed. But once that was done, “he sleeps and gets up night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, how, he himself does not know.”
br> A biology professor held up a small seed before his class and told the students he knew the chemical composition of the seed, that all the elements could be put together in the precise amounts, the components could be made to look like a seed, but it would not produce—it would not sprout and grow like the seed he held before them. Jesus said the Kingdom of God was like that seed—it did not grow by a human process. Oh, it had to be sown, the soil had to be prepared, the weeds had to be pulled, and varmints kept away, but the growth was a divine process—a process the farmer did not understand nor could he produce—somewhat like the professor’s seed and the mystery of the modern automobile engine. Man plants, but God gives the increase.
Directory