The Receptive Heart

Good morning. How are y’? All? Great, great. My name is Jonathan.

I’m one of the pastors here, and I am honored to be with you all this morning to bring you the word of God. And I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday. And hello to my people over in the gathering place. I’m usually next door with our folk service, so if you’re not used to seeing me in here, it’s because I’m usually next door. So, hey, my people hope y’ all are doing well over there.

And so how are you doing with you and God?

How’s that going? How’s your relationship with God going this morning? Well, good. This is a question that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we probably don’t ask often enough, do we? Sometimes it takes something happening in order to get us to kind of tune into our relationship with God.

We’re just, you know, on autopilot, doing our thing, and something happens. Maybe it’s something good, maybe it’s something challenging that happens. Like, you know, when you move to a new city, to a new town, you might go, okay, trying to get my bearings about me. Is there something I need to be focusing on here with my relationship with God? Like, kind of shocks you out of, you know, when you first have kids, that’ll.

Sometimes you see this miracle of new birth and just kind of makes you go, whoa, there’s something bigger than just me. What is going on? How am I doing in terms of this power that is so much greater than me? Maybe it’s something that is challenging that’s happened to you. The loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the loss of a marriage.

These things will just kind of shock your system a little bit and make you think about things that you’d put on the back burner for a while. So the first thing we have to be honest with ourselves and say, we probably don’t ask ourselves that question enough. How am I doing with God? And then when we do ask that question, sometimes we don’t really actually know how to answer it. I guarantee you, if you’re kind of tracking along with me right now, you’re probably already thinking to yourself, well, here’s how I would answer that.

You might have some sort of internal thermometer or balance or some way of calculating, putting a value on, okay, here’s how I’m doing with God. Maybe the first place you go is like the churchy kind of stuff, you know? Well, I haven’t missed church in the last seven weeks, so that must I Mean, that’s good, right? This is the last time I read my Bible, or here’s how many. I got a streak going on the Bible app.

So this is cool, you know, like, that’s how we measure our spiritual health. Maybe how you dealing with God? Obviously, not bad things. And these are, I think, part of the equation. Just trying to kind of think through how we maybe sometimes, you know, evaluate this.

Maybe there’s a morality barometer that you have or a measure, like, around sin. Like, you know, in the factory, they’ve got the sign up on the wall, it says it has been X days since the last safety incident. You know, do you have one of those in your own mind? Like, it has been X number of days since the last sin incident. And that’s how you judge your spiritual health.

Like, you know, whatever it is that you feel like you struggle with the most, like, that’s the thing. And if I can get longer without doing that thing or letting that emotion come over me or letting that anger come out or whatever it is, I’m doing good. Maybe that’s your measure. Maybe it’s related to, like, your environment and the people around you. Like, hey, you know.

You know, it’s all love and good and people, you know, happy family and happy friends, and everything’s good. And so I must be doing with God, doing well with God, because I’m doing good with my people, you know? So what is. What is the answer to that question? So Jesus, he’s going to give us a parable this morning that’s going to help us answer that question through his eyes.

And so here’s Jesus, creator of us, Creator of mankind, Creator of this heart that we have, also the one who stepped down from heaven and became human so that he can sympathize with our weakness and the giver of the Holy Spirit, who’s here with us and can look inside of our hearts and answer questions that maybe we can’t even answer ourselves and reveal that to us. He’s ready to give you that diagnosis this morning through a parable that he shared with his disciples and great crowds. You want to know what his answer is? Okay, good. I was just going to go home if you said no.

I was like, well, I guess we’re done here then. He has. He has this parable that he’s going to give us. It’s one of his most famous parables. And as we’ll find out, turns out to be, in the words of Jesus, one of the most important parables he ever tells us.

It’s that important. Sometimes it’s known as the parable of the sower or the parable of the four soils. And it helps explain that. What’s going on in our heart. Why, some days we feel great, some days we feel like we’re just killing it, man.

I mean, we’re like, we have this supernatural motivation and all the good things we want to do, we’re just doing. And all the bad things we want to stop doing, we’re not doing them. You know, we’re just like, it’s great. And then other days we’re like, eh. I mean, I don’t.

If you’re honest with yourself, you go, I just don’t actually really care about the things of God because I got all this other stuff going on. I don’t really. I’m kind of bored. You know, I’ve done the church thing, heard the sermons, listened to music.

Sometimes we’re that way on the same day, right? Like, how do we explain this variation in motivation and behavior and attitude and. And the results of all that? How do we explain that variation inside of our own hearts? And then when we look around at the people around us, the people that are in our church and the people that are in our small group and the people that we work with, how do we explain the variation of all these different people and their different ways of responding to God?

Well, Jesus has an explanation for it. And it’s this parable of the four soils. So the one who knows us knows that the true condition of our spiritual health, the true answer to how are you doing with God? Is in our heart, in that deepest place inside of us. That explains what we really, really, really want most out of life.

So sometimes when you think about the heart, we think about our feelings. Like, you know, with all your heart kind of thing. Like it’s with the greatest amount of feeling. That’s not the biblical idea of the heart. The biblical idea of the heart and what Jesus is talking about is that which you truly, actually, really want.

And he knows that even sometimes better than we know it for ourselves. So we’re going to listen to this parable of the sower. Jesus taught that the key to bearing fruit in the kingdom of God is a heart that’s receptive to the word of God. That’s the key. That’s what we’re going to learn about today.

We’re going to learn about how we can cultivate a heart that’s receptive to the word of God and bear his kind of fruit. And he gives us these four Soil conditions. That’s going to help illustrate different degrees or different types of hearts and different degrees of receptivity to that word of God. Okay, you ready to jump in with Jesus? All right, here we go.

This is Luke chapter 8, 4 through 15. And this parable is in three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. So if you want to go and read the other versions of Jesus telling of this, Matthew, chapter 13, Mark, chapter four, we’re going to do Luke chapter eight. Seems like this is one of his go to like sermons. You know, I think he’s told this a lot.

And so we’re going to read Luke’s version of this and see what Jesus has to say about our hearts. When a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. Some fell on the rock. As it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture.

Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things, he called out, he who has ears, let him hear. When his disciples asked him what this parable meant, Sidebar. Thankful for the disciples here, because if I was hearing that, I’d go, ah, not sure what you mean, Jesus, what is this supposed to mean?

Thankfully, his disciples were in the same boat and they said, hey, Jesus, what does this mean? Thank you. Here we go. Here’s the answer to you. It has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God.

But for others, they’re in parables so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is the seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy.

But these have no root. They believe for a while, and in a time of testing they fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear. But as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.

It’s God’s word. Amen. So he gives us these four soil conditions. And I believe we can see ourselves in all four of these soils, maybe sometimes all at the same time, but we can see ourselves in this. So let’s ask the Holy Spirit to show us right now what soil condition might be most illustrative of our heart right now.

And then ask for wisdom what to do about that. So the first soil condition is that of the path. And Jesus wants the person whose heart is like a hard path to have an open heart. Have an open heart. So I mentioned that Jesus said this is one of the most important parables in the mark telling of this.

When he’s telling this, he says, he says to people who were asking him about the meaning of it, he said, you don’t understand this parable. If you don’t understand this parable, you’re not going to understand any of the parables. Okay, so I guess this is really important. Why did he say that? Why is this parable the most important parable to understand?

Well, he’s quoting when the disciples asked him. He quotes seeing they may not see, hearing they may not understand. That’s a quote from Isaiah. And it’s because Jesus, the maker of the human heart and the seer of the human heart, knows that we have a decision to make about whether we really truly want to hear and whether we truly want to see. And so what he’s saying is, I’m going to give you the word of God, and then you have to make a decision about whether you will hear and whether you will see.

If you can get this parable, you’ll get it. You’ll get all the other ones. But if you decide to shut your ears and shut your eyes from the word of God, you’re not going to understand any of them. Well, first of all, thank you, Lord, for speaking right now. Let us have ears to hear.

Right? So he starts with the path. The path is the hard soil that’s been packed down by people walking on it. Like it’s turned into a road. You know, it’s that place, you know, Wilson, apparently we hate sidewalks around here or something.

And so on. A lot of the roads, you can see, you can see there’s just people walking where there really should be sidewalks, but they’re not. And so there’s this path now, and nothing’s growing on that path. Why? Because it’s been packed down.

Because everybody has to walk there, and they’re walking on the same place and it’s been packed down. It’s hard Soil. We were up at the Rocky Mountain campus for. For our picnic, and we’re sitting at the volleyball net, and it’s like. It looks like it’s ground.

I think it’s concrete. Instead, back behind the building, we’re sitting at the volleyball net. We’re just banging, banging, banging. Marcus, right? Banging these things on the ground.

I’m like, what? This is the worst. The grass is awful. Like, you’re stubbing your toes on grass. What is going on?

So I talked to Jonathan, our lead pastor up there. I said, that is the worst grass I’ve ever seen in my life. And he goes, there’s a reason for that. Because Redeemer Church, who had that building before we did, they were planning for some expansion. And so they had a company come and pack down all the dirt back there because they were getting ready to put a building on it.

Okay, this makes sense. This is why you can’t grow anything there, because it’s been packed down. This is what it’s like to have a hard heart, a heart that has been packed down over years and years and years of resistance to the Word of God. It’s hard for the seed to penetrate that heart and to take root. It’s the hard heart.

And Jesus has this rather frank and stern warning for those who would say, that’s me. And that is, there’s seed that has been sown on your heart. The word of God has gone out to you, but there’s an adversary who does not want you to believe, be saved. And he comes and takes the seed away.

Let us hear that warning this morning.

That there is one who does not want us to believe and be saved. And so, well, what do we do about this? What is our responsibility? Okay, God’s sowing the seed. He’s speaking.

He’s giving us the Word. What are we supposed to do? Let’s start in Hosea, chapter 10, verse 12. Break up your fallow ground. Hosea says to the people of Israel, for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

So there’s this mystery here. Well, we can’t cause the rain to come. We can’t cause the righteousness to rain upon us. What is our responsibility? Apparently, it’s to break up the fallow ground, to open our hearts to God’s Word, and then let him do what he does.

James 1, 21. Receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save your souls. Hebrews 3:7, 8. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. So the fact that our hearts are hardened is something about our will, isn’t it?

About whether we really actually want the word of God to be implanted in there and we can make a choice to harden our hearts. And he says, don’t do that. Isaiah 55, 6, 7 captures a piece. Or maybe Jesus is capturing a piece of this. This warning.

Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near, with the implied warning that he will not always be found and he will not always be near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. There’s the promise. Open your hearts. Break up the fallow ground.

He will reign. Righteousness, he will pardon. Maybe this was you when you were a kid. Maybe you have kids and you know what I’m talking about. Like you’re giving them an instruction and you can just tell no one’s home.

You know, I’ve got a five year old right now and this is him, you know, like, he’s just like, hey, go tie your shoes, you know, go put your shoes on, go brush your teeth, go, whatever. And nobody’s home. And you say, what did I say? Take out the trash. No, I didn’t.

Where did you. Because nobody’s home, you know, like the power’s not on, nothing’s getting in there, right? You know what I’m talking about. Or God forbid, you give them a three part instruction, hey, I need you to do this and then do this and then do this. But before you went to the second one, they’re gone, right?

You have no way of knowing what I said because you left, right? And that’s maybe a little bit of a picture of what it looks like to just have your ears closed. Like you’re here, you’re in, the wavelengths are hitting your ears, but you’re not actually opening your ears to hear. We get that, don’t we? We know what that’s like.

And that’s what Jesus is saying here is, hey, there’s a condition of the heart where maybe you can come to church, you can see nature, you can see God speaking through all of his creation, but you’re just not opening your ears to let him speak to you and so that you can hear what he’s saying. And so if that’s you today, if you kind of sense the Holy Spirit saying that’s you, you’ve hardened Your heart. You’ve not let me in. All I can do is repeat this, the warnings and the encouragement from Scripture today. If you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.

Seek the Lord while He may be found, he will abundantly pardon. You’re here. You’re hearing the Word of God. He’s here. He can be found.

You’re not dead yet. Receive with meekness the Word, the implanted word that can save your souls. Hear the warning of Jesus that this will not always be the case.

Do not harden your hearts. Break up your fallow ground. Let him in.

The Word of God is here. He’s speaking to you. Open your hearts to Him. God created this good world, but our sin has caused us to break fellowship with Him. We are not able to make ourselves right with God.

We’re not able to do that work. That’s a work that only he can do. But he offers us forgiveness. He offers us his life. He offers us his glory.

He offers us everything he has. And all we have to do is align our will and our heart with him and say, God, I want to receive what you can give me, that only you can give me. So the question is today, will you do that? Will you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord? Will you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead?

You will be saved. Recognize that you must open your heart to Him. And there’s an adversary that would like for you not to do that. Will you do that today? Maybe you’re here this morning and you are thinking about people in your life that are like that.

And you’re thinking, maybe they’re in your family, and you recognize this person has a hard heart. Well, the hard part is you can’t break their fallow ground for them, can you? You can’t open their heart for them. What is your responsibility? What can you do in this case?

Well, partner with the sower of the seed. Keep throwing seed on that ground. Okay? The enemy wants to take it away, we’ll throw more down. God has an infinite supply.

And as long as today is called today, you can keep sowing the word of God, and then let him do what he can only do, and that’s to save their soul and let them do what only they can do. And that’s to open their heart. But you give them the word of God, sow the seed, and pray like crazy.

It’s kind of a mysterious thing, isn’t it? And it’s very humbling because, boy, don’t we want to just do it for other People, we can’t. We can partner with him, though. We can sow the seed, and then we can wait for him to do the work that only he can do, and that’s to penetrate that open heart. Okay, let’s move to the second second soil condition.

This is the one where the soil fell on the rocky ground. There’s some soil in there, but there’s not a lot. And in this case, Jesus is saying, I want. If that’s you, I want you to have a dependent heart. I want you to have a dependent heart.

Just write it down. It’ll make sense in just a second.

A dependent heart. Dependent on what? Well, let’s get there. Okay, so let’s go back to the illustration that Jesus is using. There’s seed being thrown on the ground.

Some of it’s rocky ground. There’s like a little bit of soil there. There’s some soil, not a lot, mostly rock. And then he says, well, what happens? Okay, just let’s.

Jesus says, what happens in life, in nature? Well, you’ll throw some seed down there. It could grow and it might shoot up very quickly. But he identifies two problems with this kind of soil that are going to get it, one which is in the parable itself. It has no moisture.

The heat is going to come and it’s going to dry up like that. And. And new. Well, any plant can’t survive without moisture for long, but especially a new plant can’t survive without moisture. And then he identifies the second problem and that it has no root, has no root system of its own.

And so this is going to be a problem. It’s going to shoot up and it’s going to look great. But then as soon as the heat gets turned up and the first trials and tribulations come, it’s going to wither away. That’s that soil condition.

Do you know of that in your own story, your own heart, in your own spiritual journey? You know, you think back to the time when you were first a believer and, you know, your eyes were open to the goodness of God for the first time. And, whoa, this is great. And there’s just passion, and everything is just joyous. And you received it with joy.

And then something happened, right? It’s like, oh, man, I wish that thing didn’t happen. Well, what Jesus is saying is that thing’s gonna happen to everybody, whatever it is. I have to confess to you that as a church leadership, we see this all the time, and you probably have seen it too, in your own life, in the lives of those around you. And, you know, sometimes people come to church, something’s going on in their life, God’s calling them to themselves, and they make the decision.

Whatever helped you make the decision this morning that I’m gonna go to church? And you came and you came. Now you’re hearing the word of God, and maybe you will receive it. And then they come back the next day and the next Sunday and the next Sunday, and you get involved in a small group, and you get. And you’re serving, and all of a sudden it’s like, this is awesome.

This is the greatest. Pastor Gary is the greatest preacher on planet earth, you know, and, like, you’re spewing it all over social media. Eastgate Church is the greatest church ever. You know, I’ve been looking for this church my entire life. This is the greatest, greatest.

You know, and first couple times it happens, you might go, we just might be the greatest church ever. That might be true. But over time, you start to realize, okay, wait a minute, I’ve seen this before. They hear the word of God, they receive with joy. There’s this immediate spurt of growth, and with it comes all this activity.

And then all of a sudden you’re like, where did that person go? The first trial, the first persecution on account of the Word comes and they’re gone. You’re like, I thought this was the greatest church ever. What happened? Well, okay, maybe it’s more about the soil condition than it is the condition of the church.

It’s just, this is going to happen. That’s the first thing to recognize. If you’ve been here, you know, a few months, maybe you’re new to the faith, new to the faith journey.

Get ready. You’re going to get a place where you’re like this, hey, it’s not working. Why this isn’t working? Because you had some sort of expectation about what this was going to look like. You came with a certain expectation, and all of a sudden something different comes, and you’re like, wait, I was told that this was going to come.

If I did all these things, this was going to happen. And now this is happening. What’s going on? The first thing I would say is, get ready for that, because it’s going to happen. It reminds me of in John, Jesus is multiplying the bread and the fish.

And everyone’s like this. Jesus is the greatest. He can multiply bread. And now we don’t have to work anymore because there’s going to be an infinite supply of bread. And this is awesome, right?

And Jesus sees their hearts and Goes this great crowd that’s now beginning to follow him. And all this activity and all this PR stuff that’s happening, you know, he says something that was not focus grouped, you know, like he did not test this out. The advertising, you know, wing of his disciples was like, Jesus, no, that’s the wrong message. Because he says, he stands up in front of this great crowd that’s all excited about what’s going on and says, if anyone would follow me, let him drink my blood and eat my flesh.

And a lot of the people were like, ew, I was here for the bread, what is going on? And a bunch of them decided to leave because they were rocky soil, right? So, okay, what is Jesus asking us to do? How do we get dependent? How do we get a dependent heart?

What can we be dependent on? Well, let’s look, let’s look at the scriptures here first. Thessalonians 2. We also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, here’s the Word again, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of me, but as what it really is, the word of God which is at work in you believers. So the first thing I would say to you is, there’s a dude up on stage babbling, just talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking.

That’s what’s happening right now. And you could just say, dude up on the stage is babbling. Or you could say, okay, Lord, speak to me. That’s the first thing we have to do, is we have to understand that the Word of God will come to us. And then we make decisions about what we will do when we hear the Word of God.

What are we going to do? Look at Hebrews 4:12. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Okay, so the Word of God now is cutting right to your heart and is able to get all the way in there and look at what is the real motivation behind this. And so when that first comes to you, when that trial comes, when that first time where the expectation of what you thought you were getting doesn’t match what Jesus is bringing you, what Jesus is saying is, let that go all the way in and let’s look at the motivations, let’s look at the intentions.

Are you really here for me or are you here because you need a cosmic therapist to make you feel better? Because if you were looking for the Cosmic therapist Jesus is going to come in a different form. Then you’re going to have a decision to make, and it’s going to be hard and it’s going to feel like a trial and it’s going to feel like heat. The heat’s going to get turned up in your life and you’re going to have a decision to make.

Am I going to surrender my will to him, no matter what that looks like, or am I going to hold on to what I need out of life? And when the heat gets turned up, you’re either going to wither away or you’re going to pursue him. That’s the first thing.

Second is recognize why is this trial. So I’m sitting here telling you the trial is going to come, the trouble is going to come, the tribulation is going to come. It’s like, well, Jesus, couldn’t you just spare us that? Let’s just not do that part. How about that?

Well, first Peter 1:6:7 says in this you rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary. You have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it’s tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus has a purpose for these trials, and that’s to shatter your expectations. That’s to get your life more on his track than yours. That’s to pull the world and get your heart to where you’re not so rocky and there’s a little bit of soil there.

Okay, we need to get through this time. We need more soil. That’s what we need. So this trial is going to come and if you will pursue and endure, you can have long term growth.

Look at Galatians 6:2. How does this actually work? How does this work in practice? Well, Galatians 6:2 gives us a clue. Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Then look at 1 Corinthians 12 God has so composed the body, that’s us. If one member suffers, all suffer together. And if one member is honored, all rejoice together. There’s something here where when you’re in the first stages of your walk with Christ, you need other people. You need them.

You become dependent on other people to bear your burdens with you because you can’t do it yourself. That’s a humbling place to be. Nobody likes to be in that place. But you become dependent on others. When a child is first Learning to walk put yourself in the kind of mind frame of a one year old.

I wish, well, maybe I don’t wish. I wish we could see what’s going on in their brains, you know what I’m saying? Like, what is he actually thinking? And they’re starting to learn to walk and they’re used to you holding them all the time. And if they’re going to get from one place to another, you’re doing it for them.

And there’s just this closeness and this necessary closeness. And then now they’re starting to walk and you start moving away from them and they’re like, whoa, hey, I need you. Why are you moving away from me?

What’s going on? And you recognize that you need to move away from them. You need to create a trial so that they can build something new in themselves that they didn’t know they had. They didn’t know they had the capacity to do this. And without the trial, without the tribulation, they would never experience the, the joy of learning to walk.

That’s the tested genuineness of your faith is what God is after. And so back to the, you know, Jesus’s analogy here. If you’re, if you’re throwing seed on soil and you’re trying to get it to grow, like around here, maybe you’re trying to grow some grass or something like that, the beginning of summer, you’ve got what you think is pretty good soil, you know, and you throw a grass seed on it. What do you have to do to make sure that that seed will, will make its way to maturity? You gotta water it all the time, multiple times a day, right?

And you might throw hay on top of it to keep it where it needs to be because it doesn’t have any root. So it needs moisture and it needs an artificial root system. Basically something from the outside keeping it where it needs to be so it can have that time to grow those roots. And so if that’s you, if you feel like, okay, I’m relatively new to the faith, this is awesome, but a trial is coming. What am I supposed to do?

How do I get through it? If I don’t have any root system, how do I draw the moisture that I’m going to need to draw? Is this hopeless? No, it’s not hopeless. God provides for us.

So the one thing I would say is water your faith constantly. Come to church every Sunday, even when you don’t feel like it. Get on a service team so that you have to come to church, right? Go to your small group every single Week. Even when you don’t feel like it, Stop listening to whatever radio you’re listening to and start listening to Christian music.

Get the Bible app and just have it play the audio Bible all the time. Listen to as many preachers as you can find. Talk to anybody you can talk to about Jesus. And am I saying these things, saying, okay, well, if you don’t do these things, you’re not a good Christian and God’s not going to be happy with you? No, I’m just saying that if you find yourself early on in your faith journey, or maybe you’re like back in your faith journey and something new is growing, it’s just a fact.

You need constant watering of the word and you need other people to just hold on to when the trial comes. You just need it. So just constantly get that watering. Constant, constant, constant. And then if you’re in a small group and you know some new folks in your small group, they just kind of started their faith journey.

Help them understand what’s getting ready to come, and help them know that you’re going to hold onto them while that trial happens and that you’re not going to let them go. And you’ll be their hay, you’ll be their artificial root structure to just hold him in place while that trial is happening. I think that’s what God’s calling us to, is to get dependent on His Word and get dependent on other people so that we can make it through that time of heat and time of trial. Okay, let’s move to the third, the third soil condition. This is the condition of thorny ground, thorny soil.

There’s good stuff growing, and there’s also thorns, thorns growing. And if you find yourself in this place, Jesus is saying, you need to get a focused heart. You need to get a focused heart. So I think we are used to seeing these sorts of places. And there was a team of people that worked all summer long getting all the thorns out of the perimeter of the building of our property.

And so you know, you know what it looks like when thorns have just choked out everything and there’s nothing good growing anymore. It’s just thorns. And Jesus is saying, that might be you. That might be you today. You might have some things growing in your life of the kingdom of God, but you might have some other things that are competing for the attention, it’s competing for the nutrients that you need in order to really grow and bear that fruit in maturity.

There’s. There’s competition there in your heart. And then he tells us, what are the Things that could. That could compete with the kingdom of God in your life. And he gives us a list.

He says, the. The cares of this life, the riches of this life, and the pleasures of this life will compete for the kingdom of God in your heart. That’s what he tells you. The cares of this life. Just the stuff that you care about, the stuff that happens in life.

You’re like, I gotta. I gotta deal with this. I got teenagers. Well, yeah, I got one older kids driving, right? And they need cars to drive, and cars break down.

Are you aware of this? I am. And so we have to keep them running. It’s like, that’s a care. It’s just something that happens in life.

And you’re like, I gotta deal with this. It’s Jesus saying, well, just don’t. Just. We don’t need. Don’t work, don’t worry about cars.

Don’t worry about anything. Just go plop yourself on the side of a mountain and go, God, feed me. You know, like. Is that what he’s saying? No, he’s just saying that the cares of this life might be getting in and entangling your heart.

Not. Not the. The things that have to be done in life, but now it’s. It’s gotten into your heart and you’ve started to take your attention off the things of the kingdom, and you’ve started to. To really focus on the cares of this life, the riches of this life, wealth, the accumulation of possessions.

Okay, we need this stuff. Is it bad? Is it bad to have things? No. Look at the whole category of scripture, and you see that God created this good world, and he put us in charge of our little plot of land.

And that includes accumulation of things and the ability to do things and to bless other people. And if we can receive that as a gift from God and to use it according to his purposes, it can be a good thing. But when it starts to entangle the heart and you say, what I really want is the new version of this and that, what I really want is to have the better that. What I really want is the status that comes from having this level of house. Now it’s entangling your heart, and now it’s choking.

It’s choking the word of God, the pleasures of life. I hope you had some pleasure while you were eating on, you know, these last couple days. Isn’t it wonderful that God gave us taste buds and we can just, like, eat and enjoy things? That’s the grace of God. I hope that while you were at the Thanksgiving table, you didn’t just every mouth, you know, bite you put in your mouth?

You didn’t go, like, I’m hoping you put something in your mouth and you went, yes, that’s good. Been waiting all year for that. My wife, she made some great collards this, this Thanksgiving. They’re good. I didn’t know about college until I moved to Wilson.

You know, this is a new thing for us. Now we know how to make them and they’re wonderful. I love them. And like, thank the Lord, he gave us the ability to enjoy things like this. But when that becomes your aim and your goal.

Okay, now we got a problem. When instead of receiving that as a gift from God and now it becomes God, it becomes your idol, it’s choking the kingdom from your life. Alright, so what do we do? Well, his call to you today is get focused. Get focused on the kingdom.

Get focused on the kingdom of God and the fruit that he wants you to bear. Look at Matthew, chapter 13. This is another parable Jesus teaches. He says the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Jesus is telling us the kingdom of God is worth it. It’s worth everything. And yeah, there’s all this stuff going on in life.

It’s great. Receive it as a gift, Offer it to God in his service. But get focused on the kingdom of God. Get focused on the kingdom of heaven. It’s worth it.

It’s the greatest. Don’t let your heart get entangled by other things. Look at Colossians 3, 1, 2. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

So there’s a spiritual reality that is just as real as the things we can touch and see and hear. The things made of atoms that we can study and look at. There’s a spiritual reality that’s just as real as that. And we have a decision to make. Are we going to set our minds on that spiritual reality?

Because this physical reality, if we let it, will just consume all of our attention, right? We have to make a decision to set our minds on the things of heaven where Christ is that unseen world, the unseen realm, the spiritual realm, the realm of the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus is saying, hey, hey, focus on that. Because guess what? It’s either real or not.

The spiritual realm, the unseen realm, is either real or it’s not. It’s either that this is all there is or there’s something else. Dallas Willard likes to say that reality is what you bump into when you’re wrong. The spiritual realm is either real or it’s not. And Jesus is saying, it’s real and you must focus on it, because if you don’t, the cares of this life and the riches of this life and the pleasures of this life will choke it out and cause you to dim your view and only worry about things that are on this earth.

The created order. Matthew 6:31, 33. More teaching from Jesus. So don’t worry about these things, saying, what will we eat? What will we drink?

Don’t worry about this stuff. It’s here, but don’t worry about it. These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers. But your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the kingdom above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

So what’s dominating your thoughts? Is it the things of heaven or the things of Earth? He’s saying, set your minds on the things of heaven. Modern life is specifically designed to make this hard. It really is.

I mean, just think about, like, the world that we’re in right now, our environment, it is uniquely designed to grow thorns. It’s like we invented a thorn factory, and we have been working on these thorns, and we’ve gotten really good at it. We are really good at growing thorns. The first thing is that we have. The wisdom of this age tells us that this is all there is.

There’s nothing actually more than just the atoms that we can see and touch. So if the wisdom of the age that we’re sort of soaked in tells us there’s nothing to focus on outside of this, well, then that’s going to be kind of hard for us to set our minds on, Right? The second thing is that we are. I would have no data to back this up. I’m just going to say it.

I will declare it. We are the most distracted people in the history of humanity. We have devised these little distraction boxes that we carry around with us and that we sleep with and that we spend all of our time with. They’re distraction boxes. They are thorn boxes.

They cause us to lose our attention, our focus on the things of heaven, and put it on the things of the earth. And they’re really, really good. At it, because we’re really, really good at making thorns. We are the wealthiest generation of the wealthiest nation that’s ever lived. And Jesus says that the riches of life are potential thorns.

So you think we got any thorns? Yeah. My, how they have grown. Right? So this world we’re in right now, just like, if you’re just wondering.

I don’t know which soil condition I am. I’m not sure. This is probably it. I’ll just save you the step. This is probably it.

You’re probably in thorny ground right now. It’s just the world we live in. It’s very hard not to be distracted by the things of this earth and to set our minds on the things of heaven. So here’s a little exercise you could try. So, author John Eldredge, he’s the one who wrote the book Wild at Heart.

Long time ago. It’s a pretty famous book. You might know who I’m talking about. He talks about creating sacred spaces in our life, sacred spaces in our daily life that would allow us to set our minds on the things of God. And so he says, five minutes, like, get up early, spend five minutes in a quiet room by yourself.

No phone. Like, leave it in another room, put it on airplane mode and put it in the other room. No reading to do. No external distraction, no task list. Just nothing.

And just sit there quietly and say, all right, God, I want to be with you, and you want to be with me. So here I am.

I can guess what’s going to happen to you. If you’re anything like me. Five minutes is going to go by, and you have thought of 73 other things than God, Right? Because your brain’s just going. You have reflexively reached for that phone that is on airplane mode and in the other room, like, seven times.

Because that’s what you do, you know? And it’s really hard to set your mind on things of God. So if you do that exercise, maybe tomorrow morning do that exercise and just kind of pay attention to what is popping in your head. And chances are you’ll put those things in the thorn category. They’re the things that are distracting you, the things that are dominating your thoughts that are of the earth and not of God’s kingdom.

And then you can keep doing this exercise and just start giving those to God. Now every time a thorn shows up, say, God, is that thorn. Yep. Turns out that’s a thorn, all right. God, what are we going to do about that?

And it’s just a little exercise you can kind of use to Diagnose what’s the thorns in my heart and to get focused. Okay, let’s look at the last soil condition. This is the one Jesus is after. He wants us to have a fruitful heart.

As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Why did you have to add that one, Jesus? Come on, I want the miracle grow kind of faith. Jesus expects us to bear fruit. He does.

That’s what he’s after. That’s what he’s looking for. He wants you to bear fruit. He did not implant the word in your heart for it to just stay dormant. He expects it to grow and to bear fruit.

Look at John, chapter 15. This is. If you want to just kind of do some background reading on this kind of concept, just read John chapter 15 sometime this week. It’s a good one. I’ll give you two verses out of this.

By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. There it is. And so prove to be my disciples. Whoa, Jesus. You’re saying if I don’t bear fruit, I’m not your disciple?

I think that’s what he just said. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Okay, so he didn’t leave it as a mystery as to what the fruit is that he’s after. He’s after love. As I have loved you.

You love one another. His kind of love. Not our kind of love. His kind of love. That’s what he’s after.

That’s the fruit that he’s after. Galatians, chapter 5. The famous fruit of the Spirit verse. But the fruit of the Spirit is love. We can just stop there.

The fruit of the Spirit is love. Everything flows out of that God’s kind of love. The same way he loved us. That sacrificial love that he gave to us that we didn’t deserve for our good, for his glory. That’s the kind of love he wants us to show towards him and to others.

Look at Colossians 1 10. Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. What does it look like to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him? Bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. Increasing in the knowledge of God is not getting more facts about God.

Stuffing more information in your brain about God. Knowledge of God is interactive relationship with God. God is love. Interactive relationship with love. As you spend more time increasing in interactive relationship with love, you will begin to bear the fruit of love to those around you.

That’s what Jesus is after. But unfortunately he says you have to do this with patience. We have started a new kind of garden. We’ve done every kind of garden in our house, in our place. We started a new one because my sister in law and her husband decided this was good.

And they’ve tried it and they’re like, it’s working. We’re like, okay, we’ll do it. And so it’s a wood chip garden, you know what I’m talking about. You put wood chips down, you prepare some stuff underneath it, like straw, hay, things like that, some other stuff, and you put wood chips down and then you just wait and it breaks down and it becomes good magically. I don’t know how it works, but it becomes good.

But it takes time. And so what he said to us, my brother in law said, first year, probably not going to get good plants out of this. Well, that’s. Why would I do this then, right? Because it takes time.

It takes time for that good nutrient to build up and to break down and to become a place that’s hospitable for the kind of fruit you’re trying to grow. And it’s the same way with our heart. It takes time. It takes time for God to do that work inside of us. And so he tells us what we have to do in order to bear fruit.

He says, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Hold on to the word of God. Just hold on. One of the other words that Jesus uses a lot in this kind of conversation is the word abide. But it just means to stay, to remain, just stay put for a long time.

Oh, that’s not what we want, is it? We want God to just snap his fingers and say, woo hoo. We have all the fruit of the spirit in full measure done. That’s not what he does. God doesn’t heal our character like this.

God allows us to have a participation in it, to break up our fallow ground and to do the work, to remove the rocks and to remove the thorns and to add some things and to take some things away. And then slowly the fruit of the spirit begins to grow. We have to do it with patience. And it says to have an honest and good heart. Honest.

What does it mean to have an honest and good heart? I think it’s saying, God, I want you to be honest with me so that I can be honest with you. God. Be honest with me about what’s really going on in there, what my real motivations are, what I’m really struggling with, where my real wounds are, where my real problems are, where my real will is not surrender to you. I want you to be honest with me, God, and I’m going to turn around and be honest with you about where I’m at on it and then have a good heart, which means I want God’s goodness for my life.

I’m ready to surrender to his vision for my life and not my own, because it’s better, it’s gooder than what I’ve got. And so to be honest with God and to have a good heart to align with God’s goodness, it just takes time to bear fruit with patience. And so, unfortunately, a lot of times when, when, when we don’t see fruit growing, we just leave. Like in our new garden that we’re doing, if we just said, well, that was a terrible first season. Let’s do something different, well, guess what?

We didn’t give it an opportunity to do what it needed to do, which is to. It’s to take time to break down and create that fertile soil. And so the unfortunate word of Jesus to maybe some of you here is just, you’re going to have to just stay. You’re going to have to remain. You just have to stick it out with God.

Don’t jump off the spiritual journey when it gets hard. Just stay and just say, God, I trust you. I’m going to keep reading your word even though it feels like there’s nothing for me here. I’m going to keep praying. I’m going to keep going to church.

I’m going to keep going to small group. God, show me. Show me why my heart is like it is. Just abide with God and his word and let him do what only he can do. So here’s the thing.

All this talk, you might think, well, is this a formula now of spiritual growth? What’s the formula? Okay, give me the steps. Well, Jesus didn’t give us a formula, did he? He just described the nature of reality and then put it down and said, now what you want to do with that reality?

This is the way spiritual life is. What are you going to do with it? And turns out there’s a mystery here, isn’t there? There’s a piece that we kind of have to do on our own. God does not overwhelm our will.

God will let us express our will. But then there’s a piece that only he can do, isn’t it? He tells a parable right after this in the Book of Mark, and the parable goes like this. There’s a farmer, he wakes up every day, goes out to his field, works it. He doesn’t know what’s happening.

At some point, seed starts to grow, then some leaves shoot off, and then a fruit starts to grow. And when it’s ripe, he harvests it. That was his parable.

What do you mean? Jesus? I think what he’s getting at is there’s a mystery here. There’s some things that we can do. We can heed these warnings and heed this reality that he’s giving us, that there’s distractions and there’s thorns and there’s rocky soil and we need each other and all that.

There’s some pieces that we can do to make our hearts hospitable for the kind of fruit of the kingdom that he desires. But then there’s a piece where we just have to stand back and go, lord, I don’t know how this is working, but I’m going to have to just trust you that at some point some fruit is going to grow on this thing. Because that’s. I mean, I’m not giving you, like I said, a step or formulas to do, because I don’t have the formulas and I don’t have the steps. Because God’s not after a formula.

He’s not after steps. He’s after your heart. He’s after you opening your heart to him. Honestly, being that farmer that’s willing to forsake everything else and to do the work in your own heart, to be receptive to the word of God and then allowing him to do what only he can do. And that’s to rain righteousness down on you.

That’s to pardon you infinitely, and that’s to build the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the kingdom of God that only he can help build. Will you do that today? Will you have an open heart? Will you open your heart to God? Will you get a dependent heart that’s willing to be dependent on him and other people?

Will you have a focused heart where you’re intentional about seeking the things of the kingdom, not letting the things of the world entangle your heart? And will you bear fruit, have a fruitful heart with patience, and allow God to do his work over the long term? Let’s pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for speaking.

And now we want to receive it. We open our hearts to you, Lord. We confess. We ask that you would help us to see those places in our hearts that are not aligned with your goodness in our life. They’re not aligned with the kingdom of God.

We confess that we have hopped off the journey when things get hard. We confess that we have thorns growing in our hearts where we are distracted and pursuing things other than your kingdom. And we ask that you would give us the power in your holy spirit and your strength to make room for you to prepare our hearts for your word and for you to rain down righteousness on us. Lord, I pray for the one who this morning would be honest with you and say that they have a hard heart, that they have closed off their hearts, that up to this point have not been willing to hear your word. I pray that you would open their hearts this morning, that they would partner with you and allow you to come in.

You are knocking right now, Lord, on their hearts. I pray that they would not leave this place without making a decision to open their hearts to you, because you may be found right now. And we ask that we would seek you, that we would not harden our hearts towards you.

You can make a decision this morning and say, I confess. I confess that Jesus is Lord, he is in charge. I believe that God raised him from the dead. He is who he says he was. He is the one who came from heaven to die on the cross for my sins and to make me right with God through his sacrifice.

I receive it. I receive your word this morning. Amen.