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4/14/2002
Let’s bow in prayer:
You may have had one of the those weeks that has been either hot or cold, weather is kind of moderating but maybe life has been either hot or cold for you and you may need to really call out on the Lord this week or maybe you have had reasons to praise him and thank him. That is why we are here this morning. One of the reasons is just to exalt him and thank him and magnify him and to cast our cares upon him because he truly cares for us. Father we thank you that you are a God who is not out there along ways away doing other things, you are intimately acquainted with all of our ways, you are concerned with our concerns. It is important Father that we become concerned with your concerns. Help our hearts to be broken with the things that break the heart of God. Help us to be interested in the things that interest you. Help our hearts to be hearts for you. Father we ask that you would make this day a special one, help us to be truly exalting you from the heart not just from the voice, not just from the hands, not from the feet, from the very heart of our being. Father because you deserve it and you deserve our honor. In Jesus Name, Amen.
Today we are talking about planting and sowing seeds. If you have a Bible near you find Matthew 13. This is one of the most well known of all the parables that Jesus told. For the next few weeks we are going to be looking at the parables of the kingdom, where Jesus describes how it is in the kingdom of God and uses pictures to tell us the story. Word pictures. A parable, by the way if you are not familiar with what a parable is. A parable is a story taken from life, so this could be something that could happen to anybody in this particular area. He told stories that the people who were listening could look around and they could even maybe see things happening that he was telling about. So he can say, you know it’s the sower went out to sow and they would know how the farmers did that so they would readily understand the story and they would easily understand the point then that he was trying to make. The parable usually has one main point. Even though it may have some other factors, in fact this is one that has a little bit of what we call an allegorical part of it because allegory’s were stories where each part carried meaning. And so in this story there are a number of parts that do carry meaning, so there are some allegorical aspects to this story. There are some other literary figures that the Bible uses. It uses parables, it uses allegories, also uses metaphors and similes. If you remember your days in English you remember what a metaphor is and you know what a simile is, so I won’t have to explain those to you. Some of these things its like him having his like. But there are word pictures that the Bible uses. So a parable has one primary point and maybe some secondary ones that are easily grasp from it. In fact in this one, like I said Jesus explains that there is more than just one point.
The context here is that he is speaking to his disciples and also to the Pharisees, the people who were the religious leaders of the day who were opposing his teachings. Some of them were accepting what he had to say, some of them were rejecting it and opposing it, saying we don’t believe that you are the Messiah, we don’t believe that you are the chosen one of God. Others were readily accepting him as the Messiah and following him as disciples. So there was definitely a difference in the hearer. So Jesus tells the parable to explain the difference that there is among the different hearers. Some people hear and respond quickly, some don’t understand at all, and so he tells the parable that they would understand and then explains it.
So start with Chapter 13:1, ‘On that day Jesus went out of the house, and was sitting by the sea. And great multitude gathered to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole multitude was standing on the beach. And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. And others fell upon the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil, and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” And He answered and said to them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore, I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; AND YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL. AND WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES LEST THEY SHOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, AND HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I SHOULD HEAL THEM.’ “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. Hear then the parable of the sower.
The disciples said now why are you using parables? Because some people don’t understand and some do. And Jesus said, ‘That is the point.’ If a person has closed their heart against the gospel they will not be able to understand or perceive what is being said. Those who have an open heart that’s why he says in verse 15, ‘The heart of the people has become dull and their ears they scarcely ear because they have closed their eyes.’ If somebody gives a message that is so hard to understand it is because they is a closedness to it. There are people who have said, ‘I am not going to listen, I am not going to hear, I am not going to see.’ And so the inability is not in the seed, the gospel itself, it is in the willingness of the hearer to perceive and understand and respond. Because we can close our eyes and ears against any kind of message. In fact, you have seen kids say I can’t hear, and some wives to that too, and some husbands to that too but maybe you haven’t seen that yet. Ok, it is quite a spectacle. But there are times when we don’t want to hear. In fact there is certain things that that’ll come on the radio, you are like this and so am I, you come across, you go through the stations, maybe you are in a strange territory and you are trying to find music that you like and you push the little seek button on your radio and it comes up to country music and you go, Ah, oh I can’t do that. Ok, you don’t do that. I do that. And I do it when I get rock and roll too. And I do it with different things. Oldies I like and classical music I like, and other things. I do like a lot of music but some things I just go I don’t want to listen to that. And some country I really like. I believe it or not I keep talking like I don’t like the stuff but I actually have some albums that I actually do like that are country music. So, just because I laughed with them doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them. The songs. My Mom used to listen to it and we used to wake up to it every morning in Flint. She liked country music for a while. Then she moved on to different kind. People are kind of acclimate so I learned the same. I went to bed to classic music and I woke up to country. And so since I prefer to go to bed, I like classical better I guess. But I love some of the old songs, get on your horse and ride and some of those old songs that were just kind of silly titles and find a cliché you like and write a song about it, kind of thing. And I really enjoy some of it but some of it I don’t really, it is not my every day hearing.
But we don that. We turn things off that we don’t want to listen to. And maybe what we need to listen to some times, but it is what we don’t want to hear at the moment. So we close our ears against it and close our heart. So that is what these people were doing. When Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ some were going, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t think so. And so since they had closed their hearts, they could not understand. They refused to understand. And so he says in verse 19 he begins to explain the parable.
“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 on whom seed was sown beside the road. And the one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man 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 arises because of the word, immediately he falls away. And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”
And so he says there are four soils here. Now the soil determines the growth of the seed. The soil is us, of course. The soil is our heart. Whether the word of God takes seed in our heart, takes root in our heart. So he says there are four kinds of people here. Two of which have no salvation, two of which do. One of the two who don’t, might appear to and one of the two who do might not appear to. Notice number one, he says, there is seed that is sown on the path or the road. It is not like the sower was silly enough to go out on the pavement and try to grow a seed on the pavement, ok? It is not like he was going along the road scattering seed in the road. What they would have was like, many of you have seen. Back when I was still in the old school days, we went to our neighbors house to play sometimes. And when you did that you would cross people’s yards. If they let you, some people were mean and didn’t want you to so you had to go around. But there were certain paths you could get to school, if was a couple three miles for us, all up hill through snow. And I never actually had to walk to school, we always took the bus. But it was quite a ways and our snow started the day school started until the day school ended. So we had deep snow all the time. If you believe that I have some things I would like sell ya.
But there were paths through people’s yards. And so the grass didn’t grow very well there. They would mow across the path but they didn’t have anything to mow because the path was right down to the dirt. So you can imagine they put grass seed on that path hoping to grow grass, it just wouldn’t grow. And so that is what happen here when the sower was walking through his field, he would sow the seed in the field but there would be places where people had walked and the ground would become hard and so there was no place for the seed. The seed could not penetrate the soil so therefore it was gone immediately, as soon as the birds saw it they came down and plucked it up, eat it and it would be gone. So there was no possibility for it to grow. These are the people who hear the message only with their ears and they don’t understand it. They don’t understand it.
Now they suggest that some people will not understand it because they chose not to. But it is possible that some don’t understand because it is the first time they have heard it. So if today is the first time you ever heard about Jesus Christ and his being our Savior and the possibility of eternal life through Christ, then there are some things you can do with the path. You can dig it up, you can make it into soil that would be receptive, you can ask somebody to explain it again. You can say I want to hear that again, I didn’t understand it the first time. We want to be able to understand the gospel so we can respond to it. But the soil that will refuse to hear it is like the path. Says, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t believe it, I don’t want to hear it, so therefore don’t tell me again. That is the one who has no understanding and refuses and rejects in fact, the message. There is no receptivity there. Because there is no softness to the soil.
The second person, he says in verse 20, is the one who is like the rocky places. By the way this is not probably a place that is full of rocks. I mean just like any farmer you take the rocks out. But there are places and you have seen them in different fields after they are plowed where the color of the soil changes depending on the contour of the land there are some places where the rock or bedrock comes up close to the surface. You have seen wind blown places where it blows the dirt right off and the rock is exposed. Well sometimes they are just a little bit of soil over top of the underlying rock and so rocky does not mean lots of stones, it means lots of rock underneath the soil. Because he explains that there is no depth of soil there. And so he says that person is like a person who hears it and says this is what I need today. This is what I want right now, this will make my life wonderful, this will be just what I need and kind of like the little rockets you see that you can shoot up in the air with water. You have seen those water rockets that have little pumps and they shoot up. Well they go up really fast and they come down just as fast. Because there is an immediate response, there is an immediate, ah, this is just what I need. Well they may have said yesterday, that something else was just what they need. And tomorrow they will say something else is what I need. Because it says, ‘they have no depth of root in themselves.’ Because there is no character, no stability of character and so they say, ‘Yes that’s what I want and they’ll pray and they’ll say God this is what I want and it says as soon as any opposition or any troubles or trials or persecution, any kind of opposition comes up it says they fall away. Immediately they fall away. Really quickly. Immediately doesn’t mean the day after, it may mean that but it may mean that they will grow for a little while and then all of a sudden they will fall away. Why? Because they have taken offense at the gospel, believe it or not. The word there, to fall away, means to take offense at.
So here is the picture of this person, here is the person who is maybe having a difficult life, maybe some things are going wrong, maybe some things are making them feel a little bit unsure about their life and future and so somebody says, here is Jesus, he can forgive your sins, he can give you eternal life and so the understanding that they get is, Oh good, he will make my life all better. He will fix all my problems. I have a ticket to heaven and not only that everything is going to be smooth sailing from here on out. And so they get a false understanding of the gospel that says, You get all the good stuff now from here on out and that is what they are kind of after anyway. And so they accept Christ and say that is what I want. Well as soon as trouble hits they say, wait just a minute here, God, I thought you promised no more trouble. And they take offense because they believe that God was going to fix all their problems and he didn’t. By the way, Jesus never said that. Ok, in fact he said, I come to bring a sword, even some family members will be opposed to each other because some will believe and some won’t believe. So there is going to be more difficulty sometimes in our lives than pleasure because of our trust in Christ. So he says, they come in there, the soil is shallow, the character is shallow and so our false understanding of the gospel, they will say this is what I need for the day and it will make my life wonderful. Life is not any more wonderful than it was, and so they take offense at the gospel. It says they take offense and they fall away immediately or suddenly. Quickly maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe a year but something will come up and they will say that is not what I expected. God didn’t come through.
This has been my observation, is that even though the seed is gone they will still make a statement that they, ‘Sure I prayed to received Christ way back then so I know I got my ticket to heaven even though I have rejected everything else about God.’ So they apparently have a sediments of salvation but they have no heart for it. They have no interest in growing in Christ because they have rejected him truly because he didn’t make their life better. So he had to fix that false understanding. Jesus did not come to save us so we could have a more pleasurable life, he came that we might not bear the punishment of our sin for eternity. That we have now salvation in Christ because of his death on the cross.
The third soil, he says in verse 22, ‘The one on whom the seed was sown in the thorns, this man is the one who hears the word, but the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it becomes unfruitful.’ So what happens is this person, the soil, not a problem with the soil in fact it grows really good thorns. Ok so the soil is good enough to grow but there are other things that are allowed to grow with it. So the soil becomes unfruitful, the seed becomes unfruitful because the weeds choke it. And of course, you and I know that in the worst droughts there seem to be pretty healthy weeds out there even though the good stuff doesn’t grow there are other things that easily grow. And so to actually grow really good stuff you have to work at it. In this one it is like there is no work put into it. The thorns are allowed to continue to grow. And so the thorns here he describes as the worries of the world, that just means the regular stuff around us that we would pay attention to all the time, the things that occupy our thinking and our time and our efforts all the stuff that is necessary to life but we let it weigh on us. So it becomes our first attention not our second attention. Jesus said, ‘Seek me first and my kingdom and all these things will be added unto you.’
In Colossians 3:2 says, ‘We should set our mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth.’ He says the things around us, the temporal things, are truly secondary to life, not primary. But if we let them become primary they begin to choke out the word of God. The gospel of Christ. And the word there choke means to press against. So there are two things pressing for attention. One are the worries of the world and also the deceitfulness of riches. In fact the way it puts it is, the deceitful promises of wealth, is what it really is. People become Christians and yet they think what will really satisfy me is more vacation time. If we get to go to all these places and have wonderful times that will be fulfilling. If I get all the money I need so I can buy the things that I want, that will be fulfilling. If I have a career that is fulfilling, that will be good for me, that will satisfy my life. So the deceitfulness of wealth, the deceitful promises that the world can satisfy your soul. The problem is God has never made it so the world can satisfy our spiritual desires. Only he can. And so deceitfulness is that the pressures of the world, the worries that are common to all of us and our pursuit of satisfaction in the wrong things push the word out. We may have truly salvation, we may truly have a relationship with Christ but it becomes so unfruitful that people looking on from the outside might not know the difference. They would look at you and say I guess I don’t see anything different between you and my neighbor who is not a Christian so I guess I don’t see any reason to do anything that you are doing. Because we have allowed the worries and deceitfulness of wealth to push out the effectiveness of the gospel, the fruitfulness of the gospel. We don’t want to do that. We want to make sure that our focus truly is on Christ and the fact that our satisfaction comes not from the world but from him who gives life. In fact Jesus says, ‘What is the profit of a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?’ He says, ‘Even in the abundance of things your satisfaction is not built around things.’ Not exactly the way he puts it but that is what he is saying. Your satisfaction of life is not in the things you have, it is in the relationship we have with Christ. And so the thorns will grow, we have to make sure we grow better. And that they are pressed aside. Like it says they press in, they choke, we press back by following Christ even more strongly. Otherwise you become like the thorny soil which begins to have no fruit.
Now look at 23, ‘The one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.’ Now, of the four soils which one do you think was the sower most satisfied with? It is a multiple choice question, but I think we can manage alright. Jesus says in John 15, ‘Our Father is glorified when we bear much fruit, the Father is gloried when we bear much fruit’ The sower is honored when we bear fruit. When people drive by fields and you have seen some of the droughts and sometimes when the rains came in the wrong time and some corn is planted just after the last rain, and some was planted just before the last rain and got a good start. You driving down through the countryside and see some fields where the corn is way up high and looks really good and a couple miles later just because of timing or whatever else the corn is low and kind of scraggily and you don’t blame the corn do ya? You say, ‘Boy that is bad corn, he must have got a bad batch of corn. You think that farmer didn’t put in at the right time. Either because of circumstances or just bad farming practices. So the farmer gets the credit or the blame for the field. The sower gets the credit or the blame for us. That is why Jesus says, ‘Let your good works be seen by men so they can glorify your Father in heaven’. We are the soil, the seed takes root in us, how is it flourishing? Are people around us seeing good fruit? Are we seeing fruit produced because we are truly at the business of bearing fruit, following Christ and allowing his word to take root in our hearts, developing depth of character and steadfastness with him. Or are we allowing the world to push and shove the word of God out of us. So we become just like the world except we do have salvation. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3, he calls people like that carnal Christians. They are Christians yet they are following their flesh. So what is the soil of your heart? Are you the path people walk on and as soon as the seed hits it, I don’t understand, I don’t care to understand and it is gone. Well, you can do something about that. You can ploy up paths, the soil is at least there possibly. We can ploy it up and make it a little bit more receptive to the seed. Ok I didn’t understand the first time, tell me again. Let me hear that again. Explain that one more time. Ask some questions of somebody who knows about the gospel and say I didn’t understand what the Pastor is talking about, can you explain some more? That is ok. That is ok, soften the soil. We can do that.
If you are the person of the rocky ground. Where it says there is no depth of soil. Well deepen your understanding. Deepen your understanding. Become a person who is not the fly of night, who moves from thing, to thing, to thing. Say, ‘No, this is the answer.’ One of the parables we are going to be looking at in a few weeks is actually a couple of parables. The parable of the pearl of great price and the parable of the treasure in the field. And so understand that No we can do something about finding the most wonderful thing that is going to make our life truly significant with Christ and grasp a hold of it and holding on through thick and thin. So we can do that through depth of character, through steadfastness. So you can do something about the rocky soil.
The thorns we can do something about. We can grow so well that the thorns take second place. That they are not. Remember that Peter said, ‘Cast all your cares upon him because he cares for you. Jesus said, ‘Do not be anxious about tomorrow, do not to anxious about what you eat or drink or what you are going to wear, things like that. He says, God can provide those things. Seek me and my kingdom first and God will supply all these things to you. So the thorns don’t have to take precedence in our life. We don’t have to believe the deceitful promise of riches. It says if you have things you will be fulfilled. Having things don’t fulfill anybody. In fact Solomon, the wise man in the Old Testament says, ‘If you can not be satisfied with enough, you will never be satisfied with more.’ Paul says I have found the secret of contentment. Is that God can supply all my needs through Jesus Christ.
And so the promises of riches that is satisfying it doesn’t work. If you haven’t figures that out yet you need to figure it out. Because that is where the thorn is when they start pressing away at the effectiveness of the word of God in our lives. And hopefully you are the good fruit, the good soil. Where the seed goes in, takes root, and you begin to grow and begin to grow, and begin to grow, and he said some thirty, some sixty, some hundred. Our Father is glorified, the sower is glorified when we bear much fruit. Thirty is good, sixty is better, one hundred is great. We want to bear great fruit for our sower.
Let’s pray:
Father we thank you that you are a wonderful sower. You are not short with the gospel when a sower goes out to sow, he does not pick and chose where the seed goes, although he knows the better soil produces a better fruit or a better crop. But many people who hear the gospel reject it out of hand. Some respond quickly and fall away just as quickly. Others accept Christ and then they don’t live very fruitful lives because the allow the deceitful promised of riches, the worries of the world to press away, push away, the fruit of the gospel in their lives. But Father we want to be the good soil. That accepts your word, who focuses upon you and follows you and our focus is upon bearing the fruit that you have ask us to bear, which glorifies our Father in Heaven. Father I pray that we would evaluate ourselves. Father I know myself as I was studying just for this sermon I realized that often times I am the thorny soil guy. Because there are so many things that take my attention. There are so many things that come up in a day and in a week and in a month and a year that cause me to think of other things that are not terribly spiritual in nature. They are just parts of life that are present but my focus gets off you and upon them. Help me to learn to trust in you with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding. In all my ways acknowledge you and allow you to direct my path. Father those mundane things need to be cared for. We need to put gas in the car, we need to mow the lawn, we need to do all these things but they should not be the focus of our attention. We should not fall to the promise of riches. Father I pray that you would help me to re-focus my attention on you. So I become the good fruit, the good ground that bears fruit that truly glorifies the Father in Heaven. Father help that to be true in intent for everyone of us here this day. We Ask it in Jesus Name, Amen.
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