The Pressures of Kingdom Life – Luke part 23 – Grant Vissers

Amen. Amen.

Hey, one note for parents who I realize are some of you walking

out right now taking your kiddos to Sunday school.

But let me say this now and I'll say it again toward the end of

our service, because we're having some people join as

members and a few people being baptized.

We were inviting the kids back in to sit here up at the front

to witness that and to participate with us in in those

memberships and baptisms, which is going to be a wonderful

thing. So at some point, likely cued by

me praying, they're going to start filtering back in.

We're going to have them sit up here.

And so for parents or grandparents, anybody who

brought a kid who hopes to take that same kid home with you, you

need to come and pick them up here at the front at the end of

the service. I'm saying that now in parts

that I remember to also say it later when many of those parents

are back from dropping their kids off at Sunday school.

So they're going to join us at some point, which is going to be

a great thing if if you're new, if you're visiting, if I'm a new

face to you, I want to say a special welcome to you.

My name is Grant, and I'm one of the pastors here at the church.

And you've come in on a wonderful day, a day that is

full and maybe a little bit longer than a typical service

would be. So just want to give you a

little bit of a heads up on that one.

But before we get to membership and baptism, we're gonna pause.

We're gonna pray, we're going to read Scripture, and we're going

to spend some time thinking and talking about what it means for

our lives. We're working our way through

the Gospel of Luke. This is Luke's account of

Jesus's life. We've made it to Chapter 8 and

I'm going to read slowly for us a section of that, and then

we'll work our way through. It'll be up on the screen at

some point as I preach as well, so you can follow along that

way. But if you want to find it,

we've got Bibles in the back of the sanctuary over on this side

if you'd like. Also feel free to pick up your

phone and follow along that way. Let me pray you got it.

Thanks for your love and for your grace.

Thanks that you're with us, and thanks for the joy that it is to

worship and the joy that it is to gather together today and to

lean into all that you have for us, for members to join, for

individuals to be baptized. Yeah, we're so grateful for

these signs of your life and your love and your grace and

your Kingdom coming. So that would be our prayer that

as we work our way through this text, you'd speak to us and

you'd challenge us and you'd encourage us.

And in all of it that your Kingdom would come here on earth

as it is in heaven. So that would be our prayer this

morning. We pray together in the strong

name of Jesus. Amen.

So Luke 8 starting at verse one. It sounds like this.

After this, Jesus travelled about from 1 town and village to

another proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.

The 12 were with him and also some women who had been cured of

evil spirits and diseases. Mary called Magdalene from whom

7 demons had come out, Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager

of Herod's household, Susanna and many others.

These women were helping to support them out of their own

means. While a large crowd was

gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town,

he told this parable. A farmer went out to sow his

seed. As he was scattering the seed,

some fell along the path. It was trampled on and the birds

ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, and

when it came up the plants withered because they had no

moisture. Other seed fell among thorns,

which grew up with it and choked the plants.

Still other seed fell on good soil.

It came up and yielded a crop 100 times more than was sown.

When he said this, he called out, Whoever has ears to hear,

let them hear. His disciples asked him what

this parable meant. He said the knowledge of the

secrets of the Kingdom of God has been given to you, but to

others. I speak in parables so that

though seeing they may not see, though hearing they may not

understand. So you've got to help me out

here because English class for me was a long time ago, and the

debates out on how well I paid attention in that final year of

English classes that I took getting ready to graduate and be

done with English classes for the rest of my life.

So maybe you have a better memory than I do, or paid a

little bit more attention. Can you help me out with the

difference between a simile and a metaphor?

Anybody remember the difference between a simile and a metaphor?

And it's OK, so rash. This is like fresh stuff for

you. Alright, 1 uses like or as

correct. And the other is a direct

comparison because I need this and maybe you do as well.

Let's give a couple of examples. Alright?

God is like a lion, that's a simile.

Great. God is a lion.

That's a metaphor. Now they're both comparisons.

They both compare two things to help qualify and give

characteristics. Describe what something is like

1 uses like or as and your other.

The other is just a strict straight comparison.

One is the other and we know typically that what we're saying

is not literal. God is a lion, but maybe has

some characteristics of such right?

Most famous metaphor, maybe this might be maybe you have

competing ones. That would be great to hear

afterward. All the worlds a stage by

Shakespeare metaphor. My favorite simile life is like

a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna

get from Forrest Gump. Jesus taught in parables, and we

just read a parable. The parables in their simplest

form are similes and metaphors, their comparisons, their stories

that contain deep truths about what the Kingdom of God is like.

And so many of them start like this.

The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.

Tell me what the Kingdom is like.

It is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom of heaven is like a

treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it

again and then in his joy he went and sold all that he had so

he could buy that field. Another parable, The Kingdom of

Heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and

caught all kinds of fish. The Kingdom of heaven is like

yeast that a woman took mixed into about 60 lbs of flour until

it worked all the way through the dough.

Tell me what the Kingdom of heaven is like.

Jesus uses parables to tell us. Show us what the Kingdom of God

is like. And parables are meant to

capture not just your attention, like what's going on, but your

imagination. They're meant to make you think

and wonder and picture the meaning of the story and ask how

you might find your way into it, where you belong inside of it.

What does it have for me? What does it have for us?

What's the truth in it that Jesus is trying to communicate?

How can you find your way into it and figure out its

implication for your life? Ch Dodd has this great quote

about parables, and this is what he says.

At its simplest form, the parable is a metaphor similarly

drawn from nature or common life.

And I love this language. Arresting the hearer by its

vividness or strangeness makes you stop and then, he says,

leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise

application to tease it, the mind, into active thought.

It is meant to stop you in your tracks and make you picture and

think and wonder and dream about what Jesus is saying to you and

then leave you with a little bit.

Enough he says, enough doubt, enough uncertainty so that you

have to actively work out the full application of the parable.

Jesus doesn't just simply say, so go and do it.

A + B = C all the time. He invites you to actively

participate in working out what the application is at its core.

This parable that we read about seeds and soil is really

actually a parable about parables.

It's a parable that almost sets up every other parable.

When you read every parable through the Gospel of Luke, you

can reference back to this parable to help you understand

how to find yourself into it and how to wrestle out the

application of it. Jesus, in a sense here, is using

a parable to teach how we ought to listen to parables.

It's a parable about hearing the word of God, about hearing

Jesus. Jesus wants you to hear this

parable, and not just this parable, but all of the parables

and all of his teaching about what the Kingdom of heaven is

like and what the application of your life and our lives together

might look like. He wants you really hearing.

It's not the like, yeah, Dad, I'm listening, sure, kind of

listening or hearing. It's that I'm willing to be

wrong about something and have my thoughts and my actions

changed because I'm wrong about something kind of hearing.

And that's why Jesus calls out whoever has ears to hear, let

them hear. And he's not just literally

saying whoever has ears, whoever is capable of hearing, whoever

can listen to these words, sure, you may listen.

What he is saying is really listen to them, attempt to

understand what they mean, find your way into the text and allow

yourself to be transformed by it.

Whoever has ears to hear, whoever is willing to do the

hard work of being confronted by this teaching, he says, let them

hear. It's almost like this, this

promise you will hear that one line, I think encourages us to

sit up, lean in and really listen.

Jesus told this parable. The farmer went out to sow his

seed, and as he was scattering the seed, some fell along the

path. It was trampled on.

The birds ate it up, and some fell on rocky ground.

And when it came up, the plants withered because they had no

moisture. Other seed fell among thorns,

which grew up with it and choked the plants.

Still other seed fell on good soil.

It came up and yielded a crop 100 times more than was sown.

And I don't know about you, but if I think, like if I close my

eyes, I can almost picture this parable happening in real time.

And if you close your eyes, maybe you can picture the farmer

planting the seed by hand, walking up and down the field,

tossing seed as he goes. And it's not slowly like

individually, like seed by seed, like how we plant some of the

garden boxes and things like that.

He's throwing it, scattering the seed, trying to cover as much

ground as possible. He's throwing it with force,

handful by handful. And some seed, we're told, it's

scattered on the path and it's trampled up.

It's ground up, maybe into the hard ground.

And then the birds swoop and they eat it up because it's been

ground enough. They just come and Peck away at

the food. Some seeds fall on rocky ground

and they start to sprout a little bit and they start to

press up through the soil and they make it and they get a

little bit of sun, but the ground is rocky and dry.

It's parched. The plants wither because they

don't have enough to drink. There's not enough water and

some seed. It falls into thorns and weeds,

and the weeds, they grow too quickly and they suck up all the

nutrients and they take up all the space and the little

seedlings that try to poke their heads through are just choked

out. Some seed falls on good soil and

it comes up and there is water and nutrients and it does

flourish and it says it does yield a crop 100 times more than

was sown. Maybe as you picture this

parable and as you follow it unraveling in front of your

eyes, like you begin to wonder who is the farmer that Jesus is

referring to. Maybe you begin to question what

the seed is. What does Jesus really mean?

What does it mean that the birds eat the seed or that it's

trampled? Like surely Jesus isn't handing

out farming advice like what farmer plants on a path?

What does it mean to be choked out by thorns and weeds?

Besides, sometimes I feel like I'm being choked out.

It feels like it hits a little close to home, like God's love

is far away, or like the joy that I once had is now gone.

Like could this parable be about me?

Could I find my way into it somehow?

How does my life become like the seed that's planted on good

soil, which yields its crop? What kind of soil am I anyway?

My full of rocky dry kind of ground up the seed soil or how

can I become good soil where the Word of God flourishes in my

life and because of it in other people's lives alongside.

Maybe you eventually even find your way into the disciples

question where it feels like they're pleading with Jesus.

Like what does any of this actually mean?

Jesus, tell us, what does this mean?

Then we get this great line. There's disciples, ask them what

the parable meant, he said. The knowledge of the secrets of

the Kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others.

I speak in parables so that though seeing they may not see,

though hearing they may not understand.

Jesus speech is enigmatic speech.

That is, it's hard to understand, it's hard to figure

out. It's specific speech, it's

poignant, it has purpose and meaning, but it is not

intentionally deceptive. And that I think is an important

point. It's not intentionally

deceptive. And I want us to understand

Jesus here is quoting when he says though seeing, they may not

see, though hearing, they may not understand.

He's quoting from Isaiah and he's quoting from Isaiah 6,

Isaiah 6:9

verse 9, where God directs Isaiah to speak these same words

to the people. Be ever hearing and never

understanding be ever seeing but never perceiving and it is a

judgment. It is a critique on the people,

but but it it has a direct correlation is directly related

to their unwillingness to listen to really listen, to have their

lives changed by what God is speaking to them.

And so he says, listen, like if you go on being ever hearing but

never understanding, like you're never gonna understand, ever

seeing but never perceiving, He's critiquing their

unwillingness, their heart posture to actually listen to

what Jesus is saying. And so I want to say this.

If you find yourself asking of Jesus's teachings and maybe

asking over and over and over again, what does this really

mean? Like you're in great company

because Jesus in turn says to his disciples, the knowledge of

the secrets of the Kingdom of God has been given to you

because they were willing to really listen and to lean in and

to wrestle it out and to wonder and to voice that question.

Jesus help us understand what this means.

And so in 11, we continue reading.

This is the meaning of the parable.

So this is a relatively unique parables.

This this doesn't happen in all the parables.

Jesus gives an explanation of this parable to the disciples in

response to their question. He says the seed is the word of

God. Those along the path are the

ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the

word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be

saved. Those on the rocky ground are

the ones who receive the Word with joy when they hear it, but

they have no roots. They believe for a while, but in

a time of testing, they fall away.

And then he continues. The seed that fell among the

thorns stands for those who hear and who hear, but as they go on

their way, they're choked by life's worries, riches, and

pleasures, and they do not mature.

But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good

heart who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering, produce

a crop. It's easy to fall, I think, into

this trap that is like fatalistic and deterministic.

It's easy to tip toward fear and anxiety when we read verses like

this in passages like this. Like, were you talking about the

devil comes and takes away the word from their arts?

Like, what if that's me? What if that's my story?

We were talking about like time of testing.

What if that comes? Like they fall away?

What if that will be me? What if that will be my story?

What if and I read this passage and I read this passage and I

find myself asking a different what if question.

What if what Jesus wants us to see is that to anyone who's

chosen to live their life inside the Kingdom of God with deep

faith, wrestling out doubt, experiencing joy and sorrow for

anyone who has taken that step, there will be pressure exerted

on your life that attempts to distract you and destroy your

faith and relationship with Jesus.

Jesus says there are pressures on the life of the disciple.

There are pressures that impinge on the one who has chosen a life

of apprenticeship toward Jesus. These are ones who have heard

who here, who receive. And then have pressure exerted

on their life. And I think what it means is

that we as we and the challenge is as you choose to lean in, as

you choose to ask, what does this mean?

As you choose to find yourself wrestling out the teachings of

Jesus, that is going to lead you toward a life of pressure, not

of like anxious pressure on your body that just kind of feel like

internal pressure that impinges on your relationship with Jesus

and on living life, actually living it out inside the

Kingdom. I think what Jesus is saying is

that there will be pressure in an attempt to convince you to

not allow the Word of God to take deep root and to really

actually transform your life. And so he names them external

pressures. He says the devil, the

adversary, the accuser, one of the external pressures, the one

who in Genesis acts, Adam and Eve.

Did God really say that? Like the devil is gonna try to

convince you that God isn't good, that he's not trustworthy,

that you can't trust what he says, that he shouldn't be

trusted with the deepest and most significant parts of your

life. There will be external pressure

on the life of a disciple. And there will be external

pressure in the form, he says, of times of testing, be it grief

or sorrow or doubt, with no place to find its voice, to

articulate the deepest things rattling around in your heart.

Seasons of mental or physical illness, seasons of job, loss of

loss of purpose, vocation, identity.

Like these pressures that impinge and challenge what Jesus

says about you. Not only are there external

pressures, though, Jesus says there will be internal

pressures. Internal pressures, and with

these I'm becoming increasingly convinced, are some of the most

subtly dangerous pressures to the faith, where there is great

affluence in culture and society.

And so Jesus names worry, worry, riches, pleasure.

Like, let me numb my anxious thoughts because I would rather

not feel them than face them. Let me amass wealth and the

power, or at least perceived power, that comes with it.

Let me pursue pleasure, all in the name, ultimately, of a

comfortable life. Let me live a life free of pain

and suffering as much as I can. Wealth.

Mark Sayers says wealth, stability and comfort blunt the

mission of the church. Comfortable times create

comfortable Christians. I think this parable could be

written in so many different ways in 2025, right?

What about the seed that's planted but drowned out by the

distraction of mindless doom scrolling social media?

Just post after mindless post. We want the seed that's planted

but bulldozed by greed of like one more easy, one click away

purchase of one more thing that can arrive on your doorstep in

just one more day that you don't really need.

What about the seed that's planted but torn up for new

roads, bigger homes, higher skyscrapers, bigger everything?

All of it, ultimately pointing out what this passage is trying

to reveal. Which is our heart posture

toward God, our position before God.

The only way to be good store soil is for the posture and the

position of your heart to be transformed and turned toward

God. And so I find myself wrestling

with these questions. Like, do we want information

without transformation? Like, do we tip toward wanting

entertainment without obligation?

Or are we really willing to face the uncomfortable and often

painful process that leads toward life by transformation?

So Jesus says, pay attention to how you hear, to how you really

hear. Do you find yourself leaning in

and asking? Do you find yourself recoiling?

I'm just trying to like, if I stand over here, then nobody

will ask me anything about anything interesting to me.

And this wasn't like a real, this wasn't an experiment.

But I had a number of people who came up to me ahead of the

service today and asked what this painting was all about.

They're like, what's the story? What are you going to talk

about? How does it fit into the sermon?

Like, what's it? And kind of slowly, I saw people

actually coming to the front and looking at it and getting a

little closer, like what's going on here?

The beautiful thing about art and the image that I want to

leave you with is that it does exactly what Jesus is

encouraging us to do, which is to move closer and to look at it

and to wonder at its meaning. And a question like, why did the

artist paint it like this? And what is it containing and

what are they trying to convey to me?

And is it right side up or is it upside down?

Like how, you know, lean in, how can I understand the thing of

it? And then to back up and get

perspective and how does it fit into all of what's around it?

Like this is what Jesus is doing when he paints these pieces of

art with words. He's saying lean in, really get

close, pay attention, try to figure out the thing of it and

try to find your way into it and really wrestle with what it is

saying to you and wrestle with how you're being convicted by it

and how your life might need to transform because of it.

Art causes us to lean in. Parables challenge us to lean

in, to look closely. Interestingly, this is what the

women at the very beginning of the passage I think are credited

with. So we have Mary, who's called

Magdalene, from whom 7 demons had come out, Joanna, the wife

of Chuza, the manager of Herod's household, and Susanna and many

others named three. These women were helping to

support them out of their own means.

They were willing, I think, to lean in, willing to follow,

willing to wrestle with Jesus's teaching and all of what life

might be challenging them to do. And in a modern day parable,

it's what those who will be baptized and become members are

demonstrating as they declare Jesus, Lord and Savior.

A willingness, a heart posture that leans in, not with

certainty, with like every answer figured out along the

way. Like the right answer to every

question for willing to wrestle with the thing of it and find

their place into it. Jesus wants to get a hold of

your heart and transform it, and a large part of that is for us

to learn to die to the cult of like radical individualism,

self-reliance, and to choose to depend on another and to lean

in. Had a wonder at the thing of it.

Let me pray. God, thanks for the life that we

have found in you. Thank you for your love and your

generosity toward us. Yeah, we're grateful.

And so as we continue to worship and as we now celebrate new

members, baptisms, yeah, again here say we are so, so grateful

for who you are and how you are toward us and toward the world.

Thank you for forgiveness of sin.

Thank you for Jesus, your death, and your resurrection.

Thank you for eternal life. Thank you for new life.

Here and Now thinks that the life that we share together is

life inside the Kingdom, and so would we as your people continue

to wrestle it out no matter where we are along the journey.

God, I pray that we would lean in, wonder at what you're doing,

and with thanks, continue to praise and worship and then work

differently in the world. So God, do what you need to do.

We're grateful for all that we get to experience together, but

more than that, how we're grateful to do this together

knowing that you are here. So thanks for your presence in

this place. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.

So it is a joy. It's just pure joy to celebrate

baptism and membership.