Into the dirt #3

Northside Church Into the Dirt #3

Jamey Mills 1/24/21

My name is Jamey Mills, I am one of the pastors here at Northside, and it’s always a joy to have the opportunity to come and share with you guys.

My wife and I moved to the area in September of 2001… we lived in an apartment for a short time, and then found this home at the bottom of Nebeck hill in Philomath… I remember seeing it for the first time, there was a reason it was on the market forever. It was the worst house in a decent neighborhood.

There was this long walkway to the front door, someone created a lattice wall and planted ivy… that had taken over the entire side of the house…. It was like walking through narnia to get to our door… seriously… the perfect place for a crime…

I remember walking into the house and seeing 420 painted on the walls, holes punched into every door, holes in the sheetrock, and stains of questionable origin on the carpets. (walking thru a home like that and listening to a real estate agent put a positive spin on it is super fun).

We’d spend the next few years living there… replacing every door, fixing every hole, replacing the carpet, and the flooring in the kitchen and bathroom, replacing the roof, painting the house, rebuilding the fence…

But the worst of it… and I mean by a mile… was taking care of what I’d guess was a 30x60 back yard that was corner to corner… totally infested with blackberries.

This was before facebook or i could show you… I remember going at it with a loppers… that would have taken way too long… machete… that didn’t work. I tried a chainsaw… and that didn’t work.

Finally… I went to the rental place and they handed me what looked like a weed eater with a skill saw on the end of it… For days… I was out there cutting HUGE blackberry vines… untangling them… trying to load them up to haul them away… and several times… I remember looking down to realize that I had become completely entangled in them.

By that time… I had been poked so many times… and had so many thorns in me… that I really didn't feel it too much anymore… sort of became numb to it…

Do you know how hard it is to work when you're tangled up in the thorns? Or when every moment and every movement… is calculated because of them?

And it reminds of a passage I read often…

Hebrews 12:1–2 (NLT)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

The Hebrew author knows how hard it is to work… or to run… when you are tangled in the weeds… He says strip off not some… but EVERY weight that slows you down…not just bad things… but the things that slow you down… and the sin that trips you up… and run with endurance… the race, the life, the faith that God has for you.

And I think that is the kind of thing Jesus had in mind in the passage we are looking at today…

We are in week 3 of our sermon series “into the dirt” where we are looking at a story that Jesus told that shed light on something that is deeply important…

Jesus used these sort of comparative illustrations all the time… we call them parables…

Let's look at this one…

Mark 4:3–9 (NLT)

3 “Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed. 4 As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. 5 Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn’t have deep roots, it died. 7 Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” 9 Then he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”

And later Jesus explained the parable to His disciples this way...

Mark 4:14–19 (NLT)

14 The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others.

15 The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away.

16 The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. 17 But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word.

18 The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, 19 but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.

It's not like the other soils… the issue isn't hardness… or stuff under the surface… the issue is competition… competition that draws our minds, our time, energy, affection, priorities, and schedules… away… from what we were created for…

And Jesus says that allowing that… allowing the thorns of life to exist in the soil of our hearts… that pulls away from… turns our minds from Him and His word and what does Jesus say it leads too? Fruitlessness

An important question we ask… would be… is their fruit in my life because of God’s presence and the presence of His word in it?

And Jesus was purposeful in the image he uses… the thorns He is talking about are very similar to black berries… maybe a more aggressive thorn… but incredibly viney… invasive… fast growing with the natural tendency to overtake.

Jesus actually mentions three things that can lead to Him and His Word being crowded out and ineffective in our lives.

1. Worries of life.

2. Lure of wealth.

3. Desire for other things.

The worries of life… the concerns of the day… it’s easy to live there right now… where we allow everything going on around us to be the wave that causes us to take our eyes of Jesus.

The word worry there has to do with anxiousness…

it has to do with feeling overwhelmed and reactionary.

Matt Chandler from Village Church said it like this…

When you become overwhelmed with the worries of life… it's easy to get to this place where you feel like you need to manage and manipulate everything.

Coming to this place where you feel like it all rides on you. Asking questions like… am I enough, do I have enough, did I do enough, will my kids be okay…

The word that comes to my mind is overwhelmed… by the worries of the day… the pace of the day… the agenda of the day to the point where all of you time, energy, mental fortitude… is sucked into that direction… where the worries of the day become the purpose of your life.

To be clear I don’t think God is calling you to abandon the important things in life. He is calling for us to have a more accurate view of those things, of Him, and His presence in us within them.

It reminded me of a story Kyle Idlemen told… this was late March I think… Early Covid… he was on a flight and he noticed the lady next to him had two things of hand sanitizer… and she used it often… and like most dudes who get stuck in the middle seat, he claimed both armrests right away as his turf… and he noticed that everytime he moved his arm the lady would take a sanitary wipe and scrub it down… and immediately he knew what he’d be doing for entertainment the rest of the flight…

He said at one point… he didn't sneeze or cough or anything… but simply cleared his throat and she literally pulled out lysol and sprayed him down…

And it's good to be mindful and cautious… I am not trying to make light of the pandemic… but at the end of the day… our hope cannot be by lysol… it cannot be medical advancements, technology, political parties, the stock market… our.. You and your effort.

And one of the issues with the worries of life stuff… is once they have you, they tend to snowball. When we put our hope in things that cannot hold it… it leads to deeper feelings of being overwhelmed.

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (NLT) says this...…

16 That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. 17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Don’t allow the worries of this life to rob you of real life. That feels like it takes constant attention, reminding, and encouragement. Jesus says… allowing those things to overtake you is no way to live and ends with fruitlessness.

Jesus also said the Lure of money… can choke out the God’s truth in our life.

The word LURE… there is a really poor translation.

The word lure actually means deceitfulness.

Jesus is saying the deceitfulness of worldly wealth can distract us... or divide us in such ways that keeps God’s Word from impacting our lives the way it should.

There is a reason the Bible talks about money more than just about anything else including heaven and hell…

Few things… have the ability to distract us and cause division within us the way money does… and that is because of it’s deceitfulness… or at best 1\2 truths.

Money brings happiness… does it? I have seen naked kids running in dirt streets of poverty that seem to have more joy filled than the vast majority of people I know.

Money takes aways stress… maybe… but everything I have seen says that phrase… mo money mo problems… seems to have some truth to it.

The idea that money brings security and stability… however it is one accident away, job loss away, one tsunami away from being rendered useless.

This idea that it becomes the standard in which we measure value… Do you really want to live in that world?

The Bible talks so much about money because God knows there are few things that grip you the way money does.

Matthew 6:24

24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.

To be clear the issue isn’t having money. It's getting to the place where money becomes the major motivator of your life. When it informs our priorities and relationships… when it becomes the lens through which we see the world and define value… Jesus says… that is when money lures you away…. That causes a divided heart…

You cannot experience the thorns of a love for worldly wealth and the fruit of a life surrendered to Jesus.

They cannot co-exist.

The love of money has caused good people to do gross things…

To compromise… to become dishonest… to take advantage of others… to put things before people...

1 Timothy 6:10 (NLT)

10 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

John MacArthur says… There are few barriers to gospels fruitfulness in our lives greater than the love of money.

Worldly wealth cannot satisfy the deep desires of your heart… there will never be enough. It cannot provide the security you seek. Northing will pull you away from the priorities of Christ faster than the love and lure of money.

Lastly, Jesus mentioned that the desire for other things.

The word desire there is actually best translated “lust”.

This idea of longing… of passion for something that turns into fixation and really… idolatry, which is something we read a lot about in the BIble. Idolatry is allowing things to take the places and spaces in our lives that are uniquely God’s.

This has the idea of being carried away… lured away… one step at a time until you wake up one day (or maybe not) to realize just how far from God you’ve traveled.

God is clear about His place in our lives...and it is flattering. The God of creation… of the universe that made all there is, is not content to be in the background of your life… to be something you do on Sunday… to be a passing thought…

One of the hardest passages for us to wrestle with is this one.

Matthew 10:37–39 (ESV)

37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Jesus isn’t telling us to hate our family… He’s saying if you really want the best, want to love them well… it means putting Him first. That having Him first… changes the way we love them, it shapes the way we care, it informs the priorities we have toward them…

The #1 thing that would change marriages… or families… or friendships in our culture is right there… putting Jesus first.

Anyone know what this is?

Yep… it's a bowl. One of life's most painful dilemmas… is a one time thru buffett.

To be clearer… one time through river view mongolian grill.

… and no sane person goes through that line without purpose… I know what goes first, I know how much of each thing, I know what seasoning and even though it's expensive, I am pretty sure they lose money on me.

Why… because it won’t all fit. I have to decide… what I have room for and why. Because the last thing I need… is broccoli crowding out my beef. Or onions choking out my garlic paste.

The worries of the day, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things… crowd out… choke out what God’s word is intended to do in us.

God’s word… His truth is designed and empowered to produce fruit in our lives…

These four words always stood out to me… WHen Jesus was born it says Mary wrapped him up and and placed him in a manger… why? There was no room…

Not only did that fulfill prophecy of the past… it unfortunately feels a little prophetic too.

Does His word have room… in you or is it crowded out by the worries of the day… the lure of money… and the desire for other things?

Communion

We want to provide you with the opportunity to take communion with us this evening… communion is a time where we just stop… in the midst of our pace… our struggles… and reflect on the reality of God’s love and grace in our lives…

Jesus told us to take the bread and take the cup… and to do these things remembering Him… it's actually one of the things Jesus gave us to help with the very thing we are talking about tonight… a reminder… a time… to stop, reflect and keep our eyes on Him. The importance of the cross… and the forgiveness for sin and reconciliation with God that it brings.

If you’d like to take communion, it's in the back… you can grab it and take any time during the next couple of songs.