Please take a seat. Open your Bibles to Matthew
chapter 13, Matthew 13. Let's read from verse 18 to
start with. Therefore hear the parable of
the sower. When anyone hears the word of
the Kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked
one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart.
This is he who received seed by the wayside, but he who received
the seed on Stony places. This is he who hears the word
and immediately receives it with joy.
And he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while.
But when tribulation or persecution arises because of
the Word, immediately he stumbles.
Now he who receives seed among the thorns, as though he is the
word, and cares of this world, and the cares of this world, and
the sea fullness of riches, choked the Word, and he becomes
unfruitful. But he who receives seed on the
good ground is he who hears the Word and understands it, who
indeed bears fruit and produces some a hundredfold.
Psalm 60 and Psalm 30. Now Jesus in verse 18 to 23 is
explaining a story, a parable He had told back in verse 3 to the
disciples. Now I'm going to read, read what
he first said, verse 3. Behold, a soul went out to sow,
and as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds
came and devoured them. Some fell on Stony places where
they did not have much earth. They immediately sprung up
because they had no depth of earth and the sun was up.
They were scorched, and because they had no root they withered
away, and some fell among thorns.
Thorns sprang up and choked them.
Others fell on good ground and yielded A crop, some a
hundredfold, some 60, some 30. Then Jesus says this, he who has
ears to hear, let him hear. Why doesn't the message of
Christ get through? Sometimes you know you're
sharing the gospel to someone and it's kind of like you might
as well talk to to a brick wall. And then others, Why do you,
some reject the gospel, you tell them the gospel, they go, I'm
not interested. Why do some, we see that in
church, some hear the gospel, receive it, but then fall away.
You go like, they're here for a couple of weeks and then then
they, yeah, they pop in and they pop out and then next minute you
don't see them. They fall away after an initial
start. Then finally there are others,
and we have some here tonight, some of you who hear the word of
gospel, your word of God, the gospel.
You receive the gospel and your lives are transformed forever.
You, you, you change, you're another person.
The answer is, and Jesus has given us the answer.
It all comes down to the condition of the heart, Warren
Weirsby says. The heart of the problem is the
problem of the heart. It's the soil speaking here, the
soil is our heart, the soil receiving the seed.
It's interesting to all the four types of soil.
Every one of them heard the gospel.
Remember when we went through the Book of Revelation, everyone
at one time was hearing the word of God.
They're hearing he threw the 144,000 through the two
witnesses and then to top it off an Angel was sent to every
tribe, every tongue, every nation proclaiming the gospel,
yet still many rejected and blessing God.
Why did Jesus use parables? That's a good question.
You know when he first went out, he would just teach repent the
Kingdom of God isn't here. Why then did this this change
come what brought this about that it says and from that
moment on he taught not only but only in parables.
What what is a parable? First of all, a parable is an
everyday story. Jesus is talking about a man
just throwing seeds, a farmer as they would do.
But then Jesus has given us an eternal meaning to it.
So it's an everyday story, but there's an eternal meaning.
John MacArthur says it's an ingeniously simple word picture.
Jesus tells a story, but there's an Jesus is using that story to
illuminate a profound spiritual lesson.
There's something in it that he wants us to hear.
James Montgomery Boyce says a parable is a real life story
teaching one or few truths. Warren Weirsby said that a
parable is placing the known talking about a siren, a seed
beside the unknown, the Kingdom of God, Satan and our soul and
our hearts with the condition of our hearts, how we hear the word
of God, how we relate to God. So the context is this, if you
just, we won't do it because of time.
But in chapter 12 of Matthew, Jesus was walking along with his
disciples. It's on the Sabbath day and
they're going through a field where the grain has grown.
The disciples are hungry, so they grab the tops of grain,
they rub it between their hands and then they blow the husk
away. Then they eat the grain that's
leftover and they've gone. The religious leaders say, hey,
hey, you guys are harvesting. It's the Sabbath.
They're working on the Sabbath. I mean, that's how stupid it had
become. And then on the same day, Jesus
is in the synagogue, as it was his custom to go to church every
week in the Sabbath. He's in the synagogue, there's a
man with a withered hand, and Jesus heals the man with the
withered hand and, and, and, and again, he's attacked for healing
on the Sabbath of Jesus. Hey, any farmer, if a sheep
falls down a hole, you do you. Just leave it in there because
it's the Sabbath, no? And then in chapter 12, Jesus is
healing people and they said you're healing people because
you've got demons, you're in in cahoots with the devil.
Blasphemy. So this was the, this was the,
the, the place in Jesus ministry where the religious leaders just
pulled and picked and threw everything at Jesus.
And there was a turning point because from that point forward,
Jesus then only began to speak to the crowds in parables.
The purpose Why? Why did he do that?
To reveal the truth, not to hide the truth.
People say well in band, to speak in parables.
So you know, it was to hide what you're saying, to make it, you
know, only that those on the end.
No, no, no. It was to reveal the truth.
But it was to reveal the truth to the humble, the hungry, and
those who wanted to know what is this story about?
What are you? What are you?
What are you teaching us? But it was also to conceal the
truth from the other section of the crowd, from the religious
leaders, the proud, hard hearted and the resistant ones.
No matter what Jesus did, oh, you're working.
You shouldn't heal on this day. Oh, now and you're healing and
we see the healing. So they can't.
He's obviously doing it. You're doing it by the devil.
So no matter what Jesus did, there was a reason.
You remember in John chapter 6, Jesus has fed thousands of
people fishing bread and the people said, well we want to
make him the king. We can, we can have free feed
every night with Jesus. And then Jesus began to speak
about you need to eat my flesh and drink my blood.
And what did they say? Because they all left the big
crowd that came for the fun fair.
That's what church is about today.
Chuck Smith used to say, if you put on a show in church this
week, yeah, you fill the seats. But next week, to draw the same
crowd, you've got to put on a better show.
It's got to be a better circus. And so in John 6, when Jesus
turned down, he said you just have to bread fill your bellies.
And then he began speaking deeply about spiritual life
through eating His flesh, drinking his blood.
I said this is a hard saying, who can understand it?
There's your answer. You see, for some, as Jesus was
speaking about the sorrow and the sea, and he took with the
birds of the air, they grabbed hold of what he was saying.
How, how things can. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the weeds grow and you can get caught up in busy life and
or you start and, you know, I knew a bloke, he was really
religious for a moment and then he just disappeared.
He was just like up and then off.
For others, the parable bought deeper darkness.
So in the parable of the sower on the sea versus 3 to 9, the
seed, we're aware Jesus tells us in 18 to 23 seed is the word of
God. It's interesting.
So that means every time you sit under the word of God, God is
sowing the seed of his word somewhere.
The place where he's sowing it, if you're hearing it and we're
all hearing it, is the type of soil that's going to, it's going
to lodge and grow so people can come to church and go, Gee, that
was a great message. Just touch me.
You know, it's really impacting me.
I was pretty bored, you know? Yeah.
You know, and we have this sort of this, this, this way about
us. So the seed is the word of God,
the soil. What is that?
Four types means only one quarter of people actually do
something about hearing the word of God.
So based on these stats, we bring out the statistician on
Sunday, just 1/4 of the church gets it.
Just 1/4 of the people are are locking in the soil is the
condition of the human heart. Jesus says there's four
responses basically to each time the word of God is sown. 4
responses. He says there are four kinds of
hearts. The first heart hears the word
of God is the hard heart. Verse 19.
It lobs and the seed bounces. Now when we go to Nazareth in
Israel, we go to a village that's set up like the days of
Jesus and you walk through the village and we see it and they
show you the, the crops. And because of the way the
rockiness of, of Israel, it's just rocks everywhere and how
they would sew their plots. And there was no fences like we
have farms and like we have here.
And so you would have your plot and you would till the soil and
on either side of the soil. And you have to have somewhere
where you could walk because people also your, your farmland.
Well, that's where I go to the shop.
That's where I sell my donkey. That's where I go to get hay.
So you had to have paths through the areas where you were
farming. And so they were the, the paths
in and out of your, your, your, your little farm lot.
And we saw those in Israel and on the inside of that.
So the farmers on the path and he's showing.
Let's see. And some of the seed, no matter
how good a sorry is, some of the seed blows by the wind.
It lands on the on the footpath. And that that soil, that rocky
part in Israel, it's like concrete.
So it lands there as soon as it lands there.
It's like Sunday mornings here after church and the kids have
had biscuits out in the grass. It's funny how the seagulls come
to church, but they come after the service because they're
coming from the crumbs and the birds snatch the seed because
it's just sitting there not doing anything.
It's the devil stealing the word.
So you have it, you hear it, next minute something comes up
and it's just forgotten all about it.
The cause of people who had that hard hardness is sin hardens
their heart because sin just keeps on building calluses over
and over on our hearts to how we hear the word of God.
So if you came to church and you come to church and you're
regular, but if you're sinning through the week, what happens
each time you hear it? The the seed just bounces off
because you might be living in adultery, you might be doing
other things, you're being a thief or whatever.
You're just doing something immoral wrong against the word
of God, but you're going to church.
The seed ain't going to go anywhere.
It's just going to bounce off your heart.
In Romans chapter 1, Paul tells us that people who are hard
hearted, they suppress the truth.
They know, I know I should do that.
I'll get around it, but I don't want to.
And so eventually they reject God and they spiral into worse
sin. And so the application of the
first one is, beware of resisting the Word.
Each time you hear it, greater judgement comes to you.
Each time you hear the Word, you don't do nothing about it.
Your heart hardens like Pharaoh and greater judgement comes to
you. Sin dulls our hearing until the
heart is so calloused it doesn't receive anything.
Then there's the the shallow heart, rocky soul verses 20 to
21 there's rocks there parts where the farmer, no matter what
you know it it, it, it has soil on the top.
But Israel has limestone rocks everywhere.
So it might look good in your farm lot, but underneath there's
only maybe a six inches of soil and underneath a solid capstone
or limestone. So the seed shoots up really
quickly because I've got nowhere to go.
Oh, beautiful. It looks good.
There's a quick response, but there's no depth, no root.
It springs up and joy. That's the person now and we've
all seen them. They're having an emotional
experience in church. A man for the first week or so
or two weeks, they are the loudest.
Oh man, I bought a Bible. I'm praise the Lord and they're
on and they're firing. But then they lose the job.
They have an illness and under the heat of trials they wither.
It might be persecution. Oh, here you're going to church,
man, you're crazy. Keep doing that, you'll lose
your job. Oh, didn't know that.
Well, hardship comes, something happens.
They just financially have a struggle at that time or they're
disappointed. I mean, praying about this and
this and it didn't come through how they thought it would.
I mean, praying for two weeks just got saved.
I thought God would answer everything.
So the application of that one is a faith of emotions without
roots will not last. See it all too often a burst.
It's like a skyrocket big * but it just goes.
You see, we need depth in Christ.
We need depth in Christ. And then the third one is the
strangled heart. I think that's probably the most
common in Western churches. I think probably the most common
in Australian churches today. Verse 22.
So they hear the word, it grows, but what happens is their lives
get busy and the cares of the world.
Well, I know I should be in church, but I've just got myself
into a new club or I've got involved in this, or I've signed
up for that or, or we're moving to this location.
I know there's no church there, but oh man, this is just where
I've wanted to live all the time.
Or I never forget John, Pastor John Miller saying to a couple
who were leaving a church where he was at the time and they're
moving and he said, so you found a church there.
Oh, no, we don't know if there's any churches there at all.
So you're leaving. We're here where you serve the
Lord. Your children are in fellowship,
you're growing in the Lord and you're going now he says, I
don't think I can't see, I don't see God very much in that.
And so it might be riches. Well, I, I've started my, my
business and I, I don't have time.
You know, I'm, I'm trying to make a living.
We always come up with a good reason.
So there's distractions. The danger is a gradual
strangling. They just fade off.
You see them. Haven't seen your church for a
while. Yeah.
You know, got a few things on. Worldly worries, wealth,
pleasures suffocate spiritual life.
Remember the rich young ruler, He said, I want to follow you,
Jesus. Oh, man, can I be one of your
follows, Jesus? Absolutely.
Have you done this? This.
Oh, I do all that sort of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
Faithfully. He says, can't sell, you have
give it to the poor. Oh, hang on a minute.
And he walked away, or there's the guy who's the farmer who
said, man, I am doing well, man, I'm doing so good.
Said God didn't think he was. And at that night, because God
called the farmer a fool, that night, the Lord came from him
because he was thinking about building bigger barns.
He's just doing so well. And that night was the time of
his death. Luke 12.
So for you and I, we've got to be very careful.
What's the application of the strangled heart, the choked
heart we need to guard against, And I say this so much, being
too busy, too entangled with this world.
Paul says a soldier when he goes to battle, you can't be
entangled with the affairs of this world.
And we get too entangled. We actually can't grow in Christ
because we're tied up with everything else.
And then there's the fourth one, the last one, the good soil,
verse 23. That's an open heart.
What does the open heart do? And remember each each.
So each of these three so far have heard the word.
They've received the seed. The seed has landed on them.
They've heard it. But this time, as you sit there
and I still remember hearing the word of God that first Sunday
morning, we were saved on a Tuesday, went to church on a
Sunday, and I sat there and I was spellbound.
I could have sat under AI. They passed the Tom Whitaker
could have preached for 10 hours.
I would have loved it. And I thought, where has this
been in my life? And so you receive the word, you
understand it. Isn't it amazing when you become
born again? You tried to read the Bible
before and then you open it up and you pray and you're born
again and you're in you go. I understand this is very
simple. The Bible is very simple.
And it begins to bear fruit in your life.
Change begins to occur. You know, fruit.
We got a lemon tree. Finally.
It's we got a really good lemon tree and it's bearing fruit and
I never hear it working. I never hear it straining or
struggling. Flowers are blooming on it now
and soon lemons will come and it just happens.
And you know how I can tell that it's a lemon tree?
Because I can see the fruit on it.
You know how I can tell if someone's a Christian?
I can see the fruit, fruit. And so it receives and
understands it bears fruit, some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold.
And you know, you can tell an apple tree.
How do you tell a tree if it's an apple tree?
It's got apples on it. And so our lives, we people can
see you're, you're a Christian, aren't you?
I can tell. And they're not church people.
The only evidence of a genuine converted life is fruit.
The amount varies, but the presence of fruit is certain.
You're going to have a lemon tree and has 1 lemon on it.
You can tell it's a lemon tree even with just one lemon.
And so the application of this 4th 1 is this.
Examine your life. Paul tells us to do that.
Am I bearing fruit? That shows Christ's life growing
out of me. We can gauge what kind of tree
we are for the fruit that's naturally oozing out of us now,
the gardener, the soil. Soil cannot change itself, but
the gardener can. In Ezekiel 3626, God makes this
promise. He says, If you seek me with all
your heart, I will give you a new heart.
I will replace the stone of your heart with flesh.
You see, with man it's impossible to do that but with
God. Luke 1827 All things are
possible. God helps us get saved.
And so the fruitfulness depends on the heart receiving the word.
He who has ears to hear, they all heard, let him hear.
There's two types of hearers, the wise man and the foolish
man. Both heard the foolish man.
He heard, and he just went on and did his life without
thinking about God. He built his life, his whole
life on a foundation that when the storm came, when the trouble
came, his house collapsed. How often do we see that?
You build it on academia, you build it on finances, you build
it on false hopes and dreams. Something comes up and then it's
all gone. But the wise man, he dug deep.
In other words, he buried his life and his heart upon the
foundation of the rock which is Christ.
When the storm came, same storm, both people, wise and the
foolish, the wise man's house stood.
Your faith cannot be shaken, can't be stolen, can't
disappear. So Jesus, as we wrap this up
tonight, spoken parables not to confuse, but to call sentence to
salvation. It's people heard things and
they said I need to know more about this.
I had the first I want to ask you, what soil are you today?
As you sit here, the seed is going out.
Is it bouncing off your thoughts with something else?
Is it. Wow, Yeah, man, I remember I was
really on fire for the Lord two or three years ago.
Or has the seed being choked by the things that you, you you'd
like to be more involved with the Lord, but you just don't
have the time? Is it hard?
Is it shallow? Is it strangled?
Is it or is it open and fruitful?
You're one of these. Only Christ in giving you heart.
Let God plough over your heart. You know how God ploughs over
your heart? Because sometimes my heart gets
hardened. Sometimes the things of the
world try and entangle me. Sometimes my mind is, Oh yeah,
we need to, and I'm going, hang on a minute.
When I read the Word of God, the word of God ploughs over my
heart. It digs it up.
Keith, what are you doing? Where are you?
Nice of you to pray today. You didn't pray yesterday.
You haven't read the Word today. What?
What's what's going on? And God speaks to you.
Get the seed planted deep in you.
Be serious about the study of the Word of God.
There's no such thing as a verse here and a verse there and a bit
here and a bit there. That's not reading the Bible.
Read verse one and then verse 2, verse 3 and verse 4.
When you get when you can't read anyone, stop and pick it up the
next day from the verse that you ended up write down.
I don't know what that means. Keith, check out that word.
What does that mean there? Study.
Allow the seed to go into you. Meditate on it like Jesus, like
David did overnight. Teach me, teach me.
Each week we pray Hello, and each week we pray.
Part of our prayer is this. Lord, help me to understand your
word. Speak to my heart.
Help me to know your word that I may share.
Let it bear fruit. How by living out.
So as you read the word of God saying, yeah, though I found
that interesting and it tells you to do something tells you
about praying or or or forgiving someone or or just being humble.
Then apply that you hear the word, become a wise man, apply
it, live it out. Be the person that God wants to
change you into.