“to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. 1:16, NKJV)
We are currently discussing the nineteenth distinguishing characteristic of the corporate spirit or mantle of Zerubbabel, namely that which Zech. 4:10 presents: “For who has despised the day of small things?”
Mark 4 is a remarkable chapter in the Bible. It presents an opportunity where Jesus taught the crowds through two specific parables. The first parable is a very well-known story, and the second parable is a short narrative to inspire its listeners.
Verse 1 notes that “a great multitude” gathered around Him. Verse 2 makes this clear: “Then He taught them many things by parables …” Everything that is foregrounded points to increase. Both parables are also concerned with seed, a prototypical thing which possesses the built-in potential of greatest increase.
The well-known parable of the sower that is related from verse 3 onwards, is concerned with what happens with the commodity of seed when it falls in different types of earth. Four scenarios are made clear, with an analysis that follows later in the chapter. For the sake of comparison, then
| 1 | some seed fell by the wayside
(thus, wrong soil) |
the birds of the air came and devoured it | When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. |
| 2 | Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth
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immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away.
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when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time.
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| 3 | And some seed fell among thorns; (thus, the seed cannot reach its full potential) | the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop | they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. |
| 4 | But other seed fell on good ground
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yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. | But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. |
There are thus four types of ground that are symbolically found in man. Baker’s New Testament Commentary draws this analogy: “The ‘ground’ or ‘soil’ upon which the seed falls is clearly man’s heart …”, thus we are dealing with four types of hearts in which the seed is sown, and four different processes to which the seed is subjected to:
| 1 | A hardened and inaccessible heart | Satan steals all seed |
| 2 | A receptive heart, but devoid of the perseverance to push through | Oppression, persecution or opposition steals the seed |
| 3 | A receptive heart that gladly accepts the truth, but that allows various other life realities to render the seed infertile | The cares (and pleasures) of this world and the seduction of riches steal the seed |
| 4 | A receptive heart that renders growth possible | No seed is stolen because none of the above play a role in your life |
You are thus in possession of one of the above hearts, and it is important to figure out where the obstacles lie that prevent you from missing the seed of “small thing/beginning/opportunity”.
Mark 4:14 explains the seed as “the word,” here the Greek word logos. According to John 1:1 we know that Logos points to Jesus, the Son of God. For some reason we always want to equate Jesus as Logos to the Word of God, or the Bible, and therefore we expect that it is only Biblical verses that are sown in our life as seed. It is also this, but not only this – such a perspective limits the concept to a considerable degree. Remember the words of Jesus in John 5:39: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.”
Despite the conventional definition of the word logos as word, it is not necessarily a word in the grammatical sense; for that the Greek term lexis (λέξις) was traditionally used. Do note that both logos and lexis are derived from the same root verb, legō (λέγω), which means “to count, tell, say, speak” (Henry G. Liddell & Robert Scott: An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon).
In his book New Testament Theology, Frank Stagg explains that “The Logos is God active in creation, revelation, and redemption.” That this is strictly speaking not God the Father, but Jesus as God, is clear from John 1:2: “He was in the beginning with God.” But we also know that “the Word WAS God,” but also “WITH God.” Logos is, in other words, an active creative principle/power/nature of God that bring things into being or to realisation (John 1:3) outside of God, and thus make manifest His being. It is in the nature of the Word that it multiplies itself.
Logos is clearly also the personification of the revelation of God’s being – John 1:18 makes it clear: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” The Logos is “that One explained” (Analytical-Literal Translation), “that reveals {Him}” (Accurate New Testament). The Logos is “one-of-a-kind God-Expression” (MSG).
In his Word Studies in the New Testament (vol. 2, pp. 25) Marvin R. Vincent makes the following important statement about logos: “This expression is the keynote and theme of the entire gospel. Λόγος is from the root λεγ, appearing in λεγω, the primitive meaning of which is to lay: then, to pick out, gather, pick up: hence to gather or put words together, and so, to speak.”
Traditional exegesis merely links the word logos (also the word rhema) to “the act of speaking” (and also does not really distinguish between the two words), and this is obviously true in terms of the word histories of these two words. But if John 1 and 1 John 1:1-2 enriches the history of logos TO A PERSON, Heb. 12:25’s warning to the traditional exegetes becomes very important: “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks.” What is spoken is never loosened from the one/One speaking. John 1:1’s undeniable identification of the Person, gives specific new meaning and impetus to the term Logos, which is different from that linked to it by the philosophers before Jesus (Heraclitus, Aristotle, and especially Philo of Alexandria).
In other words, Logos is the complete totality of an utterance, in fact the utterance, the totality of expertly packaged words, chosen and brought together and placed next to one another, just as a poet chooses words in a meaningful way, bringing them together in a particular composition to say the most he can.
The Logos is thus the Total Utterance that consists of chosen Smaller Utterances. The Logos increased to rhema (John 6:48-58; 1 Cor. 12:12). These Smaller Utterances can be described with another word in Greek for the word word, namely, rhema.
Just as Logos can be wrongly cast in absolute terms by only linking it to Scripture, the Charismatic and Pentecostal groups that explain the term rhema (under the guidance of Kenneth E. Hagin, for instance in his book The Believer’s Authority) are not correct. They understand rhema as the revelation the reader receives through the Holy Spirit when the Word (Logos) is read, and it gains personal relevance for him/her, or as Hagin notes, “Rhema is a specific word from God to a specific person at a specific time.” This understanding of a central Biblical pair of concepts is inaccurate, as site http://williamdicks.blogspot.com/2006/02/rhema-vs-logos.html then also points out: “The claim is that rhema does not refer to the Bible like logos does, but to a fresh word from the mouth of God.” In his book The Ultimate Evidence: Rethinking the Evidence Issues for Spirit-baptism Larry Vern Newman formulates it as follows: “The concept referred to here is that God speaks a now word to an individual that provides that person with a new understanding …” (p. 54).
Although it is indeed possible that God can give a personal interpretation to a portion of Scripture that is usually read, in exegetic terms, in a specific way or in a particular context, this is not at all the case with the rhema-word, and is a faulty interpretation of the word rhema, as James T. Draper & Kenneth Keathley extensively point out in their book Biblical Authority (p. 113), joined by John F. MacArthur in his Charismatic Chaos (pp. 45–46).
On the website https://rhemashope.wordpress.com/the-rhema-word/ rhema is presented, from the Greek, as “God’s Word revealed,” where the word revealed derives from the Greek apokaluptō, “uncover, make known, disclose what before was unknown, make manifest” (Thayer). It is God’s dominant desire, according to Gal. 1:17, “to reveal his Son (Logos) in me (rhema). In his book Secrets of the Ascended Life, Kelley Varner encapsulates this beautifully: “We were chosen out of the Word, the Logos, before we were born (Eph. 1:4). Each of us is a rhema word from God, sent here to this planet on assignment. This is His will, plan and purpose, and our destiny.” (p. 76).
The example of a word in God’s poem is an illustration chosen with care, with Eph. 2:10 in the background: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” The word workmanship derives from the Greek poiēma, which means poem. If He, Jesus, is the Logos, the poem, each member of the Body is a rhema word in God’s poem. It is that seed that God implants within you when you are born again – the seed is the Christ-germ cell, a “small beginning” that increases to a complete Christ identity.
- Selah: Have you received the Christ seed as small beginning?
- Read: 2 Chr. 16-24.
- Memorise: 2 Chr. 17:12 (note how “increasingly powerful” links to this teaching!).
