Matthew 13:1-9

We're going to start in chapter 13, Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

So that means we got through chapter 12.

Today we come to Matthew 13, where Jesus introduces parables as a central teaching tool.

This is a new section in the book of Matthew.

If you've been following closely, you notice a shift in how Jesus communicates.

He has been very direct up until this point.

But now he moves into teaching in parables stories that invite people to dig beneath the surface.

And this is on purpose.

This is intentional.

Jesus is doing something both brilliant and challenging by using parables.

It's not just a storytelling device, it's a way of revealing truth to those who are open while also obscuring it from those who aren't really listening.

What we're going to do, there's three things that we're going to do.

We're going to read the parable right off the bat this morning.

Then we're going to spend a good bit of time talking about this question: why did Jesus choose to teach in parables?

We don't have to ask the question.

Jesus is asked the question by his own disciples.

And then finally, we'll explore how this parable invites each of us to reflect in our own hearts and the responses to the message about the kingdom contained in these parables.

So let's look first at these first nine verses.

They'll be up here on the screen.

This is the Christian Standard Bible version.

It says this on that day, Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea.

Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and he sat down while the whole crowd stood on the shore.

Then he told them many things in parables, saying, Consider the sower who went out to sow.

As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it didn't have much soil, and it grew up quickly, since the soil wasn't deep.

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

Other seed fell among the thorns, and its thorns came up and choked it.

Still other seed fell on good ground and produced fruit, some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown.

Let anyone who has ears listen.

Lord, we have ears.

Everybody here has ears.

And I pray that you would give us the ability to hear what you're saying.

Help our hearts to hear what you're saying.

Help us to wrestle with this whole idea of parables and why did you change from being so direct to then using these parables as a strategy to communicate?

God, would you um teach us what we need to hear this morning?

Lord, the very message of this parable, of being this soft, good, rich soil that produces fruit, Lord, we we want to be that.

But we also, Lord, we we want to just in a broad sense understand what you're saying to us in our lives.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now I recognize that in this church and this morning, there are a whole bunch of different people coming from different backgrounds.

You may be just kind of exploring religious systems and spiritual ideas and hearing about Christianity for the first time or early on.

And there's some stuff here for you from Jesus' teaching.

But and for the rest of us, many of us, we're already followers of Jesus and we've been baptized, and there's stuff in here for us as well.

So we see that this story occurs right on the heels of this scene.

Remember last week we looked at how Jesus was healing and teaching in this house, and the disciples came to him and said, Hey, your mother and your brothers are outside, and Jesus said, Well, no, my mother and my brothers are those that obey me, that listen to my words, and they obey me.

And he reframes the idea of a spiritual family.

And the text says it's on that same day that Jesus went out of the house and he's sitting by the sea, and there's large crowds, so large, that he gets into a boat and he goes out in the boat while the whole crowd stood on the shore.

So he's teaching from this setting.

He tells them many things, and then he goes into this parable.

And what I want you to see is a couple of things.

One, I want you to see this word here.

He calls upon the audience to consider.

He calls for them to contemplate this picture, this agricultural picture.

And then we see it.

Now, many of you, how many of you have heard this parable before?

Okay, so we've got some people that are familiar with this story.

So we see that it's a picture of a farmer who's tossing seeds out there into the field, and some of the seeds fall, they fall in different settings.

And so we've got seeds that are falling on the path, and the birds are eating those seeds, and then some seeds are falling where it's really rocky, and um they kind of spring up, but they can't really get their roots down into the ground because of how rocky the soil is.

Have you ever so um planted carrots?

Yeah, and when you plant carrots, you gotta make sure that there's no rocks in there, right?

Because otherwise you're you're it just kind of gets all splintered, and you can't get a good carrot.

Well, in this case, we have this rocky soil.

It's not it's not uh cleaned out of the rocks.

And then we have other other another scenario where um the seeds fall amongst thorns, and there's this competition, and the thorns are kind of choking out uh the good plant that wants to grow up.

And then the fourth soil is good ground.

And it's possible for this plant to grow up and to produce its fruit, and not just a little bit of fruit, but um, some he says it's um a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty times.

So imagine putting one kernel of corn into the ground, and then that stalk comes up, and you have like these two cobs of corn or three cobs of corn growing off of that stalk, and you open up the stalk, and how many different kernels are just on that one piece of corn, and then you have three of them, so that's where you get this idea of a hundredfold, it's um this one seed has become so much.

But this is what I want you to see.

He says, let anyone who has ears listen.

This is what I'm trying to hear.

So he says, consider this to this broad audience, and he says this, if you have ears, listen.

Okay?

Now, do they listen?

Do they all get it?

No, they don't, because the next section that we're gonna see is this wrestling, this wrestling with the text.

So when we get to verse 10, the disciples come to Jesus and they speak to, and they they ask him, why are you speaking to the crowd in parables?

Why are you all why are you doing this?

And so Jesus answered, Because the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given for you to know, but it's not been given to them.

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

Now, what kind of answer is that?

One of my spiritual heroes said to me, Look, you feel like it's contradictory.

One of my spiritual heroes said to me, You shouldn't, pastors shouldn't preach the parables until they've been in ministry for at least 30 years.

So I've been in ministry for 20 years, and I'm violating his rule a little bit.

And I'll tell you, I'm still wrestling with this, but let's wrestle with it together.

Because one of the things we'll spend some time on the question of uh from the disciples.

In the Gospels, Jesus tells around 30 to 40 parables, uh, depending on how you categorize a parable.

Okay, 30 to 40.

These parables make up a significant portion of his teaching ministry, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In Matthew 13 alone, we see several parables starting with the parable of the sower.

So, in other words, when you come back next week, when you come back next week, when you come back next week, you're gonna come back next week?

When you come back next week, we're gonna go to the next parable and we're gonna see he's gonna talk about hell.

That's an important week to come to because hell is not very popular in our culture.

The fact that Jesus, loving Jesus, would explain hell in the way that he does, it's like, whoa, that's crazy.

So let's come back next week and let's wrestle with the idea of hell from Jesus' teaching about the parables.

But he says this, he has this here.

This is his response.

Jesus is explaining that parables are designed to reveal truth to those who are spiritually opened and those who have ears, but there are two problems that arise, okay?

This is at least the two problems I see.

So, and and if you're new to listening to me preach, God is a big God who can handle our um um the our questions, okay?

And us feeling frustrated when we're reading the Bible is not an offense to him.

In fact, I go back to that very first command that he said.

He says, consider.

He asks, hey, I want you to consider this.

And I think he also wants us to consider this here.

The Bible is not written to be just an instruction manual, the quick guy that you get, you know, out, not even the instruction manual, the quick guy.

You know, the one that you just kind of flip open when you get a new device.

It just shows you, here's how to turn it on.

That's not how the Bible's written.

The Bible is written not as an instruction manual with all the technical jargon, but it is written in an intricate, beautiful way, maybe like good literature that's meant to be chewed on and wrestled with and read over and over and over again.

So here are the two problems that arise when I read this.

The first is this doesn't seem fair.

How can Jesus include some and exclude others?

Because he says, the secrets of the kingdom have been given for you, but it's not been given to them.

And you assume when he says this that he's saying, um, you disciples, you get to have the secrets of the kingdom, but the rest of this crowd, they don't get to have it.

Now, that doesn't seem fair.

It also seems like it kind of contradicts what he's been doing because he wants people to come into the kingdom, right?

And so it's like, well, what's going on, Jesus?

What's that?

Okay, the second issue that comes up is this doesn't seem to account for those who do become new followers of Jesus, right?

If he says it's not for them, but new people do come in and they receive it, then it's like, well, does that violate?

Does that contradict what he's saying here?

So those are at least two of the kind of speed bumps that we hit when we read this.

So let's talk about it, doesn't seem fair first, okay?

It doesn't seem fair.

How can Jesus include some and exclude others with this whole idea of parables in mind?

And I want to spend a minute on this because we're gonna do a lot in parables.

And this is the only time where one of the only times when Jesus says, here's why I talk in parables.

It's an important thing to him.

So it may feel uncomfortable because it seems like Jesus is being selective, revealing the truth to some and not to others.

It feels like favoritism or exclusion, but that's not really what's happening here.

Jesus isn't arbitrarily excluding people, the issue lies with the condition of their heart.

In other words, it's not that some people are pre-chosen to understand and others are locked out forever forever.

Instead, Jesus is speaking to a principle about spiritual openness.

So let me interrupt my own notes here and just say the issue does not come down to Jesus being like, um, I'm intentionally trying to hide this from you.

What he's saying is, if your heart is in the right place, you'll be able to receive this.

If you are a follower of me, this will be for you.

But this is intentionally hidden and not for you if you're not willing to follow me.

He's weeding out.

He is weeding out people.

And we do that in our own lives.

Why sometimes we work with people in a way where we don't just expose ourselves to anybody with friendship.

Can I use just an example really quickly?

I'll just keep them anonymous from Felicia and we we had a person who was homeless.

Okay.

So Felicia had somebody who was homeless that she was trying to work with, and um she hired the person to do a little bit of work and was trying to like, she helped them out a little bit, and gave the person an opportunity to prove themselves.

And um the further along that she went in that relationship, the person ended up proving out that they were unreliable, probably dishonest about uh substance abuse, and uh, but there was an opportunity there to see what's the condition of this person's heart.

And so Jesus is doing ministry in a way where he's revealing the kingdom, he's teaching something awesome about the kingdom of how it works and how the word of God works, if you're tender-hearted to him.

If you're okay, but it's not for you.

Like, hey, hey, don't you don't have to worry about the kingdom of heaven if you don't want to follow Jesus.

You don't have to worry about this parable if you don't want to follow Jesus.

It's not for you.

You get to decide.

It's kind of like you get to decide whether you're a beneficiary of this or not.

So in verse 12 he says, For whoever has, more will be given to him, and he will have more than enough, but whoever does not have even what he has will be taken away.

I'm gonna leave 12 for another parable because this principle comes out more.

If you place yourself in a position where you're receptive and you're receiving, it just grows.

Like the principle of the kingdom, the print one of these underlying principles is that you have um you keep gaining more based off what you have and the condition of your own heart.

It's like my dad when he was trying to teach me about money.

He was like, money makes more money, right?

Did you ever hear that from your parents?

So like money, money make money begets money.

It takes money to make money.

Yeah, and exactly.

It takes money to make money.

You put money in the market, it should, if you're wise with your money, it brings back a return.

Essentially, Jesus is saying the same idea here, but in terms of spiritual principles.

Okay?

So going back to my notes, instead, Jesus is speaking to a principle about spiritual openness.

The parables reveal truth to those who are humble, seeking, and willing to listen.

Those who have already, those who already have a desire for God and who are hungry for the kingdom will be given more.

Those who resist, who have closed themselves off to God, will find that even the little under the understanding that they have, it slips away.

So let's say you talk to somebody a little bit in a conversation, and the disposition of their heart is they're just closed.

But maybe they're tracking in that conversation a little bit about Jesus, but because of the condition of their heart, they go away, they just totally forget about it.

And so, in that sense, what they have is even taken away from them.

The condition, it's a heart condition.

Parables, listen to this.

Parables are like a mirror reflecting the heart of the listener.

The more a person resists God's truth, the more they become spiritually hardened.

But the invitation is still there.

Anyone who seeks will find, anyone who knocks will have the door opened.

The key difference is in the response of the listener, not in Jesus deliberately excluding them.

Because what does he say?

He says, if you have ears, listen.

He says, consider this right at the opening, right?

He says, consider this.

So Jesus is asking for everyone to engage it.

But the only ones that benefit from it are the ones who are willing to be a follower of him, who are open to his leadership.

So listen, if you're on your spiritual journey and you're like, I don't know about this Jesus guy or church or who's this guy talking up front, that's fine.

You just need to know one of the things that the Bible says is that you have this, it affirms your autonomy and your agency.

There's nothing about Jesus that's trying to cram stuff down your throat.

He says, I'll package the principles of the kingdom in these beautiful parables that are like treasures if you'll go after it, if you're tenderhearted.

But if you're hard-hearted, you're just gonna be calloused, you're gonna lose out.

Now I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

Now, it's like this, okay?

Here's here's an illustration.

Light is available to everyone in this room.

If a person chooses to close their eyes, the light does not benefit them.

Jesus' parables are like light.

They illuminate for those who are open, but for those who are, they are they illuminate for those who are open, but for those who are closing their spiritual eyes, they remain in the dark.

Okay?

Let's talk a little bit about this second issue that comes up as we're looking at it, that it doesn't seem to account for those who become followers of Jesus after.

It's like, wait, if it's not, if it's only given to the disciples, but it's not given for those who are given after them, like how does that work out?

Why would that statement be there?

It's a good question.

I'm glad you asked it.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

If Jesus is saying, uh, whoever has will be given more, where does that leave those who have little to no understanding of the kingdom?

Jesus' invitation is always, it remains open.

Uh the parable doesn't lock people into their current state, they can awaken a curiosity and spark a desire for truth.

These parables can spark a desire for truth even if they were in an indifferent or resistant state.

And so that gives you hope because many of us have friends and family who, like we long for them to be spiritually connected in with God who made them.

We've been talking about how we're a house made for God, like we're intended to be in constant relationship with God, and that's why Jesus died on the cross, so that our in for ourselves and our friends and our family and our neighbors and our co-workers, they could be connected back with God.

But the but the question, the fear is, is like, well, maybe are they locked out?

And we know because we weren't locked out.

We were those that kind of came along and benefited after the fact.

We know that even those who are indifferent and resist, that their hearts can be softened.

If we go a little bit further, we'll see this.

Throughout the Gospels, we see people encountering Jesus in a way where their hearts change.

Think of Zacchaeus, the wee little man.

A wee little man was he.

None of you grew up in Sunday school, did you?

Okay.

You never heard that song?

We gotta sing that one.

Okay, thank you.

You heard that song.

Yes.

Way back, right?

That's been around for a while.

We should sing that.

Okay, so Zacchaeus, even the apot or even the apostle Paul, right?

He was a hard hearted fellow.

He heard the gospel, and yet what does Jesus do?

Knocks him off his horse with a bright light and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Right?

God gives Saul an opportunity to repent even in his hardness.

So Zacchaeus and Saul, these men literally, they weren't receptive to Jesus' message, but when they encountered him, they were transformed.

So when Jesus says, whoever has will be given more, he's speaking to the reality that those who respond to him in faith, no matter when they come to faith, they will receive an abundance of understanding and grace.

In a sense, parables are both an invitation and a filter.

For the disciples and those who are genuinely seeking to know God, these stories unlock deeper truths about the kingdom of heaven.

They require engagement, reflection, and a willingness to seek understanding.

What I don't want you to do is to read this and think that God's trying to put distance between you and Himself.

What I want you to see is that this is an invitation to come in close and to chew on it.

It's not written.

The Bible is not written so that you can just have some tight systematic theology and be like, yep, I know my facts and figures.

No, you're invited to have a relationship with God through his word.

And this is one of those sections of the Bible that speaks to that so clearly.

So Jesus continues and says, that is why I speak to them in parables, because looking, they don't see, and hearing they don't listen or understand.

And then he's going to quote from Isaiah 6, 9 through 10.

So Jesus says, look, this method of mine is based on what Isaiah said.

Now who's Isaiah?

Isaiah is a prophet who speaks to rebellious Israel when they're caught up in their pagan idolatry.

They've rebelled against God, and Isaiah the prophet is telling them, listen, God is inviting you to repent, to turn, and there is going to be a future hope.

The whole first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah is doom and gloom.

Y'all screwed up.

He says you as a nation are like an unbandaged pussy wound.

That's what he says.

He says, you are like a stubborn mule that won't return to its pen.

That's just chapter one.

He goes 39 chapters calling out the nation of Israel for their stubbornness.

But even in that, you get to chapter 40, and we get all this hope of John the Baptist, the Messiah, the suffering servant is coming.

See, God is, he knows how to work with those of us that are stubborn.

I know none of you are stubborn, but if you happen to be stubborn, he's really good at working with the stubborn ones.

He says, looking, looking, they do not see.

Hearing, they do not under they don't listen or understand.

Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says, you will listen and listen, but never understand.

You will look and look, but never perceive.

For this people's heart has grown callous, the ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with the ears and understand with their hearts and turn back, and I would heal them.

Do you see the scenario here?

The hypothetical?

He says, if they would listen, where do we let's start here?

Otherwise, they may see with their eyes, right?

And hear with their ears.

This is the hypothetical.

It's possible, and if they were to do it, he would heal them.

He would, they would, they're they're um, they would under have understanding and turn back, and God would heal them.

There is this possibility that even Isaiah says to this nation, it is possible for you to turn.

But your state, the state of your heart is one where you're completely callus.

Do you have calluses on your hands?

Usually guys have calluses more than oh, you do?

Okay.

Yeah, I got one right here.

One.

You have one right there, too?

From cleaning, yes.

Mine's from like the lawnmower.

I feel like I've had it since I was 13.

And this is the thing.

How do you get a callus?

Work hard work over and on the same spot, right?

Over and over and over again.

And he says, your hearts, because you don't listen, your hearts have a callus on it that keeps you from knowing God.

Have you ever watched seven-year-olds on the playground at school?

How much fun they're having.

The light that's in so many seven-year-olds' lives.

Have you ever gone to a middle school and seen them?

This is kind of like what middle school is.

I have I have had some before.

They're kind of like the light's gone out.

Like what happened between seven and fourteen?

Yeah.

A little bit of life.

A little bit of life has happened.

A lot of us have had a lot of life.

We've had God working.

In Psalm 19 that we didn't read the first half is that God's been in love with you from when you were born.

He's been revealing himself to you through creation.

Those beautiful sunrises that you've witnessed, those quiet moments in your life, the moments where he's provided for you, the sweetness of like friendships and relationships.

God's been talking to you through your whole life.

But some of you have kept saying no.

And what's developed is a little bit of a callus there.

And it's keeping you from being able to hear these stories that Jesus tells.

And the good news for you this morning is that he's challenging you, he's kind of poking you a little bit and saying, Will you turn?

Will you turn?

Are you willing?

Are you willing to run after it?

Are you going to just kind of listen to another sermon and just walk out the door?

And he says, It's okay.

You have your freedom.

You have absolute freedom.

But do you have treasures that are offered to you this morning?

If you're willing to have a tender, humble heart.

Okay?

Let's go on to the last part of this.

We go, let's we'll go through 16, 17, and then we'll go to his explanation.

He says to the disciples, Blessed are your eyes.

And I don't have time to get into all the like the parallels between Isaiah, but like it's so beautiful.

Because like the the front half of what Jesus just said, it seems so harsh of like, yeah, well, they're just not listening, they're blind, they're stubborn, they're callous.

And it just seems like, oh my gosh, they're under judgment.

But then you get this like, blessed are your eyes.

And that's exactly how the that's the framework of Isaiah.

Isaiah is like written like to pound you over the head with a hammer, not because God wants to just be mean to you, but because he cares so much about the rotten state you're in.

And he wants to shock you, basically, and use graphic language.

Like we need, you know, we need our mouths sometimes to be cleaned out.

But I'll tell you, you read through Isaiah and some of the language that's used there, God's pretty okay with shocking verbiage to try to get people out of their rebellion to hear them.

Yeah, he God cares for people.

But look at what he says.

When he gets to get to verse 16, he says to the disciples, Blessed are your eyes, because they do see, your ears because they do hear.

For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see the things you see, but didn't see them, and to hear the things you hear, but didn't hear them.

This moment, like that the disciples get, like he explains, he could have just left it there, but he he he just he goes a little bit beyond his explanation of parables, and he just says, You guys are just blessed.

You are a blessed people because you see, you hear.

There are many prophets and righteous people, like even the prophet Isaiah, the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet Hosea, David himself.

They got, they had a sense God was working through them.

They had this sense of God's going to work in the future, but they didn't get the details.

They didn't get to touch Jesus.

And so Jesus says to his disciples, many prophets and righteous people longed to see the things you see, but didn't see them, and they to hear the things you hear, but didn't hear them.

Just this like amazing blessing.

I just would challenge you with that, because you know there's people that don't know how to read, they don't have the Bible in their own language, they don't have access to a Bible, they don't have a space like this where they can worship.

You are you are counted amongst those who are blessed.

God has done something amazing in my life and your life that we're even in this space.

Like this is amazing that God broke into human history and allowed for you to understand his great love for you.

Now you may not receive it, you may not want to have anything to do with God, and God gives you the freedom to decide that.

But what we're witnessing is absolutely amazing that God is this kind.

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6, it's a striking image of spiritual blindness and deafness.

It's it's it's amazing, just the condition of these hard hearts like in the Pharisees, but then just what the disciples get to receive from is such a blessing.

Let's go to this last section, all about the fulfillment and the explanation of the actual parable.

So listen to the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word about the kingdom, doesn't understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart.

This is the one that was sown along the path.

So, again, to set up the scene, Jesus tells this parable to the crowd, then he talks with the disciples, and now he's explaining to the disciples here is what this parable means.

Now, Jesus isn't going to do this with every parable.

He isn't gonna walk through each parable and say, here's what this means, and here's what this means.

This is a bit unique to the parable of the sower.

And he says, This first seed is the word about the kingdom.

Um it comes to the person, they it they don't understand it, and the evil one comes and snatches it away.

Who's the evil one?

The devil, right?

So Satan comes and snatches what was sown into his heart.

So this is a scenario, okay?

Um the God is putting out there, so the the question that you may have is like, is this for people who are just learning about Jesus?

And then if I'm a Christian already, and I and that means that the the word has gone into my heart and it's producing fruit.

Here's what you need to know about parables.

Parables teach principles.

So, yes, this is talking about you, no matter what season you are.

Maybe you're still like just the message about Jesus' kingdom and your invitation into it, you need to receive that.

You need to be soft soil.

But this is also possible to be a principle in just, I get up tomorrow morning, I'm reading my Bible, and God teaches me something, speaks something to me.

Maybe I have a little bit of a hard heart and I just don't receive it in, and it just kind of gets snatched away.

Satan's able to just kind of have his way, distract me, get my get me into a bad attitude, kind of tempt me with something.

Who knows?

It is possible that this scenario can play out for those of us that are also followers of Jesus.

So we have the word about the kingdom is the seed sown into the hearts, but then snatched away by Satan.

Not understood, snatched away, distracted by Satan.

The second seed is the one sown on rocky ground, is the one who hears the word, immediately receives it with joy, but he has no root and short-lived when distress or persecution comes, because the word immediately he falls away.

So this is the person they hear about Jesus, they hear about the kingdom, they're like, yeah, that's awesome.

Kind of have like an emotional response with joy, but they didn't have roots.

They got excited early on, but they didn't really keep going.

And in that case, they um face distress.

Life starts to happen.

Because I know none of you know what distress or persecution is.

No, they start to have life, they start to experience things that are difficult, and it's because they're starting to obey the word.

Okay, some let me break it down like this.

Some of you have recently become a follower of Jesus, and all of a sudden you're like, man, I really shouldn't do that anymore in my life.

And so you start following what your conscience is telling you, and the Spirit of God is activating your conscience, and you're obeying the Bible, and all of a sudden people don't want to be your friend anymore.

Or people say junk to you, right?

And it gets a little bit, and then all of a sudden, and on top of like your friends rejecting you, your car breaks down, or something else happens.

It's difficult and distressing.

And there's this possibility, there's some that fall away.

I've had that.

I got people that have, we've been here, what, six and a half years?

I got people who come in, they have this awesome Sunday morning.

Pastor, I love what you're doing.

Haven City Church to the moon, you know?

I'm gonna be, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be all involved.

And then next week, wow, where'd that person go?

Next week, week after, well, they're not coming back anymore.

Crazy.

Crazy, crazy, crazy.

Listen, that's not that's not how it's supposed to work.

So that's the second seed.

The third seed.

Now, the one sown among the thorns.

This is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, they choke the word and it becomes unfruitful.

So here you've got somebody.

I don't know any, listen, if there's anybody here that's got like the deceitfulness of wealth in your life, you ought to be tithing more, okay?

Let me just say that straight up.

I don't think that's talking to a lot of people in this church.

But if for some reason you win like a million dollars in the lottery, please tithe some of that to the church.

I appreciate it.

But let's say hypothetically that that person is here, okay?

And you get some money, right?

And you get some money.

The um in this scenario, this person's hearing about Jesus, but they're also just distracted by the worries of this age.

They're just kind of caught up, caught up in what's going on, distracted.

And it's just kind of chokes out that good thing.

I think if I was gonna like look at any one of these, like the mirror, like we were talking about before, this is the one that I think I'm most in danger of on a regular basis.

Just like so much stuff's going on in life, you know?

You got this phone, you can pull it out, and there's just so much information in there.

And so, like, I might sit in the morning and have my quiet time and read the Bible, and God's speaking something in my life, and I just go through the rest of the day, and it's like I just kind of gets choked out by the rest of life.

And what that choking does is it keeps me from being the fruitful plant that God wants me to be.

I don't know, you gotta look in the mirror of this parable on your own and see which where are you at?

But I'm just telling you, I think this is the one where I'm at.

But the one sown on good ground, this is the one who hears.

Notice he hears and understands the word and does produce fruit and yields some a hundred, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown.

That's how it's supposed to work.

God gives us his word, he speaks into our life, it's supposed to be heard, understood, obeyed, and then fruit comes from our life.

If you don't yet have a relationship with God, you haven't been reconciled back to God because your heart's been hard, you didn't know, you gotta turn to him.

The first thing you need to do today is you need to say, God, I'm ready to accept what Jesus has done on my behalf.

I'm ready to turn my life over to you.

For the rest of us that have already taken that step, we've been baptized, we're following Jesus, but we need to be those who are taking in the word of the kingdom on a daily basis, letting it affect our hearts, letting it change our hearts so that we can be a people that are fruitful.

2024, the theme of this year for me has been this idea of fruit, like that I'm designed to bear fruit.

You're designed to be fruitful.

That's a broad category.

It's this category of like doing life well, neighboring well, loving your family well, doing your job with excellence, bearing the having peace in your life, loving the people around you.

All of that is like the fruit of God coming from your life as if you were a tree.

But we're designed to be fruitful.

Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

You're created in the image of God, he commands you be fruitful and multiply, subdue and rule.

You all are in this garden, you're intended to be fruitful trees.

And Jesus says, the word of God, it comes into your life, we have soft hearts, it produces this fruit.

Let's pray.

Lord, we ask that you would work in our lives in this way.

It's our jobs to have this soft soil.

You speak the word into our lives.

We've got to respond to you with this tenderness, this softness, this ready to obey.

Lord, we pray that you.

We just wanted, we want that fruitfulness in our life.

We don't want to look at our life and go, man, I got ripped off by the devil over here, and I was distracted by the weeds over there, and you know, there is this just the soil and the hardness of life just smoked out the opportunity for fruitfulness over there.

No, God, we want to be fruitful, a fruitful people.

Fruitful people.

Lord, I pray that over our church.

Let that be the case for us.

Lord, let that be the case for us.

We agree with your word this morning.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.