Sermon Tone Analysis

I’m going to begin this morning by giving you the goal of this sermon.

You see the title of my sermon on the screen… A People Of Response… That’s who we’re supposed to be… and so the goal of the sermon is… It’s to get you to ask yourself this question… Where am I?

Not where people perceive you to be… but where you genuinely are.

And my goal is to help you ask yourself that question… not just this morning… but that it begins here this morning… and stimulates your thoughts and becomes something you reflect upon regularly.

We’re continuing our series through the Gospel of Matthew… and today we’re going to be in chapter 13.

So, if you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, turn with me there… Matthew chapter 13.

As you’re turning there… let’s just review what’s been going on in the Gospel of Matthew so far.

Jesus has been going about the countryside proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.

That’s what all 4 gospels say that Jesus does.

For example… Mark chapter 1 verses 14 and 15…

One of the earliest proclamations that Jesus makes is recorded in Matthew chapter 4 verse 17 where Jesus gives a short version of that same thing…

Now… You’ll see the Gospels interchange between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven.

These aren’t exactly the same thing… the nuance is a tad bit different… but they are so closely related that they are often used synonymously.

But here’s what Jesus is talking about when He says… Kingdom of God… Kingdom of Heaven.

He’s talking about… simply stated… It’s how God wants things… the way things are supposed to be.

So here’s how this works.

If you were with us last year, we spent 4 weeks getting a broad picture of this.

Sin has distorted this world that God has created… along with everything in it.

That includes you and me.

And God is on a mission redeeming the world… and the end result will be… all creation will be exactly how God wants it.

Perfection.

And so literally… Jesus is saying… when He proclaims “Repent and believe the gospel… the Kingdom of God is at hand”… He’s saying… Through me, this process of making things the way they are supposed to be has begun.

So, when someone repents and puts their faith and trust in Jesus… That process of becoming who they are supposed to be begins.

No… they’re not made perfect instantly… but that process has begun.

They are, in a very literal sense, now part of the Kingdom of God.

And what we saw in chapter 10… Jesus basically sends out His disciples to proclaim the gospel also.

Why?

Because He’s ushering in the Kingdom of God… and He wants people to be a part of that Kingdom.

So when Jesus says the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, He’s saying… In me, God is starting to make things the way they’re supposed to be.

Now… as you read through the Gospel of Matthew, you see people respond to this gospel message that is being proclaimed.

Last month, Pastor Matthew talked about when Jesus called Matthew the tax collector… Come, Follow Me… and Matthew responds by leaving his VERY profitable tax collecting business to follow Jesus.

There was a woman that had been suffering with a blood issue for 12 years… and she simply reached out and touched Jesus because she believed that in Jesus, God was making things the way there supposed to be.

So there are a lot of positive responses to the gospel message being proclaimed.

But there’s also opposition to the gospel.

Multiple times already… Last week, I encouraged you to go home and read through the parts of chapter 12 that we didn’t get to cover.

If you did, you would’ve saw people claiming that Jesus was doing the things that He was doing through the power of a demon.

That Jesus is not an agent of God… rather, Jesus is an agent of the devil.

And that’s just one example.

Throughout the Gospel of Matthew… and the other accounts as well… The gospel is proclaimed… and SOMETIMES received… but very often, we see the gospel rejected.

So now, to the point of the message today.

Where are you in all of this?

What is your response?

To help us think about your response, Jesus tells a parable in chapter 13.

Look at verse 1 with me.

In this parable, Jesus takes a common site found in 1st century Israel… a farmer putting out some seed to grow some food.

And as this farmer throws out this seed, the seed lands on different types of soil.

The 1st type of soil that the seed lands on is extremely hard soil.

When I was growing up, my dad always had dogs.

He loved dogs… but not inside dogs… they were outside dogs.

We had a pretty decent sized yard… and so, we had outside dogs.

And dogs are very much creatures of habit… right?

When a dog runs from this side of the yard, to that side of the yard, they tend to run the same path every time.

So, if you were to walk outside into my yard in the 80s, you would see all this lush, full, pretty grass… except for where the dogs ran.

Because as they would run that same path over and over, they would compact the dirt down… and the soil got really hard along those paths… and the grass stopped growing.

So, when the farmer throws seed… and the seed hits this path where the soil has been hardened, the seed doesn’t absorb into the soil… and the birds come in and snatch it away… so the seed has been wasted.

The 2nd type of soil is a shallow soil.

In other words… there’s a thin layer of soil on top of a lot of rock.

And what happens there is that the morning dew comes and makes this layer of soil nice and moist… and the seed is absorbed… and the plant begins to grow.

But because the layer of soil is so thin, the roots have no where to grow underneath… and so the sun just burns the plant up… and once again… the seed is wasted.

The 3rd soil is a strangled soil.

It’s a soil that is good… full of nourishment… but it’s so full of weeds and thorn bushes… that those weeds and thorns steal all the nutrients away and choke out the plant, and it dies.

Once again… the seed is wasted.

The 4th soil however is the jackpot.

This is what everybody wants right here.

This is good, receptive, nutrient rich soil that allows the seed to grow and produce multiples of crops.

This is exactly what every farmer wants.

This is the good stuff!

Jesus is known for using agricultural examples because it was so common to them.

It’s not so common for us.

Many of you have had gardens… some have even farmed… but many in here no absolutely nothing about planting and growing.

Luckily though… Jesus comes right out and explains this parable for us.

He explains that these are responses to the gospel message that He’s proclaiming.

You might even say… these are the different types of human hearts.

So, let’s read his explanation… chapter 13… verse 18…

Jesus says that this 1st soil… the hardened soil that will not take seed… represents the heart that rejects the gospel… someone who doesn’t understand the gospel.

Now, we have to be very careful here.

I’m actually not a fan of the translation… doesn’t understand.

Because when we think about understanding, we have intellectual, cognitive… the ability to make sense of something.

But that’s not exactly what Jesus is saying here.

The original language implies that it’s not accepted or received.

That seed isn’t absorbed into the ground… That message isn’t absorbed into the heart of this person.

The message of the gospel isn’t embraced for this person.

I want to show you a video very quickly of someone that illustrates this 1st soil very well…

*SHOW VIDEO*

Dr. Sam Harris is an extremely intelligent man.

He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford, a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA… and this guy knows the Biblical story intellectually.

He understands the gospel of Jesus Christ on an intellectual level, in fact, he writes books about and against Christianity… he refuses to embrace the gospel.

He says that belief in God is nothing but failed science… and that anyone who does believe in God, does so out of ignorance.

This first seed is the person who hears the gospel message… but rejects it… refuses to embrace that message… and therefore, are not part of the Kingdom of God.

Look at verse 20…

Here, Jesus explains 2 other soils… the shallow soil, and the strangled soil.

We’re going to look at these together because they’re pretty similar.

Jesus says the shallow soil is like someone who hears the gospel, receives it with joy… but trouble comes… and that joy fades away… and they walk away from Jesus.

The strangled soil… and this represents the heart that, again, seems to receive the gospel… and embraces it initially… but the worries of this world and trying to get ahead in this life start to strangle and choke out the message… pulling them away from Jesus.

These 2 soils represent hearts that that seem to be positively responding to Jesus… positively responding to the gospel message… but in the long run, their faith is either not genuine… or they choose to walk away.

They don’t persevere in their faith.

I’ve saw this a hundred times… A person has some difficulties in their marriage… and so they start attending church… seemingly get their hearts right with God… their marriage starts getting better… and then poof… they’re gone.

I’ve saw young men start coming to youth group because they liked a girl… while coming to youth group, they seemingly get their hearts right with God… but when there’s a break-up… the guy is gone and goes back to his old way of life.

There’s a few things that Jesus lists here why these soils… why these hearts don’t persevere.

One… Because troubles come… it’s the idea that if I come to Jesus, he will fix everything that’s wrong.