Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St Matthew. And
we read from his gospel:
As for what
was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understand it. He
indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and
in another thirty.
Prayer: Let
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In the book of Revelation, we
read a wonderful passage where St John writes: I saw another angel flying
directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on
earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.
The gospel is an eternal
gospel. It isn’t a temporary word, but it is an eternal gospel. This
means that it is a gospel that will last forever, but it also means that it is
gospel that call to us out of eternity. We who live on this earth with our
everyday existence, which most of the time seems pretty ordinary, are called by
Jesus from eternity to join him in eternity.
You might know the story of Lazarus
and the rich man: there is a poor, miserable man Lazarus who lives at the gate
of a rich man who daily sees him there and ignores him. But in the next life,
Lazarus goes to heaven to the bosom of Abraham, but the rich man goes to hell.
Then the rich man has a conversation with Abraham, pleading with him, but it is
too late for him. Eventually, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his
brothers. But Abraham says: They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear
them. And [the rich man] said, “No father Abraham, but if someone goes to them
from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses
and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from
the dead.”
Now what does this all mean? We
can see Abraham from the other side of the grave to listen to the eternal word
of Moses and the Prophets. Now, we have even more than that: We have Moses and
the Prophets, but we have the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ, who has come back
from the dead and has given to us his word. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus
calls it the word of the kingdom. What kingdom is this? It’s the kingdom
that the thief on the cross knows about: Jesus, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. We are called by an eternal gospel to join our eternal
risen Lord Jesus in his eternal kingdom. Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.
And so Jesus tells a parable
about a sower. And he tells this parable because he wants to warn us how we can
hear the gospel wrongly, and to encourage us by to hear it rightly. Jesus
describes the seed as falling on four different types of ground: the path, the
rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil.
Jesus says: A sower went out
to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and
devoured them. And Jesus gives the explanation: When anyone hears the
word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches
away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path.
Jesus tells us of the sower
sowing seed, but it falls along a path. The sower here is Jesus himself, but
also each person who goes out to sow the word of God together with him,
provided that they are actually sowing the word of the kingdom and not the word
of their own personal kingdom. But wherever pastors and missionaries and
evangelists and Christians anywhere are sowing the word of God, they are sowing
it together with Jesus.
This is a very important point,
because often people talk today as if it depends on us as to whether the church
grows. We have this thing called the “church growth movement” which puts it on
us individual Christians and pastors to follow various steps and formulas to
grow the church. And this wrong understanding is seriously killing our church’s
pastors, and crippling the joy of our ministry. And this comes from a weak
understanding that Jesus really is here in the flesh with us in the church. So
if people don’t believe the real Messiah is with us to the end of the age, then
they make their pastors, or the writers of the latest book here and there, into
the Messiah instead. Now, of course, don’t get me wrong: we all want the church
to grow, and to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but we have to recognise that
we only sow the seed.
(Sometimes it has happened to me
that when a church had a poor attendance one week that people would blame me
for it. But the people who weren’t there had their reasons—travelling, or a
baptism or celebration at another church, or whatever. It wasn’t my personal
fault that those people were missing. But also, sometimes it has happened that
when there is a full church, I am complimented! And I’ve had to tell people
that I’d never seen any of these people before, and it wasn’t my doing and my
invitation that brought them!)
The Holy Spirit is the one who
gathers the church around the words of Jesus. St Paul says: I planted,
Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants not he who
waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
Now, in the parable, Jesus here
makes a very interesting comparison. He compares the devil with birds that
devour the seed that has fallen on the path. The path refers to those who have
no understanding and don’t receive the word of God—it hits their ears and
bounced off. And so what happens to the word of God? The devil feeds on it,
like a bird picking at the seed.
Do you know that all of the
devil’s power comes from feeding on the word of God? Sometimes we might go out
at night and see a street light with moths flying around it. That’s what the
devil’s like: he is attracted to the light, and is obsesses over the light of
the gospel.
Even right in the beginning of
the world, we read how God gives Adam and Eve a command not to eat the tree in
the middle of the garden otherwise they would surely die. But the devil then
comes and feeds off this word and says: Did God really say, You shall not
eat of any tree in the garden? And when he feeds on the word of God, he
snatches it away and twists it into something that isn’t the word of God
anymore. So the devil tells Eve: You will not die.
Or think about the devil when he
tempts Jesus in the wilderness. He even quotes the bible to him and twists it
around to tempt him with a false comfort.
From this we realise that the
devil is doing his most powerful work not outside the church, but within it.
Those who don’t receive the Gospel already belong to the devil, so he doesn’t
need to work as hard with them. But because we hear the word of God, the devil
wants to come and feed on it. So if you feel as though the devil is giving you
a hard time, it’s not proof that you are far away from Jesus, but that you are close
to Jesus.
Now Jesus goes on to say: 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. Jesus
explains: 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.
Here Jesus is talking about
people who get excited about the word and recognise that there is a certain
charm or majesty or power that comes from the word, but only in a kind of worldly
sense—they haven’t recognised the gospel as an eternal gospel yet.
So sometimes people come to a
funeral and they say: Thanks, Pastor, for your comforting speech. It’s nice to
hear that the art of public speaking isn’t lost. (It’s nice to see a young
person with some passion.) But a funeral sermon is not an exercise in the art
of public speaking – this is the eternal gospel. And so the next day, or the
next week, or the next month, they’ve forgotten everything.
Or we go to a wedding, and people
read 1 Corinthians 13, because it’s such a powerful-sounding passage, and
people love to hear it read in Shakespearean sounding voice. If I speak in
the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a
clanging cymbal. And so, once they’ve had their little token bible-reading
they go on to try and live a marriage as if God’s blessing and his word are
nothing.
Or sometimes people think:
“Jesus’ words are brilliant! I’m going to go now and change the world, and
change our society.” And then people don’t listen to them, and they get
despondent, because they think that the word of God doesn’t have any power
after all.
This kind of despondency, apathy,
quick highs and long lows are a real temptation for us. So beware, when the
hardship, tribulation, persecution, depression comes your way. In those times,
all worldly charm and empty rhetoric will dry up and wither away. The reason
for your hardship is not because the word of God doesn’t work, but because the
word of God is working powerfully: it is tribulation or persecution on
account of the word.
Then Jesus says: Other seeds
fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Jesus explains: 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.
Here we see the situation where
people might understand the word of God a bit better than the rocky ground.
They are not as superficial as they are. But nevertheless, they put the word of
God on an equal plain with all kinds of worldly philosophies.
So as a pastor, it’s interesting
to see a row of books on people’s shelves. You have “Rex Hunt’s Guide to
Fishing”, “Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess”, “Aunty Margaret’s
Herbal Remedies”, “The Illustrated Karma Sutra”, “How to raise toddlers”, “How
to succeed in business without really trying”, “How to win friends and
influence people”, “The power of positive thinking”, “The idiot’s guide to
reiki or yoga”, or whatever else idiots are looking for guides for, and in the
midst of that lot you’ve got a dusty old King James version of the bible. Now
is that your bookshelf? Do you treat the bible as some kind of self-help manual
among many?
The self-help manuals won’t get
you past death. Beware of the cares of the world and deceitfulness of
riches. They will be useless to you eventually. The grass withers, the
flowers fade, but the word of God remains forever. The weeds around you need to be plucked up sometime. Sometimes
people say after a hard time in life, that their faith helped them to get
through it – and that’s a wonderful thing. But remember, that your faith isn’t
first of all for you to simply get through something – you need to get through
death, and through to eternal life with Jesus. Then you’ll say, God, the word
of God, my faith got me through. This is the word of the kingdom of
Jesus, the eternal gospel, that we’re talking about.
And finally, Jesus says: Other
seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty,
some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear. And Jesus explains: 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, in another
sixty, and in another thirty.
Here we see Jesus putting such
enormous emphasis on the fact that the seed bears fruit and yields. You
see, right from the beginning of the world, God said: Let the earth sprout
vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is
their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth. God created the whole
world to be fertile and fruitful and with such wonderful variety. It’s only
when sin comes into the world, that God says: Cursed is the ground because
of you. So if there’s some barren land, some hardened concrete paths, some
rocky ground, some thorny paddocks, it’s not God’s fault, but it’s our fault. Because
without sin, these things wouldn’t exist.
And in our parable, God has sent
his word into our hearts so that it would be fruitful. And if it’s not
fruitful, it’s not God’s fault, but it’s ours. We shouldn’t read this passage
as if it’s talking about predestination or fate, and we think: Well, I must be
a path, I must be rocky or thorny ground, and there’s just nothing I can do
about it.
That’s not true. Jesus’ words
here are a warning to us, where he gives us insights into ways we can hear his
word wrongly. But he tells us these things to encourage us to hear it rightly,
and so that we can bear fruit. The gospel is never just for ourselves—if we
have the gospel only for ourselves, we probably haven’t understood the gospel
yet.
And it’s amazing how some people
are still bearing fruit even today, even though they are dead. People can read
a sermon of Martin Luther, for example, and still be encouraged by it. Or even,
think of the apostles, and St Matthew who wrote our gospel reading today – he’s
long dead, almost 2000 years ago, and yet the word that was planted in his
heart is still bearing eternal fruit in our lives today as press forward as
members of Jesus’ eternal kingdom, together with our crucified and risen Lord
and King, our living Jesus Christ.
So as we hear the Gospel today,
let’s pray to God to send us the Holy Spirit to give growth—germination,
sprouting, full growth, deep roots, maturity, budding, fruitfulness, ripeness.
And may that word of God multiply and bear fruit not just in this life but
ascending high and mightily into eternity with our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Lord Jesus, we thank you for the
gift of your word, and we pray that you would richly pour out your Holy Spirit
on each of us. Send us your power from on high as you did with your first disciples,
and help us to bear living fruit in our lives. Amen.
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