Sermon Tone Analysis

Good Morning, turn with me in your Bibles to the gospel of .

Let’s stand in honor of the reading of God’s word.

(Read)

(Pray)

Only a few short months ago my daughter asked me a question: “Daddy she said” Will you show me that you can fly?

I tried to play it off by saying “No its a secret” but she would not be denied “Daddy please show me how you can fly!” “Grace I told you honey that is a secret.”

But she kept pressing me and so finally I told her, “Darlin Daddy can’t fly” She actually cried!

You see when Grace was 3 she told me that she believed I was superman.

As a joke because her statement caught me off guard I simply said “somethings you’ll never know” and she took it to heart she had been asking me to show her to fly for 3 years and I finally decided she was old enough to understand that Daddy didn’t lie to her.

She was crushed though, she genuinely thought I was superman!

The heart of a child is so pure and innocent isn’t it?

You can tell them almost anything and if they love you or even if they like you then it will become gospel truth to them.

This is why Jesus admonished us in the gospel that unless we receive the Kingdom of God as a little child then we could not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

Children don’t question they just believe ..

Yet as we grow older something happens to our hearts we lose our innocence and we begin to see the world through the jaded lense of past failures or pains, we call it experience.

But the sad thing is this experience, this wisdom that comes from these situations and wrong decisions in life rob from us the thing that we need the most....

A SOFT HEART.

This Jesus is going to paint a picture for us about the most important muscle in your body, the heart.

You know the greatest commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all you heart, mind soul, and strength.

Have you ever noticed what comes first?

The idea Jesus is conveying in the greatest commandment is this you cannot love God with all your mind, or souls, or strength if you don’t first honor Him as Lord in your heart.

Here is the question i want you to answer today as we navigate through this text, WHO AM I in this parable.

Everyone in this room is found in this passage somewhere.

I wanna see if you can identify yourself, because that is exactly what Jesus was trying to do.

Today is a day of self examination, I am examining myself, and I hope that you will examine yourself as we walk through this passage.

In this passage Jesus tells a story about dirt different types of dirt to be exact and he talks about dirt in terms of the productivity of the soil.

Listen here is something we need to understand God wants to plant something inside your heart on a daily basis, when you come to church, He wants to make a deposit of truth on the inside of you and as that seed is planted and nurtured then it should produce spiritual fruit.

We see this throughout the Bible that God desires you to bear fruit.

So God is a farmer, He plants and then He waters and then He desires to see fruit grow out of your life, but not physical fruit spiritual fruit.

Write this down this is the main point today: The goal of the Christian life is to bear spiritual fruit

Now some of you might say well I thought the goal of the Christian life was to glorify God?

True but remember in Jesus said by this my Father IS glorified that you bear much fruit.

YOu are here this morning for a Bible study that’s good at least i hope that’s why your’e here, to be spiritually fed.

As children of God we should be hungry for the word of God, a healthy child is a hungry child, and if you show up hungry to have truth planted within your’e heart you are on the right track.

Jesus tells this story in Marks gospel because he wants us to understand that He is a planter and that our hearts are the soil that He plants in, now we decide which type of soil our hearts are.

We are the ones who decide if we are going to move forward spiritually or if w are going to go backwards spiritually its really up to us.

God wants us to grow but we must want to grow as well, you see there is god’s part and there is our part.

Philippians

Philippians 2

Now that verse is often misunderstood, this verse does not say work FOR your own salvation because you cant work for it, because it is a gift of God.

It says work OUT your own salvation with fear and trembling.

That phrase work out your own salvation can better be translated carry it to completion.

This idea is that of a gold mine, He is saying go into that gold mine and get as much gold out of it as you possibly can.

So God has saved us but now we must mine the eternal riches of His truth and allow that truth to change us.

It goes on to say this

So there it is altogether human responsibility working along side God willing and working out these thing for His good pleasure.

The only way we can make it as a Christians is by the daily help of the Holy Spirit.

Do you know what you need everyday you need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Well good, but the word used in the Bible for filled means “to be under the influence of” have you ever seen someone under the influence of alcahol?

They don’t act as they normally would they dont react like they normally would, if they were not being influenced by the substance within thier bodies.

Now they make bad judgment calls, the alcahol changes the way they walk and interact with people.

Likewise to be “filled” or to be under the influence and indwelt with the power of the Holy Spirit changes the way you interact with people, it changes the way you walk it changes how you talk. to be controlled by the spirit of God changes the way you and I act.

Do you know what we are missing today?

We are missing people who beg God to be filled with His Spirit.

Myself included, I am telling you if I don’t get in God’s word every morning I am not a good person to be around.

Im grumpy I worry, I always have a aggrivation about me.

I walk around with a chip on my shoulder.

It is just the way I am but when I have time to be in God’s word fruit begins to show in my life, love, joy, peace, patience kindness goodness and selfcontrol.

But oh boy if I dont I am just like you, I struggle.

How many of you can say that as you have gotten older you feel the same way, that if God’s word is not an active part of your day then you struggle?

God wants to fill us over and over and impact our lives, families and communities.

This is what Jesus wants to teach us today.

When it comes to a spiritual harvest the soil is everything.

Mark 1:1-

Then Jesus goes on to explain this parable

Then

Mark 4:13-

Here we have 4 different reactions to God’s word matched up with 4 different types of soil.

Only one out of 4 respond to God;s truth like a Christian listen not everyone is gonna respond to the gospel, our job as disciples, my job as a pastor is to take this seed of the word of God and throw it out as far as I can.

I mean take a look at the sower here in this passage he is just scattering seed everywhere some fall on the wayside, some on the rocks, some in the thorns, I mean He is just scattering this stuff everywhere isn’t he?

MINISTRY IS MESSY

There is no neat and tidy way to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, you just throw the seed everywhere you can and trust God with where it lands.

When I preach a sermon I am scattering truth everywhere I try to throw out as much truth that pertains to as many issues as I can within the context of a passage of scripture thats why sometimes it seems scattered… pun intended.

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I AM DOING, scattering seeds and some fall on rocky soil, some fall on the wayside, and some fall on receptive soil.

( Adam’s videos)

Were all called to scatter the seeds of God’s truth, and trust the Holy Spirit with where it lands.

How much talent does it take to scatter seed?

Not much it is having the right seed (God’s word) and then scattering it out there during your week.

There is no pressure there just spread the truth of God in any way you can, scatter it, and trust God with the rest.

That’s our job as Christians.

(tracts, verses, conversations, sending someone a link to a message)

There are many ways to scatter God’s truth are you?

That’s another message in and of itself.

Let’s get back to examining our hearts, and it may tell us why if were not trying to scatter the good news, why we might not be doing that.

Jesus stands here in a boat on the shoreline and he tells us a story.

In this story we see four different types of soil showing us four different types of hearts, which shows us four different types of people, and how they respond to the Word of God.

The Heart that is in the Wrong Place

Mark 1:3

First of all this is something Jesus really desires that His listeners pay attention to hence his intro LISTEN, BEHOLD, or TAKE NOTE, He is saying pay attention!

I want you to notice this is a positional issue, it says the seed fell BESIDE the path.

Meaning this seed was intended to fall on the path in front of the sower but instead it fell by the wayside or off the beaten path where it was supposed to go.

Have you ever came to church with your heart in the wrong place?

Have you ever tried coming to church with the heart that says I am going to go because its what I am supposed to do?

You didnt come desiring the word, you didnt come to worship the Lord you came in and your heart was in the wrong place, it was off the beaten path so to speak and then you heard a message and left, and nothing changed.

How many of you would say that has been you at one time or another?

How about this one, you decided you were going to get into the word of God because you knew you were supposed to but your heart really wasn’t in it and you sat down with a devotional or a book and you sit down and you read it and you might as well have read a phone book because you didn’t feel anything?

You can relate to this because we have all come into church or tried to do the right thing with the wrong heart and when we try to do the right thing with the wrong heart it ceases being right.

your just going through the motions there is no devotion to Christ there it is just an action that you are doing but it wont make any impact.

Look at what happens to the seed that falls in the heart that is in the wrong place.

Jesus says the birds came and devoured it.