The Parable of the Soils

Our message today is out of Mark 4, verses 1 through 25. Again, he began to teach by the sea, and a very large crowd gathered around him.

So he got into a boat on the sea and sat down. While the whole crowd was by the sea on the shore, he taught them many things and parables.

And in his teaching, he said to them, Listen, consider the sower who went out to sow.

As he sowed, some seed fell by the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn't have much soil, and it grew up quickly since the soil wasn't deep.

When the sun came up, it was scorched, and since it had no root in it, it withered away.

Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it didn't produce fruit.

Still other seed fell on good ground, and it grew up, producing fruit that increased thirty, sixty, and a hundred times.

Then he said, Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.

When he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.

He answered them, The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you.

But to those outside, everything comes in parables, so that they may indeed look and yet not perceive.

They may indeed listen and yet not understand, otherwise they might turn back and be forgiven.

Then he said to them, Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables?

The sower sows the word. Some are like the word sown on the path.

When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word sown in them. And others are like seed sown on rocky ground.

When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy, but they have no root.

They are short -lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away.

Others are like seed sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the word, but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

And those like seed sown on good ground hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown.

He also said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed?

Isn't it to be put on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen. And he said to them, Pay attention to what you hear.

By the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and more will be added to you.

But whoever has more will be given to him, and whoever does not have even what he has will be taken away from him.

Let's pray. Father, we know so well the power of your word.

And Lord, we've come to this place and we come with anticipation to understand your word better, to have it impact our lives moment by moment.

And so Lord, we pray for your messenger that he might bring the truths of this passage of scripture to light.

And so Lord, we ask your spirit to illuminate this so that we all may understand better and walk ever more closely and conform ever more intimately into the image of your son.

Lord, bless this time together as we hear your word. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated.

What a thing it is to hear long sections of the word of God that way.

It occurs to me as I stand and listen to it that there is nothing like that, that when the word of God is read aloud like that, especially

I think in front of God's people, there's a raw power to it. It's an amazing thing to hear.

So we get into this base parable, and what I mean by that is that Jesus gives a warning or an exhortation to his disciples that says, if you don't understand this one, how are you going to understand all the parables that I'm going to tell you?

And Jesus tells some parables that are difficult for us today, I think, to understand.

And so in setting this up and getting into it, I want us to think about two things by way of introduction and setting the tone this morning.

Number one is I want to reverse engineer and think about the type of Christians that we need to have at Covenant Baptist Church in order to meet the mission that Jesus has given us and to be the quality church that Jesus expects of his bride.

And I think that what we will see is that you see Christians that have to bountifully produce fruit.

It's not about getting numbers. It's not about how many people we can get to events. It's not about how cool we can all feel together as a social club.

It is about Christian growth and the production of fruit. And we'll talk much more about that in the sermon. The second thing that I want to draw your attention to is that we should be empowered in evangelism by understanding that we don't prepare the soil, that we spread the word, and that God prepares the soil of hearts, and that mankind cannot do anything to change the hearts of other men.

And that should give us boldness to understand that we've been given a simple direction to give the word of God to our fellow man and to everyone that we come in contact with as we're going.

And as a side note by way of introduction, to remember that in American culture that wants to eat a meal that takes five minutes to prepare, we live in a church age of microwave discipleship where the idea is to get as many people in as possible, to let them go to checkbox church events or ministry, and then call our job done as a church.

But Jesus doesn't perceive that in this parable. This parable talks about the long, slow growth of a deep -rooted plant.

Bountiful harvest comes from deep -rootedness. And I think that's what we see when we look at this parable.

So in setting it up and trying to understand this, we're going to mix the text up. So we're going to go parable and answer, or the explanation of the parable together, and then we're going to, because I've been pushing it off, we're going to get to that really hard part of this text towards the end of the sermon, because procrastination is a human thing.

But also I think it helps us to understand in context what he's doing. This parable does not come up in the middle of nowhere, and Mark, as Mark is writing his account, he says immediately all the time,

Brady asked me yesterday, what do you think he's doing with that? And I said, I think the answer is that Mark is trying to keep us on a track with the story that Jesus is giving these teachings, bam, bam, bam, bam, right after the other, so that the reader understands where they fall in context.

And so as we looked last week, there was the division within the kingdom, and we were introduced the idea that Satan has his agents, and his agents are there to divide and to conquer and to cause division.

But in God's kingdom, God's kingdom is also one that needs to be united. If it will stand, it will be united, and we know that the

Lord has his agents, as he called the twelve last week. And so it's Satan and his agents versus the

Son of Man and his agents. So as we look at the parable, what is the seed? The seed is the word of God, and that is not a bare biblicism kind of idea.

What it is is wisdom of the word of God, specifically the kingdom of God, the news of the kingdom of God, which is from Genesis to Revelation.

There is no way to cut it apart. That is the word of God, and if you want to be a plant that is deeply rooted that grows, that man or woman has to love the entirety of the word of God and its whole counsel.

We know that the seed is not what is in view here so much, though.

It's the soils. And so your Bible will probably call this the parable of the sower, and that's really not correct, and so in trying to correct that,

I've titled this sermon the parable of the soils, because the differentiating factor in this parable is not the word.

It's not the seed, and it's not the sower. It is the soil, the condition of the human heart.

So the effect of preaching, the effect of proclaiming the good news of the gospel, no matter how faithful the preacher, no matter how rhetorically gifted he is, the acceptance of this word depends on the state of the hearer's heart every time.

So let's look at the four soil types. I'm sure you've heard this before, and it can be an intimidating thing to handle texts that are really familiar, but I think this one's not been handled very well very often, and I think that what it gets used as is we rip this parable, and it becomes an evangelism parable, and I don't necessarily think that that's what's in view here, so I have to prove that to you.

So here we go. So kids, you have a coloring sheet, and there are four hearts on it, and I think that those are intended to have the verse numbers that correspond with each type.

So if I can remember, I'm going to try to keep us there. If I can't remember, ask your mom or dad or read it in your Bible.

But the first is the packed -down soil of the roadside, and that is found in verses 4 and 15.

Verses 4 and 15. So these are hard hearts. These are not broken hearts.

These are the kind of hearts who are the worst kind. They believe that they are righteous. It is the kind of heart that believes that God has nothing to offer him, but instead that he has everything to offer

God. If you're choosing a line of religious agents, these would be the first ones picked, because they are so holy.

They are so pious. And in context, we know exactly who Jesus is talking about here. He is talking about those who have just accused him of being

Beelzebul, okay? He is talking about those who are following him around, calling him the king of darkness.

This is the righteous scribes and Pharisees of the day, who don't care about the people and whose hearts are hard.

These are the kind of people that we saw in Mark chapter 3, that Jesus looked at them with anger, because he was grieved at their hardness of heart.

And that wording should give us the indicator that this is who he's talking to. This is the people who have a hardened heart that the word of God cannot penetrate, and so they hear it and it just sits there.

They don't even really think about it. And notice that's what the scribes and the Pharisees have been doing. They don't think about what

Jesus says. Their first reaction to what Jesus teaches is to fight, to go against, to deny.

This is a darkened, willful blindness. It is an obstinate stupidity. As I said last week, this clearly defines these elite teachers.

It also clearly defines those who God has given over to their godlessness.

I want you to hear this lengthy passage out of Romans 1. It might be the best chapter in Scripture on anthropology.

This is the condition of man. I'm going to pick it up in verse 28 through 32. It says,

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind, to do those things which are not proper, having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.

And although they know the righteous requirement of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

That is a piece of Scripture right there. I want to pull out two parts. God has given them over to an unfit mind.

So there's the idea here where we saw it, where the scribes and the Pharisees, that Jesus sees them and sees that they have eternal sin.

They have committed what is, quote, the unpardonable sin. They have blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

And the way they blaspheme the Holy Spirit is that they have denied the salvation that the

Holy Spirit testifies of. They are a people given over. And we can see that even with their pious outer garments and their offices, that they still envy, that they look after murder and strife, and they will eventually murder the

Son of God. They know what they're doing, and they don't care. And they give approval, hearty approval.

They cheer on wickedness. This is not the prodigal son eating pig slop.

This is the one who eats the pig slop and invites everyone else to eat it, thinking that it's holy to eat the pig slop.

This is not most indicative of the people in the pews. This is most indicative of the people behind the pulpit.

This kind of hardness comes from a false teacher. This kind of hardness comes from one who thinks themselves to be righteous, and yet they are full of envy and wickedness.

Our pulpits today are filled with men like this, and it's a scary thing to step into this office knowing that the great danger, the great danger of being an elder is that you can wrap yourself in the piety of the office, and you can wrap yourself in the knowledge and the academic study of the

Word of God. See it? Knowing the righteous requirement of God, but also at the same time, knowing that we are worthy of death, and thinking, well, maybe

I'm not worthy of death. Other scary thing about this, with this hardened soil, is that Satan has direct and immediate interaction with these types.

They are directly doing the bidding of Satan. The birds are circling the roadside because it's easy food to snatch up the

Word of God, because these people don't think they need the Word of God at all. It invites the agents of Satan, and it will cycle with no breaks.

That's the story that Romans 1 tells, that they will go from bad to worse because God has given them over to an unfit mind, and there's no coming back from it.

It has applications for all time, but we can see in the character of the scribes and the Pharisees who

Jesus is pointing at, and pastors in our day and age would do well to look at these scriptures and to understand the warnings, the dire warnings that they have.

The people who will inhabit the hottest, most torturous places in hell are the people who clothe themselves in righteousness, who the

Word of God means nothing to them other than an avenue to make money and to engender themselves support and favor with the people that they talk to and that they lead astray.

So that is the hardened ground, and in the agricultural world of Palestine, these people would go out and they would be throwing seeds in every direction, and there would be paths through the croplands, and some of this soil would be rocky underneath, and some would not be, and the thistles of Palestine were a byword.

They were famous in this time, and so Jesus is talking about something that they would all know. They would all see it, that these seeds that landed on the pathways, they weren't going to grow into anything, because they were just a buffet for the birds.

And then we move on, so the second heart is the shallow, rocky soil. These are going to be verses 5 and 6, and 16 to 17.

So remembering in context here, as you saw in the very start of Mark chapter 4, Jesus is talking to multitudes.

There are crowds, and there are crowds today in the church, though not like there were 30 or 40 years ago, but there are still crowds in the church, and there are all kinds of these people in the church.

The shallow, rocky soil is one that I think that us Christians, we have a really difficult time discerning. We have a hard time, because in our

Baptist circles, the goal for a long time has been to get them to pray the prayer, and then they're good. I'm here to tell you right now, they're not good.

It's not good. Praying a prayer is not how you get into the kingdom of God. The life rooted in the word of God is how we are in the kingdom of God.

There is a mass of people following Jesus around, and they're looking for healing. They're looking for exercising of demons.

Basically they're looking for the show. This is the show. They want to be a part of it. This is where everybody's going right now.

It's a huge stir across the northern Israel countryside, which I imagine had to have been a pretty sleepy, boring place most of the time.

They're out there throwing their seeds around, and we have seen quickly that in America, one of the hard things that we have to face up with is that for the last hundred years, we've actually targeted sowing seeds in rocky soil.

This is under the guise of revivalism, where the invitation hymn plays. We get heads down, and you get the emotion stirring, and you play the same verse five times in a row, and you have heads down, and you say, if one of you guys wants to make a decision for Jesus, raise your hand right now.

Oh, I see you, brother. Thank you. And I see you over there. That encourages rocky soil, shallow

Christianity. Because what happens is we in the church have to be very careful about putting the status of Christian on someone who is ignorant, because what they will do is in their wicked heart, they will grab onto baptism, and they will grab onto an orthodox confession, and they will think,

I'm good with God now. I can go do whatever I want. We see that in these two middle types of soils. The rocky soil grows no roots, none at all.

There are church camp highs. It's an emotional response. It's superficial.

There is no true faith dedicated to the life of being a king's man. There's no loyalty involved.

As soon as a better deal comes along, or as we see, as soon as it becomes not fashionable and cool to be a

Christian, then these people will be gone. It might be the pressure of coworkers that bring them into church and make them make a confession, but then as soon as that coworker moves on, they're gone.

They're not here. They don't care about the things of God. Jesus directly relates it to persecution, and he is talking to these crowds because the persecution is surely coming.

It's not started yet, but it's coming. And we see it. It'll come first with the scribes and the

Pharisees, who will start to throw anyone out of the synagogue, and therefore out of the way of life of anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ.

And so these crowds dissipate. These types of crowds dissipate. Jesus understands that it's not about the crowd.

It's about deep -rooted growth that produces much fruit. These types of professions, they often coincide with urgent felt needs.

There were people in the crowds that really needed to be healed. There are people that truly are miserable in this world, that the bottom has fallen out of their lives, and they are looking for hope.

And what they will do is they will come into a place, and they will hear the words of Jesus, and they will see the love that exists between the followers of Christ in the room, and they will want a piece of that.

And so they will say what they have to say to get a piece of it. But as soon as it gets hard, they're gone again.

And we wonder, well, what's going on there? Maybe there's hope. There's not hope. They are not of Christ. A tree is known by the fruit it bears.

They will abandon us. And when the church is on a mission, these are the types of people that we have to get better at discerning.

Remember that thing I want you to think about. There is no such thing as microwave Christianity and microwave discipleship.

You can't make a disciple in two weeks. It takes years for that root to grow deep, to be grounded in the

Word. It takes years. It takes taking up your cross daily and following, and that's hard.

And there's days when it's really hard. That's the shallow -rooted one. They're gone as soon as it gets tough.

Let's look at the kind that really tricks us, though. This is tough. The third one, the seeds that are sown and the thorns come.

So there's some rootedness. This is, for kids, this is verses 7 and then 18 through 19, that these seeds are cast out and they take root and they grow, but they're growing among the thorns.

And because the thorns are taking the nutrients from them, the plant grows no fruit.

It might have the most beautiful leaves you've ever seen. It might grow tall, and it might be a beautiful plant.

It might sing really well. It might be able to even preach some really nice sermons.

It might be able to lead a small group. It might post all the right things on social media.

But eventually what we're going to see is that the roots that grow, there is no fruit because what happens is there is no fruit in keeping with repentance, as John would say.

They are tough for us. They're tough for us because the type of plant that grows up in these thorny soils, what they will do is they'll still go to church.

There's some rootedness. They'll still be among us, but they are in a constant losing struggle with sin and loving the world.

There is no victory over sin in their lives, and there is no love of the kingdom of God that ever sacrifices the things of this world.

They will not give up their comforts to take up the cross, and they will never have victory over the sin because they're not really

Christians. Friends, I'm going to tell you this. The struggle with certain sins can be long, and it can be protracted and grown out, but I'm going to tell you right now,

Jesus has promised you victory over sin. He has promised it. We do not give up and live in our sin, but the plant that's choked out by the thorns does, and they think, well,

I'm on a treadmill. I'm going to continue going to church. I'm going to continue doing the thing because it makes me feel good, even though this other stuff

I'm doing on Friday or Saturday night makes me feel bad. This is how you get the church service with a bunch of people who are partying all night at drunken orgies, and then they come in and they sing praises to God.

James tells us, can the same mouth produce both blessings and curses? No. That person's tongue is of Satan.

It's a rudder that's driving them to hell, and those in the crowd that Jesus is speaking to, they're seeing the healings, and they love the words, and they love how

Jesus preaches with such authority from the boat, but at the same time, they have positions, and they have occupations, and when the people are going to start losing their positions and when they're going to have to start making themselves a little bit of a social outcast, they're not going to do that.

They'll still ascribe allegiance to Christ, but they won't follow him, and they will love their sins more than they love the

Savior. They want endless bread and provision. They want, when you see the miracle of the feeding of the 5 ,000, what you're going to see is that the people around him want to make him the king because they know that they can have a socialist bread -making utopia.

If this guy can make bread out of the basket, he can feed us all. And we're just going to sit by the lake and chill.

It's going to be great. That's the kind of people that are growing up in thorny circles, in thorny paths, thorny soils.

How can I not get that out? They love their stuff. They love their stuff, and this is really hard for us to discern.

Here's the deal. There is no fellowship between light and darkness, and so we have to be very careful.

As we evaluate our own lives and then as we discern people to put into the mission, people that we're going to rely on and trust, we have to be discerning to understand you can't love the world and love

Christ. There is no way to do that. Scripture has no perception of that. It's just like when the people grumbled in the wilderness, and that's why

I read Psalm 78. It's because the Lord has always spoken in parables. It's not just a New Testament thing.

It's a whole Bible thing. God speaks in parables because those who He has given ears to hear will certainly hear, and those who

He has not given ears to hear cannot perceive. They will not hear, and they are storing up God's glory through their destruction.

Hard thing to hear. Particularly, there is one in Jesus' camp who is growing among the thorny soil.

Is it not? Judas Iscariot. He knows the teachings of Christ. He has roots.

He's an apostle. And yet, what do we find him doing? He's stealing the money. Why is he stealing the money?

Because he loves the world. He loves riches more than he loves the king. He likes to be close to the king because there's cred until it's advantageous for him to not.

And then finally, we look at the good soil, and I want to park us here for most of the rest of the sermon. Kids, this is verses 8 and verse 20.

There's some amazing stuff here. The people whose heart has been prepared to be good soil is rich, deep soil.

And it must be richer and deeper than the people of Palestine could have ever imagined. This is kind of like this 6 -foot, 8 -foot deep

Midwestern soil we got in America that will grow generations of crops on it.

These people here, they believe, and there's life change. And there is a deep root with an unshakable faith.

It should recall Psalm 1, that these people will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water whose leaf does not wither.

The wicked are not like that. They are chaffed that the wind drives away. There's no rootedness.

There's no unshakableness. And then I think the biggest part of this type of Christian, this

Christian who is a real Christian and who is in this good soil, what we're going to see is an unbelievable harvest.

Because back in these times, a good crop would be if you got seven or eight times as much as you sowed.

They would be like, man, that's great. A generational crop would be if you got 10 times, 10 times.

What's Jesus say? The low yield. This is the economy of the gospel. The gospel yields fruit in harvest of 30, 60, and even 100.

The people who are listening could not imagine that kind of harvest. That is hyperbole to them.

They don't understand it. And we don't understand it today. Understand this, that when the gospel takes root, this is what a real

Christian does. Do you understand this? The worst of us, the worst of us real Christians are going to produce 30 times as much as what was invested in us.

The worst of us. This is the lot Christians, lot, righteous lot, who lived in Sodom, who really ripped off his uncle and was selfish and took the beautiful way in the river valley.

He had a 30 times, 30 times. Abraham, I think was 100.

I would rather be 100, but at the worst, we're going to be 30. It's an amazing thing.

It's three times higher than a bumper crop every year, and that's for the weakest ones. That's for the ones that are, they're kind of distracted a lot.

I don't think we understand this today. I think that we think we have breakeven Christianity.

I think that we believe sometimes that the gospel goes forth and somebody becomes a convert and maybe, maybe, maybe their one child will become a

Christian. This is not the world that Jesus sees because the word of God is not a regular seed.

The word of God is the power of God unto salvation. It is the one that changes people's rebellion and their stony hearts.

It gives a natural flesh heart that is soft where the word penetrates it and it changes and it starts to conform that man or woman into one that thinks about the word of God all the time, that we do everything as a worship and a service to our

King. That's not some weird pietistic thing. It's that we love Jesus and we follow him in everything that we do.

This fruit is not negotiable. I like to harmonize this with John 15.

Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine grower. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he cleans it so that it may bear more fruit.

This is the economy of the Christian life is you're going to keep growing more and more and more fruit because what

God is going to do is he is going to take your branch and as it bears fruit, he's going to prune it so that it bears even more fruit because God is not content with a minimal harvest.

He wants maximal harvest from his people. These plants are annuals.

They are growing off the grapevine. We're not talking about wheat in this passage. Jesus is talking about orchards, fruit trees who grow deep roots, who have family blessings through generations.

This is not disconnected from the Old Testament. This was always the shadow and the type that the people of God were going to leave

Egypt, that they were going to cast off the world, that they were going to go into the land that God had promised them, and that they were going to be fruitful and be multitudes and multiply.

That's the parable of Psalm 78. Can you curse God and live? No, you cannot.

And the parable that Jesus is saying here is that there is going to be generational bountiful fruit.

Deuteronomy 7, 9, if you don't believe me, you shall know therefore that Yahweh your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments.

Can you understand that today, Christian? I can't. I can't conceive of that kind of faithfulness.

I fail my own children. That's one generation. God doesn't fail his children ever.

He keeps his covenants a thousand generations. That means eternally.

That's what that means. Year after year after year harvest, and you'll never get tired of winning, ever.

It's going to keep happening. But I think this is where everything

I've said, I think you've probably heard that in this parable. I think the question that doesn't get asked often enough, though, is what are the fruits?

What are they? And the Bible tells us. The Bible tells us what the fruits are.

Galatians 5, 22, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness.

Abiding in Jesus, John 15, remember, abiding in Jesus means obeying his commands.

That's what it means to be in the good soil, is that we don't war against God's commands. We embrace

God's commands. We love them. That's what we are. That's what he's made us into being. So abiding in Jesus leads to obeying his commands, and this is, as a product, going to lead to growth of the kingdom.

The parable is evangelistic, but it's not merely evangelistic, because the word is about the kingdom of God.

And the kingdom of God is made up of these types of men and women. Do you understand that? That's what's important.

It's the types of soil that are in view in this parable. The types of soil are what's important. And the kingdom of God is made up of good soil, and the good soil produces beautiful trees that have branches laden with fruits.

And the enemy will come and try to eat those fruits, and guess what? He's not going to succeed. He's not going to succeed.

He will fail. Paul writes in Romans 16 that Satan, who will soon be crushed under your feet.

How? Through the power of the gospel. The whole book of Romans is the evangelistic book. The whole book is talking about how the gospel is going forth.

It's unbound. It's unchained. And the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit that grows in these soils.

Can you, like, I want you to think a second. Paul would go on in Galatians and say, against these things there is no law, right?

Against these fruits there is no law. I want you to think about the church, the church that is filled with men and women and boys and girls who exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness.

Aren't those the things that you would want somebody saying about you at your funeral someday? He was a faithful man.

He was a loving man. He was joyful. He was peaceful. He was kind and he was good.

Those are the things that we want to say. In the church in America, when you look at the sickness that we have, the sickness is that we've looked at how many plants we have and we don't look at the fruit.

And the fruit is always the fruits of the Spirit because, as we'll see, we're about to move into that section, we're not in charge of this thing anyway.

And what happens is God grows the fruits and the fruits are only available through the Holy Spirit.

No man was born and thinks, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to be loving and joyful and peaceful. He can't do it.

He is a malicious murderer, an envier, a liar. That's what we are. But through Christ, we exhibit these fruits.

And a church that looks like that is going to be a magnet to people who don't know what to do.

And they're going to see, and we're going to sow the word, and we're going to go out in our lives and people are going to see your character that is deep -rooted, that they see it in your relationship with your spouse, they see it in your relationship with your kids, they see it in the way you work at school, they see it in the way you love other people.

And they're going to say, what is going on here? This person is peaceful. What is happening? And then what do we tell them?

Friend, you have to repent of your sins. You are at odds with a holy God. And the way to have what

I have, there's only one way. It's not moralistic. I have this problem as a public school teacher, right?

The kids ask me, how do you do this? And I say, do you really want me to tell you? And they'll say, yes. And I say, there is only one way.

You have to repent of your sins and swear allegiance to Jesus Christ. There's only one way.

There is no checklist of steps that you can take. Trust Jesus. That's it.

And then he will surely give you fruit. It's not up to us. Why is the church so choked out?

I'm going to tell you why. Men, I'm talking to you. I'm going to tell you why. It's because for at least 20, 25 years now, we've loved sexual immorality more than we've loved

Jesus. I've come in contact with a man over the last month who works in campus ministry.

He said he was going to be here this morning, and then a health thing came up, and he put me onto this idea, and he helps 40 ministers in the area now who are addicted to pornography.

I want you to think about what that means in the church. Friends, if you struggle with sin, if you are enslaved, there is a way to get out.

There's a way to get out. I don't care what the sin is, and they hit us all differently, but this particular sin, you have to confess and you have to repent, and then you have to get help.

And you know what's going to happen? This is what he told me. He said men who go through the program that he's got and get free from this sin, they start evangelizing like crazy.

He said you can't stop them. These are young men that he's talking about. They confess, they repent, they go through this thing called the 30 -day challenge, right?

We would be stupid as pastors to be afraid to talk about this. I know that there's people who struggle. Please get in contact with me.

This is a fight that I know about. Women, you have to talk to someone who's ahead in the faith.

What we don't want to do is get in struggle group sessions with everybody who's drowning at the same time.

That's not going to help you. You have to get someone who's out of the drowning who can throw you a rope and try to pull you out.

This man is a boss. The first thing he asked me, I had lunch with him, and he said, he said, Josh, are you addicted to porn?

I'd never met him before. Said at lunch. And I said, man, it's been at least 16 years.

And he fist -bumped me. And you know what he said? It's a crazy thing. He said, I can tell because of the way you talk to me.

Praise God for that. I don't say that. To get out of that was unthinkable for me 16 years ago.

And God brought healing. God brought pain before healing. Pain.

Embarrassment. Shame. Shame. It was terrible. And yet now, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Because a man can't speak with courage when he's enslaved to that kind of sin. And we will have no growth of this kind of fruitfulness in the church if our men are shackled by the sin that tears us down.

Kill it. Do whatever it takes to kill it. So here we go.

I've avoided long enough. We have to look at the purpose of the parable here, and we have to see what's going on.

He explains it to us, but he repeats twice, and I know I love it so much because Dad drew attention to it both times, if you're hearing inflection, and I'm so glad he did that.

Verses 9 and 23, he who has ears to hear, let him listen.

Let him listen. Let him listen. There are things that Jesus is hiding, but they're hidden because God has given dullness to the hearer.

And Jesus talks about, by their very nature, these things will be unhidden.

Do you understand? The nature of the kingdom of God is hidden from some today, but that lamp will not be put under a bushel for long, and it will not be hid under a bedpost, and it will not be buried under the ground, because the truth always worms its way up and is seen by everyone.

That has so many applications. Has someone been unjust to you, and you cry out to God, guess what, the truth is going to come out, and that's a very uncomfortable thing for the liar.

They will suppress it, and they will push it down as hard as they can, but the truth always comes out, because God is the

God who has made this creation, and he's made it a certain way, and the truth will come out.

Trust God. The truth will come out. Do we have to get vengeance for ourselves? No. We trust

God, because the truth will come out. That allows us to forgive our fellow man. That allows us to live in non -bitterness and repentance.

It allows us to have softness of heart, because we know the judge is not fooled. He knows everything. He sees everything.

But the other meaning here is that the kingdom of God is going to be perfectly obvious to everyone.

Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every knee, every tongue.

All creation will cry out at the glory of God, because that's what it's intended to be.

It's not a shadow. It's a light, and those who are in the dark hate the light, because the light exposes their deeds.

That's John 3. When he was alone, his followers began to ask him, and he says to them, to you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God.

The mystery that the prophets long to see. The mystery that David was right on the edge of, but he couldn't see it.

The mystery that Moses wrote about through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that he gave us these shadows, that once you see it, it's blazing glory, and the disciples are right here on the fringe of this mystery.

And guess what, friend? When they see the mystery, they turn the world upside down, because this mystery explodes onto the scene, and it's exciting, and they will die for it.

They will die. Because there's nothing that matters but this mystery once you've seen it. What is this mystery?

The kingdom of God. Everything that was wrong will be put right.

Everyone who was against the king will be laid low, and the sons of the king, because we are indeed adopted into his family, the sons of the king will be given positions of honor, and will sit at the table with their king forever.

Have we dulled this? Have we diluted it? Have we forgotten?

They didn't forget. And then he says this thing, he quotes Isaiah 6, particularly 9 and 10.

If you remember Isaiah 6, Isaiah is brought before the throne of God. It's an incredible chapter.

Where Isaiah goes, and he stands before the throne, and we know I could take you there, but he's talking to Jesus, and he says,

I'm an unclean man with unclean lips. And there's a firebrand taken out of the censer that's put on Isaiah's mouth to cleanse his tongue with fire, so there can be no corruption, no pathogen.

Jesus, the great doctor, knew about pathogens in Isaiah 6. The rest of the world didn't. But then he sends him.

Who will go? Who will go? Who will go? And Isaiah says, here I am, send me. And this is what

God tells him. Go and tell this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand.

Keep on seeing, but do not know. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.

That's exactly what Jesus is telling to his disciples. So guess what? Isaiah was the divinely appointed prophet to go and tell

God's people, but their ears would be dull, and they would not see, because God was storing up his glory through the destruction and the punishment of covenant breakers.

Because that's what Israel did. They broke the covenants. They whored themselves out for pagan gods.

And God cut them off. They couldn't hear, and they couldn't understand. Understand that as Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of that day, the

Israelites, they don't understand, they can't hear. Because if they could hear, and they could understand, they would be forgiven.

And it is not God's plan to forgive them, because he is showing his glorious judgment and righteousness against oath breakers.

That's what he's doing. That's what's in view here. And now a greater thing has come. Because Isaiah went as the divinely appointed prophet,

Jesus comes as the divine son of God to bring this message, and he brings it in parables as of old.

And the people are darkened. He is saying dark sayings. Dark sayings. But the twelve understand, because they've been given the mystery.

And those who have good soil understand, because everyone wants to hear the teacher and understand. And if you understand, give glory to God, because it's because of the soil of your heart that God has made.

Who made the soil? Can you change it? Can you change soil that's desert into soil that creates orchards?

We can't do that. When we try, we cause habitat destruction. We cannot change the way

God has made the earth. And we cannot change the conditions of hearts. But God can, and God does, over and over and over again.

The parables show that Jesus has come, and he has stored judgment on those who kill the prophets and deny the word of God.

And they're going to kill this prophet. And he's the greatest. The impact of this statement is simple, but it is uncomfortable.

And it is undeniable. We're not into Calvinist squabbles here. What we're saying is the clear meaning of the word of God is there are some people that if they understood what

Jesus was saying, that they would be forgiven. But God has not allowed them to understand it, so they are damned.

That's what this says. That's what this parable says. We have to pray. We have to pray that we would be given ears to hear.

If you have ears to hear, then it's everything. It's the wisdom of God. It's what Paul says in 1

Corinthians 1, right? It's foolishness to the world, but to those who are being saved, it's life.

It's the wisdom of God. It's the righteousness and the power of God. What's the point of the gospel?

It's a light, and it's a lamp. It illuminates. It is the way of peace. God has come, and he has made war on his enemies, but everyone who kneels down to him, they will have peace.

He is the prince of peace, and he brings peace through war. It's obvious from the New Testament.

He makes war on Satan and his forces, and he brings his people around to him. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shines in the darkness, and darkness did not overtake it. We are responsible to know this.

We are responsible to know the truth. And every human being is responsible to know the truth, because the truth is a lampstand.

And no matter how often you try to put it under a bushel, no matter how often you try to suppress the truth in your unrighteousness, the truth will come out, and you will be held accountable for it.

Whatever type of soil you are, the one thing that binds them all together is that they are responsible for their response to the truth of the seed of the word.

There is no escaping it. The Christian life is so much better than they told you, friends.

It's so much better. It is abundant, and it is an abundant escalation of abundance.

It keeps getting more abundant. I think Lewis caught it very well at the end of his saga,

The Chronicles of Narnia, where they keep going further up and further in, and every time they go further up and further in into heaven, it gets sweeter and better and more real every time.

It's a little bit more real when they walk into the second world. And then in the third world, it's even more vibrant and real.

And Aslan keeps dragging them further, further up and further in, and they can run without getting tired.

They keep running. And in the Christian life, I think what we like to think that we are is that we're batting down in the hatches, taking shelling all the time, and we're just trying to hold this ground right here.

Does that sound like what Jesus talks about with the good soil? We're not trying to hold ground. We're trying to destroy the enemy.

The gates of hell will not prevail. That means the church is on offense. And the way that we make offense is we sow the truth, and we live the truth, and we trust in the

Holy Spirit to give us abundant fruit. Have you prayed for fruit lately? Have you prayed that maybe you would be a 60 -fold?

What if we had a church of 60 -fold Christians? Have you ever seen a hundred -fold?

I have. They are something to see. Glory to God. There's a man

I know named Dan Hilden. You see this man. He's a hundred -fold. He shames me in a place where there's no shame.

It's an amazing thing to watch these who God has grace. And what Dan would tell you right away, it's all through the power of the

Holy Spirit. I've never met the man, and I'm talking to him.

Literally within 30 seconds of talking to him, he's talking about my eternal security and if I know the

Lord. What a man. What an incredible person. But glory to God, right?

Because we are going to be—I want you to think about this, and I want to leave us here, okay? The Christian life is about being abundant in obedience.

It's about being abundant in generational blessing. It's about being abundant in joy. We laugh harder and louder than anyone else.

It's about being abundant in worship. We sing loudly, and our hearts are stirred to love our King and to love the

Lord. And then we are abundant in harvest. The fields are white.

We are not about trying to go pick off other church members from other good churches around here so that we would grow more.

That is not the mission. The mission is to go out and harvest souls. We can't bring them, but we can teach them.

We can't change their heart, but we can make them hear. And when we make them hear, they will come, even if it's 1 in 20.

If we are abundant, what's 1 in 20 with 30x growth? Unbelievable. And we see the folly and the apostasy of the church in our day.

Friends, we must pray that God would give us forgiveness that we don't deserve and that He would give fire in our hearts to go about this harvest.

That's what this parable is about. This parable is about a teaching to these 12 to go out and go crazy.

And they don't yet. What makes them do that? We all know. The resurrection of the

Lord. And then the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And these men will not be stopped then.

Why? Because they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. May we pray to have that same power. If you don't, you're going to lose everything.

To those who have this, you're going to keep getting more. To those who don't have it, everything you have is going to be taken away.

The riches you gain here, if you don't trust the King, it'll all be taken away, burned up, and your soul with it.

But to those of us who have it, we will have riches beyond our wildest dreams for eternity, and they will abundantly grow.

That's the picture. And that is the parable of the soils. Let's pray. Lord, we trust you.

And it's a hard thing that there is a mix between determination and a conviction.

But also, Lord, an understanding that you are the one that bring that conviction. That the power of the Christian life is entirely yours to give.

Lord, there's no way we can multiply by 30s and 60s and 100s, but that's easy for you.

Lord, may you use us as your instruments. May you give your people ever -deepening soil and ever -deepening roots.

But most of all, would you give your people abundant fruit in our time? Lord, we understand that it is our job to trust in you.

And Lord, would you make us aggressive? Would you make us fearless? Where weights of sins bear us down,

Lord, would you help us to cast those off and to kill them and to see them as the deadly enemy that they are?

Lord, would you help us where we've had strongholds, where we think we have control of this thing, to expose our folly, to help our unbelief, and to help us to make war with sin so that we would make peace with you?

Lord, all of life depends on peace with you. All of life depends on faith in you. Without faith, it is impossible to please you.

Lord, would you give your people faith? Would you give this church faith? Lord, in ways that are scary to us and we don't understand, would you anoint us with the

Holy Spirit that we would go and that we would proclaim this word, that we would do it fearlessly? Lord, would you bring the lost?

Would you make us uncomfortable with that bounty? We pray for it. Not so that we would have numbers and mass converts, so that we would have disciples, that we could teach them what you commanded and help them to walk.

Lord, we pray these things in your name. We ask for them knowing that you will give, knowing that we ask according to your will, that you give everything as we abide in you.

Lord, we pray that we would abide in you, that there would be much fruit, that it would be obvious. It's in your name