THE RULE OF GOD COMES BY HIS WORD
MATTHEW 13: 1-23
INTRODUCTION
I have asked hundreds of people, "If you could know there was a
God and if you could know him personally, would you want to?" As
you might imagine the vast majority of people I have spoken with have
answered that question in the affirmative. In a recent poll over 80% of
Americans said they believed in a literal heaven and hell. However, only
a small minority thought they were in danger of going to hell. The vast
majority of people in the world think about their relationship to God
the same way I did prior to my coming to faith in Christ. I wasn’t sure
that God existed but I was sure that if he did he would be happy with
me. I couldn’t think of any reason he would not be glad to welcome me
into heaven. I could think of many reasons why he ought to be pleased
with me. That’s what I thought when I was an irreligious person and I
think that is how most irreligious people think. Therefore, when you consider
that the majority of people in the world are religious, not irreligious,
it is not surprising that most people rate their probability of gaining
heaven to be pretty high.
Certainly this was the condition of the people to whom Jesus spoke. During
most of his public ministry he was talking to people who took their religion
very seriously. The Jewish religious teachers were absolutely certain
they belonged to God’s kingdom and they were just as certain that others
did not belong. In chapter 12 they make it plain that they are certain
that Jesus does not belong to God’s kingdom. They claim that he is an
agent of Satan.
The problem that Jesus faces in talking to this crowd of people is the
same problem that faced every prophet in the OT and every preacher of
the Christian message since Jesus ascended. Most of the people in the
crowd presume to be in good standing with God but they are not. They like
Jesus and what he stands for. They feel that they are in agreement with
him and he is in agreement with them. They are living like the person
who has cancer but who does not know it. Then there are people in the
crowd who are wholly indifferent to or even hostile to Jesus and all that
he says. Finally, there are people in the crowd who truly do belong to
God’s kingdom. We know from 12:50 that the disciples are part of Jesus’
family. We know from 12:27 & 13:11 that God has chosen to reveal the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to these disciples.
So Jesus and every Christian preacher after him must address the various
needs that he is confronted with. He tells this parable to warn some of
the dangerous position they are in and to help others to be sure of their
right standing with God. Jesus is answering the question, how do you know
that you belong to God’s kingdom? How do you know that you are part of
God’s family? The reason that Jesus tells this parable and then explains
it to his disciples is so that we might be aware of the dangers that surround
us, flee the danger and seek our salvation in Christ’s word. Jesus is
blunt and uncompromising in this story but he talks to us this way because
he wants us to escape the judgment that is coming. As I’ve often said
before, he is like the doctor who is brutally honest about the seriousness
of the disease so that we will be serious about applying the cure to the
disease.
MAIN POINT
Your response to the message of Christ shows what kind of a heart
you have and where you stand with God
I. An unbroken heart is unyielding to the message of Christ (vv. 4
& 19)
In verse 19 Jesus identifies what the Sower, the seed and the soils represent.
The seed is the "message about the kingdom". In summary form
we would say that the message of the kingdom is that Jesus is the King
and Savior God has appointed to rule over and save his people. His people
are those who trust Jesus enough to obey him. That means the Sower is
anyone who tells the message of the kingdom. In the immediate context
it is Jesus himself but it is also the disciples and then every Christian
preacher and every Christian who tells someone else about the message
of the kingdom. Anytime you tell another person about the gospel of Christ
you are the Sower and the words you speak are the seed. The soil is the
heart of each individual who hears the message about the kingdom. We can
see that, because in v. 19 "hearing the message" is equivalent
to "the seed sown in the heart" that Satan snatches away.
This first soil is the soil that is on the path or road along the side
of the field where the farmer is sowing his seed. This seed is packed
down, hard and impervious. The seed cannot enter the soil but simply sits
on top of it, exposed to the sight of any bird that happens by. When a
bird sees that seed, it comes and eats it up. Jesus says that the chief
characteristic of the person who is represented by this soil is that he
or she does not understand the message about the kingdom. What does he
mean by "understand"? Jesus uses this word because of how the
OT uses it. If you’ll notice, he used it three times in vv. 13, 14 and
15. He does not mean by this word that the message is difficult to understand
or that these are people who have some sort of learning disability. He
is not talking about mental capacity. Rather he means that these are people
who willfully, on purpose, refuse to acknowledge and love what is blazing
in front of their eyes. They are willfully ignorant of that which they
know is obviously worthy of knowing. In other words, they do not understand,
not because they are handicapped or because they have not been given enough
information. Rather they are ignorant and uninterested in Christ because
they choose to despise what is obviously wonderful.
Imagine that you took a family vacation to visit the Grand Canyon. Your
family travels in one of those new conversion vans that have a TV with
a 6" screen and a VCR. When you arrive at the Grand Canyon and pull
up at one of the overlooks everyone jumps out of the car except for your
10 year old daughter. Everyone runs up to the rail and stands in awestruck
silence before the beauty and majesty of this amazing canyon. Suddenly
you realize your daughter isn’t with you. You go back to the van and she
is watching a Dora the Explorer video on the TV. What do you say to her?
"Honey, what are you doing? We’re at the Grand Canyon. Come and look."
She says she doesn’t want to come and look. You then tell her she doesn’t
have a choice. She has to come and look. You turn the TV off and she comes
out to the edge grumbling all the way. She looks at the Canyon, yawns
and then says, "Can I go back and watch my video now?" Wouldn’t
we say that there is something wrong with this child? She doesn’t understand
what she is looking at. But her failure to understand isn’t due to the
fact that the Grand Canyon isn’t a million times more attractive than
a video playing on a 6" screen. Her lack of appreciation for the
majesty of the Grand Canyon shows a deficiency in her, not the Grand Canyon.
It is the same with the gospel of Christ. The existence and majesty of
God is blazing in front of our face every day of our lives. Our own existence,
the created order, our sense of justice, the reality of beauty and love
all display the greatness of our Creator. Then in the person of Jesus
Christ the full radiance of God’s beauty is poured out and yet people
refuse to love and adore the one who is obviously praiseworthy. It isn’t
just atheists who have hard hearts to the beauty of the gospel. There
are millions of people in the world who give intellectual assent to God’s
existence and to the facts of the gospel but who still do not understand
the gospel in the sense that Jesus means here. Like the daughter who acknowledges
the presence of the Grand Canyon and can describe its features but who
has no sense of awe at its greatness.
At the core of unbroken hearts is pride, self-sufficiency. There is the
belief that I know what is best for me and I am able to provide what is
best. Those with unbroken hearts can be very religious or completely irreligious.
The thing they share in common is certainty that they can give themselves
what they want and what they want is what is best. They are unimpressed
with the greatness of God and of his Christ but are only impressed with
themselves and what they love.
Now note that those with unbroken hearts are easy prey for the king of
hard hearts himself, Satan, the evil one. When you refuse to know and
love what is supremely worth knowing and loving, then you cooperate with
Satan’s work in the world. Those with unbroken hearts believe they are
in charge of their destiny when the reality is that they are merely slaves
of the evil one. They are merely joining in with his destruction of God’s
good earth. You give him complete access to your life and he makes sure
that no word from God lays around where it might penetrate and break up
your hard heart. The ways he snatches God’s gracious word away from us
are as varied as the strategies of terrorists. Common to all of his strategies
is the feeding of your ego. People with unbroken hearts are fully aware
of the deficiencies in others but barely aware of any deficiencies in
themselves. As the Scriptures say over and over, "God is opposed
to the proud" and so he simply gives those who refuse to acknowledge
their true condition over to the power of Satan. There is nothing wrong
with God’s seed. If the person with the unbroken heart would allow that
seed in, it would grow and produce fruit. But in his pride and self-sufficiency
he refuses and so falls in line with Satan’s destructive purposes in the
world.
Your response to the message of Christ shows what kind of a heart
you have and where you stand with God
- An unbroken heart is unyielding to the message of Christ
- And…
II. An impulsive heart is disloyal to the message of Christ (vv. 5-6
& 20-21)
According to the Bible there is no human being who understands God, who
responds to reality correctly by seeking for God. This is what Jesus says
in vv. 13-15 of this chapter. It is what the psalmist says in Ps. 14:
2-3, "The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if
there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside,
they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not
even one." It is the testimony of the entire Bible. So there is a
sense in which the first soil represents every human being in our natural
condition. However, Jesus is attempting to help us to correctly discern
what is going on in our lives and he knows that while all humans have
hard, unbroken hearts, he also knows that the ways in which we express
those hearts are varied. There are many who presume they are safe when
they are not. So as a doctor skilled in the diagnosis of disease, he turns
to two of the most common ways people deceive themselves and gives an
infallible way to detect the presence of the disease. The rocky and thorny
soils demonstrate two kinds of self-deception.
The word translated "rocky soil" describes a thin soil where
the bedrock is very close to the surface. When seeds fall on this type
of soil they quickly sprout but when the sun beats down on them they just
as quickly wither because though they give the appearance of life, they
have no root to sustain life. So when this person hears the word they
immediately receive it with joy and then just as quickly, when trouble
or persecution comes they abandon Christ. This is the person who, by their
enthusiasm for the gospel and the Christian life, give all the appearances
of being converted but who, when trouble comes just as quickly reveal
that they have no true life in them and their "faith" withers
up and they leave Christ and his church behind.
I have known scores of these kinds of people in the 25 years I’ve been
involved in Christian ministry. They are the people for whom experience
is the final test of truth. As long as they are experiencing the "joy
of the Lord" then they are faithful. But as soon as trouble comes
or they are hassled for their faith they abandon Christ because following
him is no longer giving them a happy experience. These are the people
who say, "I tried God once and he didn’t work for me." What
they mean is that the trouble of believing and living the Christian life
wasn’t worth the experience they had. I think of a young woman that lived
on the same floor as my wife Jane while we were in college. When Jane
shared the gospel with her she responded with great enthusiasm. She read
her Bible all the time. She came to church and to our Campus Crusade for
Christ meetings. She was in a Bible study with Jane. She met a group of
more charismatic Christians, who were more expressive in their worship.
She began attending their meetings and loved to go and worship Jesus with
them. Then, about a year later, when a relationship she had went sour,
she dropped out of every Christian activity. She resisted every attempt
to contact her and made it quite clear she wanted nothing to do with Christ
or Christianity and she went back to her lifestyle of partying.
To know Christ is a joyful experience, the most joyful in the universe
I would argue. But, these people, when they "come to Jesus"
are not finding their joy in the beauty of Christ. Their happiness is
due to the fact they aren’t drug addicts anymore. Or now they have friends.
Or now they have a purpose in life. Or now they get to sing really happy
songs. Or just that they get to have a really intense feeling when they
think about God. Intense emotional experiences say nothing about the
reality of your faith in Christ. Every religion in the world gives
intense emotional experiences. Sex and taking drugs and skiing and hunting
and shopping and driving race cars and listening to music all give intense
emotional experiences. The intensity of your emotions when you think about
God or when you supposedly accepted Christ mean nothing. What shows that
you have a true faith is that you hold fast to Christ when trouble comes.
Many people are deceived by the fact they have had an intense emotional
experience that is somehow related to God and therefore presume that they
are in good standing with him. However, their "faith" wilts
away at the first sign of trouble. These are people who are looking for
an experience and not God.
I want to say a word to parents at this point. What Jesus says here is
the reason you do not want to tell your child, at the first hint of interest
in God or when they tell you they want to ask Jesus into their heart,
that they are definitely a Christian. You want to encourage their interest
in Christ and encourage them in prayer and reading the Bible. But you
need to know that there are a lot of wrong reasons they can be showing
an interest in Christ, none of which have anything to do with Jesus. We
need to let them experience some trouble and persecution so they can see
for themselves if their faith is real or simply the result of loving their
mom and dad.
Your response to the message of Christ shows what kind of a heart
you have and where you stand with God
- An unbroken heart is unyielding to the message of Christ
- An impulsive heart is disloyal to the message of Christ
- And…
III. A greedy heart is indifferent to the message of Christ (vv. 7
& 22)
The person who is represented by the seed that fell among thorns is probably
the person who is in the greatest danger. The person represented by the
soil on the path outright rejects the word of Jesus. There is no question
that he is not a Christian. The second person eventually abandons Christ.
They eventually show their true colors when trouble comes. But the "thorny-soil"
person can maintain the appearance of spiritual life for a lifetime but
not be truly a Christian. If you’ve ever been in a field of corn you have
seen what happens when the corn planter puts a row of seeds in the grass
and weeds growing in the fencerow. The corn seed will put up a plant and
the plant will remain through the whole summer and into the fall but it
never gets very tall and never develops an ear of corn. There is no fruit
because the weeds it is living in the midst of use up the nutrients and
water that it requires to grow and bear fruit.
In the same way a person can profess faith in Christ and show up in church
week after week and not get involved in really bad sins but yet never
produce fruit because all the life is being sucked out by the worries
of the world and the deception of wealth. What does Jesus mean by the
worries of the world? The answer to that question is back in chapter 6.
Verse 25 says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear."
The "therefore" points us back to v. 24 where Jesus says that
no one can serve both God and money. How do you serve money? You serve
money by doing all you can to get more of it and to get more of what money
provides. Why would a person serve money? People serve money because they
believe that the way to be happy and secure, to enjoy life is to have
money and what money provides. Serving money and worrying about what you
will eat, drink, wear, etc. are equivalent. Look at v. 32. The pagans
run after all these things. A person in whom the worries of the world
are choking out the word is the person who thinks a lot about how to save
money, how to buy more things, how to take care of the things he currently
possesses.
What does "the deception of wealth" mean? Wealth lies to us
in that it promises security and happiness to those who have it. William
Hendricksen in his commentary on this passage says, "When this person
is poor he deceives himself into thinking that if he were only rich he
would be happy. When he is rich he deludes himself into imagining that
if he were only still richer he would be satisfied." The basic problem
in this person is a lack of faith. They don’t really believe that having
Christ and nothing else is to be the richest person in the universe. They
love money and what money provides and not Christ and what Christ provides.
They use religion to get them more of what they truly love, money and
the security in this life that money provides. In its grossest forms this
false religion is formalized in those who preach the health and wealth
gospel. Those who say that God wants you to be rich and healthy and that
if you will trust him and obey him, then you will be wealthy and healthy.
There are churches full of people who are going to hell because they have
bought this lie. But it doesn’t need to be so blatant as that. It is more
than possible that there are some here who appear to have life but who
are bearing no fruit because the worries of the world and the deception
of wealth are choking out the word of Christ. Here are four questions
to ask yourself. What do you spend more time thinking about—how to manage
your money, take care of your possessions and enjoy your life here or
thinking about the greatness of Christ’s salvation and how to invest your
time and resources in building his kingdom? What do you long for more,
a well-financed retirement or going to heaven? What do you fear more,
going to hell or not being able to go on vacation or buy a new computer
or pay the mortgage? Do you regularly, generously and cheerfully give
money to Christ’s church? Do you give before you pay bills or only from
what is left, if anything?
Your response to the message of Christ shows what kind of a heart
you have and where you stand with God
- An unbroken heart is unyielding to the message of Christ
- An impulsive heart is disloyal to the message of Christ
- A greedy heart is indifferent to the message of Christ
- And…
IV. An understanding heart acts in response to the message of Christ
(vv. 8 & 23)
Notice that the first thing that distinguishes the good soil is that
they understand the message of the kingdom. Just as "not understanding"
in v. 19 had nothing to do with being mentally handicapped, so understanding
here has nothing to do with native intelligence. The understanding that
is being referred to here is the same as that referred to by Jesus in
vv. 11 & 16. It is spiritual understanding that is given by God. It
is an understanding that not only knows but loves the message of Christ’s
kingdom. A child can have the understanding referred to here because it
is not about understanding all the ins and outs of theology but about
understanding that to be forgiven of sins and loved by God is the best
thing that could ever happen to a person.
Let me try to illustrate what this understanding is like by describing
how I came to understand the joy of skiing when I was in high school.
I knew that such a thing as downhill skiing existed. But I never thought
about it and had no interest in skiing. I was interested in playing football
and watching TV and going hunting and fishing and driving around in cars
with my buddies. But I had no real knowledge of or interest in skiing.
Then one of my friends, who was a member of the high school ski club began
talking to me about the ski trips the club was planning for the winter.
She was an avid skier and enthusiastically told me about skiing. She finally
talked me into going along to Devil’s Head ski lodge on one of the club’s
trips. I road the bus up to Devil’s Head, rented skis, took a half hour
ski lesson and headed for the hill. I loved skiing. I was hooked. I began
attending the ski club meetings. I learned about the different kinds of
skis and boots. I bought my own skis and boots. I spent money to go skiing.
In short I organized by life to get more of skiing because now I "understood"
how great skiing was. It was obvious to others that I had come to understand
skiing because my life was bearing the fruit of understanding the greatness
of skiing.
When a person understands the message of the kingdom in this way then
two things automatically follow. First, contrary to the "rocky soil"
person, trouble and persecution don’t destroy faith but rather confirm
faith. In other words, the "good soil" person knows that trouble
and persecution cannot take away what is supremely valuable, the love
of God. So they keep on trusting Christ no matter what happens. It’s just
like my love of skiing. It didn’t matter to me how cold it was or how
often I fell down or how much money it cost for lift tickets. I loved
skiing and no amount of "trouble" because of skiing could keep
me from skiing. But second, contrary to the "thorny soil" person
the seed produces fruit in the good soil person. Now what is the fruit
that is produced? This metaphor is used throughout both the OT and the
NT. Fruit refers to the lifestyle of the godly man or woman and the
effect that that lifestyle has on the world around him or her. It
is a life that is worthy of the Lord, that pleases the Lord, that is full
of good deeds. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit that is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
It is a life that delights in obedience to the commands of God. Please
do not miss the absolute and infallible connection between understanding
and fruitfulness. Every Christian bears fruit. If there is no fruit, then
no matter what you say you are not a Christian. This is the testimony
of the Bible from beginning to end. Note, bearing fruit does not make
you good soil, it shows that you are good soil. The gift of spiritual
understanding comes first and makes you good soil and then when you hear
and understand the gospel you immediately begin to bear fruit. It is the
seed, planted in you that contains the life and grows in you.
But also note that not every Christian bears the same quantity of fruit.
Jesus is so kind in adding this. He helps us to see that while all good
soil bears fruit, some good soil is more fertile than other good soil
and so there is a variety in the quantity of fruit that is born. So you
should not be comparing yourself to other Christians. The question to
ask yourself is this. Am I bearing fruit? The question you should not
ask is, "why am I not bearing the same amount of fruit as some other
Christian?" Why am I not as patient with my children as Sue is with
hers? That’s the wrong question. The right question is, "Am I more
patient now than I was a year ago?" Again, fruit bearing takes time.
You don’t put the seed in the ground and the next hour see fruit. You
will see the evidence of growth right away but the mature fruit takes
time to develop. So Jesus shows us that while we need to be vigilant and
examine ourselves, we also need to recognize that we are looking for growth
and fruitfulness over time. There are no perfect Christians, only progressing
Christians. The balance that Jesus has put in this story is so helpful
isn’t it? I need to examine myself for fruit but I also need to know that
growth over time is the mark of good soil.
Don’t you want to be good soil? You can be. Repent of your stubborn,
prideful, hard hearted indifference to Christ. Turn away from seeking
an experience and seek Christ. Abandon all hope of finding happiness in
this life and give yourself to Christ. Pursue him. Trust him and love
him. To live as a member of his kingdom is a better life than any other
life in the universe because it is eternal life. There are many ways to
go to hell, there is just one way to go to heaven, by understanding the
greatness of King Jesus and the life he gives in the kingdom of God.
Your response to the message of Christ shows what kind of a heart
you have and where you stand with God
- An unbroken heart is unyielding to the message of Christ
- An impulsive heart is disloyal to the message of Christ
- A greedy heart is indifferent to the message of Christ
- An understanding heart acts in response to the message of Christ
© Copyright
2001 John Swanson.
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