Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod,
And waits to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God.
--Anonymous (British, 19th c.), Poem: Unbelief.
Not consciously, perhaps, but yet he is reckoning on the operation of that Word of which the seed is the embodiment, "Let the earth bring forth grass, herbs and fruit trees, each after its kind." (Genesis 1:11)
So the laborer who upturns the soil and prepares the earth for the reception of the seed, the farmer who casts the seed upon the ground, is, whether or not he recognizes and realizes the dignity of his calling, "[a] laborer together with God." (1 Corinthians 3:9)
This he virtually acknowledges when, having cast the seed into the earth, without further thought or care he sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed springs and grows up, "he knows not how." (Mark 4:27)
He can do nothing, yet he waits in confident expectation of the harvest. Those "laws of nature" which he trusts to multiply the seed and produce the harvest are but the Word of life working out its own fulfillment. Therefore, though he may not know it, he is really relying upon the Word of God, which not only bids the earth bring forth, but also declares that: "While the earth remains ... seed-time and harvest shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22)
Of the works of Jesus it has been truly said that "His miracles were parables."--A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Luke, Alfred Plummer, 1896, Section IV, par. 43. Not only did they meet and satisfy the need of those for whose immediate benefit they were wrought, but they were also demonstrations of eternal truth. Thus, in the feeding of the five thousand, we have the demonstration of the truth and the facts that underlie the yearly miracle of the harvest,--the annual multiplication of the bread for the feeding of the multitude.
By doing immediately, before the eyes of the people, what He does constantly by a slower process, through the operations of nature, He taught them and us that it is by His personal working that the seed is multiplied, the yearly harvest given, and the world's hunger satisfied.
Yet even in this instance He did not dispense with human cooperation. He took the small store of loaves that the disciples brought to Him, just as He takes and uses the small quantity of seed that the farmer casts into the ground; and when He had multiplied it, the disciples took what He had produced and conveyed it to the people,--which is all that the farmer is doing when he gathers in his crops and disposes of them to the people. "That You give them they gather." (Psalm 104:28)
That man needs to be constantly reminded of this fact is seen from the Lord's lament over His people in the 1st chapter of Isaiah: "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib," (Isaiah 1:3)--even the animals know the hand that feeds them,--"but my people do not consider." (Isaiah 1:3)
Therefore He said of them again, "She did not know that I gave her corn and wine and oil." (Hosea 2:8) "Stand still, and consider the wondrous works God." (Job 37:14)
And learn that He is the One from whom every good and perfect gift comes down.
But another and deeper lesson, yet so simple and unmistakable, was taught in the feeding of the five thousand, that henceforth men might more clearly discern it, not in the yearly harvest only, but in all that their eyes can see and their hands handle.
Whence came the bread that in the hands of Jesus grew before the eyes of the astonished multitude, and conveyed life to their frames? The life in it was identical with the life contained in every seed, in every grain, in every loaf made from the grain,--the life of Him who alone is "the Life." (John 14:6) He was feeding them with His own life, but no more so on that occasion than in all the lives before and after.
In order to convey His life to the people, so that they might feed upon Him, Christ clothed it with the visible form of bread. Thus the bread became His body, the life proceeding from Him, which took this shape that could be seen and handled and eaten by the people. Yet this bread was no different in this respect from that upon which these same people were accustomed to feed, as proved by the words of Christ when He took the bread at the Passover supper and said of it, "This is my body." (Matthew 26:26)
All life proceeds from God, and all the varied forms in the earth are the body with which He has clothed himself that the life may be manifested and we may see it, and feed upon Him. To His life in all things, "God gives a body as it has pleased Him," (1 Corinthians 15:38)--even as He gives "to every seed his own body." (1 Corinthians 15:38)
Yet how few "discern the Lord's body," (1 Corinthians 11:29) and behold their God in all the things in which He is revealing himself. Even those whom He fed with His body in the desert did not all discern it; for among them were those who shortly afterwards questioned, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" (John 6:52)
All through the summer months the personal presence of God, His everlasting power and divinity, has been working in the waving fields of grain, preparing for His life "a body as it has pleased Him," even as He gave it visible form to feed the people in the desert.
Let us then as we partake of that which His bounty has provided, "eat in faith," (Romans 14:23) "discerning the Lord's body." (1 Corinthians 11:29)
Thus will it be to us indeed "spiritual meat," (1 Corinthians 10:3) "The bread of God that comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world." (John 6:33)--Present Truth, September 7, 1899.