Cultivating Good Soil 06: Pulling Our Weeds 03

INTRODUCTION

1. The 3rd Soil: The Thorny Soil. The distracted soil

2. 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. 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.

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. 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

In our last two studies which were on the third soil (the thorny soil), we have seen many things that can distract us to the point of the word getting choked out of our lives and getting less and less (if any time) in our lives…

1. Riches: Wealth and Possessions

2. Cares of this life: family relationships and our necessities. I also touched on work in the lesson, and could have spent time talking about the time we spend with education also....

3. Honestly, we could probably do 8-10 sermons just on this soil because Satan can help us to turn just about everything that God has given us to use for good purposes and for His glory into something to distract us and keep us away from the word of God and from applying it

4. But for today’s lesson, which is the final lesson on this soil, I would like to spend some time thinking about the things that may fit in with the final phrase that Jesus uses to describe this soil. He says that the desires for other things are also something that enters in and is a thorn in this soil.

5. Luke’s version of the explanation of this parable narrows this down a little more to the “pleasures of life.”

ENTERTAINMENT

TV AND MOVIES

1. I have been to some houses in which the TV seems to NEVER be turned off. This was something that was part of my life growing up. It would not surprise me one bit if I spent in excess of 20hrs per week watching TV and movies at times in my life, especially when we include the many hours I would spend watching football on Saturdays and Sundays. Twenty hours in a week: that is almost a whole day’s worth of time! But this is not too far away from the average amount of time the normal American. Many American’s lives revolve around this form of entertainment, there are those TV shows that we cannot live without or those movies which we cannot help but watch 30 times. Some studies have shown staggering statistics!

· 2-11: 24 hours

· 12-17: 20 hours

· 18-24: 22 hours

· 25-34: 27 hours

· 35-49: 33 hours

· 50-64: 43 hours

· 65-plus: 50 hours

2. There are many Americans today who worship at the altar of Hollywood. May this not be said of the people of God. I would be afraid to do conduct a survey of the people of God to see how much time on a weekly basis is spent in front of the TV

3. We talked about sports in our idolatry lesson… what we said there clearly applies here also. Some already watch 10-20hrs per week of sports, then you add on top of that other TV shows that you watch...

4. The desire to be constantly entertained by the television has led to many tragic spiritual consequences. People expect assemblies of churches to be entertaining and something similar to what they could watch on television or see in a movie. There is no lack of religious organizations who are more than happy to oblige these impulses and to provide a very entertaining assembly, even if it becomes devoid of Biblical content and purpose.

INTERNET AND VIDEO GAMES

1. How easy it is to get caught up with everything that we can do on the internet. Let’s think about social media. I like to refer to social media, for instance, as Satan’s “weapons of mass distraction”.

2. So much time can be wasted scrolling down through your news feeds on Facebook, checking your tweets on Twitter, watching videos on your favorite channels on YouTube, etc…etc… that we forget that the main reason we got on the computer, IPad, or phone was to open up our Bible and read it. But unfortunately, by the time we get to our Bible reading, we have very little time because it is time to go to bed! We need more self-control in using our time more productively on the computer.

3. The average U.S. gamer from 13 years of age and older (including some adults) is spending up to 6-7 hours per day playing video games. I spent many hours of the day in my early life playing video games. And I wonder why I had issues connecting with people and communicating growing up. Also, I have heard of instances where marriages have dissolved over video game addictions; yes marriages! Marriages have dissolved because of (mostly) husbands who are too addicted to their video game system.

RECREATION

Do the things that we do for fun, such as our hobbies, choke us?

Hobbies, like entertainment, can be things that can consume a lot of our time, thus can get in the way of us having time to serve others and to spend time with the Lord. We need to be careful not to allow ourselves to be excessive in the time we are spending having fun.

SOLOMON’S EXAMPLE

Solomon for a time lived the life of the thorny soil so we could learn from his search that these things cannot ultimately satisfy us and give our lives purpose

In Ecclesiastes, especially ch2, Solomon tells us what conclusion his search for meaning and purpose in pleasure.

He sought whatever kinds of pleasurable experiences he could have, and with his resources, he could have any experience he wanted!

· Earthly wisdom

· Gratifying himself with wine and food

· Building projects

· Work

· Entertainment

· Sexual pleasure and relationships

Here was his conclusion: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.”

If we are not being fruitful because of our busyness with these things, the only pleasure we will receive from devoting our lives to these things will be the short-lived satisfaction we get in the moment we are doing these things… This is where pleasure for us will end… Because unfruitful soil will not find pleasure in God’s presence in eternity…

These things, when they take up all of our time, become hindrances to our getting to heaven. We need to be careful not to spend so much time busying ourselves with these things that ultimately have very little value for us spiritually and choke God’s word out of our lives…

It is not bad to seek to enjoy this life and the blessings that God gives us in it. Entertainment and hobbies can be good things as long as we do them with thankfulness towards God and don’t allow them to be what rules our thinking and takes all of our time…

We always need the reminder that the blessings that we have should not distract us away from what is ultimately important… Seeking God’s truth… Seeking to be fruitful in the kingdom…

CONCLUSION – USING OUR TIME WISELY

So we see that there are many weeds that can come up in our life that we can give our attention to… This list is in no way exhaustive. Other things could have been added to these three sermons on the thorny soil.

Paul says in , “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time (redeeming the time - NKJV), because the days are evil” ().

We need to look at how much time we are spending on all of these things that can be thorns…

What is sobering about lessons like these one on the thorny soil is that we can see that, when we compare ourselves with those around us in the world, we don’t look too much different… We have the same things we are devoted to. We show the same passion for wealth, entertainment. We worry about our daily necessities like everyone else… The only difference may be that we go to services once or twice per week…

If we cannot tell the difference between ourselves and the world, then it may be the case that we are this soil and the word of God has been choked out of us. We may have made ourselves too busy to be fruitful for the Lord.