WWUTT 038 Seeds On the Path (Matthew 13)

A sower went out to the field to sow seed, and some of that seed fell along a path, some in rocky ground, and some was choked out by thorns.

But there was other seed that fell in good soil, and it grew up and produced a harvest. And that good soil is you, if you are in Christ Jesus and have been transformed by the message of the

Kingdom, when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the

Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And don't forget our website, wwutt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. I am sitting here with a slice of pizza on my left hand and an Arnold Palmer on my right.

My pizza is probably going to be cold by the time I'm done with this, and I will have to go reheat it. But I'll still be drinking from my

Arnold Palmer on occasion. You know what an Arnold Palmer is, right? OK, Arnold Palmer, the golfer, he goes into the clubhouse one day and he orders an

Arnold Palmer, which is half sweet tea, half lemonade, not if it doesn't have sugar in it.

OK, if it's not sweet tea, that's just flat, plain brown water tea. That's not an

Arnold Palmer. That's something else entirely. I think Snapple called it a half and half, but it's definitely not an Arnold Palmer.

So he goes to the counter and he orders a half sweet tea and a half lemonade. And as he's walking away, there's another woman that's sitting there and she said, you know what?

I'll have the Arnold Palmer. And history was made from that point on. I'm amazed at the number of people that I'll continue to introduce this drink to that has never had it before.

I'll give them a half sweet tea, half lemonade, and they'll go, this is great. This is fantastic. Where did this come from?

You can get a great one at Chick -fil -A, by the way. Now if you order an Arnold Palmer at a Chick -fil -A in Kansas, you have to specify you want sweet tea.

But if you're east of here, they'll automatically give you sweet tea when you order an

Arnold Palmer. So like I said, I'm introducing people to this drink still to this day who are amazed by it when they taste it.

I thought it was an American staple. I didn't realize that there were still so many people that had not experienced an

Arnold Palmer. And even through this ministry, when we understand the text, I am surprised at the number of people that we will teach certain scriptural truths to who will tell us that they never knew that before until we did a video about it or a podcast about it or a blog or something like that.

You know, there is this American idea. It's like in the psyche of our culture that we just know the

Bible. We just know it. And we don't. In fact, we're a very uneducated culture when it comes to understanding the scriptures.

We need deep scriptural truths, many of the fundamentals we don't even understand. So don't just assume that people know it, especially don't assume that you know it.

We need to constantly be reminded of these things, constantly coming to the scriptures and having our hearts and our minds renewed and refreshed by the hope and the promises of God's kingdom.

And we need to understand it well enough so that we might take it to others and teach them as well so that they might also come to know the truth.

This is a very common parable that you've probably heard growing up, but is very necessary for us to understand and continue to be reminded about when it comes to storing up the truth of God's word in our hearts and in our minds, changing us.

And so we might use it to win others to the kingdom as well. Matthew chapter 13 is where we read the parable of the sower.

And before we come to the text, reading the parable and its explanation again, why don't we come to the

Lord in prayer? Our gracious heavenly father, thank you for the food that I have next to me here. But we also thank you for this daily bread, your word, that it might feed us and nourish us with the truth, with the hope of your promises and fill us with this knowledge so that we might take it to others and they would be transformed for the kingdom of God as well.

We ask these things in Jesus name, amen. Matthew chapter 13, we're starting in verse three, a sower went out to sow 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.

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

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain. Some a hundred fold, some 60, some 30.

He who has ears, let him hear. And we have the explanation of the sower beginning in verse 19.

When anyone hears the words of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and 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.

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

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

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 hundred fold, in another 60 and in another 30.

Remember that the seed represents the word of the kingdom that we have described in Matthew 19. In Mark chapter 4, it says the word of God, but more specifically, we're talking about the word of the kingdom, which

Christ came to proclaim and he used parables to help his disciples understand this picture of the heavenly kingdom.

Now think of this picture that we have of the sower. Okay, first he goes out with oxen, you know, before this, before this parable happens, what has to happen first?

Well, he's got to go out with oxen and a plow and he needs to till up the soil and these freshly plowed rows before he goes out with seed and is casting soil into these plowed rows.

Okay. So every few rows or so there's these packed paths of dirt and this is the path that he will walk on.

He doesn't want to walk in the fresh soil because then he'll pack down the soil and it won't receive the seed. So he has these narrow paths every few rows or so that he's walking down and he's got this seed bag around his shoulder.

He'll put his hand into the bag and then he'll cast the seed into the field and this art of throwing his arm across his body and scattering the seed into the air is actually a form of sowing that is referred to as broadcasting.

It's where we get the word broadcasting from. And so he's broadcasting the message of the kingdom of God.

That's that's our sower. That's our evangelist there. He is the sower. And so he's walking down those hard paths.

That's probably just narrow enough for him alone to walk down. It's not like walking on a road.

Okay. It's a path that's in a field of sown plows. And as he's walking down that path and he is sowing seed, casting it into the air, some of that seed is falling on the path.

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.

So what is the kingdom? The word of the kingdom. That's what the seed is. What is the kingdom? The kingdom is

God's rule over everything in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

Okay. That is the kingdom. Now, it's not that everything is the kingdom. It's God's rule specifically that is the kingdom.

The kingdom is active. It is not passive. It's not something that sits there. It's advancing. It is constantly progressing.

God's rule and what he rules over is the kingdom. And a day will come when what is separating this physical world from the spiritual world will be removed and God will usher in his peaceful kingdom and in doing so will remove all evil, including all the unrighteous who have not been transformed by the declaration of the kingdom.

They will go away into eternal punishment and those to whom had been given the message of the kingdom and received it, they will enter into eternal life.

Okay. Then we have the new heaven and the new earth. But the kingdom of heaven is not merely this kingdom that exists somewhere that we can't see because as Jesus says in the gospel of Luke, the kingdom is among you even now.

So when we are transformed by the message of the kingdom, we become citizens of that kingdom and we are exiles on this earth.

We take the message of the kingdom to others. And when we preach the gospel to other people and tell them about the kingdom of God, when we speak of his glory and they become aware of their sin and they repent, they become citizens of the kingdom as they become followers of Jesus.

And so more citizens are added to that kingdom every day. It's that constant advancement of the kingdom on the world.

And we are supposed to be God's ambassadors. Paul described himself as an ambassador for Christ.

And so we're supposed to be that as well. The church is like the outpost of the kingdom of God. And we're constantly advancing on the earth this message of the gospel.

So more and more are realized for the kingdom. OK, so that is the message of the kingdom. And that's what's being exemplified by the seed.

Now, there are some that we will preach this message to. They will hear it, but it will not change them.

It will not fall on their hearts, on a heart of flesh. Rather, it is falling on a heart of stone, a hard heart.

In fact, the first three pieces of ground that we see described here in the parable of the sower, these are all describing a hard heart, the path, the rocks, the thorns.

That's a hardened heart. It is only the good soil that is the softened heart that which has been opened up by the spirit to receive the message of the kingdom of God.

Most of the people that we preach the message to Jesus preach this message first. He came preach the message of the kingdom.

He commissioned his disciples to go out into all nations preaching the message. So you have heard that message and you have been transformed.

I hope as you're hearing my voice here, you've already been transformed, being a recipient of that message of the kingdom. And now you also have been commissioned to take that message out.

So as we go out with the message of the kingdom, most of those that we preach to are going to be the path.

That's going to be the majority of those who are hearing us preach of the kingdom of God. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one in Luke chapter eight specifically says it's the devil.

All right. The devil comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

This is what was sown along the path. So we have the sower that goes out or the farmer,

I mean, whatever you want to call him. Before the seed can be sown, the soil has to be tilled up.

We mentioned this yesterday and the day before that a heart has to be conditioned to receive the gospel, the message of the kingdom.

A person needs to know that they're a sinner and they're fallen short of the glory of God that compared to God's holiness, we are nothing and we can do nothing in order to inherit the kingdom.

It is only what Christ has done for us and those who follow Christ and trust in him and his sacrifice and the work that he accomplished on the cross, rising again from the grave.

Only those who trust in him and the message of that good news, that gospel to only them have been given the kingdom when they know their sin and they see their, their sinfulness and unrighteousness in light of God's holiness.

Their heart has been conditioned by the spirit to receive the message of the kingdom and they repent and become followers of Christ.

The dirt that is along the path that is untreated ground. The farmer did not till up that soil, but left that packed ground so that he could walk down that ground and be able to cast the seed.

And so that is a heart that has not been prepared to receive that message. And when they hear of the kingdom, that message just falls on the path.

It doesn't get in there. It just falls on a hard heart and the devil comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

We need to be faithful to preach the full counsel of God, telling people about their sin and then the good news, the gospel that Jesus has come to save us from our sin, the wages of our sin and saves us from the wrath of God.

In Acts chapter 18, the apostle Paul goes to Corinth and he is preaching in Corinth for the first time.

Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia and met him there. And when they came, Paul was occupied with the word testifying to the

Jews that Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, this is

Acts 18, verse six, when they opposed and reviled his message, he shook out his garments and he said to them, your blood be on your own heads.

I am innocent. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. We know that the apostle

Paul preached the full counsel of God in Acts 20 verses 26 and 27.

As he is speaking to the Ephesians, he says, therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all.

For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

So we know that even here in Corinth, a couple of chapters earlier in Acts chapter 18, as he is preaching to them, he's preaching to them the whole counsel.

He's telling them that they cannot be saved by works of the law. They can only be saved by the work of Christ, that they're all sinners,

Jews and Gentiles alike. They are all sinners and fallen short of the glory of God. No one receives favoritism in the presence of God.

No one is righteous. Not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God, which we see that theology fleshed out in Romans chapter three.

But it is only for those who have the righteousness of Christ imparted upon them, who have repented of sin and are following in his righteousness, that will be saved.

So we know that Paul preached the whole counsel of God. He told people that they are sinners in need of the grace of God.

He shared his whole testimony about how God had saved him, though he was unworthy. And it was

God who called him to this apostleship that he is obedient to even now.

And so it is necessary for us to preach the whole counsel of God. If we don't do that, then when we go out with the message, if we just speak about a kingdom, hey, everybody get happy, follow

Jesus. And if you follow Jesus, if you believe in Jesus, all right, if you just believe in Jesus, believe that he is

Lord, then you will receive the kingdom of heaven. But they have no knowledge of their sin. They have no knowledge of being fallen from God and their sin and that they actually need a savior.

They probably just follow Jesus for his moral example instead of knowing him as the son of God.

When the heart has not been prepared with the full counsel of God, then the seed just falls along the path.

There was a man that was once a part of my church, but because I was constantly convicting him in the ways that he was not adequately preaching the gospel, he became disgruntled and left, even called me satanic when he left the church.

But I would listen to him as he would go out and he would share the gospel with others, had a great heart to want to see others saved from the kingdom.

I don't doubt his heart, but the way that he preached was terrible and his theology was awful. And he would go to a person, he would say, do you know, do you know

Jesus as Lord and savior? And a person would say no. And he said, well, let me pray this prayer with you and you, you repeat these words after me.

And then he would say, Lord, I confess that I'm a sinner. And they would, they would repeat after him,

Lord, I confess that I'm a sinner. I need you to be saved. I need you to be saved. So Lord, come into my life,

Lord, come into my life. I believe in you and I trust in you. Okay. They go through that whole prayer, the whole sinner's prayer, and then they get to the end and he slaps him on the back and he goes, welcome to the kingdom.

And I had to confront him one time and I have to sit and I had to say to him, you are not leading anyone to Christ by talking like that.

You're trying to, you're actually communicating to them that all they have to do is recite a few magic words and immediately they're brought into the kingdom.

I'm not going to say that there hasn't been anybody at all who's been saved because I'm sure the spirit has worked in someone's life in some way, and they've been brought into the kingdom.

But what you are doing is not bringing anyone to a knowledge of their sin.

They have no knowledge of sin. They have no knowledge of Christ as savior, even though they might say that word, they don't know what it means.

And so this thing that you're doing is not leading anyone to Christ. Instead, what you're doing is you're sowing seeds on the path.

You might be speaking truth about God, but a person's heart has not been conditioned to receive it.

And so as you're saying something about the kingdom of God or about the gospel, it's just seed falling on packed dirt.

It's a hard heart. It has not been tilled to receive that message. And he would contend with me and he would say, it's not, it's not up to me to convict a person of sin.

That's up to the spirit. And I would say, yeah, that's true. But you still have to tell a person that they're a sinner.

And you also have to help a person understand what sin is. I encountered this recently, too, where I was listening to a youth minister speak to a youth group, and I have yet to confront this guy about this.

So I do need to do that. But anyway, I heard him preaching a message to youth, and he quoted from Romans chapter five, verse eight, while we were yet sinners,

God shows his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But he was preaching this message to this youth about how

God's crazy about you. He just loves you. And so when he got to that verse, he said,

Romans five, eight says, God shows his love for us and that while we were messed up,

Christ died for us. And I mean to go to this individual and say to him, when you say that to youth who we know are unregenerate, we knew that the youth that we were ministering to that day were mostly unregenerate, had not received the message of Christ.

When you go to unregenerate youth that way and you say messed up, what they hear you say is that, yeah, we all have our problems, but God loves us anyway.

You've not actually brought them to a knowledge of sin and your term messed up does not teach them what sin is.

We need to not shy away from some of these hard words, even words that we don't think youth would understand.

God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And we need to tell that those youth what it means to be a sinner.

Do not shy away from the harsh truth, folks. If we do that, we're only sowing seed along a path.

We have not been sowing seed into a heart that is conditioned to receive it. And when they hear the word, it doesn't convict, it doesn't bring about any real change and the devil will just snatch it away from that person and that'll be it.

And the opportunity that we had may be gone and we may not get another one. Would we be able to stand in the presence of God and say,

I preached the full counsel of God or would their blood actually be on our heads because there were things that we just didn't want to offend people on.

And so we withheld some important aspects of the word of God. We did not say repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand preaching the way that Jesus preached the full counsel of God.

When we teach others about the truth of God's word, it is necessary to bring them to an understanding of their sin and that they have fallen short of the glory of God telling them what sin is.

It's a word that means to miss the mark and it is outright rebellion against God. And all of us at one point were in that.

All of us were were insolent, haughty and boastful. We were haters of God. We were enemies of God.

And yet, even when we were in that place, God showed his love for us and that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. He died in the place that we deserved to die because of our sin, because of our blasphemy and our rebellion against God, Christ died for us in that place.

So it is now because of the work of Christ that if we are followers of him, we become citizens of that eternal heavenly kingdom.

Let us be faithful to the full counsel of God. Our gracious heavenly father,

I pray that you continue to teach these things to us and let us keep these things in mind as we still have a few more things to discuss in the parable of the sower.

But thank you for how far you've brought us so far. And I pray that we are continuing to be faithful to the full counsel of God, to learn more no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much we realize we need to die to ourselves in order to live in Christ Jesus.

I pray that we are ready and willing to be changed into the image of the son, which you continue to work in us through your word.

And it is in the name of Jesus that we pray, Amen. It's become a pulpit cliche to preach that God hates the sin but loves the sinner.

Well, hold on to your seats because that's not in the Bible. On the contrary, scripture says that God hates sinners.

What? Psalm 5 .5, God hates all evildoers. Proverbs 6 .19, God hates those who cause division.

Jeremiah 12 .8, God hates his own rebellious people. Romans 9 .13, God hates Esau. In fact, 14 times in the first 50

Psalms alone do we read about God hating those who do evil. Oh, and you'll love this one, the Lord hates the very statement,

God hates the sin but loves the sinner. In Malachi 2 .17, it says you have wearied the Lord with your words.

But you say, how have we wearied him? By saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them.

God does not merely hate sin, he hates those who do sin. And that's what we read about when we understand the text.

Alright, alright, get out of here. Fortunately for us, that's not the end of the story. Because God does indeed love us, he did not leave us in our sin.

He sent his son, Jesus Christ, as an atoning sacrifice, dying on the cross in our place. The wrath that we deserve for our wickedness was poured out on Christ instead.

Romans 5 .8 and 9 says God shows his love for us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Now when God looks at us, he sees not our sin, but the righteousness of Christ, all those who follow him.

How is it that God can both hate the sinner and love us too? The answer is the cross.

The beauty of which we read about when we understand the text. Our question today comes from Dennis in Florida.

He says, Dear What, thank you for your video on hate the sin but love the sinner.

That one always drove me crazy. My friends use that line all the time. It didn't seem biblical, but I was not able to say how it wasn't biblical and your video helped me to figure it out.

Perhaps you can help me with something else. If God hates sinners and loves sinners, then what is the opposite of love?

I guess I always thought it was hate, but if God hates sinners and loves sinners and he cannot contradict himself, then they cannot be opposites, right?

Dennis, you would be correct. Hate is not the opposite of love. In fact, it is necessary in order to truly be loving that we must hate.

That was a statement that was made by Paul Washer in the famous youth sermon that he did back in 2001.

I can't remember the name of that sermon. You can still find it online, but one of the controversial statements he made in that sermon, among many controversial statements, but one of the ones that he made that's still controversial even now is that in order to truly be loving, it is necessary for us to hate.

He gives this example, because I love children, I hate abortion.

If you cherish abortion, if you defend it as something that is morally acceptable in our country, if you've had an abortion and you've not repented of that, you cannot say you love children.

In order to truly love children, you can't cherish abortion, which destroys children.

It takes the lives of children. If you love that, you can't say you love children. Because I love children,

I hate child abuse. Because I love children, I hate a father that would not be faithful to his wife and not fulfill his obligation to his children and instead would break his vows and would go chase after other things that he wants to go do and get divorced.

I hate those things because I love children. Hate is not the opposite of love.

It is necessary for us to hate enough that we would see a person in sin and call them out for it.

We hate that sin. We hate that they are doing something that would keep them from the kingdom of God.

And so we would call them out for that sin and say, hey, what you are doing is evil. That can still be a loving statement that can still be done in love to say to a person that their actions are evil so that they might understand it is not pleasing to God, that they would repent of it and follow in the righteousness of Christ instead of the worldly things, the passions and the desires of the flesh.

If there is one thing that the homosexual rights crowd has right when it comes to criticizing that statement, hate the sin but love the sinner.

They have said the two things are inseparable. If you hate a person's actions, you hate them. And I absolutely agree.

A person does what they do because of who they are. That is what determines their actions.

We don't sin. And that is what makes us sinners. We're sinners and therefore we sin.

So if we hate what it is that a person does, but loving them enough to call them out for it, that they would repent of that sin and follow in a path of righteousness.

So again, hate is not the opposite of love. It is necessary to hate in order to truly be loving.

So what is the opposite of love? The opposite of love is apathy. It's not feeling anything at all.

It's not doing anything at all. And if there is one statement that is the most apathetic statement in our culture today, it's that there is no such thing as objective truth.

Okay. What's true for you is not what's true for me. You can believe what you want to believe and I'll believe what

I want to believe and we can both be right. This is facilitating a culture of apathy to believe these things, to claim that there is no such thing as objective truth.

When we just let a person go about their way and do not think that we have to confront them in behavior that is destroying them, then we're apathetic.

We're not truly loving. And we're in a very apathetic culture that does not want to confront people in their sin, but instead wants to give them permission to do whatever it is that makes them happy.

That is truly the opposite of love. So let us love enough that we would call a person out for their sin.

Hating the same things that God hates, which is entirely a biblical approach to sin.

Thank you so much for your question, Dennis. Lord, continue to grow us in these things as we go throughout our day.

And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes.

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