Sermon: Parable of the Seed and Soils

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Open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13. Gospel according to Matthew, first book in your

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New Testament if you're a new believer. A little more past midway through your

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Bible. And as you guys get there, you heard me announce that this was the most popular gospel, most quoted from in the second century of the church.

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And that says a lot, actually, considering the context of where the church came from.

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First to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. And Matthew is so heavily focused upon the fulfillment of the old covenant promises and prophecies about the

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Messiah. And now enter Jesus, the kingdom of God, now in the world, broken into history.

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And so, Matthew chapter 13. This comes after, of course, a pretty significant moment where Jesus is confronted by the religious leadership of the first century.

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They accuse him of working with Satan, and he confronts that horrible sin, and he warns them of impending judgment.

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And so that's the context. You have the kingdom being proclaimed in his generation to those around him, and it's being rejected by certain people.

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And so you have Jesus now with his followers. You have the opposition. And Jesus goes into the parable of the sower.

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And so let's read this parable. Hear now the words of the living and true

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God. Matthew 13, 1. That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down.

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And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying, a sower went out to sow.

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And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil.

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But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

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Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

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He who has ears, let him hear. Then the disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables?

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And he answered them, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

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For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

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This is why I speak to them in parables. Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

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Indeed in their case the prophet of Isaiah, prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says,

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You will indeed hear, but never understand. And you will indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.

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Lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their hearts, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I will heal them.

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But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears for they hear. For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people, long to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

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Now here we go, today's unpacking. Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches it away.

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Snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy.

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Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while. And when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

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As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

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As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word, and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, and another sixty, and another thirty.

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Thus far is the reading of God's word, let's pray together. Father, please bless

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God now, as we enter into, Lord, your word.

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God, I am unworthy in myself to be presenting your word.

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It is pure, firmly fixed forever in the heavens.

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A lamp, a guide. And so I pray, God, that you would bless,

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Lord, your people as we approach your word. Help us to understand.

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By your spirit, teach us, Father. Please, by your spirit, teach and guide today. Lord, let this not be the words of a mere man, but let it be,

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Lord, empowered by you. Help us, Lord, to see and understand and change.

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Let Christ be exalted and be made famous through this message. In Jesus' name, amen.

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So, Matthew chapter 13, parable of the sower and the seeds. It actually is a quite powerful passage, because, like I said, when

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Jesus teaches this parable, he's teaching it in the context, at least here in Matthew, of opposition.

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Great crowds following Jesus. Opposition is there. People are professing faith in Jesus. And this is one of those moments that causes me to love

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Jesus a lot more, and to appreciate the gospel, the

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Bible, the message of Jesus more. Because what you see here in Matthew 13 is common fare for Jesus.

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It's Jesus teaching people that it's possible to think that you know him and not.

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To have Jesus within arm's distance, arm's reach, and not actually touch him.

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To actually go throughout your life believing that you have some sort of an intimate connection with Jesus, and actually not know him personally, intimately.

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Not to have a true salvific knowledge. Jesus does something that would cause him to get fired from most seminaries, evangelism courses.

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Today, we do things differently than Jesus and the apostles. We preach the gospel today in a way that looks very easy.

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Now, don't get me wrong. The gospel is a gift. Salvation is a gift. Eternal life is a gift.

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The righteousness of Jesus is a gift. You can't earn it. You'll never pay it back. You are never worthy of it.

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However, we preach the gospel in a way that sounds something like this. Try Jesus out.

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Give him a try. Give him a chance. I've mentioned it many times before, but it highlights exactly the problem.

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Years ago, Rick Warren was on Fox News at Christmastime. And what he said on Fox News at Christmastime was compelling.

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It perfectly identifies the evangelical gospel of the 21st century. What he said was this.

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He said, give Jesus a 30 -day trial. Just give him a try for 30 days.

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That's all I'm saying. Just give him a try. No real commitments. Just give him a try for 30 days. 30 -day trial for Jesus.

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That's all he's asking of you. And that perfectly codifies the evangelical gospel of the

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West in the 21st century. And it is, of course, why you see so many seeds cast out.

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And you see so many things choked out with no root. You see gospels that are proclaimed that are really no gospel at all.

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You see, when Jesus preached the gospel, he preached it in such a way as to make it vividly clear. You are either in him or you're not.

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You either come to die and rise again or don't come. So Jesus takes great pains to make sure that when he preaches the gospel, he makes an effort to talk you out of coming.

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Jesus preaches that way. He talks people out of coming to him. Now don't get me wrong, Jesus tells people, come to me, all you who are burdened, those who need rest.

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He calls people to come to him. But he also preaches in such a way as to make sure that you know that you know him.

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That there are actual markers and tests to know whether you are actually in Christ or you are not.

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Jesus defines union with him and relationship with him in such a way that you can actually determine, yes,

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I actually know him. I have a relationship with this person who's called himself the

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Messiah and God. I know him intimately. Jesus tells the story in a way that sounds so different than the past.

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It's compelling. When you look at the things that we produce today, I went to Australia last year in New Zealand.

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And while in Australia, New Zealand, meeting with the believers that were out there, I got to share with them a bit about what's going on over here.

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And I got to hear from them what's going on over there. And one of the things I noticed immediately, first couple days

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I was there, is all of the garbage that we have shipped out to Australia. And when I say garbage,

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I mean all the spiritual garbage that we've shipped out to Australia. All of our false teachers, our famous false teachers, are the pop culture icons in Australia.

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They're the famous teachers in Australia. We've taken all of our spiritual garbage and we've distributed it and shipped it out around the world.

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And they have it over there. And it's amazing because we preach what we call gospel today around the world.

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And it's this idea that coming to Jesus really has no consequence at all. You can profess to believe in Jesus.

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You can say a magic prayer. And just so long as you've prayed this magic prayer, you know

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Jesus. There doesn't have to be any fruit. Not a hundredfold, not 60, not 30, not really any fruit.

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Just so long as you've made a profession of faith. And that's a gospel that's so different.

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It's different from what you see right here in Jesus. It's different than we see what was in the gospel record, the

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New Testament record. And it's different from the gospel proclaimed in history. Just as a point to consider.

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When you look at the giants of the faith in history, the way that they preach the gospel like Jesus here, you see something very different.

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I was on the program like two weeks ago with Dr. James White. And on the program, Dr. White mentioned how he was going to England.

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And I said, oh yeah, I was just in Ireland. And he mentioned that you can still see all of the residual sort of vestiges, all that stuff of Christianity in England.

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And I was like, yeah, you can't go anywhere really in Ireland and not see the dramatic impact of the gospel and the kingdom of God.

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All of the old stones are still there, the bricks. You can just see the old Christian kingdom, as it were, sort of hanging around.

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You can't miss it. You see, those Christians in history that would topple entire nations and governments and peoples, they did it with a gospel that was clear about where you are and where you need to be.

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One example, quickly, of a person in history that preached the kind of gospel that Jesus is preaching here.

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It's a man like George Whitefields. Get to know him. George Whitefields was responsible for one of those great awakening moments in history where, listen, the gospel was preached and it wasn't like a passing moment.

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It was the kind of thing where the gospel was proclaimed and entire villages come to Jesus, entire cities come to Jesus, where they start shutting down the old way after these people come to Christ.

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Their lives transformed. They start bearing fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

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Stuff starts happening. When George Whitefield preached the gospel, he didn't preach it in such a way as to say, this isn't going to cost you anything.

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He preached in such a way as to say, if you are not born again, if you're not regenerate, if there isn't fruit coming out of your tree that is good, then you don't know him.

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Stop pretending like you do. And you see in history these great moments of light penetrating darkness where entire people groups come to Jesus.

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Nations fall at the feet of this Messiah. And you listen to what they were saying and it sounds so different from the kind of message that we proclaim today.

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Where coming to Jesus costs you really nothing. And coming into contact with Jesus may not actually change your life and your being.

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But that's not the kind of gospel that Jesus is preaching here. He preaches in such a way as to make sure that you can identify as to whether you actually know him.

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And I don't mean intellectually. I don't mean know about him. I'm talking about the kind of knowing that the

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Bible talks about that is intimate relationship. That kind of knowing.

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And it's interesting, this word here, I just want to point to it quickly. Jesus says in Matthew 13, 9, something that we said last week, he says elsewhere.

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He says it in Revelation. It's quoted in the other gospels. But he says this, he says, He who has ears, let him hear.

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Now I want to say this, we don't like that. Can you be, I mean seriously, I don't like that.

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We don't like that to know that I'm going to go out and preach the gospel. And some of the people that I proclaim this good news to, they just don't have the ears to hear what

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I'm saying. We love to be able to manipulate, and to convince, and to sell.

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If you know Jesus, and you know how precious he is, and how amazing he is, and you know how your life is being transformed closer and closer to deeper intimacy with him, you want to tell everybody, and you want them to bite down.

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And the idea that there are some people who do not have ears to hear the message can bother us.

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Because we want the world to know. And what this tells us fundamentally is, listen, that there is a sovereign

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God who orchestrates all of this. And this gospel goes out, and Jesus preaches it in such a way as he tells the story, he tells the truth, he calls people to come for life, but then he singles out that group and speaks specifically to the ones that God has given the ability to hear what he's saying.

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He says, he who has ears, let him hear. And what we know from the gospel record, the

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New Testament record, the Old Testament, this entire revelation is this, listen, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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Romans 3, there is none righteous, not even what? One, none who does good, none who seeks for God.

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Nobody's looking. Nobody's looking. I'm not looking for God apart from Jesus Christ.

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You are not looking for God apart from Jesus Christ. You didn't have ears to hear apart from Jesus Christ choosing to reveal himself to you.

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The Bible says that those who are in the flesh, that is those who are still fallen in Adam, they cannot please

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God. They're not even able to submit to the law of God. Jesus says in John 6, 44, No man can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up. There's no abilities spiritually to come to God.

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We're broken. We're not sick. We're not just a little off spiritually.

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We're not good people. The Bible says that we are, Ephesians 2, dead in our sins and trespasses.

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Dead! And here's the way that Cheryl put it years ago,

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Luke's wife, when I was preaching on this, she said, What can a dead man do?

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I thought that was wonderful. What can a dead man do? And I've quoted it a lot since then. What can a dead man do?

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Ephesians 2, We were dead in our sins and trespasses by nature, children of wrath.

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That's our condition. And so Jesus speaks to a great crowd. The text says, great crowds gathered about him.

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And he's proclaiming the message of the kingdom, the word of the kingdom to them. And he says, He who has ears, let him hear.

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There are certain people there that God is illuminating to hear his voice. But there are also certain people in the crowd hearing the parable of the sower and the seeds who are rejecting

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God. They don't believe. Their hearts are hard. And I just want to examine this theme quickly before we go into and it's quite easy to unpack the four points of the seeds and the soils.

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This issue of blinding, because he says, Whoever has ears, let them hear what I'm saying.

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And then there are these others who don't hear. They don't understand. In Matthew 13, 14, it says,

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Indeed in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. That says, and in the quotation from Isaiah 6,

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You will indeed hear but never understand. You will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed.

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Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

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That's from Isaiah 6. We did this last week, right? Isaiah 6, the famous scene where you have

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Isaiah before the throne of God. He gets this glimpse of the holiness of God and the just majesty of God and he is terrified.

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Right? He's terrified. And the angels are saying, Holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord God almighty. And his first response to this scene of God's glory is to cover his mouth and realize his own deceitfulness and his own sin.

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He says, I'm a man of unclean lips and he says, I'm unraveling, I'm coming apart at the seams. But then the text says,

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Go. But they're not going to hear, they're not going to understand. It seems weird, doesn't it?

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Like God's sending somebody to go preach to somebody the truth and the message about him but he says, they're not going to hear, they're not going to understand, they're not going to believe.

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Which gives us this clear indication that God does send his people to go proclaim the truth to people but God has already committed ahead of time to judge those people by allowing them to have what they want which is not him.

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So their eyes are closed, they can't hear and that message of the gospel goes out and they don't perceive it or understand it and that is according to God's decree.

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If you say, but Pastor Jeff, really? Like really

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God is sending people with a message of truth and he's going to leave people hardened in their sin to not even respond?

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I want you to see using the same text just move backwards to 11, 25 through 27.

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I want you to see the consistent message of Jesus concerning his sovereignty over bringing salvation.

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I want you to hear this. It is powerful. Matthew 11, 25. Look closely at Jesus here.

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He says, at that time Jesus declared, I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth.

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I thank you. Grab hold of it. Seriously. Stop for a moment. He is thanking the

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Father for something here. This is I thank you. God, thank you so much for this amazing thing.

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Thank you. Here's my gratitude God. Thank you for this thing.

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There is gratitude. He appreciates it. He is showing God how committed he is to his glory here and he says, thank you

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Father. For what? That you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

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Yes, Father. For such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my

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Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father. And no one knows the

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Father except the Son, and here it is, and anyone to whom the

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Son chooses to reveal him. Did you catch that? God, thank you.

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Thank you that you hid this. That you are hiding this from these people.

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These wise and understanding. Thank you that you hid it from them and you revealed it to these little children.

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These little children referring to, of course, his people. These people who have been humbled like little children who belong to God.

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Thank you God that you hid it from these people and you revealed it to these people.

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And I think it's powerful to focus in upon the fact that it says that everything has been handed over to Jesus and no one knows the

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Father except anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. So, in Matthew 13 you have an instance where Jesus says, whoever has ears, let them hear.

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A crowd of people. He says, come on my people who hear me. Come on my people who know my

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Father. I want you to listen to my voice. And isn't it powerful that Jesus teaches really throughout the

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Gospels, but specifically in John chapter 10 about you and me, if you know Jesus, it says this

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My people, my sheep hear my, what? Voice.

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And they come. My sheep hear my voice and they come. They won't follow a stranger.

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Jesus says about his sheep that they hear him and in John 10 these

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Jewish people who are rejecting him, they actually say to him when he said it over and over and over, they say to Jesus tell us if you're the

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Messiah. Stop keeping us in suspense. Are you the Messiah?

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And Jesus says to them, he says I told you. He says the reason you can't hear me is because you are not of my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice and they come. I give them eternal life and they're in my hand and nothing can snatch them from my hand.

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They're in my father's hand and nothing can snatch them from my father's hand. Jesus doesn't teach in one place or two places or three places or six places or ten places.

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His absolute sovereignty over salvation it is from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the

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Bible. God is the one who has freedom in his grace.

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He has freedom in his grace to give ears to hear and to prepare the ground to receive a seed of the gospel that brings forth fruit.

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Jesus teaches his absolute sovereign power over salvation and it teaches that God does blind people.

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He does harden people. He does allow people to be left in their sin.

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One last point on that. Romans 1. We use it a lot of apologia, don't we? Romans 1.

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If you've taken any apologetics at Apologia Church, you know we teach Romans 1 because we want to emphasize the fallen condition of humanity.

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What's it say in Romans chapter 1 verse 18? For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness what?

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Suppress the truth for that which is known about God is evident within them for God has shown it to them.

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And then it says, since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, everything, his divine power, it's all shouting to us so it says that we are left unapologetus without a defense, without an apologetic.

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And then it says, watch, watch. Here it is. Therefore, because of all this, because we don't want

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God in our knowledge, we don't want to know him, we say no because we want to exchange

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God for an idol, it says, therefore, God gave them over.

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Therefore, God gave them over. And I'll tell you what, watch, you preach this in the standard, fair, evangelical church model that God is so sovereign over salvation that he could say to this vast lump of humanity,

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I choose to give you grace and you judgment, you mercy and you justice.

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You preach that and the first thing you hear is, why does he still find fault?

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For who resists his will? And Paul would say to that, what?

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Who are you? What? Oh man, who answers to answer back to God?

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Shall the thing molded say to the molder, why have you made me like this?

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You see, here's the truth of the scriptures we need to grasp, is that all of us are in the hands of the potter, and all of humanity is this fallen lump of clay, worthy of only hardness.

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And God chooses in his grace to give grace to some and mercy to some and ears to some and eyes to some, salvation to some and to leave others in their rebellion.

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And so that gets us to the sower and the seeds.

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Now I want to say this, just it's not going to take long to unpack this, I don't believe, I think it's rather straightforward and clear.

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I believe, I'll never know the answer to this, I really will never know the answer, only

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God does. But I believe that I had a false conversion when

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I first heard the gospel and it wasn't until after my drug and alcohol addiction and my plunge into depravity that I truly understood the gospel and came to Christ.

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And it was one of the things that I got a hold of in this like two week period of silence after God crushed my life.

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I had the Bible in front of me and I had a book, don't even know how I got it actually, it was the

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Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur. And I was pointed in these studies towards this text.

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And it was this text that God used to cut me and to show me who

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I was. Because I saw in this text that the gospel goes out and it's going to hit at some point good ground.

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And when it does hit good ground, it actually gives life and it actually produces fruit.

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Sometimes 100, sometimes 60, sometimes 30. Here's the point though, what I saw was that the consequence of good soil and gospel seed is actual fruit.

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And what I didn't see in my life was actual fruit. Not 100, not 60, not even 30.

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I saw depravity. I saw a profession of faith, but I saw depravity.

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And it was this text that God used to open my eyes to my condition.

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And I pray that that happens today. Jesus says in chapter 12 verse 1, at that time, sorry, chapter 13 verse 18, when he explains the parable, he says, hear then the parable of the sower.

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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.

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First thing to note is that clearly this is a picture of the son of man casting out these seeds of the word of the kingdom.

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I want to note something in particular here, just sort of put a cap on it, and that's this.

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Jesus refers to this as the word of the kingdom. So for Jesus, the gospel message, the truth about him, it's appropriate to call it the gospel of the kingdom, and it's appropriate to call it the word of the kingdom.

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Watch. Do we preach the gospel like that today to the standard person? Do we say, he's the ruler of the world, he's the king, he's lord, he has all authority.

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You're coming into his kingdom. You're coming under his rule. You're coming under his lordship.

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You see, we preach the gospel like, watch, you can have Jesus for heaven, but you don't have to have

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Jesus as lord. And that's a false gospel.

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It's not the gospel. If you thought you could know Jesus as savior, but you could separate him from yourself as lord, then you've never known

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Jesus. Because Jesus preaches his message like this. It's the word of my rule, my kingdom.

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And this message of the kingdom goes out, Jesus says. Now, it's interesting,

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Jesus preaches here in the midst of an agrarian or agricultural society, and so everybody's very familiar with agriculture.

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They know their life depends upon good crops and things growing so they can actually eat.

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We don't worry about it now, because if we want something to eat, we go to Whole Foods. We go, if you're rich, right?

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You go to Sprouts, you go to Fries, you go to Safeway, you go wherever to get food, right?

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So, you don't have to grow anything. You go pick up an apple, a bushel of apples. You can buy, watch, it's how amazing it is.

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You can go to the store today, and you can buy 10 ,000 apples. And never put in any work, except to carry them out of the store.

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Right? You can go to the store today, and you can buy all the celery you want, all the potatoes you want. You don't have to worry about any of it.

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You just go, and there it is. Praise God for capitalism, right? That's straight from Jesus. It's true, but you don't have to work for it.

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I don't have to worry about how it grows. It's an amazing experience. Recently, my wife has been growing things in my house.

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She's been growing, what is she, do you call it, do you call it babies? Is that what it's called?

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Is that what you call it? Is that what this technical term is, though? Is it actually babies? It's not?

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What do you call it? Okay, she calls it babies. She says, no,

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I know you do. Imogen, doesn't she say, doesn't she say, sailor, doesn't she say, I gotta feed my babies?

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She does, yes, okay, so. Okay, so she says, I gotta go feed my babies, right? Now, I don't know if that's because they're her babies, or if they're like, it's a technical term like, you know, like kombucha.

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You've got that ugly thing in kombucha that floats around on the top, right? They call it the mother, right?

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It is ugly, right? It is this huge fat disk of disturbing stuff that floats around, right, and it leaves like little boogies in the kombucha and it just floats, right, like around.

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Okay, and they call that the mother, so I, okay, so. The starter is interesting, because how we live today, we don't pay any attention to this, my wife is buying like this really old wheat, right, it's like non -GMO, and like, you know, it's all this stuff, and like she grows it, it's like it has its own life, and it tastes delicious, actually,

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I'm really glad she's doing it, but for my family, it's like this really cool thing, we're actually like making our own bread fresh, and we're using all the things that God made, like that are natural in creation, to create all these cultures, to make sourdough bread, and it's like we're like, ooh, what a fun experience, right, for us it's like, ooh, neat, right, because otherwise we're like, let's go grab some wonder bread, for 99 cents, right, so we don't do this anymore, we don't do it anymore, and like some of our people are going to Kauai, and they're like, how are we gonna survive out there, it is unbelievably hard to live out there, because it's so expensive, so everyone's like, we can buy chickens, and we can plant trees, and we can grow this, and grow that, and literally there are families right now among you, that are trying to figure out how to do this, so they can survive in Kauai by growing their own food, like we have to get into it, but for them, that's their life, and Jesus uses in an agricultural society, a very peculiar parable, now watch, when he first tells it, there's a good chance, and I'm convinced of this, there's lots of different answers as to what's going on here, but I'm convinced of this, that when

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Jesus first told the parable of somebody casting seeds out onto this bad ground, that they would have seen in a sense, it as silly, this is kind of a silly parable, what idiot throws seed out onto ground that's not prepared, and it might look like the sower is actually incompetent in the story, it might raise an eyebrow or two upon people that live this way, why would you waste good seed on ground that isn't ready?

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Seems kind of incompetent, however, I believe that in the parable,

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Jesus tells it this way, the sower goes out, the son of man, casting out the word of the kingdom on all these different types of ground, because it shows the benevolence of the sower, that he sends the message out into the world to everybody, the word of the kingdom, the king has come,

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Jesus is savior, he's lord, repent and believe the gospel, that goes out to everybody, and it shows his love, it shows his compassion, but Jesus teaches that this word of the kingdom goes out, and it falls on different kinds of soil, the first one it falls on,

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Jesus explains that the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart, and Jesus tells in the original story, that a bird came and devoured it, which means this, watch, you and I are going to preach the gospel, and we're going to tell people about Jesus, and sometimes there is actual demonic influence, that blinds the people we're talking to, so they can't even remember it, they can't hold it, do you ever run into somebody, do you ever have this experience, where you tell somebody the gospel, and it doesn't click, it's like they can't see, or have you ever had this experience, where you tell somebody the gospel message, and they can't see it, they can't hear it, they can't understand it, and then you tell them later, and all of a sudden they come to life, they see, and they go, how come

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I didn't see this before, how come I couldn't understand this, how come I couldn't even see how amazing

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Jesus was, but at one point they heard it, and it just disappeared, Jesus teaches that there is actual demonic influence, that removes understanding, and even remembrance of the gospel, it gets snatched away, there is actual demonic influence, which means this, listen,

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I can only say one thing to this, I think that I have to say, praying about it, I thought, what do

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I need to communicate, and this is it, if you hear the gospel today, don't assume you have tomorrow, don't assume you have the next half hour, don't assume you have the next 24 hours, you don't know, and you can hear the good news right now, and think that I got it, and I'll contemplate it,

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I'll consider it, I'll think about it, but it could be snatched away, it could disappear, you don't know how much time

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God has given to you, I'll share this one thing, I think my son and my daughter got a good reminder yesterday about how limited our lives are, and how fragile we are, my son,

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I'm proud of him, he saved up money, really strict, saved up his money to buy himself his own first car, so I was super proud of him,

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I said, don't go into debt, that's slavery, try to avoid it at all costs, and he did it, he saved up money, and he bought a car, and it's a

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Mustang, of course, right, it's a 98 Mustang, so I went to go look at it with him, we went to pick the thing up, and the guy we bought it from was like, oh yeah, it's got these problems and this, it's a $2 ,000

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Mustang, we knew it would have problems, it's got a V8 engine, it's worth all the problems, right, so we'll figure it out, right, so he gets the car, and this is

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Friday now, halfway through the day, he's now driving around in his car, and I get a phone call after going across town to drop my daughter off, he says,

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I'm stuck at a gas station, the car won't start, so I'm trying to figure out, like, troubleshoot from where I'm at, and I say, okay,

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I gotta come to him now, figure it out, so we spent all night Friday trying to figure it out, turns out ultimately it was the battery, we thought it was a theft system, we had to go across town, get a new battery, put the battery in it, and I noticed that the battery inside, the guy had lost the thing that locks the battery in, and I thought, this thing's gonna shake a lot, it might shake one of the connections loose,

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I said, we'll figure it out tomorrow, get it all connected, go home, next thing you know, I wake up to my wife,

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Saturday morning saying, wake up, the kids are dead on baseline, like, the car is dead,

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I'm like, what, what, so I get in my car, I rush down baseline road, and I'm thinking as I'm moving my way down there, the last thing

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I heard was, we're on the side of the road, I thought, they're fine, I drive down baseline in a dangerous spot where cars are just zipping past there, and there's my son and my daughter, my 16 -year -old daughter, on baseline road, in the middle of the road, while cars are flying through, they don't even see him, they're skidding, because what happened was, the battery connections came off, they slipped off, and so he's sitting there dead with no ability to put hazards on, the car is dead, on baseline, cars can't see him, they're skidding, thank

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God for this young man that pulled behind my son and turned his hazards on, we got him out of the way, car's fixed, praise

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God, story ended well, but it could have had a much worse ending,

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I only share that story to say this, none of us know when that moment comes where God takes us to stand before him, and here's this story

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Jesus gives of seeds going out and hitting soil and birds coming to devour and take it away where you can be under the hearing of the gospel, have that seed of the gospel snatched away from you, you don't know your limitations, you don't know the boundaries of your life, you should respond when you hear, contemplate, is this good soil?

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The second one, Jesus teaches, as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

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So that of course is the seed that fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, but since they had no depth of soil, the sun rose, they were scorched.

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So Jesus teaches, there are people who hear the word of the kingdom, and it looks like they're in, it looks like it penetrated the heart, it looks like they're genuine believers, but when there is external influence, tribulation, trial, persecution, they have no depth of soil, it's not even rooted in there, it was never genuinely connected, and so it withers away, it burns out, it gets destroyed, and I am thoroughly convinced that a great majority of what we see around us, when we contemplate

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Christianity in the West in the 21st century, is this kind of soil.

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It's the kind of soil where it looks like genuine profession, it looks real, but the moment there is difficulty or tribulation or persecution on the account of God's word,

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Christ, his gospel, it disappears. You see, people today who profess faith in Jesus, at the first moment of pressure from the culture around them, don't stand for Jesus, don't believe that book, don't say you believe that, buy into our worldview, accept what we say, they fold instantly.

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The moment persecution and tribulation arises, it will reveal whether or not there was ever good soil.

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Jesus teaches us what? He'll never lose us. He'll never forsake us. He gives us eternal life, and it says what?

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He that began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ, which means this, if you are truly in Christ and there is good depth of soil, it means that when persecution arises, you will make it through, because it is

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God who is in you, causing you to obey him, to pursue him.

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It's that great promise in our new covenant, Ezekiel 36, I'll put my spirit within them, I'll write my law within their hearts,

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I'll change their heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, I'll put my spirit within them and cause them to observe my statutes.

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Someone who truly knows Jesus is changed, and you didn't do it, I didn't do it, it's not to your glory, it's

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God's. When that gospel goes out and it actually penetrates and someone comes alive, even when there's persecution and difficulty and trial, you make it, not because you're good at it, not because you're disciplined, not because you're special, because you're better than the next person, it's because fundamentally it is

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God, working in you, to cause you to love him and obey him. What kind of soil are you?

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Are you the hard ground? Or, verse 22, as for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful.

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So now Jesus explains what he meant when he says other seeds fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them.

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It's seed that goes out and it hits ground where it gets choked out and no life is possible.

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I'm convinced, again, about this as well, that in our own culture today we see so much of us, so much of this around us, you see people who profess faith in Jesus but they don't want it to cost anything.

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They don't want it to cost anything, they want to love their stuff, they want to love their things. Right? Our things are most important, our stuff is most important or the love of this life and this world is so important that the gospel of the kingdom pales in significance.

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Now this is the one I think I need to spend just a moment on because I think it's easy for us as we read this book and we read this text to avoid the hard heart surgery and that's to say, watch, we can say in this parable as we read it, because we love to do this as Christians, right?

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We never like to read ourselves into the bad guys. Right? Like we're like, oh the

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Pharisees bad guys, not me, right? The Pharisee who prays in the street corner so other people see him pray.

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I don't ever pray great prayers in front of people but not to God, that's not me. And I certainly don't ever do righteousness if somebody else sees me, that's the that's the

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Pharisee, that's not me. Oh, and this over here with the seed on the soil that gets snatched away from the devil, that's not me.

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Oh, it's certainly not me about persecution and trial and it's not the cares of the world and riches for me, that's not me.

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We never look at it and ask the question, how much of this is actually a danger to me?

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Am I the kind of person who loves the world so much and the things of the world and riches that I will be choked up ultimately?

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James says in James 4, 4 friendship with the world is enmity with God.

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And James says there, you can't be a friend of the world and a friend of God, you have to choose one or the other.

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Sounds kind of like Jesus saying things like there is a wide gate, a small one, a broad road, a narrow one, one leads to life, one leads to destruction, many find the one, few find the other.

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Sounds kind of like that narrowness of Jesus, right? Like you either have death in Jesus and resurrection or you don't know him.

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You either plan whether you have what it takes to follow Jesus or don't come and in this case,

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Jesus says there are people who hear the word of the kingdom and it looks good and then it gets choked out.

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Why? By external influences. What do we love? You see, watch.

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This is important. This can get heavily misinterpreted. People could say well, okay, so Jesus is teaching you ultimately here not to get choked up, not to get choked out by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches so all riches are bad and everything in the world is bad.

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That's how Christians do sometimes, right? We're reactionary. We go one of two big swings.

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We say, okay, riches then is evil, the world is evil, so we start saying things like if you're a rich person, you couldn't possibly know

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Jesus, everything in the world is evil, shut off your internet, throw out your TV, right? We start doing that stuff.

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That's an overreaction. It has to do with emphasis and what this stuff does to you. Let me just say first of all, watch.

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Praise God for Christian billionaires. Can I say that? Yeah. Praise God for Christian billionaires.

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Praise God for the wealthy Christian who gave Apologia Church $125 ,000.

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Praise God for him. How many babies are going to be saved because of that rich Christian?

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Right? Jesus isn't teaching that riches themselves are wicked and evil.

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It has to do with emphasis. If your whole life is absorbed in pursuing riches, loving money, just accumulating stuff for your own self and your own benefit for you, then yes, that chokes out the seed of the gospel.

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No ground. Can't penetrate. And if you love the things of the world so much, if it's all appealing to you, if it's all attractive to you, if there's no difference between what you listen to and watch now from before, do you love the world so much that all of that still is attractive to you?

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That's what I'm talking about. The things of the world that choke out the seed of the gospel. You see, you can't dedicate your mind and your heart to the things of the world and still have an intimate relationship with Jesus.

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You will get choked out. And Jesus says, there are people who hear the word, and it looks like it's there, and it gets choked out by the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of the world, and then

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Jesus says finally, as for the what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.

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He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.

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Here's the point. Jesus had just said, you know, in Matthew, we just talked about it, good trees bear what?

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Good fruit, bad trees bear bad fruit. Jesus says, you'll know them by their fruit, you know if they're mine, based on their fruit.

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And Jesus says here, if it actually penetrated good soil, it bears fruit.

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Listen, no one's saying Jesus is not teaching here perfectionism. If you're a Christian, you're a sinner today.

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And if you say you're not, you're a liar, and you don't know God. That's in John. So we sin, and we're not perfect, but don't you love how

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Jesus helps us out a bit? He says, some a hundred, right? Yes.

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Some are Charles Spurgeons, right? Some are George Whitefield.

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Some are Jonathan Edwards, right? Some are these amazing missionaries that you say, how did you get like that?

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How do you know Jesus like that? Like Luke's grandparents. That's a hundredfold kind of Christian right there.

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Going into the Congo, preaching the gospel, saving tribes, building hospitals, ending your days victorious in Jesus.

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That's a hundredfold. Right? And some is like 60. You're like, you're doing pretty good. That's some good fruit, right?

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You're fighting for the faith, right? You're developing fruit. And some are, you got it, right? Thirtyfold, right?

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There's something there. The point is, as Jesus is teaching, if the word of the kingdom penetrated genuinely tilled ready soil, it bears something.

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And this is what cut me. I looked at my life and I thought to myself, how am

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I not the other soil? Because all I love is the world.

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I love the things of the world. I love to party. I loved it all.

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I would much rather spend my Friday and Saturday nights going out and getting high and doing whatever than I would spending time with Jesus.

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How am I not? How am I not a high definition display of that bad soil?

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And so I began to contemplate what it means to have good soil there so the seed penetrates.

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And let me just say the final word on this is this. All these different soils, right? The benevolence of the sower is he just sows out the word, sows out the word, sows out the word.

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Some is fake, doesn't penetrate, it's not real. Some gets snatched away. And some hits good ground. Watch.

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Watch. Anybody who is part of an agricultural society that has to live off of what they produce understands that you only get good soil one way.

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It has to be tilled. It has to be prepared. It has to be made ready.

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And so Jesus is teaching here first. If you have ears to hear, hear.

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Some won't. And that's judgment from God. And so he tells this story of sowing that happens and only one soil gets it and bears fruit.

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Which means watch. If the gospel penetrates a heart that is good soil, it is because it has been prepared already.

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Which points us back to the original point made at the beginning from Matthew 11, 25 -27.

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Nobody knows the father except the son. And Jesus teaches ultimately no one knows the father except the one to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

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Jesus chooses whom he saves. It's what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John chapter 3.

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What must I do to enter the kingdom? He says, you must be born again. Well, go into our mom's womb a second time.

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He says, no, you gotta be born of the water and the spirit. That's not water baptism. That's Ezekiel 36.

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I will sprinkle clean water on them and they'll be clean. I'll put my spirit within them and cause them to observe my statutes.

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Jesus is saying, you must have a new birth born from above and that's the spirit of God.

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And he goes where he wishes. He does what he pleases. It's all of God. Unless you are born again, you'll never even see the kingdom of God.

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You must experience a new birth, regeneration. You have to have a heart made ready by God to receive this and this is the question.

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Which soil are you? You walk out that door right now. You walk out that door right now and none of us knows what's ahead of us.

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Maybe by God's grace he gives us 50 more years, 80 more years, 20 more years, one more year, one more day.

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And you're in this room right now full of a bunch of people who have no earthly right being here before God and hearing this precious amazing message of love.

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And here you are hearing the message of the kingdom. Jesus is the Messiah, the King, the

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Lord. He's God. He died for sinners and rose from the dead and he commands men and women everywhere to repent of their sins and to believe in him.

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And you hear the message that there are people who have ears and people who don't.

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There are people who are different kinds of soil. And so there's a good chance you could not allow yourself to be impacted by this word today and you could walk out that door.

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Sounds like something we just heard. Something got snatched away. There's a good chance you'll hear this word today, you'll be super excited about this message but never contemplate what it means to follow

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Jesus and you'll make a mere profession of faith that isn't genuine and it'll last a little while and then it'll get choked out or scorched.

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Or there's a good chance some of you right now are just being given ears to hear. There's a good chance right now that your heart is receiving the word of the kingdom.

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Which soil are you? Doesn't do any good to come to a message just to listen to a talking head for longer than I should have.

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It really doesn't do you any good to come to church. Why? Why? If you don't know

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Jesus, think about it. Why? Why? His demands are too great. Why fake it?

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That's one thing I'm going to say as a Christian transformed by the grace of God in the gospel. Why fake it?

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Why? What use is there in faking it? You don't know him. You don't have eternal life.

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Why fake it? Here's an invitation. Stop coming. That's what

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Jesus said. Don't come. Why fake it? Why come to church? Why pretend to be

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Christian? What benefit is there in being almost Christian? What benefit? Of being so close to Jesus but never tasting and seeing?

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That's the kind of message Jesus commands us to preach and I know that's a risky message to preach as a pastor, right? Don't come back!

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Next Sunday. Right? I hope you do. But I hope you do to genuinely know

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Jesus. Not to have a pseudo relationship with Jesus.

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Do you know him? Can I say this? Jesus clearly wants people to know him.

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He wants people to know him genuinely. He's not interested in a fake relationship with you.

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Do you know him? Do you think you know him because you're raised in church? Do you think you know him because you're in this room?

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Do you think you know him because your dad is a minister? Do you think you know him because your grandparents are missionaries?

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Do you think you know him because you've got a Bible on your shelf? Jesus never had any of those things as tests as to whether you know him.

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Ever. He said this. Ready? Here's how you know. Fruit. No fruit.

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No root. Do you know him? That's the call. Repent and believe the gospel.