JESUS CULTIVATES THE SOIL OF OUR HEARTS

Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65:(1-8)9-13; Romans 8:12-17; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

There’s nothing much lower than soil. People put paths and roads, freeways and highway over the soil. The thorns and the thistles grow up above the soil. If you look around you’ll see rocks lying on top of the soil. And all soil is not the same, some are sandy, some are full of stones, some has too much clay in it. And again, good soil isn’t found everywhere. Agriculture is generally the work of cultivating good soil, so that the seed sown by the sower will yield a fruitful harvest: trees and bushes need to be removed, stumps might need to be removed out of the ground, stones need to be picked from the field sometimes by hand and the soil needs to be tilled and fertilized and irrigated.

When Jesus tells the parable of the Sower sowing his seed; Jesus tells it to people who have an idea of how much effort goes into producing good soil. He also told it originally to people living in a arid environment where many areas of the country where not suitable for growing any kind of crop. I cannot see what your heart looks like; I don’t know whether it is hard path, or rocky ground, or a shallow soil or a thistle patch or good soil. What I have to do is simply sowing the seed of the Good News. Preaching Christ Jesus and Him crucified, to everyone without favouritism, because I don’t know where it will sprout and grow in faith. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make it grow. It is the work of the preacher [my duty] to faithfully sow the seed with reading, preaching, and teaching God’s Word in its truth and purity.

Anyone involved in farming will tell you that the one who cultivates the field needs to be active in keeping it in good shape for good harvesting. If the field is left to its own it will be full of trees and brush, full of weeds and thistles and scrub. When we think of our heart as being like the field left to its own, we need to remember that we can’t hand pick the stones out of our own heart, we can’t remove the paths laid down by the World with our bear hands, we can’t cut down and till up the thistles by ourselves. In Ezekiel 11 God promises that He “will remove the heart of stone from [your] flesh and give [you] a heart of flesh, that [you] may walk in [His] statutes and keep [His] rules and obey them. And [such people] shall be [His] people,” God says, “and I will be their God.” What a good news for us! God makes the heart of a person ready for His Son, for the Good News of His Son, “But [God also warns us] as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord GOD.” Brothers! Don’t resist the work of God as He works on the field of your heart!

In Deuteronomy 30:6 we also find this promise, “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” In our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 55 we hear the promise of God that the word that goes out, that is the seed that is sown, “shall not return to [God] empty, but it shall accomplish that which [the LORD] purpose,” God says, “and [it] shall succeed in the thing for which [He] sent it.” The Holy Spirit is active in making this happen and so is Christ Jesus.

To see how Christ is active in this let’s look at another parable told by Jesus, “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” Who is the vinedresser here? It is Jesus. God is very interested in your heart. When He comes to it, your heart is in desperate need of cultivation, like a land seemingly unsuitable for agriculture. Jesus describes that heart saying, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” These are stones and thistles, old tree stumps deeply rooted, they are the hard paths of the World and they need to be removed by the Law of God, and handpicked out of your heart by the gracious and merciful nail pierced hands of your Saviour Jesus. As your faith grows to its maturity, it is Jesus who works through the Holy Spirit to cultivate and to create the conditions necessary for it to bring forth the good fruits that the Father desires to see in you. That is; “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

I started out saying that there was nothing much lower than soil. And that’s true, but the good news is that God loves to lift up the broken hearted, the lowly. He brings down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. Jesus also teaches in Matthew 23 that, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” We also hear in James 4 that, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”And again James says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” Which is to say don’t be so proud, you need to recognize that it is God who does the exalting. If you exalt yourself; if you lift yourself up by your own reasons; if you go about prideful picking the stones and thistles from your own heart; you will be doomed to fail. Your success will not be eternal, it will not be everlasting; such a harvest grown from such a field will not last, it will spoil in the tests and trials of the World. Don’t fight sin by yourself. The field of your heart is not a self help farm, it is a humble soil that needs to be cultivated and implanted with faith in Jesus Christ.

The other bit of Good News is that in Christ Jesus we know that God doesn’t mind getting his hands down in the dirt, in the mud, in the soil of our hearts. He is willing to touch death, to get dirty, to spread manure, to pick the rocks out by hand, to be pricked by the thorns of your sin in order to create in you a clean heart, a fertile soil for the seed of His Holy Word and Sacraments. To God be the glory as He works in your field, as He picks the stones of your sin, as He forgives you all your sins, as He implants faith in you, as He makes that faith grow through His spoken and preached Word, and through His Holy Waters of Baptism, and consecrated bread and wine; as he brings forth the fruits of faith that He desires, in Him and in His Son Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.