Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Wednesday, August 15th

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Jeremiah 30-31
Today's scripture focus is Matthew 13:1-23


The Parable of the Sower

13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”
10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11 He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.
16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20 The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. 22 The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. 23 But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”


I really enjoyed reading MacArthur's sermon on this passage, The Responses to the Gospel.  I'm going to just quote some parts of it - partly because of a lack of time on my part, and partly because he says it so well anyway! ;)


the parables of Matthew 13 are given by our Lord to describe the character of the kingdom between His rejection and His return. They describe the church age, as we know it. This period of time that is called the mystery form of the kingdom. Christ is still the King, His kingdom is here, it's the part of the kingdom, however, that was not seen in the Old Testament. The King was rejected. He will return to establish His prophesied kingdom, but in the meantime there is this mystery form, unseen in the past, that we know as the age of the church.
And we asked the question in the last couple of weeks, - What will this period be like? How will it be? Will the gospel be preached? Will it be heard? Will it be believed? What will happen to the kingdom in this period?
And our Lord gives the answer to His disciples in a series of seven parables. They are given in this chapter and wonderfully explained to us, the very time in which we live...
Now, the parable then is very simple. A man goes out and throws seed. The seed falls into four kinds of places. It falls on a hard path where it will never germinate. It's either picked up by birds or trampled under the feet of those who walk on the path. Some seed falls into rocky soil, germinates for a little while because the sun and the water are there to start with. It responds by growth but its growth is all upward and there's no root and when the sun scorches and burns that-plant up there and it finds no resource underneath, it dies. And then there is that seed that falls on the weedy ground that is strangled out and choked out by that which already lives there and is natural to that place. And then there is that which falls into the good, clean, deep, rich soft soil and it grows and produces a tremendous harvest...It's soft, unlike the hard way side. It's deep, unlike the stony limestone ground. And it's clean, unlike the weed-infested soil. And there the seed bursts into life and it brings forth a tremendous harvest...
 verse 9 simply says, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear." What does that mean? If you can understand this, then understand it. If you can get the message, then get the message. Because there's an important message...
the only people who can understand it are the people who believe in the King, right? Are the people who are redeemed, who are in the kingdom because of you're in the kingdom the King promises to explain to you the meaning of this. You see, the benefit of being a Christian is not that you get some instant academic knowledge; you get some instant wisdom so you understand everything on your own. No. The fact that you become a Christian doesn't mean you understand on your own any better, it does mean, however, that God promises to teach you the meaning of His Word...
the people with the hard hearts and the deaf ears can't understand...
This is then given to conceal from those who don't believe and revealed to those who do because the Lord's going to teach....
Who is the sower?... it seems rather obvious that the sower is the Lord Jesus Christ...The Lord is the original sower. He is the one who first puts the seed in the soil....Anybody who sows what Jesus first sowed is a sower. If you repeat the message of Jesus Christ, you become a sower. If I repeat the message of Jesus Christ, I become a sower...So, we are all the sowers who love Christ, who received His message, who pass it on. The seed, then, is the Word of God. We are sowing, then, the gospel, the message of the kingdom....
It is about preaching the gospel. That's what it's about. It's about preaching the Word about the King and His kingdom...
Now we come to the soils. And here is the main import of the parable. It is how men will respond to the gospel. When it's preached, how will they respond?...
We've seen there are four kinds of soils. Let me say this and I want you to understand it. All the soils are basically the same ... dirt is dirt is dirt, whether it's hard dirt, soft dirt, dirt with rock under it, or dirt with weeds in it, dirt is dirt is dirt. It's all talking about the same part of the world. The issue is not specifically the soil; the issue is what has influenced the soil, the condition that it is in. It is to say, then, that all men could receive the seed, right? All soil could receive the seed if it was broken up. If it was cleaned of weeds. The issue, then, is this, here comes the key to the parable, the result of hearing the gospel in the life of an individual depends upon the condition of that person's heart. Did you get that? That's what Jesus is teaching.
The result of the preaching of the gospel will depend on the condition of the heart of the hearer....
the mark of salvation in the soils is fruit. And only one out of four demonstrates it. And that's a very important point. Salvation is noted by fruit, not by foliage, by fruit. And if you don't understand that, you get confused in the parable...
Number one, we call this the unresponsive hearer, the way side hearer...This is the man who is hard-hearted, very simple. This is the man the Old Testament would call stiff-necked. This is the man who is irresponsive, unresponsive, inattentive, unconcerned, indifferent, negligent, doesn't want anything to do with it, just hits him and bounces off. And Satan is seen as the birds, the wicked one, who comes and snatches away....Never broken up, never softened by conviction, hard-hearted, callous, indifferent....In other words, when someone does not respond to the gospel, initially when they're hard hearted and stiff necked, Satan just snatches it away. He just blinds them to its true value.....
How does he do that? Well, there are a lot of ways. One way he does that is send false teachers...by the fear of man....Sometimes Satan uses pride....Sometimes Satan snatches it away through doubt. Sometimes he snatches it away through prejudice. Sometimes through stubbornness. Sometimes through the love of sin the person doesn't want to give up. Sometimes through procrastination. But one way or another or a combination of ways, when it hits that hard stuff, Satan snatches it away and the person so easily forgets that it ever came....
There's a second kind, and that's the rocky ground hearer...This is the person who hears the Word and immediately with joy receives it. And the indication is that there's not a lot of thought involved. It's just sort of a quick response, a Wow!, you know, sort of emotional, sort of euphoria, sort of instant excitement without counting the cost, without understanding the real significance..... 
if your confession of Christ, I'm talking about you personally, does not come from a deep inner conviction of your sin, does not come from a deep sense of lostness, does not include a tremendous desire for the Lord to cleanse and purify and lead you, if your confession of Christ does not involve a great hunger for self-denial and self-sacrifice and a willingness to suffer for His sake, then you have no root and it's only a matter of time. And something will come along and you'll burn up and die, because you're not willing, as Jesus said, to take up the cross and follow Him....
trouble and persecution will do two things. One, trouble and persecution will kill the false believers. And secondly, they'll strengthen the true believers...
Third here, is in verse 22,...Worldliness....there are these who hear but they never clean out the soil. The world is still there....The soil that is going to produce the fruit must be cleansed of that stuff and that is why I'm so convinced in my heart that true salvation only occurs where there is true repentance...where there's a willingness to deal with sin in the life and that is a marvelous and gracious work of God....People don't get saved when their hearts are still occupied with the things of the world....
And that takes us to the last soil....very productive soil....This is dirt like the rest of the dirt but it was good because of its preparation ... no weeds, no rocks, no hard surface....
There is good soil out there. There really is. Now isn't that a wonderful promise? I mean, we've all run into the hard stuff, haven't we? And you go away and you're discouraged. And then you've all run into the stuff that springs up real fast and you're so excited and then when it sort of falls away and dies, you say - Ohhhh. And it's very discouraging. And we've all come across those people and we've invested but they're double-minded and they never let the world go. And finally they fade away and we get discouraged and we wonder if it's worth it but then comes this last one and the Lord says -The good soil's out there. It's out there. You be faithful.
Beloved, the ultimate mark of salvation is fruit bearing, fruitfulness.... it's evidence of the divine life....you look at a life, you see gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, love, joy and peace, and do you see it on a long-term, protracted, continuous basis because the fruit is a continual thing? That's attitude fruit.
And then it tells us in Paul's writing to the Colossians and the Thessalonians and Philippians, that there was to be the fruit of righteous behavior, so that fruit is a right kind of attitude and fruit is a right kind of deed. Paul tells us in Romans that fruit is winning people to Jesus Christ....
Fruit is God at work, manifesting in the attitude, manifesting in the action. Fruit is God producing spiritual reality in our life. You show me somebody who has no manifestation of those attributes, somebody who has no manifestation of righteous deeds as God counts righteousness and I'll show you somebody, no matter what they may look like on the surface, who's going to die out. Fruit is the issue.
Even in the first Psalm it says that the true person, the true believer is like a tree planted by the rivers of waters who bringeth forth...what? ... fruit in a season. Fruit is always the mark of true faith. In John 15, the true branches brought forth fruit. In Ephesians 2:10, Paul says you are created unto good works, and God ordained that you walked in them. It isn't that you're never going to do something wrong, it's really this, that one who is truly good ground has as a consuming desire to be productive, to let God produce through his life. And even when there's failure, there's great brokenness over the failure because the desire is to see God at work....
it says that there will be some who bring a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty. Not everybody is equally productive. God uses people in different ways. And there are some Christians who never really fully get their act together. They go through life being a thirtyfolder... when they could be a sixty or a hundred. And there is...when we say that Christians will always be fruitful, we're not saying that all Christians will always be as fruitful as they ought to be or could be. Because when we do become disobedient, then we restrict that. But may I hasten to add, all Christians at this point in the parable start and thirtyfold and thirtyfold is three times what was even normalSo that a true believer isn't somebody you've got to scrounge around looking behind the leaves to try to find a piece of fruit hanging somewhere. A true believer is one whose fruit is multiplied and manifest. And it only goes from a tremendous and obvious fruit to one that is just inconceivable in terms of fruit. That's the plan. True believers produce fruit...
Go and preach and realize it as you preach, you're going to get resistance and you're going to get short-termed converts and you're going to get double-minded people who can't let go of the system but you're also going to get the real ones. And keep this in mind, you're going to have an enemy all the way along...the world, the flesh and the devil. And they'll be at it in the process of sowing to try to stop you....
What kind of soil are you?..
The second lesson is this, the issue in the parable is not the talent of the sower..it is not the talent of the sower; it's the nature of the soil. But let me tell you something, folks, the more you throw the better the opportunity you're going to hit some good soil. I mean, some people are letting out a seed or two every year, and it is really tough. You just keep slinging it and you'll be amazed how much good soils lying around... no matter how incapable you may be as a sower.
And then, remember this. That sometimes the Lord plows up the stuff that doesn't receive the seed the first time, so don't give up....Sometimes you've just thrown the seed; you throw it there and before the birds can hit it, comes the Holy Spirit with the plow... and plows it under. So, be faithful ... hard soil, shallow soil, weedy soil, may not always stay that way, by God's grace He may do some tilling in that soil ... so keep throwing the seed in that same field over and over, over and over, over and over and see if the Lord won't break up the soil. 



I don't know about you, but I found that very encouraging.  And convicting - I need to throw some seed.

Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 13:24-43
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Jeremiah 32-34

1 comment:

Miriam said...

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Love this post. Encouraging and convicting is right!