A Christmas Harvest: Short-lived Joy/ Enthusiastically Deceived

Intro and scripture

Matthew 13:20–21 NIV

The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

Pray.

I was so excited when we moved in our house here, do you know why? Because of the yard. Growing up I had a little lawn care business and came to love helping people’s yard. After a couple of my yards won Copperfield yard of the month, I was a hot ticket item in the neighborhood. Some day I would have a yard of my own. Well then our first home had no sprinkler system and I could never recover that yard.

So we move here and get this brand new yard with a sprinkler system. I thought I have made it.

Quickly I learned that because the soil was no good and shallow, a fungus developed. From April to now I mowed three times because it wasnt growing. It had the appearance of life but it wasnt really alive.

Shallow soil, short term growth

From Wesley Allen:

A parable is metaphor, drawn from nature or common life, which arrests the hearer by its vividness or strangeness and leaves the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise interpretation or application to tease it into active thought even to the point of altering one’s world-view.

This parable is in a unique place in the gospel of Matthew. In the height of Jesus’ teaching and public ministry which includes miracles like healing sick, demonic, calming a storm, a man born paralyzed.

Jesus has been showing them what the kingdom of heaven looks like and consists of. Now he will teach them about the kingdom with a series of parables.

This parable is the first one that he tells standing from a boat speaking to multitudes. It is positioned first because it describes the people that are able to grasp what is going on and those that cannot.

Early on the burning question as you read Matthew, and likely the feeling that the disciples would have....is how can people not get this? Look at what he is doing!

I always find it fascinating that when Jesus heals a man on the sabbath. Mark 3, a withered hand in the synagogue. He heals the man and the pharisees are like wait a minute....

How can people miss this?! Well Jesus gives this parable. Tells of the things that get in the way.

What is the message? What is the word that some miss?

The message is about the kingdom of God breaking in. In the gospels the word kingdom is found over 100 times. Constantly Jesus is teaching on this. This is the gospel truth that Jesus is King and that he is establishing his kingdom. This is what we turn to in advent....

Not just a birthday party for Jesus.

Augustine describes the scandal of the incarnation.

Man’s maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that the Truth might be accused of false witness, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die. (Augustine of Hippo)

One Christmas eve, I preached about holy week on Christmas eve. People were very confused. What I was trying to do is show that the incarnation was more than a baby born, but it was about who the baby was. It was the right idea in theory, but requires a skillful preacher to do it. Afterwards, someone came up to me and said “preacher, we came for the Christmas story. We can get that Easter stuff next time we come to church.”

I think he was kidding.

Friends, the incarnation is the scandalous coming to us of the maker of heaven and earth. It is the cosmic bridge that brings us back to God, it is also the declaration of his impending victory over the world of evil, sin, and death.

His kingdom is not of this world.

His kingdom has different principles: love, justice, mercy

His kingdom has different authority: not our partisan politics or our man-made career success,

His kingdom has eternal consequence and right now reality

And some will miss it.

Jesus knew this to be true.

Unchristian Christian

Notice something from our parable. Matthew says that only the first soil is one that does not receive the word. But even that one, hears it. The final three out of four of the soils, they not only hear the word but they receive it. Our shallow soil for today, receives it with joy. These are Christians at least in the way we have often thought about Christians. They heard the word, they responded. But only one of the soils produces fruit.

There are two realities here:

There are people who believe in the kingdom and are not citizens

Salvation is more than a momentary experience

Outside the church or with old friends, I often hear, well I do not go to church or I cannot believe in God because look at the bad things that are done in Jesus name, or the church hurt me.

No doubt. Bible believers enslaved people. Christians were idle or enabling in nazi Germany, see Ditrich Bonhoeffer. Christians today put their political stance over the throne of Jesus.

Frederick Bruner:

Jesus knew this problem personally - he experienced it himself with God's own people. Jesus teaches disciples that not all who receive the Word hold it. As the English proverb has it, "Not all who go to church say their prayers." Only one of the four who hears the Word stands under it, yields to its authority, obeys it. Armed with this "three-out-of-four" truth, the scandal of un-Christian Christians can be overcome, for we now know that this scandal is not proof against Jesus - he predicted it.

Frederick Dale Bruner. Matthew: A Commentary: The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28 (Kindle Locations 656-659). Kindle Edition.

John Wesley in Almost Christian:

There is the person who:

Heathen honesty

outward religion

sincerity: A real desire to love God and do his will

But the altogether Christian:

love of God

love of neighbor

faith

“May we all thus experience what it is to be not almost only, but altogether Christians! Being justified freely by his Grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus, knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us!” -John Wesley

Salvation is not an event, it is a journey

I gave my life to Jesus about 9 times growing up. Every year at camp.

We have reduced faith in Jesus and the kingdom to a decision. To a mental assent of some sort like some truth that we can tip our cap to and move on. Even for some of us that have had a miraculous conversion and maybe especially these, there is a danger to think this event is the everything.

Early Church leader writing about this soil says:

We cannot leave this second soil without saying the obvious: a joyous conversion version is no guarantee of a Christian life. It is not how we start our history with the Word; it is how we continue it. Big conversions, then, stand under a limited criticism here - not that they are evil, but that they are perilous if we put our trust in them rather than in God. "The Word brings a person to the goal only when that person bravely resists the outside pressures and overcomes one's selfish interior desires" (Schlatter, Der Evangelist, 436).

Frederick Dale Bruner. Matthew: A Commentary: The Churchbook, Matthew 13-28 (Kindle Locations 666-669). Kindle Edition.

It is not how we start our history with the word, it is how we continue in it.

Kingdom reception is confirmed in discipleship.

This is why the farming analogy is so perfect. It requires work in the dirt. The path of the first soil never even had a chance because there was no plowing. God’s love has given you the ability to work and to walk with him. God’s love has given life, and so many do not walk in it.

Trouble and Persecution

Now in this parable, the short-lived joy is ended with trouble and persecution. No doubt the early church would hear this and be challenged by it facing terrible persecution in the first couple of centuries.

Read the martydom of Polycarp this semester for school. The earliest recorded martydom outside of the NT. Christians faced with being fed to the lions or as Polycarp was, burned alive as a spectacle if they would not renounce their faith. They wrote about faithful followers like Polycarp and then those that renounced Jesus to save their life.

But that is not the only hardship that I think the parable can talk about. I think this can also be seen in Peter when Jesus is being beaten and near crucifixion and someone sees Peter and says “hey are you that follower of Jesus?” And he runs away.

The point of this soil, even a joyful conversion will not carry you when the stakes are high. When your career is on the line. When your marriage is on the rocks, when you are faced with the death of a loved one.

"There are many that are very glad to hear a good sermon that yet do not profit by it; they may be pleased with the word, and yet not changed and ruled by it"

So what do we do?

Repentance is the plowing

Reminder, the seed is not an expendable resource in the parable. The truth is the kingdom comes whether we are ready or not.

“Understanding” is a theme in Matthew’s gospel. Mark and Luke do not use this phrase. Understanding is not just an intellectual assent. But it is about standing under the meaning. It is about making the message one’s own. Standing under his teaching in obedience and walking in it.

We must see to our soil. And before trouble comes. And it will come. We too often turn to God in crisis and though God is gracious, I wonder what the harvest might be if we turn to him before crisis.

We see to our soil by working the dirt. The plowing is about repentance.

A lot of people think repentance is what is required before God takes you back, but actually repentance is simply what it means to turn back to him.

Repentance is about unlearning self-conceit, self-will, loves that we have put before God.

What do you need to turn away from today?

What do you need from God today? Is it a reminder that he is good, that he gracious, that you are loved?

What does understanding the kingdom, or standing under the kingdom look like for you today? What do you need to do?