Week 02 || The Slow Apprenticeship - Becoming Good Soil || Matt 13:1-9, 18-23 & Rom 8:1-11

Kia ora and welcome to the St Francis Church

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As a church, we are learning to faithfully follow

Jesus by practicing His way at His pace. For

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among us, head to stfrancis .co .nz. Grace and

peace. Good morning everyone. I hope you're warming

up after the cold morning. There's a lovely frost

out there. And it's supposed to be an ideal way

we look at the frost and the... the cold soil

out there. We're talking about becoming good

soil this morning. So I want us to pause at the

moment. And I want you to imagine this as I speak

it. And it could be yourself. There's gardeners

in here. There's non -gardeners. There's wannabe

gardeners. And there's us that buy fruit from

the shop. Picture a gardener before planting

season. Not at the very moment of planting, or

30 seconds in seed in the ground. But picture

the gardener weeks before that happens. Someone

that's digging over the soil, pulling out the

stones that have found their way there, working

in the compost. That's the unglamorously unseen

work before the seed goes in. Now anyone can

drop a seed in the ground. Not anyone actually

can grow a potato. The first job of an apprentice,

whether it be gardening or any other job, but

as you're also following Christ, is not to produce.

It is to learn to read the materials that you

have. And the apprentice of Jesus learned soil,

specifically the soil of their own heart. In

Jesus' parallel that you heard read this morning,

isn't really about the seed at all. It's all

about the soil. I think a lot of us, as we go

through life, approach our spiritual lives the

way many people approach gardening today. We

drop seeds. We download an app. We read a book.

We attend a conference. We buy a journal. We

start a Bible plan. And then we wonder why nothing

actually grows. We've been asking the wrong question

or wrong, if that's what we are doing. We've

been asking, what's the right seed? When Jesus

has been quietly insisting, the question is in

the soil. This week is week two of our July series

of Slow Apprenticeship. Last week we received

the invitation, come and take the oak. How have

you found that in the past week if you've actually

journeyed through it? Are you realizing that

you're wearing the wrong yoke? And you're starting

to pick up or ask Jesus, what is the right yoke

for me? We learned that apprenticeship begins

not with performance, but with a quiet yes to

Jesus. And this week, we are going to get more

honest. Because once you say yes, the next question

is, what kind of ground am I offering Jesus to

work with? Often we say yes and then just carry

on. And we don't ask this question. Jesus has

a parable for that. And you heard that this morning,

the parable of the sower. But really, it should

be called the parable of the soils. what Jesus

is painting here. The sower that's scattering

the seed across the different grounds. And Jesus'

own interpretation a few verses later. I want

us to notice three things that you heard this

morning. The first is this, that the seed is

fine. The seed is always fine. The sower scatters

the same word on every kind of ground. And the

variable is never the seed. The variable is always

the soil that it lands on. We love in life to

blame the seed. We say, I tried that Bible reading

plan. I got so far in, and then it just wasn't

connecting. And it didn't work for me. We say,

the prayer practice isn't for me. And we say,

I just don't feel God in that kind of service.

I think some of those things are actually true.

But the deeper question, the question that Jesus

actually presses on us, is whether our soil,

our lives, our soul is any condition to receive

what God is actually offering us. Here is Isaiah

on this. Isaiah 55 and verses 10 and 11. He says,

as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return to it without watering the

earth and making it bud and flourish, so that

it yields seed for the sower and bread for the

eater. So as my word that goes out from my mouth,

it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish

what I desire and achieve the purpose for which

I sent it. The word is good. The word is faithful,

and the word does its work. And the second thing

that comes out of this parable is that when Jesus

describes these four soils, He is not describing

four kinds of people. He is describing four conditions

of the same heart. So within me, I have each

of those soils, same as in you. And this matters

for us to actually understand it clearly. We

tend to treat this parable and think, well, I

hope I'm the good soil. But the truth is that

you and I are all for soils at different seasons

or times. You can get good soil for a year, then

you can go through a season where you become

path soil. You can be rocky one year, thorny

the next. We are all of these soils in this parable.

And the question is, what soil are you right

now, today? Are you the path? Hard ground, trampled.

So much foot traffic that nothing can actually

take root in it. Now when Jesus is talking about

this parable, the path that he's talking about

ran through the middle of the field where everyone

walked. It was compact. It was lifeless. It was

getting A to B. So what is path soil today? Path

soil is hardened by traffic. And by traffic,

I mean the relentless flow of input, news, scrolling,

coming, opinion, content, content, content. Give

me more of it. Past soil in your life is what

happens when there is no room for quiet. No margin,

no space between the stimulus that comes in and

the response. You see the soul of someone. whose

attention has been so colonised by everything

else that cannot take root. John Mark, kind of,

he puts it sharply. He says, and he's taking

this from Dallas Willett, hurry is a great enemy

of spiritual life. Hurry is what creates path

soil. Hurry actually hardens us. We don't connect

with people or do things or do it well because

we're hurrying from one thing to the next. If

you can't remember the last time you sat in silence

for 10 minutes, who can remember that they did

that? Silence in 10 minutes. Now, if the thought

of doing that, being unentertained for any length

of time, fills you with a low -grade panic, Your

soul might be path soil right now. And what about

the rocky ground? Well, it's a thin layer of

soil over rock. And the seed germinates fast,

the word that lands on it. The plant looks great

for a few weeks, and then the sun comes out,

and the plant dies because the roots had actually

nowhere to go. Rocky soil is the soil that responds

to the spiritual highs. But there's no root system

for the hard seasons in life. This rocky soil

shows up at maybe a conference you go to. It

gets emotional with things, makes big decisions,

and then it disappears in a month. You can't

sustain it. Rocky soil falls in love with the

feeling of God, but never builds the structures

that hold faith through those long winters. And

then we get what thorny ground is. And this is

the most common soil in our context, in our lives

today. The soil is fine. The sea germinates.

Life's going well. I'm reading this. It's going

and roots go down. But then the ground is already

occupied. And it's occupied with the worries

of life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the

desires for other things. come in and they choke

out the word or the goodness of God. Thorny,

swirly and insidious because, well, nothing is

obviously wrong in life, is it? Where everything's

going quite well. You're not against Jesus. You're

not refusing him. You're just very, very full

of all sorts of other things. Full of legitimate

concerns for other people. Full of legitimate

ambition of getting ahead. full of legitimate

anxiety. And in all that fullness, the word gradually

gets crowded out. When you drive through the

country and you see those big billboards that

says about the fire warning from green, medium,

to extreme, that's a bit like us with this thorny

soil. Where are you on that pendulum there? Is

it good? Is everything crowding you out from

Jesus' Word? Most of us are thorny most of the

time in life. We're not bad people, we're just

busy people. But what about the good soil? The

good soil that we would hope to be in most of

the time? Well that receives, it retains and

it reproduces. And Jesus said it's 30, 60, and

100 times what was sown. Now, it's not meaning

the 100's better than 30 or the 60. It's just

saying that good soil reproduces itself. Notice

Jesus never says good soil is the rare unicorn.

Good soil is simply soil that has been tended,

broken up, cleared, watered, patient. Good soil

in our lives, what we're doing, is just soil

with a gardener. And you're the gardener to prepare

that ground to receive God's Word and His love.

But making that good soil requires hearing. It

requires understanding of His Word, letting it

sink in and then letting it stay. Which is exactly

where Paul takes us in Romans 8, one of the other

readings that's set down for day. And after that

great cry of last week in Romans 7, where he

says, Richard, man that I am, who will deliver

me, where he says, I'm trying to do this, but

actually I end up doing the wrong things. Roman

8 opens with the most revealing sentence in scripture,

I think. There is therefore now no condemnation

for those who are in Christ Jesus. And then Paul

goes on to talk about two ways of living. Firstly,

there's that mindset on the flesh, which means

more than just our bodies. It means the whole

way of life that runs on self, on appetite, and

on the immediate. And then there's the mind that's

set on the spirit. To set the mind on the flesh's

death, to set the mind on the spirit, is life

and peace. I want you to notice that word set,

that's important. to set your mind. When you

do that, it's an orientation. It's a direction

that you say, I'm not going to do that today,

I'm going to do this. You've set a direction

to follow. A daily choice about what governs

you. The Spirit says, Paul says that it's already

in you if you belong to Christ. Now the Spirit

is a gardener tilling the soil in your lives,

but you have a part to play. And often we give

up on it after a certain period of time. You've

got to set your mind. You've got to decide what

you feed. You've got to decide what governs.

And Paul goes on to give us the secret of soil

tending. It's in Romans 8, verses 5 and 6, and

Romans 8:5

then verses 10 and 11. And I've chosen the message

to hear it paraphrased in this way. Paul says

those who think they can do it on their own end

up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle

But never get around to exercising it in real

life Those who trust God's action and then find

that God's spirit is in them living and breathing

God Obsession with self and these matters is

a dead end But attention to God leads us into

the open into a spacious and free life But for

you who welcome him, in whom he dwells. Even

though you will experience all the limitations

of sin, you yourself experience life on God's

terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that

if the alive and present God who raised Jesus

from the dead moves into your life, he'll do

the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing

you alive to himself. So when God lives and breathes

in you and he does as he surely did in Jesus

You were delivered from that dead life And it's

with his spirit living in you Your body will

be alive as Christ's So this is what Paul is

saying Here is a secret of all genuine spiritual

growth. We do not generate the life the spirit

does You cannot grow yourself into godliness.

You cannot manufacture the fruit. You cannot

will yourself into love, joy, peace, patience,

and kindness. The Holy Spirit grows those things

in you, like a seed grows in the good soil. We

have a poster in the lounge area there from Colossians

2, 6, 7, which says this. So if you're going

out there, there's a this after the service,

find which one it's on. Just as you receive Christ

Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow

Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and let

your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will

grow strong in the truth that you were taught

and you will overflow with thankfulness. So what

is our work? Our work is to make ourselves growable.

to till the ground, to clear the obstacles, to

create conditions where the Spirit can do what

only the Spirit can do. I'm not sure if you have

already forgotten what you have done at the beginning

of the service. You are tilling the soil and

pulling out the obstacles and the confession

and the repentance. You are making room for His

goodness to grow in the good soil, but first

we have to get rid of the weeds. This is by way

what spiritual practices actually are. They are

not how we earn God's favour. They actually are

how we tend the soil. They are today the agricultural

work that makes the soil receptive to what the

spirit is already trying to do. Tish Harrison

Warren writes about this beautifully. She says

it like this. We become what we worship. and

what we do. We become what we worship and what

we do. What you worship and what you practice

shape what you become. It's not legalism, that's

gardening. You make yourself available, you tend

the soil, and you trust the sower in your lives.

I want to jump into another passage that's set

down for today. Just briefly, Genesis 25. It's

a quick look at how not to tend the soil by looking

at this passage. Two brothers and it's a bowl

of soup. Sounds like a kid's story, doesn't it?

But it's about Esau and Jacob. We know the twins

different from the womb. Esau is the tribe's

outdoorsman, the hunter, his father's favorite.

Now Jacob, he's a quiet one, his mother's favourite.

And we hear about how he comes in from the field

famished from a day's work and Jacob is cooking

that lentil stew and he says to Jacob, give me

some of that red stuff, I'm starving. And Jacob

says to him, well, first sell me your birthright.

The birthright in that culture and in cultures

today, but not really in ours, is the most valuable

thing that a first born could possess. It's the

double portion of inheritance, the leadership

of the family, the covenant blessing that ran

from Abraham through Isaac into the future of

God's people. It was worth more than gold. But

Esau says, hey, after this day's work, I'm about

to die of hunger. What use is this birthright

to me? And he trades it for soup. And the text

says it bluntly. So he self -despised his birthright.

Now, I do not believe he was about to die of

hunger. He would have been hungry from that day's

labour, but there is a difference in this. He

let an immediate appetite govern an eternal inheritance.

He had no soil depth. He failed his apprenticeship

in that one unguarded afternoon. And both brothers

in this story They refuse the slow way. Ethel

despises his birthright because he can't see

beyond his immediate hunger. Now, he's past soil.

No depth, no patience, immediate gratification.

Jacob seizes a birthright through manipulation

rather than waiting for God to give it. And he's

also past soil because he's not actually trusting

God. that God can grow what God has promised.

And both are going to spend the next 20 years

paying for this moment about lunch. See, apprenticeship

is not coercion. It's an invitation by Jesus

to come into this life to learn. And you and

I, we choose every day what we feed and what

we starve. And Paul goes ahead and nails this

dynamic in Galatians 6, and again I'm taking

it from the message for this morning. It says,

don't be misled. No one makes a fool of God.

What a person plants, they will harvest. And

the person who plants selfishness, ignoring the

needs of others, ignoring God, harvests a crop

of weeds. All who have to show for his life is

weeds. But the one who plants in response to

God, leading God's spirit through the growth

work in him, harvest a crop of real life, eternal

life. So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued

doing good. At the right time we will harvest

a good crop if we don't give up or quit. The

soul that won't wait won't grow. The soul that

sows to the flesh reaps the flesh. There are

no shortcuts in the kingdom. So what does the

soil work actually look like in practical terms

in your life and mine right now in 2026? I'm

wanting to suggest three soil practices for this

week and you can follow them up in the booklet

that's been made for this series. I want you

to ask you to pick just one of them. You've got

three, do one. Do that for this week and do it

for the next seven days. The first practice in

it, if you choose to do this, is to break up

the path. Now, if your soul has become path soil,

hardened by the relentless flow of input, I suggest

the first thing that you need is silence. Not

because silence is religious, because silence

is agricultural. It's a working, silence breaks

up the path. So for the next seven days, if you

choose this, Take 15 minutes out of the day with

no input. There's no phone, no podcast, no music,

no reading. You could walk or sit, or you could

just look at the garden. Let your mind do what

minds do when they have space, which is sort,

settle, and then it'll come to the surface. Now,

if you're not used to this, this will feel uncomfortable

for at least three days. That discomfort is a

path saw softening. So I encourage you to stay

with it. Hosea 10 in verse 12 says it plainly.

He says, break up your unplowed ground for it

is time to seek the Lord. And sometimes the most

spiritual thing that you can do is hard agricultural

work on your soul, to sit in silence with no

other input. Let your mind sift, settle, and

surface. The second practice, if you choose it,

is to deepen the rocky ground. Now, if your faith

has felt thin, like it doesn't hold weight in

the hard seasons and you're struggling, what

you need is depth, not more content. You need

less content, but slower. So for the next seven

days, if you pick up this one, take one short

passage of scripture. And I want to suggest maybe

Romans 8, verses 1 through to 11. And read it

Romans 8:1

slowly each morning. Read it aloud. Sit with

the phrase. Memorise one verse by the end of

the week. Don't move on to anything else. If

you're tempted, just stay put within that verse.

Go deep, not wide. Thomas Merton, he put it like

this. The spiritual life is first of all a life.

It's not a hobby. It's not an interest. It's

not a category. It's a life. Live one small piece

of scripture into your bones in the next seven

days. And if you choose the third practice, it's

pulling the thorns. So if your life is thorny

of anxiety, ambition, and a thousand legitimate

concerns are choking out the words, you need

to start naming those thorns out loud. So for

the next seven days, each morning ask yourself,

what is the thing That if I'm honest, really

honest to myself and before God, it's choking

my attention to Jesus right now. Is it work?

Is it money? Is it a relationship? Is it social

media? Is it a story that I'm telling about myself

over and over again? Let's get in the way of

you doing something, being free and being you.

Name it, say it out loud to God. Don't try to

pull it by force. Sit with it and wait. Just

expose it. Thorns hate to be named and as you

name them the light begins the pulling. Now these

are not magic things to do. They are simply soil

tending. And don't pick all three. Pick one.

Spend some time to find out which is the right

one for you. Because the only practice that grows

you is the one that you actually do. So I want

to close where we began in Isaiah 55 verse 11.

Isaiah 55:11

So as my word that goes out from my mouth, it

will not return to me empty, but will accomplish

what I desire and achieve the purpose for which

I sent it. Remember, you're not responsible for

the seed. The seed is the Word of God. It is

as alive. It is going out and will not return

empty. And you are not responsible for the harvest.

The harvest belongs to the sower. He alone causes

the growth. You're responsible for one thing.

One thing only. The soil. Your soul. Tend it

this week. Continue to tender through the seasons.

And whatever practice that you choose for the

next seven days, just do that one thing and do

it well. And trust the soil with the rest. Remember,

this is a slow apprenticeship. We're running

the race, as Paul said, to the end. Week two,

tender soil. So whoever has ears, let them hear.

Amen.