Series of Sermons – Dirt Parables
Scripture: Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, Luke 8:4–15
Theme: Your Life – Your Soil
Title: The Truth is in the Dirt
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
I want to talk to you today about your spiritual walk with Jesus. I want to talk to you about how we help ourselves enjoy our best life in Christ Jesus.
The greatest thing that can happen to us is when we give ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest thing that can happen in our lives is when we repent of our sins and turn to the LORD. The greatest thing that can happen in our lives is when we are baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins and are filled with His Holy Spirit.
Now, why do I say that?
Because without Jesus everything we do or enjoy or desire in this life will be in vain. Jesus put it this way:
“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” – Matthew 16:26
I know those words are heavy. They are supposed to be. They are words Jesus wants us to hear. They are words that He wants us to listen to, receive and allow them to weigh heavily on our hearts, minds and souls.
There is nothing more valuable than our everlasting being. There is nothing more valuable than our relationship with the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. There is nothing more fundamental in this life than our spiritual condition.
It is imperative that we get this right. It is imperative that we understand that our spiritual condition is the foundation upon which we build our lives here on this earth and in preparation for our lives on the New Heaven and New Earth.
There would be nothing more tragic than to spend 80 – 90+ years on this earth enjoying our lives, our families and creation and let that it be it. There is nothing more tragic than having to stand around a person’s casket knowing that you are seeing them for the very last time.
I have been around such caskets. I have been around people that have lived what we would call a pretty good life. They loved their families. They loved others. They worked hard. They accumulated some land, built a home and enjoy a rather pleasant life.
But in the end that is all they did. They never took care of the most important thing in life. They never connected with the LORD JESUS CHRIST. They never asked Him to be their Savior and LORD. They never experienced what it means to be rescued and redeemed by the LORD. They never experienced what it means to be infilled with God’s Holy Spirit.
The Lord does not want that for any of us. The Lord created all of us to live forever. He created us to live an Abundant Life here on this earth and on the New Heaven and New Earth. He gave His life on the Cross so that we could experience both the Abundant Life here and everlasting life forevermore.
Wow. All of that was heavy and we haven’t even gotten into our passage this morning. But all of that needs to be said. We need to know how important salvation is this morning. It is everything. When we are born again the sky is limit. Without salvation then nothing really matters because it all will vanish like a fog on a sunny morning.
Our parable this morning is rather interesting one. It is one that like most of Jesus’ parables has so many different layers and can teach us so many different truths. That is part of the geniuses of Jesus’ teaching.
What one person receives from the Holy Spirit as they read this parable may be a little different than what another person receives. It is like looking at a diamond in the bright sunshine. It sparkles but depending on the angle you are looking at it will determine just how bright and how clear it is at the time.
This parable of the Sower or of the Four Soils is that type of parable. It has many layers and many different lessons for us to examine and to understand.
It is at first glance a rather strange story. For it is the story of a man who sows some seeds and yet has not prepared the soil or at least it looks that way.
Growing up we had a garden every year. We would grow beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions and other things.
At no time would we just throw out the seed. At no time would we fail to work the soil that we are going to use. My parents would have seen that as a complete waste of time.
So, each year we would do a number of things before we would plant our seeds. We usually hired a person to come by and plow our garden before dad bought a garden tiller. They would come and spend a few hours plowing up the soil. They usually went over it three or four times to make sure that the ground was soft and viable.
We would then make sure that all the big rocks were removed. Eastern Kentucky has its share of rocks so we would have to see if any “appeared” out of the ground after plowing. Then we would make sure that everything had been turned over and was ready for planting.
We did this because we didn’t want to waste time, money or an area of the garden. If you are going to plant seeds then you want the most for your time, effort and resources. We wanted the best garden possible because we were going to use all that it could give us to eat on throughout the year.
When we come to this parable one of the first things that seems odd is that this Sower didn’t properly prepare the soil. It appears that they just bought a bag of seed and merely scattered it all over the ground hitting areas that were hard packed, full of rocks and weeds. Luckily they also had some soil that was ready to receive the seed.
I am sure that his listeners wondered what kind of Sower Jesus was talking about. Money was tight in those days and seeds were valuable.
Who in their right mind would just throw away seed that they knew wasn’t going to be fruitful?
That is why they wanted Jesus to take some time to explain the parable to them. Common sense told them that only a foolish Sower would throw away seeds. A wise Sower would make sure that the soil was as ready as possible to receive the seed.
So, the picture we get is a little different.
You have to remember who Jesus is talking to at the time. He is talking to people who understand that they are already a part of the Kingdom of God. They are Jews. They are children of Abraham. They faithfully go to synagogue and they make the trips to the Temple during the time of the festivals.
These are people who have stopped everything that are doing and have followed Jesus. They have put their careers on hold to walk around Galilee with Jesus. They are investing their time and their energy helping him share His message.
Jesus’ disciples were dedicated. Each day they woke up to walk with Him, listen to Him and do what He told them to do.
So this parable hits them a little odd.
Why would the Sower not prepare the soil?
It is at that point that Jesus has to turn the parable upside down. The problem is not with the Sower it is with the soil.
Now, for us this may not hit home. But to the Jews any mention of soil hits home. They were people of the ground. The soil, the ground, the land meant a great deal to them.
After all they were living in the Promise Land; a land of milk and honey given to them by the Lord God Almighty.
They knew that Adam and Eve had lived in the Garden of Eden where the land was so rich that it was able to grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables.
They also knew the story of creation. They knew the story of how God took some dirt and created Adam. How God breathed into that dirt and Adam became a living soul.
Ground, dirt, soil and clay all meant a great deal to the Jews. It meant life. It meant sustainability. It meant prosperity. It meant the future.
So, when they heard the parable they not only thought about it from the Sower’s perspective but from the soil’s perspective as well.
Why did the soil allow itself to become hard?
Why did the soil allow the rocks to stay and thereby be shallow?
Why did the soil allow itself to be filled with weeds and thorns?
Why was it not all like the fourth soil? Why was it not well tilled and ready to receive the seeds and produce a harvest?
One of the ways that we could read the parable is to see it as Jesus sharing the Kingdom of Heaven with all kinds of people.
+People who would choose not to receive His message.
+People who started off well but never allowed His message to get deep into their hearts, minds and souls.
+People who allowed the things of the world to choke out His message.
+People who were ready and who did receive all that Jesus wanted them to receive.
But Jesus always had a way of making things personal. Jesus had a way of sharing a story that had both a general meaning but also had a deeper personal meaning as well.
That is what I think He does here in this parable. I do believe it had that general meaning that we just stated. That there are those people that very much look like and act like those four soils.
But I also think that in each one of us there are those four soils. I think this was what He was trying to speak to His disciples and the others that were listening.
Like Adam they were made from dirt and one day they would return to the dirt. What they did with their life (their dirt) would determine their everlasting life.
If we look at it from that angle then this parable speaks to us in amazing ways. It reminds us that we need to do some things in our lives to make sure that we are able to enjoy our lives in Jesus to its fullest. Let’s see what those things are:
I. Don’t be hard hearted or hard headed
Jesus wants us to have a pliable heart rather than a stubborn or obstinate heart.
This is what happened to Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. Even though he was showed time and time again the power of God and could have repented and then been blessed by God, Pharaoh continually shut the door to God. He saw himself as a god in and of himself. He was stubborn, proud and obstinate. He wasn’t open to God’s leadings and teaching. He wouldn’t change his mind even though it caused his ultimate down fall.
On the other hand, his adopted brother Moses was radically different. He allowed the Lord to change his way of thinking. He allowed the Lord to change his direction in life. He allowed the Lord to change the way he was living. When it came to Moses and God, God was in control and Moses was pliable.
Moses didn’t start off that way. All you have to do is to read his story. At the burning bush Moses looks and sounds more like hardened ground. But then as he and God continued to talk you begin to see a softening. A softening that continued on throughout his life.
When we read the Bible we have to allow it to be like a plow. We have to allow the LORD to plow up some of the areas that we find ourselves hard hearted and hard headed. We have to allow the Bible to change our way of thinking and living.
Once we read a truth then we have to receive that truth. It doesn’t mean that it will be easy. It doesn’t mean that it will not cause us some pain. It doesn’t mean that it will not change our schedules or the way we do things.
For Peter that meant that he had to change the way he looked at people. He could no longer be narrow-minded towards others that were not Jews.
For Paul that meant that he had to change the way he looked at people. He could no longer just cast aside someone because they did not measure up to his brand of discipleship. We see him being a little hard headed and hard hearted toward John Mark who was having a difficult time. Later on we see the two come back together letting us know that both men allowed God to work on them.
This morning, as God’s soil we have to allow God to plow up our hard areas. Those things in our lives that cause us to be intolerant, pig headed and stubborn.
II. Don’t live shallow – don’t live half hearted
One of the biggest temptations that we all face as we begin our walk with Jesus is to be half-hearted. That is to say, we are tempted to try to live a life for Jesus that is lived more on the sideline than in the game.
We do this when we only do what is necessary to be born again but after that try our best to just coast our way into heaven. We do this when we try to live the Christian life without a lot of passion and drive. We do this when we try to get by on a shallow experience with God.
For example:
+Being faithful at church unless there is something we think is better to do or somewhere better to go.
+Being a good steward but never to the point it requires a great deal of sacrifice.
+Singing parts of the songs when we feel like it but most of the time being closed lipped.
+Reading a verse or two in the Bible at some point in the week if possible.
+Mouthing a quick prayer perhaps when we wake up or when we go to sleep.
+Loving God but in reality loving family and others more.
This was the sin of the congregation at Laodicea. They were not a passionate church and they were not a passionless church. They were just lukewarm. They were just shallow. They had rocks in their spiritual gardens.
However, in the end the Bible tells us that the LORD said that He would spew them out of his mouth. In other words He would not accept them. He would not accept their half-heartedness or their shallowness.
That is the danger of being half-hearted. It is not a way to enjoy success at work, in a marriage, with a family, in sports and most importantly in our relationship with the LORD.
Of course we all know that you can’t run red hot all the time. You will eventually burn out. But you can live a steady life that gets deeper and richer. You can live a life in which you are constantly growing season after season and finding yourself displaying and living out more and more of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
III. Don’t let weeds creep in
Anyone who has ever grown a garden, a yard or even just has plants in a pot knows something about weeds. I don’t know of anyone who ever went to a store and bought a packet of weeds to sow in their garden or yard.
And yet, they appear out of nowhere. You start to mow your yard and you see them cropping up here and there. You look at your garden and there they are growing next to your tomato plants, in your rows of beans and doing their best to over take your corn, your onion patch and your bell peppers.
Weeds are just a fact of life. They do their best to squeeze out anything else. They don’t really produce anything and for the most part they don’t even have pretty flowers. They are just a constant nuisance and they steal vital nutrients from your plants.
So, what do we do with them? You can put down some stuff that will lessen their chance to grow but for the most part you have to pull them, cut them away or kill them with chemicals. In other words, you have to take some time to get them out of the way.
The Devil does his best to put some weeds in our spiritual gardens. He doesn’t mind us learning a little, reading a little and being passionate a little as long as in the end we let other things come in a weed out our good spiritual crops.
He did this with King Solomon. King Solomon started off his walk with God like a rocket. By the time he is 30 years old he has finished building the Temple and the people of God are doing the best they have ever done in their history. People are constantly being able to worship, to pray and to help one another.
But then weeds started appearing. Solomon started doing what other kings did in those days. He started having all kinds of arranged marriages with neighboring countries that were more like international contracts. You marry a member of my family and I will marry a member of your family and that way we will forever be family and we will never fight or hurt one another.
In the natural it sounds good; even wise. But with each new wife came new beliefs, new false gods and the need for new false temples.
Each of these new wives was like weeds growing in his spiritual garden. They may have been beautiful and they may have brought some wealth and a measure of safety but in the end they cause the downfall of King Solomon. He allowed the weeds of wickedness to come in and destroy not only his life but the nation of Israel as well.
We have to be careful. Spiritual weeds will do their best to take over our lives. They may even appear to be things that would help us help us but in the end all they do is take away our time, our resources and our energies that we need for our spiritual walk.
Weeds can be things like:
+CNN, FOX and any other media that causes us to have fear when we need to grow in faith and trust.
+Sports/hobbies/entertainment/work that cause us to spend more time with them than we spend time in God’s Word or learning more about God.
Now, is it wrong to listen to the news? Of course it isn’t. But we have to be wise or the news can be a little weed that ends up destroying our faith, our trust and our hope.
The same is true with other things. John Wesley’s mom had some great advice when it comes to things that act like weeds:
“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.”
? Susanna Wesley
The best thing we can do with “weed” things in our spiritual life is what we need to do with weeds in our gardens; pull them out, root and all. We have to get rid of them and do our best to not let them get back in again.
IV. Finally, we are to enjoy the abundant fruit of righteousness that comes with good soil
This is the part I believe Jesus wanted to focus in on the most. The part where a person does their best to receive what the LORD wants for them. The part where their soil is able to receive the seeds of the Lord and enjoy a bountiful harvest.
When the LORD wants us to soften us up, get rid of the rocks and weeds it is so that we can have a more abundant life. It is so we can enjoy an abundant harvest. It is so we can enjoy the fullness of the Abundant Life.
As we read the end of our parable the result that comes with good soil is amazing. One small seed is able to produce a crop that is 30-fold, 60-fold and a 100-fold. And when you think about it, think about how many tomatoes you can get from a single plant, potatoes from a simple plant and beans from a single plant. It is amazing.
What is true in the natural is also true in the spiritual. The more you give yourself to the LORD the greater the riches are in your life.
It is always good to allow the Bible to share a story that really puts all of this into perspective. Such a story starts in Genesis chapter 13 with Abraham and Lot talking to one another.
Both men had been overly blessed by the LORD. Each man was wealthy with flocks of sheep and goats, herds of cattle and many workers. Life was good and things were going well.
But the land that they were using wasn’t able to handle all the sheep, goats, cattle and workers that each man possessed. There wasn’t enough land resources to take care of both of their needs. Someone needed to move so that they each one of them could grow a little more.
After talking together, Abraham allowed Lot to pick the land that he wanted to go towards and then he (Abraham) would go in the opposite direction. Lot looked over the land and picked what he thought was the best land possible. It looked green, healthy and prosperous. It looked like the perfect spot to continue to grow his fortune.
However, as you read from Genesis 13 to Genesis 19 you begin to understand that Lot made one bad decision after another. He allowed his spiritual garden to be filled with all kinds of bad things.
+The land he chooses was invaded and he and his family along with all his possessions were captured.
+Abraham rescued Lot and his household but instead of leaving the land, Lot goes back and resettles in one of the most evil towns in the Jordan Plain; the city of Sodom.
+In Genesis chapter 19 we have the story of how that city along with the other cities of the plain was destroyed by God with fire and brimstone because of their sinfulness (immorality, selfishness, perversions etc…)
+Lot is supernaturally rescued but again because of some poor choices ends up fathering his own grandchildren who will themselves be known for their sinfulness (Moab and Ammon).
All along the way, Lot never gets rid of some of his stubbornness, his shallowness or his unwillingness to get rid of certain “weeds” in his life. As a result he lives a life way below the life that God had intended for him.
Now, contrast Lot’s life with Abraham’s life. As you examine Abraham’s life you see a man who doesn’t always have it easy. He has to endure several famines, the loss of his wife, an extreme trial with his son and other mishaps and trials. Yet, as you get to the end of his life Abraham is continuing to keep his heart pliable, he is continuing to grow in his relationship with God and he is continually removing any barriers that would hinder his walk with God.
As a result Abraham grows stronger and stronger. He leaves behind a legacy of faithfulness, obedience and victory. His last days are his best days.
What does all of this have to say to us this morning?
Jesus’ parable teaches us and points us to live a life on the manner of that of an Abraham. We are called to live by faith, follow God’s directions and lean into God’s corrections. We are called to enjoy the fruit that comes from such a life of faith and obedience.
This morning let’s allow the Holy Spirit to challenge us to break up any hard soil in our lives, to dig deep and to get rid of any “weeds” that trip us up. If we do that then I believe that we will live the best life possible here on this earth. I believe if we will keep our spiritual gardens in order then we will be able to receive all that God has for us.
Will it always be easy?
No, if you have done any gardening you know it requires some hard work – plowing, picking up rocks, getting rid of weeds, harvesting and then preparing it all to put on the table.
The same is true in the spiritual realm. It is not easy to plow up the areas on our lives that lead to use being hard headed, stubborn or obstinate. It is not easy to get the rocks of shallowness out of our lives. It is not easy to constantly get rid of weeds that want to pop up and cause us to lose out on the good things God wants to give us through His Word, prayer, worship, service and fellowship.
But just as good as fresh fruit and fresh vegetables from the garden are so too is spiritual fruit and favor with God.
This morning, as we close - how is the dirt in your own spiritual garden?
You see the truth is in the dirt – hard, rocky, full of weeds or ready to produce a harvest?
Invitation/prayer/blessing or sharing the Lord’s Supper
