One Sabbath in church I had told my regular story to the children who came forward. Then I said: “You must be sure to come back next Sabbath, because I am going to tell you about the 20 million babies I have at home.” You can be sure they asked their parents, “Please bring me back next Sabbath so I can hear about those 20 million babies!” And sure enough, they were there.
I had not been fooling them. I really did have millions of “babies” at home, for I had just planted a new lawn by scattering tiny little seeds all over. I am sure there must have been millions. And they had sprouted and there were little green things popping up all over. It was pretty.
But you know, each one was a miracle! I could not have “made” one little seed that would grow even if my life had depended on it. In that tiny little thing so small that I could hardly see it in my hand, was the truth of life. When it fell in the moist ground, and the warm sun came up to shine on it, it popped open and little roots began to go downwards and the little stem that makes the grass green began to go upwards.
All the great scientists in the world with their wonderful wisdom to do things, could not make one living blade of grass.
When Jesus was a Boy your age, He must have held one of those tiny seeds in His hand. He was learning something important from just watching.
Then He knelt down and planted that little seed in the ground, buried it out of sight. If the little seed could talk, it might have cried: “Why are You burying me here out of sight? I want to see the sunlight all day, and now it’s dark down here in the ground. I am finished!” And it would wail. But that was the best thing that had ever happened to it!
What Jesus learned was something that apparently no one else in all the world had ever learned. Life comes from death! When He was having a hard time in the land of the Jews, and the leaders were rejecting Him and He knew they planned on crucifying Him, some big men came from a far-off country known as Greece. It was a wealthy place. They wanted to visit with Jesus and talk to Him.
Probably they invited Him to come over to their country; the people there would not try to kill Him or reject His teaching. They would listen to Him as a great Teacher. These visitors from Greece would tell Him, You don’t have to stay here where the people don’t like You and Your life is so hard!
At that time Jesus tells us about this lesson He had learned as a Boy from watching that little seed die in the ground alone: “A grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies. If it does die, then it produces many grains.” He was thinking of His cross that was coming up soon.
He sees that He Himself is the little “grain of wheat.” If He accepts this invitation to go to Greece and have a good life, then even if He saves His own life He will leave His people to perish in their sins. He could live and die in Greece and end up no more than Aristotle or Socrates (famous Greek teachers)—dead in their graves.
Then He told the lesson:
“Whoever loves his own life will lose it” [and we could include Himself in that “whoever,” for He is talking about Himself as well as about us!]; “whoever hates His own life in this world will keep it for life eternal” (John 12:20-25). And think of what He has done by letting Himself be like a seed dropped in the ground! Yes, He was crucified; but He has risen from the dead and now He is the Savior of the whole world. The “many seeds” which have come to life because He was the one seed that fell in the ground and died have become many, many millions of happy people redeemed for all eternity.