Cultivating Good Soil 05: Pulling Our Weeds 02

I. INTRODUCTION

A. OVERVIEW OF SERIES… We began this series by looking at how we need to listen to the word of God in order to be fruitful, examining the parables after the parable of the sower. We saw how we need to listen with a heart that desires to see what needs changed in our lives and to obey what is said… Then we began looking at the parable of the sower/soils to see things that can cause us to not listen to God’s word and to be unfruitful…

1. Hardened hearts - Unbelief

2. Shallow hearts - Trusting in emotional responses instead of digging our roots deep into God’s word.

B. The 3rd Soil: “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.”

1. This is deceptive soil. It looks good, looks clean, looks ready but down in the soil lie the roots of weeds ready to spring to life again.

2. Good seed and dormant weeds competing together, not good for the seed. The weeds squeeze out the life of the good seed. That was a very familiar situation. The thorn roots, or the weed roots restrict the good seed, drink its moisture, veil its sunlight and the good seed either dies or is unable to get enough nutrients to bring forth fruit.

C. Explanation of Soil

1. "And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. " ().

2. What do we see in this explanation? What we see is that the good seed, the word of God, has competition for the attention of the person. This person is what the Bible calls “double-minded.” This is the person who wants salvation, wants Christ, wants the Kingdom but wants the world also. He wants the best of what both worlds have to offer. But what ends up happening is that the concerns of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for others things fill the heart and crowd out the word that was sown, and we are left not bearing fruit. God’s word cannot bring forth fruit unless those weeds are radically removed from our lives by the root.

3. In our last lesson, we began examining ourselves in regards to how we can choke the word of God out of our lives with a desire for riches and possessions. Over the next two weeks, I would like to look at the other two areas that Jesus mentions in this verse

a) the cares of the world

b) the desires for other things (pleasures of this life)

II. WHAT IS MEANT BY “THE CARES/ WORRIES/ ANXIETIES OF THE WORLD”?

A. The word used for cares comes from a root word that means distraction/division. Things of this world that are taking our attention or our allegiance away from obeying the word, or things that distract us and make us worried or anxious…

B. Some of the things that are cares of the world or things we become anxious about seem at face value to not be wrong.

C. One example is family...

1. “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.” ()

2. In this passage you have caring about the needs of a husband and a wife being referred to as cares/anxieties of this world. In this context, Paul does say how it is not a sin to get married, but he is telling us here that marriage, and obviously what follows in having children does divide our interests. This is not bad in and of itself, but it can go overboard!

3. Family can become an idol. How often regarding family members have you heard said, “I just could not live without you”? First, it is simply not a true statement. I lived for about 25 years without my wife. It is possible. I lived for over 30 years without my daughter. I can live with or without them. These relationships are great to have, but they are not what our life is all about. Our spouses and our children should not be the “center of our universe”. Only God should be! Christ is the only one I cannot live without. We need to be careful not to make them “ultimate things” in our life.

4. Family can lead us to reject and not obey scripture… I have heard of many instances where people change their views away from what the Bible teaches because someone in their family gets them to believe something different… or some people are unwilling to believe certain biblical doctrines because it contradicts what their grandparents and parents believe and teach…

5. Family is a blessing from God, and we need to fulfill the roles that the Lord gives us in our families, but we need to make sure that we don’t ignore the other responsibilities that the Lord gives us because we have made family the most important thing in our lives… Family is important, but NOT more important than our service to God.

a) "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple"

6. We can fill up our time with so many family activities or our children can have so many school or sports activities that we end up really not serving anyone else outside of our immediate family… Or our children can have so many activities that we never have the time to teach them God’s word and brush that responsibility, that belongs to parents, onto others.

a) Sometimes there are so many activities to do that some miss services…

b) In so many ways the word can get pushed to the backburner because we are just too busy with our families doing worldly things…

D. Our Necessities -

1. Jesus, in , tells us of other things in this life that we can be anxious about…

a) "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" ()

2. Jesus is not saying here, don’t be concerned at all about these things or don’t do any work to make sure you provide these things for yourself or your family. What He is saying is that these should not be things that we worry about or control our thinking… There are more important things in this life to devote our thinking towards.

3. We need to do our part in making sure our necessities are being met, but we should not get to the point that we are doubting that God will fulfill His promises. He will make sure we are provided for… that we have food to eat and clothes to wear…

E. These are the things that we so often worry about in life, even to the hurting of our fruitfulness towards God. These things can take our minds away from seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness FIRST as Jesus commands in . These things, when we are not thinking rightly about them, can kill us spiritually or leave us with so little time to actually work on growing and obeying scripture.

III. EXAMPLE OF THIS SOIL: MARTHA

A. "Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." ().

B. She forfeited her opportunity to hear the word and to benefit from it because of her being preoccupied with a concern of the world that could have been taken care of later. Serving all of these people in her house was not as important as hearing the word taught and allowing the words of Christ to change your life!

C. This is exactly what Jesus is getting at in the parable of the soils when he mentions the cares of the world. Mary allowed herself to be distracted from the word by her concern/anxiety for a thing of this life. In and of itself, being hospitable and serving the guests in your home is a good thing… but it is not an ultimate thing… Hearing the words of Jesus, the words that give life, THAT is more important!

IV. EXAMINING OURSELVES

A. How often are we just like Mary. We may say, but THIS thing I need to do… whether it be work, or family, or all of the activities we get involved in… THIS thing I am doing is important! This may be true, but is it getting in the way of you serving the Lord, getting into His word and learning it? Is it keeping you away from services and Bible studies with your brethren?

B. "But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap." ()

C. The time will come, because we are so busy with the cares of this life, when Christ’s judgment will come upon us by surprise… that we did not have the time to prepare for it, to make sure we were being fruitful…

V. CONCLUSION

A. What we spend our time on in this life is what is important to us… If we allow ourselves to be distracted by the cares of the world to the point where we are not being fruitful because we are missing services, not studying God’s word, and just don’t have the time to do what God commands, we are the soil with thorns… All of the justifications that we try to make as to why we do not have time to do what Christ has commanded us will mean nothing whenever we stand before His judgment seat. Are we really seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness FIRST?