How many gardeners do
we have here this morning? I am so
sorry that you can’t find a better hobby.
I am not a gardener. I
think my reticence about gardening came from my early experience at I learned at an early age that I was not much of a
farmer.
My family moved
to our small farm in West Virginia when I was five years old. The farm was only a few miles outside
of my hometown of Wellsburg, West Virginia. Previously, our home was on the banks of the Ohio River,
where we were flooded on several occasions. I think that my parents wanted to find higher ground after
the floods (it’s not hard to find higher ground in the mountains of West
Virginia) but I suspect it was really because my father wanted to farm. In the mountains, however, it’s hard to
find enough level ground to farm, which means there would never be enough farm
income to support a family. My
father, then, worked in a steel mill to earn enough to raise a family, while my
siblings and I did a lot of the work on the farm. We grew two large gardens, and I spent many a summer day on
the end of a hoe, digging weeds and promising myself that I would never have a
garden of my own (a promise I have kept, to this day). When
Tanya and I married I told her I would be happy to do anything she asked, with
one exception – I did not want anything to do with a garden.
Though I was not
a very good farmer, or gardener, I did grow to understand farm terminology and,
certainly, analogies to farm work.
I’ve always enjoyed the Parable of the Sower, from which our message
comes this week. Anyone who has
ever worked the soil will understand the comparisons that Jesus makes. This morning, we are considering the
four types of soil of which Jesus speaks, which are analogies of the different
types of the human heart.
Luke 8:4-15 –
4 While a large crowd was gathering and
people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable:
5 “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As
he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and
the birds ate it up.
6 Some fell on rocky ground, and when it
came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture.
7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew
up with it and choked the plants.
8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It
came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”
When
he said this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
9 His disciples asked him what this
parable meant.
10 He said, “The knowledge of the secrets
of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables,
so that,
“‘though seeing, they may not see;
though
hearing, they may not understand.’
11 “This is the meaning of the parable: The
seed is the word of God.
12 Those along the path are the ones who
hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so
that they may not believe and be saved.
13 Those on the rocky ground are the ones
who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They
believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.
14 The seed that fell among thorns stands
for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s
worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.
15 But the seed on good soil stands for
those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by
persevering produce a crop.
We are people who
take very seriously the importance of caring for our hearts. I have had a few medical issues related
to my heart over the years, and when something goes wrong with your heart, let
me tell you – it will get your attention in a well, heartbeat. I’ve carried a copy of my EKG in my
wallet for a number of years. My
doctor told me that I have an abnormal EKG – abnormal is normal for me (I tend
to hear that a lot). I can’t help
but wonder, though, if I arrive at the emergency room, unconscious, in an
ambulance, is anyone really going to go through my wallet to see if I have an
abnormal EKG (actually, after one of our worship services, a nurse told me
that, yes, the hospital personnel would indeed go through my wallet in such a
situation in order to discover whether or not there were any conditions of
which they should be aware. I
thought that was nice to know).
While it is important
to care for our hearts, it is also important to care for our hearts in a
spiritual sense as well. We don’t,
however, have the advantage of connecting a high-tech test to measure the
spiritual health of our hearts, but in this parable Jesus describes four types
of soil, and compares each type of soil to a condition of the human heart, and
he gives us a way to measure the spiritual health of our hear.
1. The Seed
That Fell Beside the Road.
I am not a cynic, but
I could be.
When we consider the
condition of our world and all of its ills, the struggles of humanity, and the
violence and hatred, it is easy to become discouraged to the point of allowing
our hearts to grow cynical and hardened.
When Jesus talks
about the first type of soil he refers to the seed that falls beside the road
and is trampled under foot.
Between the rows of crops were paths and right of ways where the ground
was worn down and hardened by wear and the seed could not manage to penetrate
that hard soil.
There are a lot of
people who are beaten down by the wear and tear of life. These are people who have become
hardened by life’s difficulties and their hearts have grown cold and
bitter. Just like the hardened
pathways, their hearts have become hardened and the good seed of the gospel has
a difficult time penetrating their hearts. They have suffered loss or been through difficulties that
cause them to close off their hearts, to become distant to other people, and
they make a choice – sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously – not to
allow themselves to be hurt again, and they close off their heart and it grows
hard, callous, and unresponsive.
The difficulties and
struggles of life can harden our hearts.
When we’re young we are idealistic and believe we can change the world
and we’re ready to take on any challenge and we don’t need faith to move a
mountain because we can pick that mountain up by ourselves and move it
somewhere else – do you remember feeling this way? But life’s realities start to settle in on us, and that
idealism and hope starts to slip away.
We are hurt by what happens to us as we move through life and we find we
can’t solve every problem in the world so we start down the road to
disillusionment. I know ministers
who have started out with the intention of changing the world and when
realities started to sink in they close off their hearts and it hardens because
of the hurt they suffer in dealing with people and the problems of people. I know people who used to have the most
open hearts but now they are closed off because of the wear and tear of life.
There have been times
when I have felt myself consciously closing off my heart. Because of a time of struggle or other
difficulty I could feel my heart become like that hard, beaten down path.
2. The Seed
That Fell On Rocky Soil.
Jesus says this is
the kind of soil where there is just enough soil to allow something to grow but
not enough of a root system to give it adequate nourishment to survive.
There is rocky soil,
which doesn’t mean you always see the rocks, as they are just below the
surface. There is a thin layer of
soil that is not deep enough to produce any kind of mature or worthwhile
crop. And when you have shallow
soil that does not allow for any root system to develop the crop quickly
withers because there is no support system, there is no way to get adequate
nourishment and sustenance.
Years ago, at another
church, we were preparing to remove some shrubs that grew alongside the
sanctuary. We thought we could
just pull them out of the ground with little effort. They didn’t come out as easily as we had hoped. We kept increasing the machinery we
used to pull them out. We used a
tractor and a chain, but the back wheels of the tractor spun on the blacktop
and would not budge those shrubs.
Next, we used a backhoe, hooked up a chain, and then put down the feet
of the backhoe in the pavement.
When he drew the bucket back the roots of those shrubs were so deep,
even with those feet down, the backhoe was pulled across the pavement. Those were some deep, tough roots.
It is so important to
be rooted – to be connected – to something. When Jesus talks about a faith that exists for a while but
then fades away during a time of testing he is talking about a faith that is not
rooted to anything.
We are, in our
society, becoming more and more a rootless people. The old bonds and ties that used to exist are passing away
and with their passing there is a loss of a support system that helped people
to weather the difficulties and struggles of life.
The church, the body
of Christ, provides a rootedness that connects us to something beyond our own
life that is absolutely essential to a faith that is growing and alive.
Shallow faith turns
people into spiritual consumers rather than servants, it’s a faith that reduces
everything down to a few slogans or a few things to be against rather than what
we are for. But a deeply rooted
faith is one that blossoms into maturity, it is one that will sustain us
through difficulty, and it is one that will keep our hearts open and loving.
3. The Seed
That Fell Among the Weeds.
Some years ago I was
working on flower beds around the house and I cleaned them out, sprayed the
ground with weed killer, put down a cover to keep any weeds from growing, put
some decorative rock down, added clean topsoil, and then sprayed weed killer again. And guess what I grew? Weeds!
There is the essence
of the problem I have with yard work.
No matter how hard I work I have never been able to grow a good stand of
grass. Lawns need to be fertilized
and treated and seed sown every year; there’s a multitude of things we have to
do in order to have a nice, healthy lawn.
Isn’t it amazing, though, that nothing is required to grow a nice stand
of weeds? I can grow the best crop
of dandelions and weeds by simply doing nothing.
The third condition
of the heart that Jesus describes is when we life and love are choked out by
what he calls life’s worries, riches and
pleasures (verse 14). Worries
will certainly do that. And riches
and pleasures fall under the category of distractions. But there are a lot of distractions in
life, and many of them are very good distractions. They are good things, worthy of our time and consideration. But they are not the best things in
life and should not crowd out the best things. The greatest enemy of
the best in life, says William Barclay, is
not the worse; the greatest enemy of the best in life is often the second best.
(The Gospel of Luke, revised edition, The Daily Study Bible Series,
by William Barclay, page 100).
One of the greatest
dangers in life is not that we pursue things that are unworthy or bad, but that
we allow necessary things in life to rise to the level of the greatest
importance. Everybody needs to
earn a living, but is earning a living all there is to life? No. Everybody needs recreation and entertainment in life, but is
recreation and entertainment all there is to life? No. There is, unfortunately, a strain of faith in our
society that is very puritanical and wants to remove all the pleasures and enjoyments
out of life. They don’t need to be
removed; they just need to find their proper place and their proper role in
life.
It is very easy for life to rearrange our
priorities, even without us noticing.
Have you thought about your priorities lately? Are they aligned with what matters most to you? Do they reflect your spiritual
priorities?
4. The Seed
That Falls Into the Good Soil.
Jesus said this seed
produced a crop a hundred times over.
That’s a pretty good return.
This is an encouragement to remember that the gospel still takes root in
lives and when it does it results in an amazing return. This is an encouragement to not
despair. There are times when we
wonder if what we do makes any difference – it does.
I read once of a
group of archeologists who discovered some seeds in an ancient Egyptian
tomb. Out of curiosity they
planted them to see what would happen.
Guess what happened? Some
of them actually grew. Isn’t it
amazing there was still life in some of those old seeds?
What matters here is
not how well the disciples understood the message or how well received it was
by the crowds either then or now, but the power of God’s work to bring
transformation.
A healthy heart
doesn’t just happen. A healthy
heart is, first of all, my responsibility, and I must work at it. It’s easy to assign blame for things
elsewhere, but it is my responsibility to work at growing a healthy heart and
spirit.
Do you identify with any of the types of soil
of which Jesus speaks? Do you feel
worn down by life? Do you feel as
though you have not put down any permanent roots, especially spiritual
roots? Do you feel as though the
many responsibilities and chores of life choke out some of the more important
matters of life? Do you feel as
though your life is bearing good fruit?
How healthy is your heart?
Which soil represents your heart?
Having a good, healthy heart is important, but
not just in a physical way, but also a heart that is healthy spiritually. Does your need a check-up?
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