The Good Soil

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The Good Soil

When Jesus saw a large crowd, He decided to talk about planting a seed.

As pastors, as leaders, when you get a crowd, your first instinct is automatically, ‘what do I need to do to keep this crowd’. How do I keep them happy. How do I keep them entertained.

If you know ANYTHING about jesus, that’s not his game. He made people mad. He opposed people. People left him. But he wasn’t here just to make sure he had everyone receiving from him. He wasn’t here just to make sure he could give stuff to a bunch of people and then leave. He had a different priority.

To Jesus, it’s not enough that we receive from Him - we have to produce

Now, Jesus saw this large crowd, he told them a story about a farmer planting seeds.

Luke 8:4-8

Luke 8:4–8 NIV

While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: “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. Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed 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.”

In this parable, Jesus talks about 4 different levels of response from people who hear His word

Now, before we begin, I want to ask the question - what would constitute being a mature Christian to you? What does it mean when I say, ‘this person is on the right track with God?’ How can you tell someone is ‘producing’ what the Spirit is planting in their lives?

There’s a lot of answers to this question. They have a strong prayer life. They read their bibles regularly. They go to church. They are generous.

And I have a bit of a challenge for you today -

I don’t believe those qualities are, in and of themselves, enough

for God to say ‘yep, that’s all right there, that’s what i mean when I want people to produce a crop’.

Because these are all qualities of healthy Christians. There’s no debating that. But we may be misunderstanding this verse slightly. let me read on.:

Luke 8:11-15

Luke 8:11–15 NIV

“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 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. 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. 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. 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.

So I wanted to address a few basic misunderstandings I think we have with this verse.

We aren’t the crop in this story - we’re the ground

We talk about Spiritual maturity in terms of the quality of our faith - how much we pray, how much we give, how often we attend church. And these are great! But

The bible’s concept of ‘good ground’ starts with how much the word of God can grow and produce through our lives to others around us

Because remember, the plant that’s in various stages of growth in this picture - that’s not talking about us. That’s talking about the Gospel. The seed is the word of God. The plant is the fruit of that word. We are the ground.

So I want to talk about the four stages that Jesus outlines here.

First - If we don’t want to understand the word of God, we can lose it

That’s a scary idea. But I think the root idea here is not that it’s a punishment - it’s that, if we don’t take hold of the word, we won’t see the fruit of God. Nothing will grow.

People think that being a Pastor means i’ve been trained to understand the bible better. And that’s partially true. I have been. But the Bible says that the Spirit teaches us about God as well, and let me tell you , he’s WAY better than any professor I had. I believe that I understand the word like I do simply because i’m always studying it.

The bible says whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is noble, dwell on these things, and the God of peace will be with you. That doesn’t mean, ‘always look at the bright side’. It means, if you are CONSTANTLY seeking out God’s words - you’ll find God, and you’ll find peace.

If we don’t let God’s words take root in our lives, if we give them a passing ‘ya, i guess that’s interesting...’ - we’ll miss them.

Second - We need to allow the word to push into us and through us

Remember, we’re the soil here. The second part of the story is ‘rocky soil’.

As the word expands, as the root grows deep, it’s going to meet obstacles first and foremost from inside of us.

Areas that have been hardened. Areas of pain, or self righteousness, or prior concepts about how God works or who He is.

And Jesus knows what he’s talking about. so if we take this seriously - the idea that, as God gives us a truth, the first person that’s going to oppose that is myself in some fashion - we take a brutally honest look at ourselves and say ‘God, first and foremost, I want you to change me. I want you to work through my heart, and remove the rocks’.

Maybe your rock is pain you’ve felt at the hands of a church or another minister. Maybe your rock is a pre-conceived notion about how God works, or who He is, that you’re not willing to let God himself challenge. Maybe your rock is a truth that is contrary to what God says that you’re just not willing to budge on.

Whatever it is - we need to let the word grow. We need to remove those rocks. Because if we don’t, if our faith is challenged in some fashion - if we’re not all in, if we’re still rocky ground, we won’t survive that challenge.

Third - we can choke out the word in our lives

Luke here calls it ‘life’s worries, riches and pleasures’. Mark calls it ‘the desires for other things’. And basically, this is a place where we’re good with God growing into us, we’re good with the idea that he wants to produce a fruit through us. And we say, ‘ya, absolutely, I wan’t that - but I also want this as well’. And there are many other things that will prevent the word from growing in your life.

There are obvious ones - sinful behaviour. When we are hoping for the word to grow, but we’re also actively feeding the darkness in our nature. It just doesn’t work together. Sinfulness is weeds - and weeds choke out good growth.

But I think there’s less obvious ones. I do believe one of the greatest ways that we choke out the word of God as christians is when God goes to do something, and we stop him and we say, ‘ya, you don’t work that way, you work this way’. And we wouldn’t openly admit that we do that. But if we really examine ourselves - we do.

And we’re well intentioned. Of course the church made the best music years ago - any of the new stuff is fluff and doesn’t appeal to me, so we don’t need it in church. Kids ministry looks nothing like it used to - my kids would sit quietly and still the whole service! We don’t need fun, and games, and all that. Real pastors know how to preach for 2 solid hours - any less than that, God just doesn’t do that! We love the things we know, we love the things in our lives, we love the environments around us.

The thing is - God is moving, and doing new things all the time. We’re seeing new and amazing musical expressions from the church all over the world. We’re seeing a rising tide of amazing services and kids ministry programs to meet the totally different generation of kids that are coming up after us. We’re seeing Pastors striving harder and harder to make their message clearer and clearer to reach more and more. And they’re all ways the spirit is moving in response to what is going on in the world.

When we refuse to let the spirit do something new, because it’s not comfortable for us - we choke out the word in OUR lives. When we want to see God lifted up AND. Maybe it’s God lifted up AND music my way. Maybe it’s God lifted up AND me not having to leave my comfort zone. Maybe it’s God lifted up AND me feeling like I’m getting my way.

We look at so many different reasons for why we may not feel the presence of God as much in ourselves as we used to, but we forget the most basic thing about God - he’s still moving. And if we don’t feel him around us - we turned off the path at some point. We choked out God’s fruitfulness with our desire for other things. And if we’re not producing as much fruit as we used to be, we have less to pass around to others.

Lastly - the goal of the word of God in our lives is multiplication

We forget that most basic foundation of being a person who produces for God. We are supposed to multiply. The word of God coming into our lives, into our hearts, changing our decisions and the path we take. Changing our character and giving us a hope and a future. God impacting us in a strong and amazing way. All of these things, every second of every experience we can say that we’ve ever had with God - it all aims for this one thing.

It aims to plant more seeds. Because the mark of a good crop is one that sows a multiple of what was sown into it. That’s the BIG difference between a life choked by worries and a life that produces crop - that you get more seeds out of it than you put in.

So I asked this question earlier - what marks a mature Christian? What shows that someone is on the right track with God? And that’s easy. That, through their life, there are more people who are receiving the word of God.

What does a farmer do with wheat? He plants the seed. The plant grows. He takes the plant, pulls out the seeds on the inside that were more than what was put into the ground, and he uses those seeds to make more plants. This is the goal of every farmer. You’re never going to meet a farmer whose goal is to make a single stalk of wheat. He wants it to multiply.

Do we want to be the kind of person that God says is ‘good ground’? We need to:

Desperately seek to understand who God is and what He wants for us

Remove the rocks, the hard places in our lives where we just won’t let God into

Cut anything in our lives that causes us to either let bad seed into our lives, or control the way the good seed grows to bend it to our own wills.

And lastly - make multiplying ourselves an absolute priority. Make the very foundational assumption of our faith as Christians as, ‘I’m here so that someone else can meet God through me’. We are the ground God plants the word into - and if it stops with you, the plant dies.

Imagine a church full of people that fought for this. A church full of people that was willing to put up with any change, any challenge, and ‘trouble’, if it meant more and more people hearing the word of God. Imagine a church that asked to be filled with the spirit, not so that we could experience it, but so that we had more to give out to other people. Imagine a church that said ‘I’m not the finished product - i’m the ground that God plants in to feed the next generation’.

Let’s let God take the word that He has grown in our hearts, pull out the seeds, and plant it in new soil - so that we can see the multiplication. And we can be the good soil.

Communion

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 NIV

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.