Things are not always what they seem. Years ago my wife and I purchased some perennials from a mail order nursery. When they arrived, we planted the bare roots according to the directions, but the plants did not grow. Years later, long after we had forgotten about them, the plants sprouted right where we had planted them. All that time the roots that seemed dead had life and produced plants in their own good time.

The proclamation of the gospel can be like that. Sometimes that proclamation does not seem to do anything. Yet the gospel is always alive and life giving.

The gospel is God's power

The Bible tells us that the gospel is God's power for salvation (Romans 1:16). It is powerful because it is God's Word. You cannot separate God's Word from the Holy Spirit. Whenever God's Word is read or proclaimed, the Holy Spirit will be doing his work of bringing people to faith or strengthening faith.

That does not mean that everyone who hears the gospel will believe. Some will reject that message. When God works directly with his almighty power as he did when he created the universe and as he will when he raises all the dead on the Last Day, he cannot be resisted. On the Last Day no one will be able to remain in the grave. However, when the Holy Spirit works indirectly, through means, he can be resisted. As our Savior lamented, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matthew 23:37, emphasis added).

Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit always works through the means of grace, and the administration of the means of grace will always accomplish what God wants it to accomplish. Our Lord declares, "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:10,11).

Believers are where the gospel is proclaimed