Isaiah 61:11

²⁶He said, “God’s Kingdom is as if a man should cast seed on the earth, ²⁷and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, though he doesn’t know how. ²⁸For the earth bears fruit by itself: first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. ²⁹But when the fruit is ripe, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

³⁰He said, “How will we liken God’s Kingdom? Or with what parable will we illustrate it? ³¹It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, ³²yet when it is sown, grows up and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”

¹¹and the LORD will guide you continually, satisfy your soul in dry places, and make your bones strong. You will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters don’t fail.

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰For as the rain comes down and the snow from the sky, and doesn’t return there, but waters the earth, and makes it grow and bud, and gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater; ¹¹so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do.

⁸Rain, you heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, that it may produce salvation, and let it cause righteousness to spring up with it. I, the LORD, have created it.

¹For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning lamp.

⁷and give him no rest until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

¹¹Truth springs out of the earth. Righteousness has looked down from heaven.

³He spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a farmer went out to sow.