Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 16 November 2014 by Captain Michael Ramsay
There are many popular TV shows these days. TV is entertainment for the
masses and so people involved in TV reach a lot of people. Actors and movie
stars get a lot more exposure than professors writing for an academic journal
or lawyers practicing law. A good movie producer takes the topic and makes it
interesting and accessible to the public at large. The more people it is
interesting for, the more popular the show, the more know the producer and his
work.
The producer in this regard is actually very similar to Jesus in the
first century. Jesus was always obviously very smart. He is -after all- the Son
of God. Even as a child he is learned enough to discourse with the priests in
the temple, later he is a teacher with his own students or disciples. He holds
his own in many debates and conflicts with the Sadducees, Pharisees, and
Priests – the legal, intellectual, and religious leaders of his day. But here
is the thing: Jesus for his purpose of teaching and bringing salvation to the
world doesn’t choose to be a lawyer, he doesn’t choose to be a professor, he
doesn’t choose to be a priest. Jesus chooses to reach the masses on their level
instead.
Now Jesus is very popular
and –just like today’s TV shows – he has many regular followers (V. 4). There
are many people who actually follow Jesus around from town to town as he
travels. They are like the regular viewers of THE JESUS SHOW with such
sensational acts as turning water into wine, feeding the 4 or 5 thousand,
healing the lame and casting demons into pigs and much, much more…tune in next
week! And Jesus has many regular followers who do follow him from town to town.
And a good number of them, like it says in Verse 2 and 3, were women who were
so devoted that they even provided for him out of their own resources.
Now, Jesus consciously chooses not to speak exclusively in the
intellectual language of his time and he chose not to appeal directly only
to the elite of society. He chooses instead to speak in a language that will
attract common people, the masses. His message, particularly in Luke’s account
is for the poor, the needy, the oppressed and that was most people then.
Now just like I don’t always understand what is going on in some TV
shows today, people didn’t always get what Jesus was saying and especially many
of the intellectuals; they did not even want to understand. If you look at
Verse 10, Jesus is quoting Isaiah (Isaiah –6:9-10) and it says there that ‘to
you - his disciples, the regular viewers, if you like, of THE JESUS SHOW. “To
you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others
I speak in parables, so that looking they may not perceive, and listening they
may not understand.” Now this verse quoted from Isaiah is one of the signs
pointing to Jesus as the Christ, and not everyone understands.
Do we understand? If you haven’t got your Bible open yet, you may wish
to turn to Luke 8 now. We are going to see if we can figure out the Parable
of the Sower. What is the message Jesus tells great crowds that follow him
from town after town. Let’s see if we can figure it out.
First, do you remember taking quizzes in school? I remember quizzes from
the math textbook. You know what the good thing about quizzes from math
textbooks was? The answers were always in the back. So I could always just flip
to the back and copy or check the answers.
Now I don’t really if we were supposed to do that or not but as we go
through this parable today, we’re going to do the same thing: the answers to
this parable are in Verses 11-15 and in Verse 11, if you’ll look with me, it
tells us what the seed in the story is: the seed is the Word of God. So let’s
take that information back to the parable. Verse 5: “A sower went out to sow
his seed [the Word of God]; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was
trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up.”
Someone is sowing, planting, teaching the Word
of God and as he does, some seed falls on the path and is trampled or the birds
eat it. This is the picture Jesus is painting -
and
most people at this time in Palestine, since Israel is an agricultural society,
instantly understand this. In
first century Palestine, instead of a fence between each field,
there is a narrow well-beaten path, like the one mentioned in the parable;
these parts are as hard as pavement;
they are used to mark property lines to sections of land. They are also paths
for travel.
The image here is
of a person walking along with his bag of seeds and tossing them into his field
and some of these seeds inevitably fall onto the trodden path where nothing can
grow because it is so hard. It is like today if I were trying to throw seeds
beside the highway. The ones that land on the road just will not grow.
Jesus is letting
us know that even as we are faithful in sowing the seed, sharing the gospel,
there are some with whom it just won’t take. We need to sow but even so there
are people who just won’t - for whatever reason - let the seed of the Word of
God grow. I think we all have friends and/or family for whom this may be
tragically true: people we pray for daily. People we tell about Jesus on a
regular basis but they harden their hearts like the path in the parable of the
sower. This is what Jesus is speaking about here. Even as we are faithful, some
will not believe.
Even still we must
have faith and faithfulness. As we are faithful planters who share the word of
God, there is the next ground upon which the seed falls. Verse 6 says that some
of this seed falls on the rocks: it starts out well but it withers and dies.
Verse 7 says that some of this seed that is faithfully sown will fall among
thorns and these thorns choke it out.
Now I was in
prison for a couple of years working with The Salvation Army in Winnipeg. I was
there regularly and had many opportunities to get to know the guys and preached
a bit there over the years. Sadly many of these friends were the soil of the
rock and soil of the weeds. So often you see people’s lives turning around as
they attend prison church services three, four, and, if possible, five times a
week. So often they start to read the Word and ponder things of the Lord. So
often the Lord gets a hold of their lives and starts to transform them. So
often the Word of God starts to GROW! And then so often (Verse 12) the devil
comes along… But it doesn’t need to be this way. The regular followers of the
JESUS SHOW know that the Word of God, the gospel, is good news. It is the power
to change and because of that we must keep sowing the seeds. We keep sharing
the good news.
There are those
who receive will this Gospel with joy - Verse 13. Like my friends who do do
really well in prison but they don’t have the foundation, the background, the
roots; so when they leave jail they can’t find a town, a church, a Christian, a
single person for support. The seed doesn’t take root in their soil. The Word
doesn’t take root in their soul. It doesn’t grow. They believe only for a time
and then – they fall away. But it doesn’t need to be this way. The regular
followers of the JESUS SHOW know that the gospel is good news. It is the power
to change. So we keep sowing the seeds, we keep sharing the gospel.
And then there are they who are like the plants choked
by the weeds. These are friends of ours, as we are faithful in sharing the Word
of God with them, who seem to have enthusiasm. They seem to have that same
passion for the Word of God as we do. They seem to have that same passion for
Christ but then…it changes.
I think of a
friend of mine from jail. He is a great musician. He plays religiously in the
church band at the prison. On the outside he is a professional musician. Upon
release, he immediately gets involved in a band again. He does really well too
and I don’t see or hear from him for over a year, but then just before I am
transferred to another town, I see him again – back in prison. Verse 14: “as
for those [seeds] that fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but
as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares, and riches and
pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.”
The rocky and
thorny soil is very common in Palestine in Jesus’ day and rocky and thorny
temptations are very common in Canada in our day: cares riches and pleasures
choke a out lot of people here and now. Is there anything choking the Word of
God out of our life? Luke spends a lot of time in his Gospel addressing the
difficulties of wealth. Luke 18:24: “How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the Kingdom of God!” and we all in Canada, no matter how much we think
we lack, are among the wealthiest people ever to live on the planet. Is wealth
trying to choke us out of the Kingdom?
Jesus speaks about
the pursuit of pleasure and he speaks of worry. Is there something choking the
Word of God from our life? Is there something that we spend more energy on than
reading the Word? Is there something we spend more time doing than praying? Are
there weeds chocking our growth in Christ? It doesn’t need to be this way. The
gospel is good news. It is itself, as it says in Romans 1:17-18, the power to
transform us.
And transform us
it does when it takes root. When we resist the devil, he will flee us. The one
who perseveres receives the crown of life, which the Lord has promised (James
1:12). We do not need to be as hard as the beaten path and we certainly should
never be discouraged from sowing the seed’s of God’s Word because - look at
Verse 8 - here is good news! “Some
[seed] fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold."
Verse 15: the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the Word, hold
it in a their heart and bear fruit with patient endurance. And how can they
not? Jesus continues, Verses 16-18: "No one after lighting a lamp hides it
under a jar, or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lamp stand, so that those
who enter may see the light.
For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, Jesus says.
As we are faithful
in sowing the seed of God’s Word, it will produce fruit. All of us who are in
the Kingdom today are there because the Lord’s seed has grown in our soil, it
has grown in our soul. And as it grows more and more we can’t help but sow more
seeds of the Word of God: It is evidence of our Salvation: no one hides a lamp
under a lamp stand.
It is the same
with our loved ones. We should not be discouraged as we are faithfully sowing
seeds of the gospel of God’s Word; we never know what kind of soil it is
landing on and when it hits good soil, praise be to God! When it hits good soil its yield will be thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And we have all seen that fruit as
people we have prayed for years later come to or returned to the Lord.
So even though we
can’t change the soil we shouldn’t be discouraged when the seed doesn’t seem to
grow. We need to keep planting God’s Word. I don’t know how everyone in your
family is doing with God; I don’t know how all of your friends are doing with
God; I don’t know what seeds you’ve planted or what seeds have been planted in
you but I do know that Jesus loves you and he has called you and the one who
calls you is faithful. If you have a loved one in whom a seed has been planted
– a friend, a family member, someone, if that seed is planted, water it with
prayer.
Let us pray.
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