Amos 3 - Repent

Hey Journey, welcome to church this morning, I pray that last week's message about the power of the pivot was as impactful for you as it was for me as we travel along together into this pivotal moment at Journey. As Pastor Carlyle said last week it is time for us, as a church, to grow up and become who God is calling us to be. It is time for us as individual Jesus followers to grow up spiritually and be spiritual contributors and not spiritual consumers. And that has led us this year to Rooted, our new discipleship course that we believe will change the trajectory of our church through the power of the Holy Spirit as we become united in biblical teaching and study, building relationships with one another in groups, and celebrating all that God is doing and will do in our lives. We are all getting rooted together. Please turn your bibles to Luke 8. We will get there shortly.

But before we get there we need to understand something I have been thinking about. Something that I believe God has for you this morning. I am not a Pedologist (sturdier of soil), nor am I a Botanist but I do know one thing about plants and roots. It’s this: “You have to have the right soil to grow roots.” My wife Karlee has undertaken the task of trying to grow food at our house, in the backyard and interestingly enough on my kitchen counter. Which basically means she keeps the seeds of avocados, fruits, veggies and the like and plants then in big and small pots, her garden bed in the backyard and even the small tree she says one day will bear fruit. She started this about a year ago. I went to Costco, got organic soil, whatever that means, and then a little earlier this year she said to me, “hey we need to get soil for the garden bed and the pots. I thought to myself…didn’t we just get that last year? She told me it had dried out, but I know we have a hose, and I can undry it out in about 2 minutes. But she then told me that wouldn’t work, and there were gnats all in the soil and it isn’t good and loss of nutrients and it wouldn't grow right. I took her at her word, as I have no ability to argue the difference and I went and got new soil and here is a picture of our backyard today. It’s about having the right soil, and the right soil will allow seeds to take root and hopefully in a few weeks I can enjoy a small cucumber. It is proper soil, in the right environment that allows things to grow. It is what is on the inside. So lets put this into a spiritual context, you can never get properly rooted if you are not the right soil.

So in Luke 8 it starts out by saying, “After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him” In the ministry of Jesus he would go town to towns all around Galilee and a few surrounding regions with “the 12” as they are known here, but there were the twelve disciples. Imagine with me for a moment that you are a Jewish man or woman in the first century under the rule Rome and they are invading your home land and you have been told by God that he will send a deliverer to rescue Israel from the opposing Tyranny and oppression. Rumor has it that this Jesus who is going around teaching things never before heard is that man. You’d be interested. He is teaching not about politics, but proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. Meaning that God has not forgotten them, but will soon send the messiah. Or perhaps you have heard that Jesus was healing all the sick and hurting and you want to be healed also. There is a buzz in the air that Jesus is coming, an anticipation that he could be the one to free you, heal you and do more for you as he is God’s messiah.

The next couple of verses describe the women in Jesus' ministry who were following him also, and I wish we had time to get into how important women were in the ministry of Jesus but we don’t have time today. Maybe another sermon. Verse 4 says, “While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable” This town is in anticipation that a large crowd begins to form hoping to get from him what they want and he begins to speak a parable, you may have heard that a parable is A Earthly Story with a Heavenly Meaning. That is true, but you may also know that some of Jesus' parables fall into two categories one of which would be extended similes. You remember smilies are “like '' as opposed to metaphors. The kingdom of God is like…treasure hidden in a field. Extended Simile. But when you come to this passage it's more of an allegory. The problem that we run into when we look at it as an allegory is that people want to assign meaning to every single part of the story and even add confusion, when in fact, not everything has a specific meaning. In this story, the seed, sower and the different soils mean something. So here is a rule of thumb when it comes to allegorical passages in the bible, “The Main Things are the Plain Things and the Plain Things are the Main Things.

So you are sitting there in the crowd waiting for Jesus to speak and he begins to tell a story about a farmer, remember this was an agricultural community so everyone would understand what he's saying when he says, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. 6 Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” When he said this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” And that's it. Jesus leaves the people and heads to the next town. With the last phrase, “whoever has ears let them hear.”

If you are in the crowd and you have all the expectation on Jesus, you want to be healed and he tells you a story about a farmer and some seed and soils and just leaves, picks up shop and goes on you. Your expectations of what Jesus is supposed to be, or should do are probably diminished. You'd go back home and eat dinner with your family and ask yourself “what in the world was with that guy.” Here is a hard truth to understand when it comes to this parable and we will break it down in a few minutes, “Many will be evangelized, only some will grow roots” very few will be saved. That should be a fire alarm in your heart and soul and we should ask ourselves, how we hear the bible when it is taught is crucial.

If you have ever read passages in the bible of Jesus teaching and are confused, don’t beat yourself up at all. The disciples were exactly like me and you. It says this in verse 9 “His disciples asked him what this parable meant.” Thank God for unschooled ordinary men that he called to be his disciples.

But then Jesus begins to explain something that is often overlooked and missed when we read the bible. In fact church this is something that we should all wrestle with, if you ever wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep you should begin to ponder the words of Jesus because it does determine your ability to be rooted in Christ. He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, “‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’

What Jesus is doing here is he is using his parables as a filtration system to distinguish the superficial spiritual consumer and the sincere spiritual contributor. Those who have ears let them hear, A lot of people are not looking for Jesus to save them, they are looking for Jesus to do what they want him to do. The question isn’t what am I going to get from Jesus but rather the statement is All I want is Jesus and nothing else. That's the difference. Jesus quotes Isaiah 6, and in Isaiah's time there were a group of people who were more interested in their own ideas, partially about religion and God. And God says if you continue to turn your mind and ears off to me, then I am going to speak to you people in such a way that not everyone will understand. He says the same thing in Romans 1 people gave up worshiping God and worship created things and it says God gave people over to their depraved mind. In essence if that's what you want that's what you're going to get. This is something that I want us to wrap our minds around. Jesus isn't making it easier for people to believe, in fact he is making it harder, because the genuine hearers will be fully rooted disciples. Following Jesus isn't easy, it's incredibly difficult but worth it.

When I was in high school our football team  had a  game with a terrible performance. Now as a whole, we were a terrible team, but we really lowered the bar in energy and effort. Football is a team sport, you need at least 11 people to play and if 1 person plays well and gives their all  but 10 others don't, it doesn't matter, you need all 11 to give everything they have for 60 minutes. So we stunk and the next day our Coach, Coach Johnson, which I ran into him the other day at Walmart in surprise after 15 years,  told us to pad up but everyone on the team, some 50 people or so, met him at the track. We are standing there and he says to start running, we asked for how long…until I say stop…or you have the option to stop whenever you want and you'll be done with practice for the day and you can hangout in the shade next to the fence. So we started running. Me, my twin brother Christian and our friend Kory all ran together. Some guys on the team ran a lap and quit, easy for them to have a rest day. But we kept running, and running and running, and over time more and more people quit especially as Coach Johnson started timed laps.

After 3ish miles…by far the longest run i've ever taken, he says alright stop. Everyone left about 30 of us, came to the grass and started doing push ups, and we asked, how many, until I say stop, or until you are done. So Christian, Kory and I started doing pushups. We were not allowed to rest more than 5-10 seconds unless the coach told us to go. 15-20 minutes later we are still going.  And he says “stop” we had maybe 20 guys left, and then he says “now get into plank position” and you know what we asked, “for how long” and he said, “until I say stop, or until you quit.” And if you don't know what a plank is (show them) it's when you get into this position and in about 15 seconds your entire body begins to shake like it's a 1997 Astro Van going down the 101 at 65 miles an hour. We just finished 3 miles of running, 20 minutes of pushups and the three of us at least we're not going to quit even though we wanted to. 8.5 minutes later coach tells us to stop. He said, football is about giving everything you have for the team, putting all of yourself out there not for you, but for each other, now there are 11 guys left after all of this. We can play and we can win with these 11 guys. He was showing us what it takes. Jesus is doing the same thing in this parable he is saying it is difficult, it isn't easy there will be times when people dont believe or you want to bow out, but he is looking for the rooted, sincere, spiritual contributor to produce a harvest.

Here is something I wrote down in my notes: “You don't get to follow Jesus from a safe distance.” Honestly, that's why some of you, as we will see in a moment, are currently not good soil. That's why some of you haven't grown in your faith, you haven't moved on from Milk to Meat because you are trying to follow Jesus from a safe distance. That's not how it works.

How will those who are sincere spiritual contributors stand out in the sea of superficial spiritual consumers? Jesus makes it clear in this parable, it's those who grow roots and have fruit. Jesus explains this parable. “This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God.” The seed is the word of God, the seed is the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that God sent his son to this earth to be the sacrifice for the atonement of your sins and as you believe, follow and persevere in this life you are justified, sanctified and on the other side of heaven you are glorified in eternity with him. The seed that is thrown out is the truth of God being received by people who are and live in a broken and sinful world. The seed is the Word of God nothing more and nothing less. And how you respond to it is what's at stake. It is the word of God that takes root in our life and by the power of the holy spirit you are transformed and benign to produce a harvest of righteousness.

Jesus talks about 1 seed and 4 different types of soil. But do you notice who he does not explain at all? The shower. The person sowing the seed is not mentioned at all which helps us understand that the sower isn't the main character of this passage. So many people want to make the preacher God's word the big deal and God's word a secondary afterthought. But the sower doesn't matter, it is God word preached to people and how people respond to it that matters. The first type of soil Jesus says is The Path - Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. There will be people who have hard hearts towards the word of God and towards Jesus. These are people who will say, ‘You can’t really expect me to believe that, do you?” That's just a fairytale story told by people to convince people to be good and not bad. You may know people like this and we should always tell them about Jesus, but for whatever reason here Jesus says the devil or sin, makes their hearts hard and their ears deaf. They may never believe.

The Second Soil is the Rocky Soil: Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. This is the type of people where their seems to be a moment of response to the Gospel and excitement even, they professed Jesus, prayed a sinners prayer,  students went to camp and had a life changing experience, maybe even people who have been baptized, but then they stopped showing up. It may have been a few months and you run into them at the store or the gym and they say something like “of yeah its just been a little while” what mostly happens is that what they thought about Jesus, or how their life would have changed didn't go the way they expected, there was joy! But not root.

The Third Soil is the Thorn Soil: The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. This type of root can go deep but doesn't go in. Jesus is saying this type of soil, really there are people who start off strong, they do grow roots, but there is this underlying issue that eventually becomes the main growth, namely, people stopped growing spiritually and started going after worldly things or allowed the worries of life to overtake their spirituality. In doing so their spiritual life gets cocked out. The worries, we;ve all seen it, and i don't want to down play it but the worries of life make us question Gods sovereignty and if you missed it I talked about that a few weeks ago with Even if faith.

But for a moment if you will let me be a little transparent, maybe you are like myself. I love going to the gym. My kids love it, Karlee loves it and for about 3-6 months I can run after it hard and I finally start seeing results…but one day I'm just tired and think to myself…I can skip today, or instead of the salad I think, well this meal won't hurt, plus im looking good you know…but then those days build up, and over time i’m back to where I started if not worse. The same can be said for those in the thorn path. You start off good and you begin to make excuses not to continue and start running after the riches and pleasures of life. Well I can't miss vacation, I cant make a commitment to serve because I have so many other things, my kids can't miss their travel team, lets make memories with our kids they will remember and only go to church every once in a while and never be in a group lets just run after that instead. You are growing weeds in your soul, that's what Jesus would say. I have 4 kids. I want every memory for them, but what's the point of them experiencing the world if they lose their soul in the process? If you don't continually grow as the parent, they will not see Jesus as a priority but rather as an add-on. Break glass incase of emergencies. This is what Jesus is saying, the thorns grow with the plant and chockout the fruit.

Listen real quick before anyone takes offense or has excuses, this is God's word, I am not saying anything Jesus isn't saying. How you are receiving it right now might be an indication of which soil you are.

The fourth soil is the Good Soil: But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. This is the type of person that despite disappointments, despite the worries, despite the pleasures, despite it all, they persevere, their heart and soul is good soil for God’s word to take root in their life and grow and in doing so the holy spirit will produce fruit thats 20,60 or 100x their own ability. This is the person who understands that through God and his word they are not where they want to be, but they are not where they used to be and they keep moving forward as disciples, as contributors and rooted individuals.

Listen, it's all the same seed, it's all the word of God, but it's how people respond to it that makes all the difference. If we are in season of becoming rooted in Christ as disciples, rooted as a church in our community then we have to be the good soil because like I said earlier, You have to have the right soil to grow roots.

So where does that leave us? With one question. What Soil are You? If you had a real honest discussion with yourself and God about yourself, what soil are you? You might be the path and right now your thinking this dude is wack, I’m asking you, and praying for you to have a softened heart and ears to hear. If you are in the Rocks or thorns you through the power of the Holy Spirit would admit it to yourself so that you can ask God to change you. Like Karlee asked me to buy new soil, God can and will give you new soil. Let god renew your soil.

You have heard this before…but how many of you have actually had ears to hear? Soils. You are the soil.

Listen, no matter where you are I’m asking you to get signed up for Rooted and for 10 weeks open your heart, soften your hearts, be devoted to Jesus and desire to grow and watch and see what God does in your spirit and in your life. Wrestle with God during that time, ask questions, allow the word of God to grow roots in your life as you devote yourself to Jesus and his word. Be Rooted.

Pray.