Matthew 13 the Parable of the Sower
This week it is shallow people that Christ is warning.
So, Matthew reports Jesus’ parable about a sower of wheat or barley. Jesus was illustrating the purpose of his mission. He said that he was like a farmer sowing seeds so that he could reap a harvest. He said that he was sowing his message (the Word) very widely so that he could reap a productive harvest. Jesus is not just going through the motions. He is gathering people from every generation, nation and place to share in his eternal kingdom. That harvest is people – people who are bursting with spiritual life and godliness - people who will live forever in his kingdom. But the parable contains a very strong warning that not every person who hears his message receives it successfully. The variable is the condition of our hearts.
Jesus Christ has been sowing in your life for some time, now. He has been sowing the very information, witnesses, advice, examples, wisdom and help that you need for a life that pleases God; a life that he can bless. His seed has been falling into your life; the information that will let you know who he is and what God has in mind for you; and how you can access it. Are you aware of this? What has the seed of his message produced in your life? What has been your response?
OUT goes the seed – flung widely so that it lands on your heart. It gets in through your ears and eyes. You both hear and see the word of Christ. You hear it from the Bible and you see it in the lives of some people. It lodges in your mind having entered through what you have heard spoken or read or seen in the lives of Christ’s followers. Your heart must decide what to do with it.
It is possible that your heart is like the seed that falls on rocky soil. This is not soil that has stones in it.
It is ground make up of a layer of hard rock with a thin deposit of soil across it; the sort of ground that if you got a spade and tried to dig a hole, it would penetrate only a few centimetres and stop dead, jarring your arms. We sometimes meet that kind of ground when we go camping. You simply cannot get your tent pegs hammered into it. A thin layer of soil conceals a solid sheet of rock just below the surface. This is the ground Jesus is using to describe some hearts. You must hear him out and check that it is not your heart he is describing.
Jesus says that people like this give initial acceptance to his word. That is, they seem to be going along with his message and accepting it with some enthusiasm. Like seeds sown on shallow soil, they spring to life quickly in the mild weather, but when the sun gets stronger, the soil dries out and the plant shrivels up for lack of roots.
Some people don’t have much soil. There is only a thin covering of soil over the bedrock of a hard, and disobedient heart. God’s common grace has provided a certain brightness of personality and intelligence that others may respond to. But scrape away those qualities deposited there by means of a helpful upbringing, a good education, kind parents and other evidences of God’s rainfall grace, and you hit rock. Just below the surface of reasonableness and friendliness there is rebellion.
Remember, about a year ago we learned together about God’s rainfall grace and his saving grace. Rainfall grace is the blessing that God sends like rainfall on the lives of all people. Here is an excerpt from that earlier study:
God shows common or indiscriminate grace to all people – the evil and the good.
Every day, God treats humankind with common grace, such as: protection from accidents; medicines to put off diseases and delay death; technologies that will help people to work more efficiently; police to come and arrest the violent trouble-maker; a man diving into a river and saving a drowning child; a loved one travelling safely home from across the world; food in the cupboards to feed your children; an accident that prevents a robber from making it to your home; a well-run school that gives your children a helpful education; … and it is God who gives to a writer or film-maker or philosopher the brief lightning flash insights into the truth about the human condition.
In all these ways, the good that is delivered to the world comes by God’s grace and often in spite of the blindness or rebellion of the instruments God uses to deliver it. But God’s intent is the same: that we should know he is gracious and that he invites us to make peace with him through repentance.
But know this: common grace itself saves no one! It is merely an invitation or an awakening to repent and trust God. It is not an end in itself. It is no good to have a happy, pain-free, convenient life for 40 or 60 years and then cave in through death and fall down into everlasting judgement for refusing to make peace with God. In fact, I imagine that the recollections of God’s common grace enjoyed briefly in this life, will be a fearful mental affliction on those who come into the hell of God’s unending disapproval and judgement.
We must accept common (rainfall) grace in the right way. Take it as an invitation to be reconciled to God. Take it as an imperfect taste of the blessing he will lavish on you in Jesus Christ – an eternity of ever-increasing joy, satisfaction and love.
The reason why it is important to understand about God’s common or rainfall grace here is that this is the reason for the layer of soil over the hardness in people’s lives. God’s generous blessing creates a layer of useful soil in people’s lives. It is what makes people friendly and restrains them from many destructive things. But it is not sufficient to transform a person. The hard heart has to be broken up in repentance by God’s saving grace so that we can receive the word of Christ implanted deeply in our hearts.
This category of person, who has a shallow layer of manners and good upbringing over a heart that is in rebellion towards God, responds readily to certain things about the Christian life. They may like the music; they may enjoy the social aspect of Church culture. Their naturally positive and outgoing disposition takes on Christian things with enthusiasm – joy even. They can see that being a Christian adds a helpful dimension to a person’s life and they would like to have that, too.
Judas Iscariot was like this. A shallow man with a superficial layer of cooperation and friendliness. He initially received the message of Jesus with joy. He liked Jesus’ positive talk about a new kingdom and was thrilled by the excitement of miracles and healings. But he was shallow. Beneath his thin soil of receptivity and enthusiasm was a rebellious and rock-hard heart. When the heat came on, he turned traitor and betrayed Jesus for money.
Jesus describes how shallow people receive his word. He identifies the problem as ‘having no root in him or herself’. Although this kind of person briefly shows some Christian characteristics, it is not going deep. It is not touching the ‘self’ – the heart of the person. It is not being received by the true self of that person. He has no root in himself. The roots of Christ’s word have not pushed deep into the heart of the person and found a place to live and grow. It is all superficial outward display; just nice words or manners.
For a time, persons in this category go along with Christian activities taking what they can out of them to feel better about themselves. Then something dramatic happens: The sun comes out. Not just a warm, comfortable, mild sunlight, but hot and scorching. The heat comes on. It happens like this: An issue or set of circumstances arise which make it not longer comfortable to be identified as a Christian. Trouble (tribulation) and attacks (persecution) come against the person ‘on account of the word’ and he ‘immediately falls away.’ What does this mean?
The sun (representing testing and judgement through troubles and trials) serves a purpose – the same purpose it serves for every Christian – but for the shallow person it has a very different result. The sun in the parable represents the testing process that must occur. The testing of God is designed to prove the genuineness and the worth of your faith. The degree of ‘heat’ and its duration is wisely and justly prepared by God. The scorching sun will not kill the deeply rooted plant. In fact, the heat, when combined with deep, well-watered soil will make a plant flourish beyond imagination! However, the scorching sun will quickly expose the faith that has no root.
Here are verses that describe this testing process:
1 Peter 1.6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The testing (the scorching sun) is designed to prove your faith is the real thing. It is designed to encourage you, make you very strong and extremely fruitful. It is not designed by God to crush you! True, Satan will have a go at using God’s tests as temptations. God tempts no one to sin. But you can be very, very certain that Satan will tempt you to deny your faith in Christ and blame God when trouble hits. The scorching sun of trouble is also designed to expose non-faith, in the hope that you will abandon your self-generated ‘Christian’ living and deeply receive Christ himself.
So, the sun does its scorching work to see if there are any roots to your faith. When the outer tips of your life are scorched and shrivel under the heat of trouble or attack, will your roots be deep enough to sustain you during these periods of trial? Will your faith prove to be genuine? And when the trial ceases, as it surely will, will your life quickly spring up again into new and more flourished growth and fruitfulness?
Will the moisture that has settled on your life evaporate under the heat of testing - or are you watered from within? It is not good just receiving the droplets of the Spirit as overspray from other Christian’s lives? What Christ wants for you is that you are like a tree firmly planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither (Psalm 1).
As God spoke through Jeremiah (17.7-8):
7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
This is a powerful illustration of strength, resilience and fruitfulness. And it makes plain where that capacity comes from: the stream of water.
Then in Jeremiah 17.9,10 God says, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.’
See here why God must test our lives with scorching heat. We are so easily deceived by fruitless bushiness that might satisfy us or impress others, but has no productive worth. We must prove to be rooted and grounded in Christ. To have roots that draw up the water of his life so we consistently bear fruit that pleases God.
John Piper commenting on Psalm 1 says:
If you delight in the Word of God and meditate on it day and night you will yield your fruit in season. You will be a fruitful person. O for more fruitful people! You know them. They are refreshing and nourishing to be around. You go away from them fed. You go away strengthened. You go away with your taste for spiritual things awakened. Their mouth is a fountain of life. Their words are healing and convicting and encouraging and deepening and enlightening. Being around them is like a meal. This is the effect of delighting in the Word of God and meditating on it day and night. You will yield fruit in season.
We all need to be and want to be deep-rooted, fruitful people.
The sun has come up very strongly on some of you. Its scorching heat is testing your roots. Without roots in Christ, you will shrivel up. It is time to drive your roots deep into Christ. Pay attention to your inner life. Let Christ’s word into your heart where it can take root and grow up. It is what you do at the level of your roots that matters.
Remember, the sun represents God’s glory – in particular, his righteousness. His righteousness will never shake hands with evil – rather he exposes it. The reason why the display of his righteousness - including his exposure of corruption, and judgement of evil, sin and its results such as sickness and accident – scorches us, is that we are insufficiently watered by his Spirit and his Word. The deeper our roots are and the more they stretch towards the water of life – the more our heads will be lifted up to celebrate his glory and bathe in its brightness and warmth. The more fruit we will bear that feeds and blesses our people.
Therefore, if you fear that your Christian experience is planted in shallow soil, call on God to crack open your hard and disobedient heart and to slip his word in there and grant you faith to receive it. Let the roots of that word go deep into your self – into your heart so that the Spirit of God can water it and get some entirely new attitudes growing up fruitfully in you.
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