“Listen then to the parable of the sower.
When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one sown with seed beside the road.
The one sown with seed on the rocky places, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution occurs because of the word, immediately he falls away.
And the one sown with seed among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, and the anxiety of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.  

But the one sown with seed on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces, some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty times as much.”

-JESUS

To understand the financial system of The Kingdom, one only needs to look at the King’s creation itself.  You might now be wondering: “how the heck is looking at sunflowers, algae, cactus, or even mosquitos, have anything to do with finance?”  Well, I'm glad you asked, you see the foundational framework of The Kingdom revolves around seed.  And from this framework, an exchange mechanism operates. It is this framework that is referenced as: seedtime and harvest.

Today, you can search around islands and eventually you will come across a single coconut tree in a totally isolated spot, growing.  With nothing else around it, that solitary tree somehow is alone and doing what it was created to do.  No other trees around it, no other things living around it, it grows.   You can discover in the most remote and non accessible cliffs all over the world similar phenomena, flowers, grasses, and even trees growing right there on the side of sheer cliffs.

Creation speaks in ever so eloquent colors and shapes the results of the monetary system of The Kingdom. Have you ever wondered how exactly a tree gets planted thousand feet up in the sheer side of a mountain?  Ever wondered how flowers move themselves to a river bank in the middle of nowhere with nothing but rocks at the banks of each side?  To those that have not the understanding of the framework, the previous questions are legitimate questions.  To a farmer, gardener, lumberjack, or tulip grower, the questions seem quite silly and ridiculous.  Why? Because they would immediately know the answer to how the tree and the flowers ended up in the most unlikely places.  The answer?  Seed.

You see, the tree was not planted on the cliff side.  The flowers did not get up and moved from the meadows miles away to the river bank.  The tree and flowers are nothing but the evidence, the manifestation, the marking, where a death occurred.  Yes you heard that right, a death.  For the tree to become or for the blossom to manifest, a seed must have died first.

All seeds have a shape, a purpose, and a state of existence.  A seed under  the right conditions has the capability to survive many years.  Under the right conditions it can survive, alone in its own comfort and protection, thousands of years.  It can use its hard outer shell, to protect what it carries. But the true purpose of a seed is not to protect and keep hidden what it carries forever.  For the true purpose of the seed to manifest, the seed must die first.  UNLESS it dies first and by doing so completing its intended purpose and reason for existence, the true purpose of the seed would never come to be.

Not too long ago in Israel an ancient date palm tree that was extinct was brought back to existence.  How?  Through the discovery of a jar full of the seeds in an archeological dig.  As marvelous and unique as this discovery came to be.  People were suddenly faced with a dilemma.  Keep the discovery behind a glass, climate control museum case or grant the request to let the discovery be destroyed.  In the end of the debate, the decision was made to allow a few of the seeds to be planted, that is to be “destroyed” as the opposition argued.  It became the hope of many that this ancient tree and its once renowned fruit would once again come forth. Had they not allowed the seed to die, the tree would have never come up.  Surrendering it to death, the seed was allowed to complete its assignment.  And by doing so, the life that was always in it, was allowed to be released.  You see the seed's original purpose and intent is not to remain forever a seed.  The original intent of the seed is not only to carry life inside and protect it.  Once it arrives at its destination, to complete its intent, it must die to release the life it carried inside its shell of protection. 

Which leads us to a very reasonable question.

How does one get seed?

The answer to this question is a marvelous and fascinating part of The Kingdom.  For one does absolutely nothing to get seed.  It is simply, supplied, given to one.

Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness

2 Corinthians 9:5 

Let’s take the example of a tomato.

Let’s say someone knocks on your door and when you open the door, you see a single tomato.  Now let’s say you were hungry and wanted a nice tomato sandwich.  You can take the nice ripe and juicy tomato and make a glorious tasty dish and perhaps even share it with another person. Your tummy would be full for a meal, and then the next meal you would be looking for something else.  Alternatively, you could take half the tomato, and then plant the other half.  Or even better, you can individually take the seeds from the tomato and carefully set it in containers to grow seedlings.  Depending on the preparation and effort done to plant the tomato seeds, the amount of plants can be 1 or 10’s of plants from that one tomato fruit.  The resulting harvest of that one tomato, can be a few tomatoes or hundreds of tomatoes.  Or if you chose not to wait for the plant to grow and produce more tomatoes, you could choose to eat all of the tomato. 

As you can see, the seed is given but what one chooses to do with the seed is entirely a choice. This choice is directly related to the increase.  The fascinating marvel of this system is that one seed does not produce another tomato.   No, it produces a plant.  That plant can then produce a few or hundreds of tomatoes.  In other words, the multiplication of the seeds is NOT a one to one ratio increase.  Rather it is exponential growth.  With a little time, effort and care, soon, there are many tomatoes to make salsa, or spaghetti sauce, or tomato soup, or many other items that can feed multiple crowds.

And it all began from one seed, sowed, cared for, fruit harvested, seeds sewn back.  The increase becomes not just a temporary one time event of more, but rather a flow, a river of provision and increase.

It is a marvelous system set up from the beginning of time.  God said, “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest”.

Many have taken this to mean that the increase is for one's own material prosperity, our well being, the ability to have a wide margin and bless others.  Mind you this can indeed be a result.  But the depthness of this truth goes so much deeper.  The implications are so vast in their consequences that few have actually unraveled it to its fullness.  It is an underpinning, a foundational stone, a primary protocol of The Kingdom.

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest”.

That statement implies many things.  It implies that the system is set up and set to remain until earth is no more.  It implies that Seedtime and Harvest will always be available until the earth remains.  It implies that the two are connected to each other.  It implies that what is harvested is directly related to what was sewn in intimacy.  The word seedtime, in the original language, carries a connotation of intimacy, intercourse and  children, among other things.  It implies a setup of perpetual increase, a legacy.

You see, lack is not a fruit or result from following the economic framework of the kingdom. God’s very nature is one of multiplication, increase, abundance.  So it bears to reason that the system He would set up would be a system of increase and longevity as the result of intimacy and closeness.

So in a system where logarithmic increase is the norm, would lack be part of it?

In a word, yes.  The harvest or increase of planting nothing is nothing.

If lack is present, several investigative questions must be addressed.  One of the questions that needs to be answered would be: “where is the seed that was given?”  Another question would involve the environment.  Is the seed in the ground and is it an issue of timing?  Was the seed planted in the wrong place, and it did not produce?  Was the seed taken by an adversary?  Was the seed eaten? 

And what exactly does heaven lack?  Or rather what does heaven have that you need for your increase, how can you obtain it?  There is a hint of it, in an interaction with a rich young ruler and Jesus captured in the gospels.

A ruler questioned Him, saying, 

“Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 

And Jesus said to him, 

“Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments:

‘DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,

DO NOT MURDER,

DO NOT STEAL,

DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS,

HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’” 

And he said, 

“All these things I have kept from my youth.”

When Jesus heard this, He said to him, 

“One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 

And Jesus looked at him and said,

“How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

They who heard it said,

“Then who can be saved?”

But He said,

“The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.”

Peter said, 

“Behold, we have left our own homes and followed You.” 

And He said to them, 

“Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Did you capture it?

“What must i DO” was the question.

Jesus answered him with the price, the action, that which was needed, that was required to obtain it.

SOW the seed.

SOW your increase

SOW everything you have.

Peter must have been thinking something like, “if the “rich” young ruler would not qualify, and has all that stuff, how the heck do we qualify?”  So he asked Jesus, if this man with all this vast wealth can't obtain the “riches”, who can then?

And Jesus replied once again.  Let the seed DIE, sow even your increase, you will receive the true increase, true wealth that is from heaven.

But why does one need to increase? Why is it that seed is given rather than the actual increase itself?  I mean we are talking about God after all. The maker of everything, the sun, stars, galaxies, trees, leaves, rain and desserts…gold, diamonds, sapphires and every other jewel was created by him.  So why would He provide SEED for increase over providing the actual increase itself?

It is because God is not after your stuff.  He is not in need of more. He is. 

God told Moses just that, I am that I am.  He was revealing Himself to Moses and the world, whatever you may think you need, I am.  He does not need anything.  Yet He still wants us.  What would love be if it expected or demanded reciprocation back to itself?  The depthness of love that The Creator of heaven and earth has for us, demands nothing in return but yet yearns to walk with us.  It yearns to have a lover that out of free will wants also to be with Him.  So He then provides the vehicle, the opportunity, the access, the framework, to willingly give up something, in order to obtain something worth way more than the price of what was exchanged. 

It is this very character of God that ignited the sparkle of creation.  Before the beginning of time, space, and the universe He was.  Before it all began, He determined that just for the opportunity to present someone with the invitation to accept or reject being with Him, He determined to let HIS seed,Jesus, His only son, would be allowed to die.  The seed was planted so an opportunity could be given to free will lovers to accept or reject being with Him.  What kind of love would do this?  No guaranteed return, no expected reciprocation. The reality of such love is incomprehensible! Yet it is now available, because Jesus, the seed, was sown.

And from this understanding, but not only understanding, but by DOING it, Jesus, God's First Son of many, ministered to people.  He would go around preaching “repent for the kingdom is at hand.”  In His living on earth, Jesus not only spoke of, but physically and practically exhibited the protocol of seedtime and harvest.  

Out of this unfathomable Love, is why He gives seed for increase.  You see, something that is coerced, manipulated, lusted after, is not Love.  True love merely extends the opportunity to join, but does not do out of expectation of reciprocity.  Rather He gives seed to the sower.  So the sower could then increase.  And out of this increase, the sower when present with the opportunity, could then have what is needed to obtain true wealth.

This is what Jesus was presenting the rich young ruler with.  He presented him with the opportunity to come and do life together.  The rich young ruler obviously had some understanding of the protocol of sowing, for it is recorded he had much wealth.  But rather than diving deeper into the revelation of why the increase, he let the increase be the reason for sowing.  He rather have the climate control museum show pieces to display, rather than sowing the seed and in trust, letting the seed die and the plant grow.

Jesus once again asks the question, in John’s book, The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Jesus asks:

I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see

Here Jesus is asking to buy gold.  But not any kind of gold.  Gold refined by FIRE, and the reason is to become rich.  He asks to BUY not just any garments, but WHITE garments so your shame will not be revealed for others to mock you.  He asks to buy an eye slave, that is a bread to gather oil to spread on your eyes.  That is oil, the anointing upon your eyes, to give you the proper sight to see truth and from His perspective, to bring clarity from the fog of this world.

You see there are things that only can be obtained through the exchange of goods. Jesus says “BUY from Me”.  Anyone that has purchased anything for a birthday, anniversary, or a gift, knows that the more valuable the item, the more currency is needed to complete the purchase.

But what exactly would be the exchange mechanism, the currency of The Kingdom that Jesus would accept as payment?  It obviously is not the currency of this world.  If you are from a certain country, you can take the currency and try to buy something with it when visiting a different country.  But more than likely they will not accept it and you would need to exchange your currency to something that would be accepted.  The same is with The Kingdom.  Its currency is NOT the currency of this world.  The rich young ruler found this out.  He tried to have enough but became sad when he found out the exchange rate to obtain what he wanted.

So with what does one buy anything from Jesus?  God gives seed, but not currency.  Some have said it is oil, but throughout the scriptures one can see that it is not the currency.  In the story of Elijah and the widow, the widow had oil fill the jars to sell and or exchange it for other goods.  The 10 virgins had oil but the foolish ran out.  The wise one told them to go and purchase more from those who might sell them some oil.  Each of those examples the oil was not currency but a commodity.  The oil is a result of an exchange that occurred.

When one makes their own currency but makes it look like the real thing, it is called counterfeit.  The owner of the real currency, if the act occurs within their borders, normally calls this a crime and there are consequences to be had.  Such an example can be seen in the story told of the seven sons of Sceva, sons of a Jewish high priest.  In Modern days, they would be the equivalent to sons of Head pastor at Corner church of non-denomination or denomination X.  In other words, people that had an appearance of knowing God.  They went through the religious acts and traditions of the congregation and even appeared to many as knowing God and being known by GOD.   In this self-deception they tried to operate like Paul, as he was also known to have been a jewish teacher of the law.  So having this “currency” they tried to use it to operate in the authority and power that Paul was displaying.  And even the demons called out the counterfeit currency.  They told them “Jesus we know, Paul we know.  Who are you?”.  Basically, your currency is fake and your masks and facades have no value. So we are going to mock you and let everyone see your currency holds no value. And the sons of Sceva literally left totally naked for everyone to see their shame and nakedness.

You see the congregants of corner church X, thought they were rich because of all that self printed currency.  So much of it existed, that they themselves believed it was real and carried authority.  That is until those that knew real versus fake called it out.  Wanting to operate at the high level and authority that Paul was displaying and proving God’s sovereignty, they tried to exchange their counterfeit currency and were exposed as frauds, stripped of all masks and everyone saw how truely naked they were walking around as.

So how exactly did Paul, a Jewish scholar, teacher, and priest of the law, obtain the real currency that was recognized by the Kingdom that even demons knew to be the real thing?

You see Paul knew the law.  Knew that even all his learning was not enough to receive the depthness of the revelation, the true riches of what was presented to him.  He suddenly,  in that encounter with Jesus, connected the dots of how to obtain the currency that The Kingdom would accept as payment.

It is written in the Psalms,  He gives beauty for ashes. It is also written in the book of Numbers that the people would take the ashes of the red heifer to put on themselves to make themselves presentable before God.

Now Jesus lived 33 years.  But there was a  paralytic man, from birth for 40 years, every day, that sat in front of the gate beautiful at the temple.  That means Jesus saw him as a baby, saw him as a child, when entering the temple.  When Joseph and Mary lost Jesus, Jesus entered the same gate.  You see, the gate beautiful was the gate used by children and women to enter the temple.  And after 40 years, the paralytic was made whole by Jesus.  You see, the currency of Heaven is in operation here.

So what is it?  Ashes.

Ashes? You might question.

Paul connected the dots and wrote about it in the letter to the Romans.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 

For you see ASHES is what is produced once the whole sacrifice is consumed in the fire of the altar. It is these ashes, produced at His altar, that then become currency in the Kingdom.  As a LIVING sacrifice, it then becomes the choice of the sacrifice to remain in the fire or choose to run away from the Altar.  Without ashes from HIS altar, ashes from other sources become counterfeit currency.

With what currency does one BUY from Jesus?  Ashes.

What type of gold?  Not 5 carat gold, purified gold, refined by fire.  The higher the purification, the higher the price.  That is why God gives seed, for the increase.  Yes the price for This Gold, Refine By Fire, is not just the seed, but the increase as well.  

Want not to be put to shame and demons shame you by showing your nakedness?  Buy white garments from Jesus, with ashes.

Want to see The Kingdom like Paul?  Who was made blind and had to have his eyes anointed with oil?  Buy from Jesus the bread, to soak up the anointing oil. so you can see from the Kingdom’s perspective not yours.  

Buy it with ashes.

Ashes come from the altar, the fire utterly consuming it all.

That is why Jesus said,

Blessed are the poor (left with nothing) for they will become rich.

The currency of The Kingdom?

Ashes.

Your ashes, of giving it all up, even the increase by God.  So you may obtain that which can’t be burned by Fire.