Desert or Prairie?

Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Focus: Perseverance in Christian Faith

Function: To help consider their own faithfulness

Form: Bible Study

Intro: I confess that I have preached this text several times and I am not sure I feel good about my previous attempts to explain this passage.

I think I have done a pretty good job of shaming people in an attempt to make them be the best kind of Christian they can be.

I suppose that coming to worship, and focusing a big portion of our worship service on the sermon, an exposition of God's Word means that we do indeed come for aid in our Christian life.

But shame does not come from God. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit quickens, moves, or stimulates us into change. But when God is working in our hearts to change our minds, our way of thinking, God never makes us feel like failures. God always lets us know that with Him, we can find new freedoms in becoming like Christ.

Having said that, at times, living out our Christian conviction can be a sacrifice, can be hard, can force between two choices, one may seem more pleasurable than the other, but we know that one is more like what Jesus would have us do.

So, when I preached this text, the message was titled: “What kind of soil are you?”

The parable is about 4 different kinds of soil.

My past title: “What kind of soil are you?” doesn't apply since it's impossible for us to change the kind of soil we are. The soil is kind of stuck there.

You can't press all the details of a parable, one has to find the main theme.

Fortunately, the main point of the parable is given to us right in the parable in verse 9. Let me read it: “⁹Whoever has ears, let them hear.” and then again, with the first word of verse 18, where our text picks back up again: “listen...”

Maybe the title should be “How well do you listen?”

I find the story to be very comforting to the disciples as they begin the task of going out into the entire world to share God's grace and message of hope.

The story reminds disciples that many will not respond well to the gospel message.

And their response is not our fault.

I believe Jesus wants us to use the parable as we are preaching the gospel with the hope that people will make up their minds to listen well because there are many who miss the blessing for lack of hearing.

The four soils:

The path. This is the place that is to busy. There is so much activity on the path that the seed never germinates. It is swept away by Satan himself.

How many people get so distracted by the busyness of life that they never take time to consider spiritual things?

How many times to do we actually ask ourselves the question, What does Jesus want me to do? Or What would Jesus Do?

We can get so busy we forget to ask that question.

The rocky soil, presumably along the side of the path.

The rock is to hard for the seed to take root.

Too hard for their to be fertile soil.

This person responds quickly, but has no real depth.

The text says they do well until trouble or persecution comes, because of the word, they fall away.

We don't practice infant baptism because we believe that a person should count well the cost of discipleship.

But we have seen it. People who are initially excited, but then fall away.

Unfortunately, we see this sometimes in prison.

The men respond well during the weekend, but later on, when their faith is challenged by gangs, drugs or their own lack of character, they resort to previous lives.

However, some of the times where the Church has grown the most is when there has been persecution. My brother told me that a missionary to Iran presented to their church about how strong the Church is in Iran, where they are persecuted the most. The same is true in China. The same was true in the 1^st Century.

Persecution can grow a Church. But Satan is an enemy to the healing power of the good news. There are lots of views of who, or what, Satan is. So, for our discussion, let us agree to the common denominator here: Evil is real. I want to give 2 stories contrasting Satanic persecution that built the church, and a Satanic attack that stole away the seed.

I saw it happen in Haiti.

Tell story of Village 9.

• Poor village
• 3 miles to potable water
• had to be 13 to have clothes
• I was desperate to preach, what could I know about their lives
• But a sermon came to me that morning about the nature of evil and the reality of Satan.
• They had an obvious choice, to us, the choice is not so obvious
• 5 minutes into the service we sang “when I die, I am going to live again...”
• We spent the next two hours filled with joy.
• It was Acts Chapter 2
• Somewhere in there I preached, but I was a small part of the whole event.
• I kept noticing the men walk out of the room and walk back in with a concerned look on their face.
• But the atmosphere was electric!
• The joy of the Lord seemed to form a bubble over that building as it filled the building.
  • The sense of God's presence reminded me once during VBS when a tornado headed directly toward the church.
  • The trailer court emptied out with all of the residents hiding in basement and the VBS director started singing the VBS songs to calm the Children and again that sense of being a bubble occurred and that tornado literally lifted off the ground a mile from the Church, went directly over the Church and touched down again about a half a mile past us.
• I digress for a moment.
• Sunday night, we were going back to village 9 for another meeting and no one from our group wanted to go with us.
• I asked why and then found out that the concerned look on the men's faces was because there were 6 Voodoo priests doctors circling the Church trying to cast a spell on us.
• But there was no getting through.
• Here is the point. Persecution and Satan himself, whether you believe Satan is a metaphor for evil, or a real fallen angel, either way, it/he attacks new Christians.

Contrast with Cheeseburger and the woman.

The Thorny Soil.

Dare I say that this can easily describe us?

To be fair, the admonition is to listen well.

And I know that because there are times in my life when I have responded in all four ways to the message.

So, without shame, let us look at the thorny soil.

The seed wants to grow.

It has good enough soil to take a good permanent root. But there are too many distractions.

A few years ago a family member stole a large sum of money from my wife, her sister and her brother. I wanted to be angry. Forgiveness was hard. But that is the worries of this world getting in the way...

Here is the thing, in order to have a strong crop, you gotta weed the garden.

Now, next week we will look at the parable in the interim of this passage, how weeding the garden is God's job, not ours.

But the weeds need to be pulled.

And Jesus tells us this part of that parable, hoping we will listen to the fact that weeds will choke out the good soil.

Jim Wetzel, not our Jim Wetzel, but the one who used to write the gardening column for the FW News Sentinel wrote this once: “a weed is an unwanted plant.”

His point was that even a beautiful flower growing in the pumpkin plant is a weed because of its place.

Sometimes the things that distract us and choke out our fruitfulness as Christians aren't evil.

We are called, by Christ, to do good works for Him while living under the sun.

And finally, there is the good soil that produces abundant fruit.

The lesson from this is not what kind of soil we are, but that when we are disciples of Christ, we do produce fruit.

And producing fruit is what matters to God.

Again, I don't say this to shame anyone.

Jesus didn't tell this parable so that the plants would uproot themselves into some place different, but so that people would pay attention to what they are hearing.

We can get to busy to even respond to Jesus.

I suppose that is the saddest condition of all.

We can be excited for a short time, but have no root and soon fall away.

We can take root, but allow ourselves to be distracted.

Or, we can make up our minds to be in it for the long haul.

But, I am not going to ask you what kind of soil you are.

This is a faithful Church. You do very well.

All of us always know that we can do more.

No shame from me.

So, what I am going to ask is what kind of soil are we sewing the seed onto?

Is it a Desert, or is it a Prairie?

There is a lot of busyness in our culture. The minute the gospel is preached, another idea or the struggle just to stay alive chokes out the message.

There is a lot of rocky soil. There are so many things clamoring for our enthusiasm, that we can get excited, and then fall into excitement for something else and forget the most important things.

There are a lot of thorns that distract us from our mission.

But there is also a faithful God who weeds, prunes, waters and encourages us.

I wonder if the call to keep on listening is a call for us to keep together.