Tuesday, October 29

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Colossians 1:6-7

All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

A few weeks ago I wanted to use acorns as an illustration in a talk I was giving, so I did a little research. I found out that acorns are actually seeds; each acorn containing one seed that, when planted, produces an oak tree. But what I found really interesting was that a healthy oak tree can produce from 70,000 to 150,000 acorns a year! That’s a lot of acorns!

But what makes that number even more amazing is that a healthy oak tree lives an average of something like 150 years!

Now think about those numbers for a moment. One oak tree can produce 70 to 150 thousand acorns a year for up to 150 years or more! If I did the math right, that’s over 22,000,000 acorns...from a single oak tree.

Now imagine that every single one of those 22 million acorns is capable of producing an oak tree that, in turn, can produce another 22 million acorns in its lifetime.

Like I said, that’s A LOT of acorns!

And the almost incredible productivity of oak trees takes me to Paul’s words in Colossians:

All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

How does the gospel grow? 

Let’s start with Jesus. Jesus began his public ministry by proclaiming: 

“The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” Mark 1:15

Then Jesus died on the cross and rose again in order to fulfill God’s promise of salvation to all who believe.

In a sense that was the first acorn! And that acorn then grew into the oak tree that produced the apostles; men like   Peter, James, John and Paul. God used those men to plant acorns that then grew into churches all over the ancient world. And those churches planted thousand more acorns through all the new believers that came to faith in Jesus.

Fast forward through history and you eventually come to our church and to your own story. 

Our church was planted in 1894 and has grown and produced acorns for over 119 years! You can trace your own faithstory to another oak tree and another acorn that was planted somewhere, sometime; and now you are also an acorn God can use to grow yet another tree.

Do you see it? Once the gospel was planted; once the fruit begins to grow; it’s unstoppable! It’s immeasurable! Each and every acorn contains the potential for limitless growth! 

That’s what Paul is talking about in Colossians, and that’s what Jesus is talking about when he says:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”

Pastor Brian Coffey