Lent 1 Midweek

Lent Midweek I Jonah 1 Philippians 1:1-18 Luke 8:4-15 #1 Pastor James Peterson 03/09/2022 Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The theme is this: God sows His Word all over the place. Admittedly, I am only starting to learn about farming. But I do know this. Corn and beans are planted in nice, neat rows. It's all about the bushel per acre. And some ground is better than other ground, richer in nutrients or closer to the river. But then when I started learning about wheat, I realized that it isn't planted that way. It's scattered all over the place, and at harvest time, it gets mowed down like grass, separating the kernel from the chaff, and all that biblical language. I don't know, maybe the sower is planting wheat. Obviously God is the Sower in our story. And He sows the seed all over the place. His Word goes out all over the world, to believers and to unbelievers, to faithful and unfaithful, to the weak and the strong. As I was pondering the call documents, there was one thing that was clear to me: that you all want everybody in town to believe God's Word. You want your pastor to start a mission outreach. You want your pastor to reach out to the college. You want your pastor out in the community. This I will do, and this I will do with a glad heart. This I will do, and do my best, with your help and encouragement. For there is opportunity in Frontier County for a good harvest. As long as the Lord God sows faith into souls, we have the opportunity to invite our neighbors to become part of this harvest. As long as the Lord God sends preachers like Jonah and Paul to the Frontier of this county, there are opportunities to minister, to care, and to love the people around us. This we must do, and this we must do with a glad and cheerful heart as God's redeemed people. Recognize the grace of God, that He sends out His Word so abundantly that He even does what we would never do. He starts up the planter and throws seed on the interstate! He heads over to Colorado to plant seeds in the mountains. He starts up the engines and sows seeds in the desert. There are things we are told as Christians that we can never do. Like pray in the school. Like trust in God rather than medicine. Like bring back our children to our community, to our church, to faith in Christ Jesus. The soils are dry and dried up, we think to ourselves, but let us never forget... It is God who is the Sower and not we ourselves. He has sown faith in us, in our souls, in our children, and in our community. And we can be sure that He will continue to do it. Consider Jonah, who was literally the preacher who wouldn't preach. He was the prophet who didn't believe in God or that the Word would create faith. And yet God the Sower turned a whole town to repentance. Consider Paul, who was the Pharisee of all Pharisees. He was killing Christians, until Christ showed Him who He was. And Paul believed. And Paul became a missionary. And Paul wrote thirteen epistles. He wrote these beautiful words to the church of the Philippians that we just heard. And through His own imprisonment the imperial guard believed in Jesus. Pagan Gentile Roman soldiers believed because of the prisoner Paul. Paul that rocky ground became good soil all because of the seed from the Sower. Because the Lord God sows His Word all over the place. For now, we tell our neighbors about the Sower, that God sends the Word to us and we believe it to be true, we believe it through and through. That at this moment, right now, we are in the good soil, hearing the Word, holding it fast in an honest and good heart, and bearing fruit with patience. But that no matter what we go through, the Word of God is always offered from this lectern and from this pulpit. That the Word of God is available to us unlike any other time in the history of the world. The Sower goes out to sow, even today, among us. The Sower goes out to sow even here in this town, this county, and this community. The Sower goes out to sow, into all the world, to all kinds of people, to bring sinners to repentance. The Sower goes out to sow, not having stopped sowing when He ascended into heaven, but still providing for Word and Sacrament in our midst and all across this country this weekend. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In the holy name of Jesus. Amen.