Understanding the Kingdom of God (Pt 5) : The Soil of Our Hearts.

The Kingdom of God Part 5: The Soil of Our Hearts. Last week I spoke about how God gets to your heart.

This morning, the soil of our hearts.

First point. I've got a big announcement next Sunday. Be here.

Point two. As we mature, as we grow, as we get older, as Christians, don't you find we get a deeper sense of the limitations of our own minds

and our unconscious habits that we get back to again and again and again, and our minds can get clogged.

Thoughts, ideas, opinions that come against us.

You see, two things are trying to happen at the same time in a spiritual level.

You need to understand the one is, God is inclusive and he wants you regardless of what you're going through.

Do you see in the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, there's not one person who called out to God, who God did not hear, reach out to, or respond to.

I want you to see that there is an enemy who, when you. When God the Father is trying to draw you closer to Himself, there's an enemy who will come to pull you away.

And he will.

He'll get you here. He'll get you in the way you think. Because when you talk, we all see it, we all hear it.

But when you think, no one does except you.

And in our fallen condition, our minds are often turned toward the wrong things. And we can't think the thoughts we need to think.

We can't stop our wills. And so what happens is, instead of automatically turning to God like we're supposed to, we'll end up going down other places.

And Jesus knows this.

And an essential adjustment is in our lives is the investment of taking care of our minds by cultivating the way we think.

We are all responsible for the way we think. And the way you think normally causes the way you act.

And you will find that the messy or the disordered mind becomes obsessive.

And when you have bedraggled thoughts and you aren't clear, you don't know how to act. You don't know what to believe, you don't know what to think.

You don't know what comes next. And it's into this context that Jesus wants you and I to know that we can't allow any old thought just to run through our minds.

You got to say, there are some thoughts I won't think.

In the Bible, in the New Testament, the word for your soul is the word psyche, and that encompasses a person's whole being.

Your mind, your thoughts, your heart, your will and your emotions are all entwined in and affected by one another.

Would you agree by that it's not just women.

For those of you who watch that. What was that? Mark Gungor? Men with their boxes and girls with how everything's connected. I think that's a bit.

I think it's more than that. I think guys are just as busy in the way we think. We're just far more obviously dignified about how we do it and humble.

But Jesus wants us to understand there is an effect in the soil of our hearts.

Your mind is a breeding ground. And he wants to get to us and help us understand the nature of the soil.

Because friends, sometimes our reactions, our responses is because of the state of the soil.

And you know what? Sometimes you don't know it sometimes. Have you ever looked at a sunflower? Ever been those stupid plays when you're a kid and they put that stupid flower on

and you got to be like a daisy or thank God it never happened to me it's a punishment.

But some of you have been there. You know, I got a blow in the wind and you don't know how stupid you look. Just we do.

And the only people who like you on the stage is your parents and your grandparents. Everyone else is like, oh what's that?

Are you hearing me? And sometimes we don't know the thing we projecting that's coming out of here, but others do.

And so Jesus tries to help us.

So the first soil he tries to help us with. In the passage I'm going to read, it's out of Matthew chapter 13 if you want to turn there or just follow the screen.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 13. I'll read from verse three.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

He told many stories in the form of parables. I read this last week, such as this one.

Listen exclamation which means really listen.

A farmer went out to plant some seeds. As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath and the birds came and ate them.

The ground, the soil along the footpath is the soil of distraction.

The first thing Jesus points out at the beginning of this parable is there are birds. There's an enemy watching a bird, there is a picture of an enemy.

Your life is being watched by the enemy all the time. There's never a moment you free from the gaze of the enemy

and he simply snatches the word out of your mind.

And the emphasis, what Jesus is saying is you've got to actively hold on to the word, make it a priority read, meditate on your Bible.

So Jesus wants to bring the Word, the Logos, the self acting Word into your life.

And we're all in this room going to hear the same words, us watching them on the air, we're all going to hear the same word, but it's going to hit different kinds of soil.

And the first soil is the soil along the footpath. It's the soil of distraction.

The enemy finds many ways to get the word out of your mind. Different things demand our attention all the time.

It's the way the mind works. Can I suggest that actually one of the biggest enemies you and I face is screen time.

Think of the hours we could have devoted to God, seeking his word, finding him, where we find ourselves, all of us doing just things that are irrelevant.

Distraction.

And when the enemy is describing being described as stealing seeds away, he's saying that the devil is active in your hearing process.

He doesn't want people to truly hear the word, so he will distract you.

Often it'll be little things. I've got no time. When I spend time with people, I try and talk to them about what Dr.

Yanni Boetzer taught me about the Times Square.

And if you were to work out that you have about seven times 28 is 168 hours in a week, you got 40 hours. You work, you sleep roughly about the same.

If you start working out what you do in your time blocks, you will discover that your average person has over 40 unaccounted four hours in a week.

They can't say what they did with that time, but which is the equivalent of a full work week. Just do the maths yourself one of these days.

And you see, the enemy comes to distract because he does not want that time used. Well.

If he's not going to distract, number two, he's going to distort, which means the invitation of God, come to Jesus.

God wants to forgive your sin. The enemy distorts it to mean from the day you get saved, Jesus is going to make sure you're the head, not the tail.

Everything's going to be a blessing.

Your life's going to flow so well, nothing will ever go wrong. Then the problem is the moment something does happen, you run the other way

because your perceived needs aren't getting met. You have a distorted view of what the Bible says God will do for you.

And then we lay expectations on God in our immaturity that aren't met. And who gets the blame? Always the Lord.

There's no inward turning to God.

There's no inner turning from self toward others. There's no humility and surrender to the truth.

When the enemy gets you to distort the Word of God.

What he's doing is he's getting you to use God instead of submitting to God. I became a Christian to get this need met, that need met.

I come here for this. I need this. I want this. I want this.

I'm actually coming to use God because he's more powerful than the friends I have at the moment. And when it gets dashed, the seed is taken away.

The last one you'll find the enemy is pretty good at distraction, distortion, and then loneliness.

Mother Teresa said, in the west there is so much loneliness. The greatest disease in the west today is being unwanted, unloved and uncared for.

Loneliness is this when the enemy does his level best to keep people apart.

Jesus says, you become one body, you become one together. The enemy hates it. When we are one, he hates it.

He will do everything to disrupt people. He makes his hardest effort to break unity because he knows that the Lord commands blessing wherever there is unity

in the workplace, family, school, even church. People believe that if I don't get along with certain people, I must just have nothing to do with him,

just avoid them and.

And thought suckers come to us over and over and over again. We're so busy letting feelings run our lives and doing things our way,

we cannot hear the message of love, of forgiveness, of grace, of mercy, of understanding the moment something doesn't work for us anymore.

We say, this doesn't spin my wheels, and I'm out.

It's an inner loneliness. And that inner loneliness will not allow you to engage the imperfect relational interactions we have with other people.

Because as much as no one else is perfect, nor you, and the enemy tries to make you think that you're better than others,

so there's a breakdown of relationship.

And then the word of God that comes in to cause us to be a people together on this earth gets pulled away by the enemy.

The word of the Lord gets stolen. This is on the footpath.

And you understand the footpath. People are on it the whole time. It's distraction, there's noise, but there's not only that.

The second one is the stony ground, verse 5. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock.

The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow.

But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun. And since they didn't have deep roots, they died in the stony ground.

Jesus is saying, these are people who love the Word. They hear it. They respond to the gospel. What a word.

Wow. I love what I'm hearing. They love it immediately, but they don't receive the Word at The deep level of the soul where it can penetrate the depth of personality.

Personality is the place you live from. These seeds don't take root because there isn't something within the person's character to take hold of.

You see, your character is the internal overall structure of a person that is revealed by long running patterns of behavior from which our actions automatically arise.

Your personality runs your life the way you are. Your very personality, from how you were shaped as a child, determines your interaction with others.

Remember the sunflower? And that's how you live toward other people all the time.

And you know, what we'll do is we'll justify our every decision and our every action. But that is the reality.

And there isn't a character to hold on to that deep root.

It shows itself in our thinking, our choices, our habitual ways of behavior becomes obvious in our relationships.

It's the way you lean and the way you think, the sorry. Your thoughts are directed by your feelings which affect your responses and your social relationships.

That's what's happening in the second category, the the seed Jesus word wants to get in there. Now you're not distracted.

Now there is something inside you.

There's a bedrock, something like a failure of character that doesn't allow the roots to get in.

And you will not go into the Word of God. And usually all the commentators seem to be agreed the cause for this is no real repentance,

because repentance breaks hardness and pride and makes it humble.

The Lord draws near to the humble. He resists the proud. And so you find in this area of stony ground,

it's the I don't appreciate the change that's got to come when I embrace this Word.

So I want to love the Word. I just don't want to do anything with the Word so it gets stolen. Without the roots of character, this good news withers.

Then you get the third kind, which is the thorny ground. Other seeds, verse seven fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants.

Now this of course is concern for self.

And he's saying here, where the soil of the Word of the Lord comes to you, the Logos takes root. But other things also take root.

So now in this instance, you're allowing the Word into you, but you're also allowing the cares of this world, the worries of this world, to take root in the same soil

at the same time as the Word does.

And you allow a competition between the two. The worries of this life, the lure of wealth. Jesus said.

Mark 4 says, the desire for other things.

Luke 8 says the pleasures of. Of this life.

Luke 8:14 says they never grow to maturity. The thorns are the things that keep us too preoccupied to give thought to the Word or the Logos when it presents itself.

Luke 8:14

Cares of this world war, social tension, famine, failure of our economic system, unemployment.

I've tried to write some things down. Life risk, Donald Trump. There are things that you can put in place that you allow in,

you meditate on, you think about.

And I want to tell you, living in this beautiful land of ours, there's enough to worry about.

And if you allow that, the same primacy as the word of God and your devotion, it creates thorns that come in and choke the very word that God wants to give us.

Because remember, he doesn't come to save us from this world, he comes to save us in it.

And what we want is a Christianity, which is so neat and tenderized by that we basically live in the Maldives, and then we sing with our harp and go straight to glory.

It's not what the Bible teaches. As I said, the Bible teaches through the kingdom of God.

An invasion in this present world with people who live in it the same. What makes you and I unique is not that we are not in this world.

We're in it, we're just not of it.

And we live differently. We don't allow things to get choked.

Matthew 6:24.

Matthew 6:24

Jesus said, you can't serve God and be enslaved to money. Our test for considering whether we're in bondage to our stuff, including food and clothing,

is to consider how much of our time and thinking do we give to these things? How ready are we to give something away if God asks us to give it away?

How ready are we to let go of the thorns? Choking or they not there. The mind is too full.

Jesus said in Matthew 6:25, this is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life. Whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear.

Matthew 6:25

Isn't life more than food in your body, more than clothing? He's not saying, don't think about ironing your food and ironing or ironing your clothes or cooking your food.

He's saying, what I want you to understand is that material things, if material things are uppermost in your thoughts, it'll run your life

and you'll govern your life by those things.

Jesus goes on in verse 27 of Matthew 6, can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

And then he closes off that argument in verse 33 that you and I know so well. Seek the kingdom of God above all else.

And Live righteously and he will give you everything you need. The thorns keep the soil dirty enough that they can cover the word that's being given you.

I wonder how many of you this morning got issues on your plate.

And you'll look at this and I'm hearing you, but I've just got to make some mental notes quick of some stuff I've got to go and do. Thorns.

And then Jesus says there's a fourth kind. We all know the story so well, which is fertile soil, verse 8.

Still other seed fell on fertile soil and they produced a crop that was 30, 60, even 100 times as much as had been planted.

Have you ever thought about that? Thirty, sixty or a hundred times? Imagine God gives one word to you, just one, and you hang on to and you nurture that one word sufficiently,

you get back 30, 60 to 100 times in your life.

The benefit of what? That one word that was given to you, a small seed, a logos that settles well into the good soil of your heart

puts a significantly productive harvest in place.

And as that seed of the Word grows, it produces a harvest of healthy kingdom activity. How do you get 30, 60 hundredfold?

It means you get active with the word God has given you.

You get active into this world, demonstrating the kingdom of God bearing fruit for others to come and eat of.

In Luke 8:15, the NLT puts it like this. And the seed that falls on good soil represented honest, good hearted people who hear God's word

Luke 8:15

cling to it and patiently produce a huge harvest.

So how do you do that? Well, you don't just hear the word, you hold onto it and you act in accordance with it.

So when God speaks something to you, get a revelation from the Bible, go and do the things God said.

I've told you a story about that friend I had admission school with.

He actually came here one time, twice I think to our meetings, because he lives down in Port Alfred.

And he irritated the life out of me. Remember I told you he irritated the life out of me.

Projects due Monday morning. He always did it Sunday night and always around midnight and left the light on and.

And I'm trying to sleep and he's busy working and.

And then he's. I stepped. We stepped on two mattresses in a loft, not even a door or a window or anything.

The loft of the meeting hall. That's how I slept for a year. And I'm with this oak and, and between us was this pile of laundry that never got done on his side,

which meant that when he wasn't there his aroma was.

Are you hearing me? Just, just work with me on this. And I'm like, I remember the one day and it's like half past 12 at night and he's working

and I look down over the balcony, the lights are on, and he's got a praise on going, doing his assignments. It should have been done a week ago.

And I got sick and the Lord said to me, go make him a cup of tea.

Jesus said, I've not come to be served, but to serve. I said, lord, that's not fair.

And then he says to me, no, no, you want to be served, you want the lights off your, you want the thing, just go serve. I'm not.

And I remember I went down there and I made a cup of tea and I wanted to slam it down, but I like, if you're going to honor God, as you heard this morning,

let's just finish what we start.

So I make some tea and I put it down there and I said, bless you. He goes, sure. I know you really didn't want to make me this tea.

I said, no, you're all right. But I am. Gave him a hug.

Do you know he never did that again the whole year? You know what I got a harvest of Sunday night, sleeps 30, 60, 100 fold for what I put in on such a stupid little point.

You know, chit can't tell you something as ridiculous as the point is that the Lord asks you to do. It's not ridiculous to him that he thinks it's worthy to say,

won't you please do this knowing there's a 30, 60, 100 harvest to come.

If you just act on what he told you, you join your will to the word you've received. The same word goes out to everybody.

The difference is in the heart and the heart where if you've got good soil, the difference in your heart is you have an effect.

And the effect you have is good. And as we use the power of choice to turn our minds to God in the day, guess what happens? Guess what happens.

You suddenly have a greater contact with God throughout your day.

You develop a conversational relationship with Him. Now suddenly, because I got good soil in here, I want to hear the word of the Lord.

I start to live ready to hear the word of the Lord.

I start to engage him in common conversation. I start to find his voice. I bring the reality of God into my life.

And my actions are based on the revelation that he keeps giving me. I want to hope that today and tomorrow and the next day and the next Day

I'm going to be doing the fruit of what I'm hearing when I'm with him. I'm busy putting in place for myself a harvest of, of righteousness.

I'm busy putting in place. Jesus is telling us, if I hear and I say yes, and I just do the adjustments according to what God says,

it's amazing how others start to benefit. If you're struggling in your workplace to get a promotion, just change your flipping attitude.

Are you okay? Don't go in looking like you suck lemons. The dentist has taken all your teeth and your personalities disappeared.

Be a blessing, be a joy. Be someone who's like, we can't do without this person because Jesus has been telling me to reflect him, and he doesn't look like that.

There's a kingdom we're being invited to live in. We can experience its reality with such constancy and power.

We can know and feel the presence of God. You see, when there's a harvest, thirty, sixty, hundredfold, and I'm a farmer, I walk through my harvest,

I. I walk through my fields. I live in the benefit of what's coming out of the soil.

In other words, when you start doing good and things become good, you feel. Are you hearing what I'm saying? You literally, and I don't want to, because the new age perverts it,

but you literally create the space you walk into by your sowing.

Thirty, sixty, hundred fold. There's nothing mysterious here. What you turn your attention to is the key to your life.

And so I close with this. So Jesus says, take heed. Pay careful attention.

Remember a parable, Parabola is characterized by contrasting one thing against another. What's the lesson Jesus is telling now?

Remember, he's going to go. Which we're going to start now.

A whole series of stories on the parables that are explaining keys for how the kingdom of God breaks into our lives and how we forcefully advance the kingdom

greater than John the Baptist. We advance the kingdom into the world around us because we have got. We understand the nature of the invasion of the kingdom

that we forcefully advance, but at the same time, we are forcefully opposed.

There is this constant struggle that goes on and you may think living in South Africa is the worst thing that ever happened to me. Can I tell you something?

You are a prophetic picture of the future. Because around this throne is.

Is every tribe and nation and tongue. It is a rainbow plethora of people around the throne that is the true rainbow nation

where you will worship and live alongside people who are very, very different to you now, if you go preach the gospel in Oz or Europe or anywhere else,

they all think the same, look the same. Have you ever been to the Netherlands? All the gardens, the houses, the yards, the people all look the same.

You come to South Africa, nothing's the same. And someone who you thought, was this today? Is this. Are you with me?

We're living in a situation with a plethora of beliefs and people and nationalities and pain and anger and hurts and love all at the same time.

Can you imagine when the people of this land start to walk in the power of the kingdom of God? The testimony to the world will be,

look at them in the midst of an impossible adversity, the greatest difference between rich and poor, highest crime rates, highest, highest death rates.

In the midst of that, a beautiful bride emerges. You're here for a reason at this time.

That's why you're here. That the kingdom of God can break in. So Jesus says, take heed.

And here's his point. When you look at how the seeds grow or don't grow in the same environment, you learn how different people react to the word of the kingdom.

Some people are just not able to let the word of God work at a deep level in their souls.

But God has so sent his word out that even the humblest believer in this room who simply believes and says, yes, Lord,

the keys for a 30, 60 hundredfold harvest are birthed in you in the moment that Jesus sends his word.

Because the Father said, when I send my word, it does not return to me empty. All it needs is the willingness of the heart to receive it.

Jesus says in Luke 8:16, no one lights a lamp and then covers it with a bowl or hides it under a bed.

Luke 8:16

A lamp is placed on a stand where its light can be seen by all who enter the house. I want you to see as we close.

This is God's initiative. God the Sower comes to sow the word of the kingdom into your heart. And he does not intend that word to be covered.

He intends it to be lifted up, giving light to everyone. We are the light of the world, wherever we are.

And I said last week, in Luke 8:18, Jesus said, Pay attention or listen carefully or pay heed to how you hear.

Luke 8:18

To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them.

Please pay attention to how we hear.

How are we supposed to hear? Can I say this? We listen with true repentance. The art of listening is in true repentance.

And to repent means to turn from one direction to another.

It's a willingness to come to God and his word every day of your life and say, lord, I'm willing to humbly accept your word,

which will require a turning or a changing in me, which is the word for true repentance.

I want to be in the position where you can talk to me. Friends, please hear me.

Do you know that there is the slight possibility that. That in some things you may be wrong?

The way some of you looking at me. Yeah, I know people who are wrong.

Do you know there's the slight possibility you aren't always right? Have you ever thought about it? Even if you've walked with the Lord a long time,

if others have been wrong, we can be wrong. That's why there is a safety in the voices of trusted people around you.

And sometimes our obsession or rebellion or stubbornness is driving us in the wrong direction.

And what Jesus is trying to tell us is we must listen to the word of God about the kingdom and ask ourselves this question.

Where is my mind and where is my heart in terms of what I've just heard? I'll ask you this. When was the last time you heard a word of the Lord

that shifted the way you behave, that cause you to repent in your activity or thought pattern towards a situation, a person or a circumstance when you can?

And he's telling us that with the soils, it's possible to miss it.

And here's the thing, the parable of the sower, it applies to all of us, all the time. But if we don't listen with care, what we've heard may be lost.

So I want to close with this.

What I think Jesus is trying to say is that the word of God comes to us as we learn to develop a hearing kind of life.

A life lived in the spirit, a mind attuned to God, where the Word of God comes and fills our lives if we want it. But you must want it.

Have you noticed that God doesn't flirt? God doesn't tease. He is a gentle whisper. He doesn't compete, but to the one who seeks.

He finds the one who asks, receives the one who knocks the doors. You see the language?

The Lord is saying, I just want you to develop a listening kind of life so the Word of God can fill you. Here's the problem.

If you don't want it, then God allows you to live the with me life, do everything with me and all that trauma that follows.

But if you follow him he gives you a with God life where in your everyday, you're open and attentive to the voice of the Lord.

You're at work like everybody else, but your spirit is attentive to the word of the Lord.

You're in this world, you're not living of it. You're open to the small nuances of the Holy Spirit.

A life of.

A life of growth and abundance. And I want to say this, as we close, most of what God will say to us will shine a light onto the circumstances we're about to walk into.

Your word is a light to my path.

The words God speaks, He illuminates that little bit ahead, just that little bit ahead, and shows us that's why his mercy is on you every morning.

Rarely does God tell you the end. He gives you enough for each day and he wants us to listen with care.

And when you're attuned and you hear God's voice, your life begins to be marked with friendship with God and confidence towards him,

where he becomes the bread you eat, the air you breathe, confidence with him. Lord, I want to be that kind of person,

that my life is marked by friendship with you and confidence in you. A with God kind of life.

The verse for this is John 17,3 and this is the way to have eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

Friends, he's offering us a life of abiding in Jesus where we bear fruit, we shine before men, our works give glory to our heavenly father.

Matthew 5:16. Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your Heavenly Father.

Matthew 5:16

Stand with me. Thank you so much for being a part of our meeting today.

Can I just ask two things? The first is if today the message has in any way been useful to you, would you mind just maybe liking it

or putting perhaps a statement down or a comment down that we can know how the ministry has helped you?

Maybe a thumbs up, maybe you can subscribe to the channel, do whatever, just so we can know what impact this message may be having on you.

And secondly, you may be someone who's saying, greg, I hear you. And this hope that Jesus has for us can come into my heart and it can change me.

But the reality is that I don't even know if I know Jesus. I want to say two things to you right away. The first is he's near you right now.

The Bible says if you believe in your heart that he is the Lord, and if you confess him with your mouth, you will be saved.

Which means you just need to where you are, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ even now and just say, lord, here I am. I recognize who you are.

I confess my sin to you. I acknowledge you as Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, the Son of the living God.

And I want to follow you. I want to become a disciple of yours. I want to give my life to you, Lord.

And you can pray that prayer right now between you and the Lord.

Secondly, you can get hold of us, you can see the telephone number. You can get hold of us and say, hey, I've given my life to the Lord.

Can you help me from here on out? And we could either send you some material, we can put you in touch with a really good church near you.

If you live in our area, you can come to us, you can follow us on YouTube. But it is good to get connected into the family of God,

to get connected into a local church that your life changes being surrounded with the family of God.

Please stay in touch. God bless you.