The Parable of the Sower - The reality of the Kingdom message

Good morning, church family.

As Alex said, we're going to read from Matthew chapter 13, the first 23 verses.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

Starting at verse 1.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea,

and great crowds gathered around him, so that he got into a boat and sat down.

And the whole crowd stood on the beach.

And he told them many things in parables, saying,

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

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

He who has ears, let him hear.

Then the disciples came and said to him,

Why do you speak to them in parables?

And he answered them,

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,

but to them it has not been given.

For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance.

But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

This is why I speak to them in parables.

Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

Indeed.

In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says,

You will indeed hear, but never understand, and you will indeed see, but never perceive.

For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear,

and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,

and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see,

and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Hear then the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it,

the evil one comes and snatches 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,

immediately he falls away.

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.

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.

Welcome, everyone.

My name's Matt, if I haven't met you before.

It's great to see you here.

If you haven't seen me up the front, if you have only been here for a few months,

you wouldn't have seen me up here before.

I'm from the congregation, and I'm not one of the ministers here,

so Dave Bottencorner and Dave Calderwood would normally be the ones up here giving these sermons.

But I and a couple of the guys in the congregation are going to be taking us through Matthew chapter 13,

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

this coming few five weeks.

So today I'm going to be doing the parable of the sower,

and it's probably the most recognisable one out of the parables that you would see in this chapter.

Adam is going to be taking us through the weeds in verse 24,

and Simon is going to be taking us through the parable of the mustard seed in verse 31.

Andrew Wilkinson is going to be taking us through the hidden treasure in verse 44,

and Gareth is going to be taking us through the parable of fishing net in verse 47.

So the good news is, if you don't like one of our sermons,

you won't have to hear us again for a long, long time.

Look, on a serious note though,

I pray that we'll be an encouragement to you over the coming weeks,

and that we can bring these parables to you faithfully.

I have a question for you.

Do you ever feel like the gospel in Australia is somehow failing?

Do you feel like the good news of Jesus is under attack in our society?

I often feel like people these days are just becoming harder and harder to their gospel.

Their hearts just kind of becoming more and more resistant to the words of Jesus.

Do you guys feel like that?

I don't know if that's just me.

I think I feel like that.

Sometimes I feel like Satan is winning a battle for hearts and minds in Australia.

You know, I kind of look back at Australian history and see over time we're just becoming more and more secular as we go along.

Do you feel like the gospel in Australia is failing?

You see, telling people the message of Jesus can be really hard.

People these days seem to not really want to hear the message of Jesus.

And I think there's a couple of different categories here.

Some people hear about Jesus and they think,

Oh, that's too hard.

I have to go to church on a Sunday.

I've got all these rules.

You want me to follow the Ten Commandments?

All these rules that I have to do?

I can't do this thing.

I have to do all these other things.

That's ridiculous.

I think that's one type of reaction.

Another one is that they think it's too easy.

Like, hold on, you're saying I literally just have to accept and believe?

Like, where's my list of rituals?

Shouldn't I be praying three times a day?

Or shouldn't I be eating certain foods and avoiding others?

I mean, come on, guys.

Like, this can't be what this is.

What about this?

I think some people in our society think Jesus is a joke.

Now, not a show that I particularly recommend you watch,

but Family Guy depicts Jesus in this way.

He does this miracle and there's this great scene where they depict Jesus

doing his miracles and it goes like this.

Jesus gets up in front of the crowd like this and he goes,

da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And that's their portrayal of Jesus.

An absolute, absolute joke.

And then I think there's people who think Jesus is even on the other end

of the spectrum.

He's too serious.

Can't believe you've done this.

You did this.

I told you not to do this.

I asked you to do these things and you have not done them.

And I think that's another perception of Jesus, that he's very serious.

I think not only that, but sometimes you can wonder,

how do people even come to Jesus in our society at all?

There are so many barriers getting in the way of someone coming and accepting Jesus.

Isn't there?

I mean, just look at our society and the perception in the media,

the way that our friends and family who aren't Christian talk about Jesus.

How on earth does anyone come to Jesus in Australia?

And I think for me it's made worse by this nagging feeling that I sometimes get,

where I go, I know God is all-powerful.

I know God can do whatever he wants to do.

So why, when I tell someone the gospel and I hear the gospel,

does it not just sweep through our society, every heart changed, every mind believing?

Why is this even a competition?

Why is there other religions in our world?

Why is not everyone just coming to Jesus?

You see, I think I would probably expect, if I was God,

that I would have a moment like we see when Elijah's talking to the prophets of Baal

and you've got the two altars and this big rain of fire comes down

and it's clear to everyone that God exists, that he's real,

and that he is the one in control.

That's what I kind of want to see, don't you think?

It's just this huge, undisputable sign that God is the one in control.

Is the gospel failing in our society?

Why do so many people reject the message?

Well, in this series, not just today, but I suspect throughout the other talks as well,

we're going to see that the gospel is doing exactly what God intended it to do.

It just might not look like we think it should.

See, reactions will differ.

People will see the gospel and respond in different ways,

but ultimately, God's gospel is doing exactly what he intended.

Now I'm going to pray and then we'll properly get into the actual parable.

So let's pray.

Dear God, thank you for the time that we can spend here together thinking through this parable.

Thank you so much that for many of us here,

you've given us minds and ears to understand and we have accepted your kingdom word.

God, I pray that you would give me the words to speak and for those listening, clarity to hear and understand.

Amen.

Okay, first let's step back a bit.

Let's zoom out and look at the context of Matthew.

And Dave, both Dave's have been bringing us Matthew for a number of weeks now.

And really the way that Matthew works is Jesus comes to the world and he says,

Okay, Israel, you've got the Old Testament.

You've seen throughout the Old Testament that there's prophecies,

there's people and things pointing towards this guy who's going to come and bring the kingdom.

Your history shows that someone's going to come.

And Jesus says, I am that person.

I'm the one who's going to bring the kingdom to this world.

And so we see that that happens.

And then we get to this point in verse 10 where he sends out his people into the world.

He sends out his disciples into the world.

He's been doing a lot of miracles and healing people.

And that's kind of the start of the kingdom coming.

He sends them out into the world.

And they go out and they say,

Look, we're getting differing responses here.

And you can see it coming out in different stories as we go through,

not just in chapter 10 onwards, even beforehand.

People respond very differently to the message of Jesus.

And so we get to this point where they're starting to see rejection.

And in fact, if you look at the end of 13, which is the part that we're doing today,

you can see that he goes to his own town, Nazareth.

And people who have grown up with him since he was a baby,

like this is not like society now where everyone just constantly moves cities, towns, whatever.

Move to Tamworth, Jimmy and Nilm.

Very unusual.

You often stay where you were.

They all know him very well.

So I don't know why I had to get Jimmy and Nilm there.

That was not in my script.

Sorry, Jimmy and Nilm.

I can't even see where you are.

You can hear Jimmy's laugh.

But this is not like that.

They all know him.

And they still reject his message.

And so we're going to see this common theme over the next five weeks

where Jesus and his disciples explain his kingdom message to people.

But there's wildly different reactions to that message.

And it's a message that divides people into people who hear and understand

and those who don't.

And a way of thinking like this is it's a bit like olives or blue cheese or oysters,

maybe anchovies.

You either get it or you don't.

It's very unusual that someone be in between.

By the way, for the record, blue cheese is great.

Oysters are great.

Olives and anchovies are disgusting.

But again, very polarising.

And so we come to chapter 13, verse 1.

And we're met with this pretty unusual scene.

That's the context that we get up to in here.

We get this unusual scene where all these people have come to see Jesus speak.

Huge crowds.

So much so that he gets on a boat and kind of goes a little bit out into the lake

and everyone's on the shore standing around.

And he tells this odd story.

Now they've all come to see him do miracles

and maybe tell them some word about God.

But he talks about this story about this guy who,

a sower who goes out into the fields

and he spreads seed around.

And he's not a particularly picky sower.

He's not trying to pick which soil.

It goes on every soil.

So we've got the path,

which is the first one,

and the birds come and eat it up.

And then we have the rocky ground.

The thorny ground is the third one.

And then the fourth one is the good soil.

And some of these plants grow and some don't.

In fact, it's only really the plants on the good soil that grow.

And that's it.

Now probably pretty fairly,

a lot of people in the crowd at this point are going,

what on earth is he talking about?

Jesus hasn't explained it at this point.

Literally that's it.

We have the context of what we've seen in the next coming verses,

what he's talking about.

But the people in the crowd,

you know,

like I'm a gardener.

Sorry, I'm not a gardener.

I'm not very good at gardening.

I can mow.

I can whippersnaip and I can hedge.

That's about it.

Even I know that if you plant seeds,

not in good soil,

they won't grow.

And imagine them back in the day.

They knew a lot about farming.

What on earth is Jesus talking about?

In fact,

it's not just the average Joe listening in the crowd who feels that way either.

The disciples,

his own disciples come to him and say,

why are you speaking to them in parables?

Just say it how it is.

Why are you talking to them in this way?

You see,

after all,

parables don't make a message that is difficult to understand,

easier to understand.

If we said that,

we would have to say that everything Jesus said up to this point

is pretty inaccessible to the people he's teaching

and somehow you need to have a parable to explain it.

It's not like that at all.

And I'm going to illustrate that by telling you a parable of my own.

Okay.

A man once bought a Russian doll.

Does everyone know what a Russian doll is?

It's one of those things you,

like,

break in half,

a doll that you split in half and there's another doll inside.

Keep going,

there's more dolls inside each doll.

Okay.

A man had a Russian doll.

It was made up of ten dolls.

Okay.

Now he hand-painted seven of the dolls.

He did not hand-paint the third and the ninth doll.

But the tenth doll,

he smashed into eight pieces and buried it in the backyard.

He who has ears to hear,

let him hear.

Now,

I would be very,

very surprised

and wonder how you'd read a copy of my sermon

if you knew what I was talking about.

But I am,

of course,

talking about the 2019 Cricket World Cup

where Australia

had nine group matches,

lost the third and the ninth match,

got to the semi-final

and spectacularly lost to England by eight wickets.

That's what my parable means.

Yeah,

at this point you're going,

why do they let him up here?

Now,

the point of this is to illustrate

that parables don't make a difficult message

easier to understand.

And Jesus explains to his disciples in verse 11,

if you've got chapter 13 open,

verse 11,

to you it has been given

to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.

But to them it has not been given.

But to the one who has,

more will be given

and he will have an abundance.

But from the one who has not,

even what he has

will be taken away.

This is why I speak to them in parables,

because seeing they do not see,

and hearing they do not hear,

nor do they understand.

In this section,

Jesus is saying to the disciples

and the believers

who have been given the mind to understand

and recognize Jesus' words and parables,

he's showing them

that this is a unique way of teaching them.

It helps them build a connection

with what Jesus is saying

in a way that telling it straight

doesn't do it.

Now, Dave Bott sent me a great quote,

I think,

that really summarizes this.

It's from a guy called Eugene Peterson

in a book called

The Contemplative Pastor.

It says this,

it says,

parables sound absolutely ordinary,

and I think we can agree

that this one does.

Casual stories about soil and seeds,

meals and coins and sheep,

bandits and victims,

farmers and merchants,

and they are wholly secular,

which means they're not religious.

Of his 40 or so parables

recorded in the Gospels,

only one has its settings in church,

and only a couple mention the name of God.

As people heard Jesus tell these stories,

they saw at once that they weren't about God.

So there was nothing in them

threatening their own sovereignty.

They relaxed their defenses.

They walked away perplexed,

wondering what they meant.

The stories lodged in their imaginations,

and then like a time bomb,

they would explode in their unprotected hearts.

An abyss opening up at their very feet.

He was talking about God.

They had been invaded.

See, parables drop the defense of the listeners

in a way that just saying it straight up

does not do.

And what's also clear here

is that Jesus is saying

that the Gospel and the Kingdom message

is not meant for everyone.

It's not meant to be part of his plan

that everyone

hears a parable and hears the message,

understands and accepts and believes.

But God's plan for the Gospel

is doing exactly what it is meant to do.

You see, we're to expect rejection of the Gospel.

Jesus' parables won't become clear to everyone.

But you see, I tend to want that to happen.

I want everyone in the here and now

to be swept off their feet,

to instantly understand and believe.

I want every friend that I tell

to just be weeping in gratitude

for what I have shared with them,

for every family member

to come and see the great news

and understand why I care about this so much.

But that's not God's plan.

His plan is different to ours,

and that includes allowing people

to respond differently

to the Gospel message.

And so after the disciples come to him

and kind of ask,

why on earth are you speaking to them in parables?

Jesus explains,

he then actually explains

what this parable is about,

the sower and the soils.

And it turns out that the parable

is actually talking about the same thing

that he's just explained.

So the parable presents

four different receptions of the Gospel.

And the kids talk,

look, I nearly thought I'd get up here

and just say,

see kids talk and then sit back down,

because it explains it so well.

The birds of the path,

the rocky soil,

the thorny soil and the good soil,

they all represent different ways

that people respond to the message of Jesus.

And you can see on the outline,

I've tried to do a bit of a fancy alliteration thing

and summarise them

into the responses driven by the devil,

responses driven by difficulties,

responses driven by distractions,

and responses driven by desire.

So Jesus explains,

the sower goes out

and he spreads the seed,

we see that in verse 19,

that it's the words of the kingdom,

and it lands on different soils.

It's not selectively spread,

it's spread everywhere.

And the first place

that we see the seeds land

is on the path,

and the birds come

and they eat it up.

And Jesus explains

that this represents people

who hear the message

and immediately reject.

They're so prejudiced

against the Gospel,

they don't want to hear it.

For whatever reason,

their hearts are not open

to the message of Jesus.

And I think conceptually,

this is probably a very easy one

for us to understand in our society.

We do see that we talk about Jesus to people

and it's like,

you can tell,

there's just no chance

that they're going to accept this message.

There's so many things

that prejudice them

against that message.

The second is the rocky soil

in verse 20.

And these people initially

hear the Gospel.

They hear it

and sometimes

they're quite excited about it.

They think maybe

they've found something.

But then over time,

difficulty comes in.

Maybe it's suffering of some kind,

maybe it's a death,

maybe it's people

making fun of them

for maybe thinking

about becoming a Christian.

And so difficulty

pushes their hearts away

from the message

and they reject the Gospel.

The third one

is thorny soil.

And that's where

people hear the Gospel again,

pretty excited,

thinking maybe

this could be something

that is actually

the meaning of life.

But then things

start to get in the way

and we know

what these look like.

I'm not going to go

through an extensive list.

We know things

that tempt us away

from the Gospel.

And so slowly

these things come along

and the Gospel that once

looked really attractive

suddenly starts to turn

into like a burden.

It's actually holding me back.

I want to do

all these great things.

But I have this

Christian thing

and then it becomes

an issue

and our hearts

are drawn away

through temptation

and through distractions.

Now these first three soils

all say the same thing.

It's about hearing the Gospel

and rejecting the message.

You see,

I think we can be

a little bit tempted

to think about this

like it's grades

of hearing the Gospel

and understanding

where you go,

you've got the path,

don't want to be the path.

That's the far end

of the spectrum.

Look,

if you have to be

something

and it's at least

not the path,

at least just try

and be the rocky soil.

And then,

you know,

thorny,

you know,

still not great

but better.

And then at the end,

good soil,

fantastic,

that's what you want

to strive to be.

It's not like that at all.

These three fall

into the same category.

It's people who

reject the Gospel

and those three

are in contrast

to the fourth,

the good soil.

This is people

in verse 23

where the Gospel

is received

with joy.

It's heard,

it's understood,

it's accepted

and becomes the truth

in people's hearts.

You see,

this parable

explains

that there will be

different responses

to the Gospel.

And not only

should we expect it,

it's God's plan

for the world.

God's Gospel

is doing

exactly

what He intended.

The Gospel

has been given

and understood

to those

who God

chose for it

to be given

and to

and understood

by.

And so when we

look around Australia

or around our world

and we see

the Gospel

not being received

in the way

that we might wish,

we shouldn't

despair

and get this

sense of

feeling like

the Gospel

is not doing

what it's meant

to do,

that we as Christians

are not

representing it

in the way

that we should.

we should not

worry that the Gospel

is not a strong

enough message,

like somehow

it's not persevering

in the way

that it used to

or that somehow

we need to change it

so that it will

reach people

how it might have

once upon a time.

We shouldn't

feel the need

to dress it up,

to add things

to it,

to make it better

or maybe

the opposite end,

to take things away.

You know,

there's some things

like,

you're telling me

I'm a sinner

and then I've got

a problem with God.

I mean,

that's pretty offensive.

We don't need

to take things

away from the Gospel.

You see,

in everything,

everything that happens

with God's message

is His plan.

I want it all now.

I want to see it

sweep through our world

right now.

But that's not

God's plan.

God's plan

is to choose

His soil

and to see

an abundant harvest

come from that soil

as we see

in verse 23.

See,

in everything,

we can have faith

that the outcome

is exactly

what God wants.

See,

when we tell

others the Gospel

and they reject it,

we don't need

to feel shame

that somehow

we've done

something wrong.

That was God's plan.

When we see

people

accept the Gospel,

I don't need

to be surprised

that somehow

someone

this message

got through

in our society.

That's God's plan.

That's exactly

what He wanted

to happen.

And in fact,

if you're a Christian,

God chose

your ears

to hear.

He chose

your eyes

to see.

If you're a Christian,

God chose

your heart

to hear

and understand.

He chose

you to turn

to Him.

He chose

you to be

the good soil

and how much

can we rejoice

that we are

on the right side

of God's plan?

God's plan.

See,

it's about

what God

has done

for us.

This parable

is not about

shooing away

the birds

or trying

to filter

out the rocks

or weed

up the thorns.

It's not about

us trying

to be a good soil.

This is about

what God

has done

for us.

And yes,

we have difficulties.

Yes,

things get in the way

and distract us.

But if you

believe the

message

that Jesus

came

and died

and rose

again

so that we

could be

restored in

relationship

with Him,

then you're

the good soil.

If you don't

yet call yourself

a Christian

here today,

then hear the

seed of the

gospel now.

We are God's

creation.

creation.

We chose,

we chose

to rebel

against Him.

We rejected

Him and decided

we didn't want

to live with

God as our

King and our

Ruler.

We wanted to

do it our

own way and

our state

before God

was helpless.

We were

rebels.

We lived as

enemies of God.

We wanted to

live our own

way but our

actions,

those actions

are leading

us to

eternal death

and separation

from God

forever.

You see,

our hearts,

we don't

turn to

Him.

We don't

turn to

Him on

our own

and the

punishment

for that

is too

great for

us to

handle.

So God

sent Jesus.

This is the

amazing thing

is that we

didn't do

something for

this.

The problem

was our

making but

God took it

on Himself

to fix it.

He took

the punishment

for our

rebellion,

our rejection,

our hate

for Him.

Jesus died

an agonizing

death with

nails in His

hands and in

His feet,

keeping Him

to a wooden

cross.

God's own

Son and He

didn't deserve

that death.

His heart

was solely

for God.

but in

doing so

He took

our

punishment

and where

that punishment

for us

would have

meant death

forever,

an eternal

separation

from God.

Jesus beat

death.

He took that

punishment and

paid it in

full and He

came back

alive.

And it

shows that

that punishment

has been

completely

taken for

us.

Our

relationship

with our

Creator and

King is

restored and

we have Him

as our

ruler if

only you

choose to

let Him

take that

punishment

for you.

Because there

is a choice.

You don't

have to let

Him take

it for

you.

Do you

accept and

believe the

message that

is given to

us by

Jesus?

If you

do, then

you are a

good soil.

You are

the good

soil that

He talks

about in

this parable.

And if

not, then

your rejection

of Jesus

will mean

that you

rightfully

take the

punishment

that you

deserved

anyway.

But either

way,

regardless of

everyone in

this room and

how we

respond,

regardless of

how anyone

in our

society and

the world

responds to

the gospel,

it's exactly

what God

meant for it

to do.

I'm going

to pray

for us.

Dear God,

I just want

to thank you

so much for

sending your

son Jesus.

Thank you

that he is

the one by

which we

can be

saved.

Thank you

that you

didn't leave

us to our

rejection and

rebellion of

you, that

you didn't

leave us

to an

eternal

death.

Thank you

that you

sent Jesus

to take

that punishment

for us.

Thank you

that because

of you we

can be

good soil,

that we

can have a

relationship

with you,

that we

can be

your children.

God, I

just pray for

us here

today.

I pray that

we would

take encouragement

from what you

have done

for us.

I pray that

you'd help us

to remember

just how much

we can be

thankful for

what you

have done

by sending

Jesus.

Thank you

so much

that regardless

of what

happens in

our world,

that you

have planned

each and

everything.

Thank you

that our

people respond

regardless of

the responses

that the

gospel makes

happen in

our world.

Thank you

so much

that it's

all in

your plan.

Thank you

that we

can take

comfort from

that.

Thank you

that when we

tell our

friends and

family, we

know that

no matter

what happens,

it's in

your hand.

Amen.