Sermon manuscript:
There is no higher or more exalted thing than that God should
speak to us. The fact that this is the highest thing in life is understood even
by those who do not know the true God, but follow some other god in their
hearts. The Buddhist monk sits in silence at the monastery, waiting for
enlightenment. When he believes that he has received it, he is very pleased. The
astro-physicist pours over numbers and theories, looking for new insight. When
enlightenment comes, he is delighted. Even the great horde of humanity, who
might care more about their creature comforts than they do about anything else,
are pleased to hear about and use some new gadget. In this way they all are
participating and anticipating the greatness that is to come, the greatness
that their god is bringing about on the earth. It is a grand thing to hear your
God speak.
Our one and only true God, of course, has something
different to tell us than all the other things that people trust in. The true
God tells us that he has worked redemption and eternal life in the birth, life,
suffering, and death of his eternally begotten Son Jesus Christ. We are
forgiven and received by God as beloved children for Christ’s sake.
Furthermore, since we have already been redeemed from sin
and death, we already have begun to live our eternal life. This eternal life is
not one where we pick whichever way we might want to live—which would probably
mean that we would pick sinful things, or at least selfish things. Instead this
eternal life is only of the highest and best things. We live sacrificial and
selfless lives of love by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this way we
disciples follow our master, our great teacher, Jesus, who has taught us that
whoever would be the greatest must become the least. The more we love, the more
we suffer in that love, the more we become like the glory of God, which is
Christ the crucified.
There is more that could be said about what our God tells
us. This, after all, is why we have the Bible and why we gather to hear
readings from the Bible. But I’ve tried to sum up the two chief teachings for
Christians. First, the Lord Jesus Christ is our Redeemer and Savior. He has
purchased us with his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.
Through him our sins are forgiven and we are accepted by God. Second, now that
we are his own, we serve him in his kingdom in everlasting righteousness,
innocence, and blessedness.
All of Scripture, all the preaching of God’s prophets and
apostles, is for us to know this, believe this, and thereby be blessed
eternally as God’s chosen children. This is what the true God says to us and to
all who have ears to hear. There is nothing higher or more exalted. This will
become especially clear when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.
Although this is the highest message there is, not everyone
believes it. Among those who believe, not everyone continues to believe it.
Among those who believe and continue to believe it, it is not always to the same
extent or with the same results. This is what our Lord’s parable of the sower
of the seed is about.
The seed is the Word of God. Some of it falls on the hard
beaten path so that it never takes root. The devil comes and takes it out of
people’s hearts.
Some falls on soil where the seed sprouts, but it doesn’t
continue to grow or come to maturity. Some seed falls on the sandy, rocky
ground that quickly warms up in the spring. The person quickly and joyously
believes. But then the hot sun comes out. Jesus says that persecution comes
because of the Word. That means that people have to choose between remaining
with the Word of God or forsaking the Word of God so that they can get along
more easily with unbelievers. In that struggle these people choose their friends
and family. They save their own skin by silencing the Word of God. But this
also means that their faith immediately withers and dies.
Some seed falls among the
thorns. This seed starts out fine, but right along with the good seeds are the weed
seeds. They grow up together with it. Jesus says that these thorns are “the
worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other
things. They enter in and choke the Word.” Another way of saying this is
that the heart, mind, strength, and soul slowly but surely go after other
things.
In a way, the slowness of the
onset is the worst part about it. As you well know a garden can survive some
weed pressure for quite some time. Days and weeks can go by without seriously
affecting the yield. You don’t have to pull them immediately. But the longer
they grow, the harder it is to pull them. The roots go deeper and deeper. So it
is with the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things besides
our Lord. Since these things are stuck to our flesh we can’t get rid of them.
The weed seeds are part of the soil and they will pop up inevitably. So it is
with these desires in our flesh. But if, through neglect, we just let them
grow, or, worse yet, water the weeds instead of the seed of faith, then it
can’t help but end in disaster. This happens all the time. It is not just in
youth that a person can lose faith. Not a single one of us is safe until we
have died faithfully and sincerely confessing our Savior.
So with these first three types
of soil we have seen how the greatest message there is—about the Son of God
being the Savior of the world—is brought to nothing. Faith is lost. That might
be something deliberate and well known—such as it is with those who hear the
Gospel, but they scoff at it and judge it. Or it can be hidden under a show of
piety—where someone truly believes himself to be a Christian, but in truth he
is a worldling or someone whose heart is stuffed with other concerns. Either
way, Jesus is not Lord for these people. Some thing or someone else is Lord for
them.
Finally, there is the good soil.
These are the ones who hear the message, who accept it, and who produce fruit.
Some produce thirty fold, some sixty fold, and some one hundred times what was
sown. As you know from your own experience of growing things, the yield isn’t
always the same. Some of the hindrances that we have already talked about are
often factors in the yield. If there is a lot of weed pressure, then there will
be less fruit. If there was dryness and excessive heat, then the crop will
suffer. Good growing conditions produce bountiful harvests.
This shows us that there is no
such thing as “safe sins” for us Christians. If you are anything like me, then
I’m sure you’ve heard this alluring lie in your head: “Don’t worry so much
about committing this or that sin. It won’t hurt you. You can repent later. You
can be forgiven later.” Not only can such thinking bring about a disaster—a
complete loss of faith without recovery. Even if God does pick you back up
after you have fallen, the sin inevitably leaves its mark. The resistance to it
will be less next time. Regardless, even if everything goes to plan as we
hoped, the heart will still be weighed down with joylessness and self-loathing.
This variance in yield in the
good soil also shows that we can’t have our cake and eat it too. That is, we
can’t belong both to the world and to God. The world has its own beliefs as to
what is good and what is evil, what we should strive for and what we should
avoid. The world teaches, for example, that everybody should look out for
himself, strive for the applause of the crowd, and become as rich and popular as
we can in every possible way.
Thus the world is terribly
deceitful, as Jesus points out when he says that wealth is deceitful. We are
deceived, and, in fact, we enjoy being deceived, into thinking that all that we
accumulate will last. We imagine that if we have a big balance in our bank and
retirement accounts that we are all set. But, as Jesus says elsewhere, “You
fool! Your soul may be required of you this very night. What, then, will become
of all your riches?” Or again, “What does it profit a man to gain the
whole world, but lose his soul. What will he give in exchange for his soul? Or,
How can he redeem himself?”
But it is not natural for us to
know this or feel this way. By nature we are secure and sleepy so long as we
have many months and years of bread stowed away. That is why this is so tricky
and deadly. We are deceived into paying homage to the god called mammon. Mammon
wants us to be drunk and stoned and high and asleep at the same time. That is
how he catches his prey. He does not want us praying to the true God for our
daily bread. Being alert and sober is the way that we begin to break free from
mammon’s grip.
And what do we as Christians do
as we begin to break free from the grip of other gods? We produce fruit. Paul
tells us the fruit of the Holy Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” These are
wonderful things that we could consider with much profit, but let this suffice
for today: The first one mentioned is the most important and it encompasses all
the rest. Love is the first and foremost fruit that Christians are to produce.
The word “love” gets used a lot,
so there can be a lot of confusion about it. No doubt this comes from the
father of lies, who is always messing around with the meanings of words. So if
you want to know what it means to love, you can do no better than to look to
our Lord Jesus Christ. He is God, and God is love. And what did God do? He
humbled himself and took on the form of a servant. He did not count the cost to
himself, but poured himself out for even the most wretched and vile sinner,
including you. He did not die just for his friends and family, for those who
treated him well. He died for those who set and naught and sold him, pierced
and nailed him to the tree. He died for you even though you have denied him and
loved other gods more than him.
So, also, you are to love one
another. Love the ones whom God has placed in your life. Love your spouse.
Jesus died for the worst of the worst. Your spouse isn’t the worst of the
worst, even if he or she has treated you badly in the past. And even if your
spouse should treat you badly in the present or in the future, don’t let that
put a damper on your love. What credit is it to you if you love someone who is
already incredibly loveable? What is noteworthy about divine, Christian love is
that it loves the unloveable.
Let that be the way that it is
with you with all the people whom God places into our life. We are to love
them. The world regards this love as nothing. It is too humble. It goes
unnoticed, and so they believe that it simply goes away, whereas their riches,
supposedly, last forever. But it is actually the other way around. The love
that Christians have (which certainly includes courageously preaching the
Gospel wherever and whenever the opportunity might arise for you to do so),
produces fruit that lasts eternally in the lives that it touches. The world and
all that is on it, including all the riches, will melt as it burns. Only human
beings, with their eternal bodies and souls, will last forever. What if your
love warms some cold, unbelieving heart, so that that person comes to believe
in Christ, the true God, rather than in all kinds of other gods? Will not this
be eternally precious both to you and to the person whom you serve? What if
your word of tough love, that turns the sinner from his sins, brings that
person to repentance?
There is nothing higher or more
exalted than God speaking to us. In you speaking to others, God is speaking,
for Jesus says, “He who hears you, hears me.” The message that our God
gives to us, where he tells us what his will towards us sinners is, is the best
thing that there is in the universe. Everything else, no matter how brilliantly
it shimmers or shines, is nothing but fool’s gold. Therefore, it is my hope
that the seed falls into your heart, that you accept it, and that you produce
fruit according to God’s good pleasure.
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