Believing the Best III, About the Bible

Matthew 13, let me begin reading just a few verses and then we'll continue on a little bit later. That same day as Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake, such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. I'll be coming back to the text. Have you ever wondered if Jesus Christ himself wrestled with his own effectiveness? I've thought about that a lot. I believe he did. I believe that he often asked himself, why am I not getting through? It says in John 14, don't need to turn there, for example, verses 8-11, Lord, show us the Father that that will be enough. And Jesus answered, don't you know me, Philip? Even after I've been among you such a long time, you almost sense his emotion. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Or in Mark's Gospel, chapter 9 and verse 19. Oh, unbelieving generation, Jesus replied, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? He sensed some frustration in his voice. Well, see here in Matthew 13, I think we catch a glimpse of Jesus in a time of contemplation, as he weighs the fruitfulness of his own ministry. And I'm going to ask you this morning to engage your imagination just a bit in the text. Kind of let a story and a scenario develop, as though you were watching it from the hillside. See, months before Jesus began this ministry, traversing here and there over the arid plains of Palestine, proclaiming the kingdom of God was at hand, calling people to repentance and a new life in relationship with his Father. But things were not going all that well. Jesus knew it. There were crowds all right, there were great crowds. But very few were actually making decisions to repent and change their lives and follow him. Oh, there were crowds all right, but there were very few converts. Multitudes who had come to listen, but only a few who came willing to change. It seems to me that here in these verses, we see a glimpse of Christ facing what I would describe as personal disappointment. It's not that he and his disciples weren't trying. They were intensely devoted to fulfill the mission. They were given to it. But something wasn't working. And so Jesus sat by the sea. There's so much in the Bible that we miss because we just gloss over words. Contemplating, reviewing his strategy, hoping to reap some greater harvest than he was seeing. He possibly wondered to himself, maybe the problem isn't with the message or the strategy, maybe the problem's with the listeners. Perhaps this satanic stronghold that I've sensed here needs to be broken another way. Maybe I'm just expecting too much, Jesus. Suddenly, now use your mind here, a disciple walks up to him as he's seated next to the shore. And Jesus is aware that there's another person present. And the disciple whispers, Master, kind of walking in the middle of his thoughts, Master, are you okay? Master, a huge crowd has gathered around the point of the lake. Master, there are thousands of them there. They're up on the hillside. They're standing shoulder to shoulder. And they're buzzing with excitement about your coming. Master, this could be it. Finally, we're going to get this thing rolling. We're fired up. We've already set people in the crowd to keep things under control. What do you think, Master? Can you come? And Master, if you do, can I just suggest that you bring one of those powerful sermons? One of those sermons like you had up on the mountain a while back, you know? Or maybe throw in some of those beatitudes. They really like those. And, Master, especially if you can come and smack those Pharisees. I mean, just nail those a few good woes to you. Jesus, if we ever needed a grand slam, this is it. The bases are loaded. Now, I'll bring the boat over, and you can get in, and then I'll just push you around the point, okay? Are you ready to go, Master? Jesus is thinking to himself. And then he looks into the eyes of that disciple. So you think another good sermon will do it. You think that a few woe beyond the use and a couple of beatitudes and a few nicely placed pundits of wisdom are going to make it happen. And he shakes his head. As Jesus gets into the boat, the disciple pushes him around the point. And as they go just around the tip, they see this huge crowd. And the crowd is so big that even Jesus himself gasps for a moment. The disciple positions the boat, and a hush falls over the crowd. The disciple backs away and whispers, Go for it, Lord, the grand slam, the big one. And as he slowly steps away, all that can be heard is the sound of the water lapping on the pebbles of the shore. Jesus looks up. He's got a lump in his throat. He sees a great wall of faces in front of him. Poor, rich, short, tall, young, old, hurting, successful. All of them anticipating something really big. Maybe a miracle. Maybe a feeding. But at least a grand slam sermon has got to be coming. Jesus lifts his voice and says, A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell in rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. And other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants. And still other seed fell in good soil where it produced a crop, a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And with that, Jesus shifted himself in the boat just a bit and looked out to sea once again, and the sermon was over. Now, since the three gospel accounts where this is recorded don't tell you what happens next, permit me just a little license to fill in the blanks. When the disciple came back to the boat, he came to Jesus and he was panicked. He said, what are you doing, Lord? What was that? That was no grand slam. That was a foul tip. The crowd's beginning to stir. They're getting a little restless. Those kids that were skipping rocks are going to start flipping them toward you. Jesus, the people didn't walk five miles to hear you give the farm report. Where's the powerhouse? Where's the miracles? Do something, Lord, or we're going to lose this crowd. Jesus, you know we haven't been doing all that well. We're just not keeping that many, Lord. We need some critical mass here if we're going to make something happen in this mission we have. Oh, Lord, if just half this crowd came, if just half of them, imagine what would happen. But when the disciple sees that he's getting nowhere with Jesus, he says, well, at least explain this little thing, this little message to us. All right, Jesus said. We've been preaching the Word of God everywhere, but for the most part, things just aren't happening. We'd hope people would respond to this revelation from the Father, respond to this instruction to give their lives to Him, that these seeds of God's Word would fall on soil that would allow their lives to be transformed. After all, that's why I came, to see lives changed. But these power-packed seeds are falling on problem soil. Hard-hearted, self-willed people are rejecting the message outright. Some are receiving it enthusiastically at first, but their response is just emotionally based, and in a short while, they just give up on it. And others are taking it to heart, but all of the cares and concerns of their life just seem to rise up and overwhelm it. Cares like riches and lust and pleasure and things and fame. In fact, I see some signs of oxygen loss in some of your faces, Jesus says. But some has found good soil, rich and black and receptive soil. Some has taken root and grown up and produced a beautiful harvest, 30, 60, or 100-fold to the glory of my Father. And these few are making it worthwhile. But what kind of soil are you, Jesus asks, really? What's the soil of your heart like? Think it over, Jesus says, think it over. You better think it over. Now, dear ones, I've taken a fair chunk of time this morning to recount this story, because I've read this hundreds of times. And just let it kind of go. And as I read this message a few times during the course of my weeks away from you earlier this summer, there was an impact that it had on my life. God broke through in these verses and spoke to my heart, because I've been thinking about the soil condition here at North Way Christian Community. I've been asking the question, how effective is all the seed sowing that's going on from this ministry? And I have to tell you, there's lots of it happening. There's Wednesday night and now Saturday night and Sunday morning. There's the single parents ministry. There's the home group ministry, where seed is sown in a more intimate setting. There's, above all that, your personal seed sowing that I encouraged so directly last week in your own reading of God's Word. But folks, listen, it is not the quantity of the seed. It's the condition of the seed. This summer, I did a little patching of barren spots in my lawn. I didn't have, you know, I'm not real good at that stuff, but I, you know, I discovered it didn't matter if I piled four feet of seed on that spot. What mattered was that I scraped and prepared and took care of the soil first. And I've been asking the Lord, what is the soil condition, generally speaking, and I'm going to ask you today, what is the soil condition of your heart? This morning, some of your soils need to be tested. I couldn't help but think as I was gone this summer. You know, we've had about three to four hundred people respond to the invitation to receive Christ in our church in just this last year. That's a great bit of, that's okay. I mean, that's a great bit of news to me. But I couldn't help but think, where will those three or four hundred people be in six months? Where will they be in a year or in two years or in five years? Where will all the people be that come here Sundays faithfully to hear the message? Will they be out there producing fruit? And I have to say to you, it was just a bit painful for me to think about all that. I had to admit to myself that over the years, nine and a half years, thousands of people have lifted their eyes and met mine or come forward or said in one context or another, yes, I want to follow Christ, thousands now, thousands. But painfully, just a few seem to continue on. Most of them have proven to be rocky soil, bony soil, people whose faith has faded in the afternoon sun. So what can we do about it? And I'm talking now just generally speaking, what can we do here? But I'm going to ask you to require yourself to look at your own life and say, what can you do about the soil condition of your heart so that we can improve the productivity of what's happening in our lives? You see, there's two focal points. One is the rocky soil. Let's talk about, for just a minute, clearing the rocks. The rocky soil people are those who receive the gospel rapidly but never develop a root structure to support that germinating seed in their life. They welcome Christ into their hearts. They have good intentions, but it just doesn't stand the test. Now, I've commented on this before, and most of you have affirmed the fact that people generally come to know Christ in a time of crisis. Do they not? I mean, that seems to be when their own lives are unraveling that they come and say, I've got to do something different. There's got to be an answer for me. You know, for a lot of years, I've marveled at the response of people in that kind of situation. And I think it's most clearly seen when you go into prison ministry. The few times I've been in the prisons for prison ministry, I'm amazed at the turnout of men. I mean, there are guys who come to those meetings who wouldn't have dreamed of setting foot in a church. But, you know, their lives are against the wall. And so they come. They're hungry. They're looking for something to take place, some kind of relief. I mean, folks, it's when you're needy that you come. You want to guarantee yourself a small group? Publicize your Bible study for winners only. Winners don't need God, so they think. It's when lives are ravaged by loss or defeat or divorce or disease or debt. The pattern's predictable. Their emotions are heightened. Their responses are tuned. And they say, I need something. But what we find is, as things get worked out, as God intervenes many times, things kind of get back to normal. The driving motivation for faith in God vanishes. You've seen it. I've seen it. When everything is falling apart, we need God. When it's okay, hey, you know. I'm glad you were there when I needed you, God, but I've got to get on with my life now. Now, is Jesus saying in all this, you know, don't come to God in a crisis? How many believe God's arms open wide to people in crisis? Of course. But what has to happen is, once we come, we need to let our root structure go down deep. The roots of our mind need to be spreading out around the facts of the gospel that we believe. The roots of rationality and the roots of relationship, those are the two things that I think balance out the emotional response that many of us have. If the charismatic movement did something for us, it was to heighten the sense of emotion in loving God. Isn't that true? I mean, I think that was wonderful, and many of us still need that in our life. But if there's one thing that tended to drift away, it was that rationality and relationship just kind of got glossed over. And for the seed to bear fruit, there's got to be a root structure. It's got to be out there. There's got to be an entangling of understanding and relationship. The kind of roots that are going to last in trials and temptations and discouragement are roots that have gone in based on the facts I talked about last week, based on the friendships that God gives us. Those are the things that are going to make it. That's why the Bible says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. When's the last time you really gave ample time to investigate what you believe? I want to urge you, plug in to Growing in Christ or Discovering the Way, or we're going to be offering some other courses early in November, where you can let your mind be stretched and send out the roots. We need to get some of the rocks out of our lives, folks. The little distractions that come, we need to clear the rocks. The hours of TV watching, the drone of information. I marvel at the number of you that listen to radio ministries. One guy said, I listen to 10 of them a day. You know what I say to that? God bless you. If you can remember anything after hearing 10 sermons in a day, you're a better man than Jesus. I mean, that's it. It's far better to listen to one sermon and really know it than to listen to 10 and have no idea what's going on. We need to get out of the mindset that someone else needs to hear this. I know that already. A root structure needs to go out, and I want to encourage you. Once that's in place, once the roots have gone down, it's there as a foundation, and the winds and storms of life can come and blow, and you're not going to lose it. You're not going to find that your harvest is being choked up. You're not going to find it shallow, but it's deep. So be part of it. Be part of sending out your roots. Be part of Operation Care. Be part of a home group where the relationships are bonded together. Don't lift your hand up, but how many of you know that you wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for somebody else who cared about you in the midst of the struggles you were going through? Be part of Wednesday night when we spend 45 to 50 minutes digging in, applying our minds to God's Word. Be part of it. Now, some of us here today are rocky soil, shallow, but some of us are thorny soil as well. Those who have thorny soil complexes are those who receive the gospel joyfully, but other value systems wrap their technicals out around the plants and choke them to death. What do we need to do if we have a thorny soil complex? Well, Jesus, I believe, is calling us here to authentically and carefully address every other value system in our culture, to expose it for what it is, and to embrace the fact that there is no other truth except that which God gives. Let me explain. There have always been alternatives to what Christ teaches, but there's never been such a proliferation as we see today. How many of you know that if you want to design your own value system, our culture lauds you for doing that? There's individualism out there, secular humanism. How many people do you know that their whole life is around acquisition, materialism, accumulate, gather together? New Age, hedonism, populism, wanting people just to applaud your efforts. Most of our athletes today are driven by populism. But there's an added twist in this culture that makes it different than any other that I've ever studied, and that's the value system that throws into it relativity. Have you ever had someone to say, well, that's fine for you, but I have my own thing. How many have ever heard that? That's sort of unique. In our culture, there's sort of a value given to tolerance. Well, you're a Christian. That's fine. I mean, I have my own way of relating to God, and people go off on that, and that becomes their way of sort of just putting you out of sight and out of mind. Believe me, folks, if we don't come to terms with the fact that there is only one way to God, that his value system is the only way that life can be fruitful for us, we short-circuit, we get choked out, and I'm in this for the hundredfold return. How about you? I'm in it not just to scrounge along. I'm in it because Jesus said that there's going to be 30 and 60 and hundredfold returns in our life. The deadly error of most believers today is in mixing value systems. I want to say that again. The deadly error in most believers' lives today is mixing value systems. Take a little of this and a little of that, a little of Jesus and a little of the world, a little of Christ's way, a little of what can get me through in the marketplace. The only way to deal with that is to investigate those other value systems and expose them for what they are and get them out of your life. And it's okay to say amen right there. I don't know many people that just reject God. I've never met a person that comes to this church and says, I'm not interested in Jesus anymore. We just get entangled, don't we? A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Well, I need to compromise here. I need to give myself to that. I need to make sure this gets taken care of. And suddenly God's word is choked out. We give in to lust. We give in to the success syndrome. We give in to 80-hour weeks. You know, Simon Peter is one of my favorite characters, and I've often talked about him in a rather negative light. It's kind of good to beat on someone once in a while. But he's a great example to us in one particular way. Do you remember when Jesus was moving along and crowds were coming and he said those words about eating my flesh and drinking my blood in John 6? He said, if you want to be my disciple, you've got to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And the disciples and people who were following him, what did they do? They turned white. They said, you've got to be kidding me. He's lost it. He's gone out of his mind. And many of them, the Bible says, left him. Jesus turned to the 12 and he said, will you also leave me now? Remember that? I don't know about you, but I get the impression that following Jesus in those days was a real trip. Okay? I mean, you didn't know what was going to happen. And what did Peter answer? Of course it was Peter. I mean, he always spoke first. What did he answer when Jesus said, are you going to leave me too? He said, Lord, where shall we go for you? Let's read it. You have the words of eternal life. And the living Bible says, you alone have the words. Now, I want to challenge you, thinking men and women, responsible men and women. Test God. Is his value system, are his words the words of eternal life? Or are they just one among a whole bunch of options out there? And remember that eternal life is not just hereafter. It's now. Eternal life is God life. Peter is saying, I think implicit in this, Peter is saying, I've investigated other things, Lord. I've tried making it. I've tried doing it. You alone have the words. And in the coming weeks of this autumn, every Sunday I'm going to take one of the values that are out there in the world. And I'm going to compare it to the values that God offers in its place. I'm going to use the basis of the Ten Commandments. I'm going to talk about things like success, priorities, sexual fulfillment, family relationships. And I'm going to say, here's what the world says, and here's God's value system. And then I'm going to say to every one of you, you choose. Choose whom you're going to serve. And I want to submit to you that you're going to be able to say, Lord Jesus, you alone have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go? We've tried other things, and they don't fulfill. Other value systems that compete with yours are not compelling to me. And it's not difficult then to let that soil just remain soft and to grow the harvest of God. If we're to cut the thorns from our lives that choke out the harvest, folks, we need to examine what we believe and live by it. And that's my challenge to you in the weeks ahead. Proverbs 4.23 says this, Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Let me just paraphrase it. Above all else, make sure the soil of your heart is soft. Because out of it, God brings a harvest of eternal reward. You're receiving seed, hopefully, every day. And you know, I have to say to you, those of us who are in full-time ministry, we wrestle with this just like all of you do. I've had people say, you know, it must be wonderful to be a pastor, because all you have to do is read the Bible all day long and pray. And just, you know, it must be great that you have all that time to do what you want to do. If I could do that, they're thinking, you know, the little thing in their heads, if I could do that, I'd be more spiritual than you are, Pastor. But the problem is that those of us who handle God's Word regularly also find the same thing happening. I find the rocks, and I find the thorns, and I find the hardness creeping in. And I want to say with you, church, God, do whatever you need to do to keep my heart soft, to keep my soil firm. Because I believe we have some great things coming, great things coming, things that are going to change us. And we need to be willing to do whatever it takes. And I have to say, folks, I'm wondering, are we getting too comfortable? I want to end with this little story that I read about a very brilliant man. His name was Henry Nowen. Has anyone here ever read any books by Henry Nowen, The Wounded Healer, books like that? He's a Catholic priest, a man deeply in love with Christ. And he is a man who lectures at Harvard and Yale and Notre Dame routinely as part of his opportunities because of his incredible writings and insight. And Henry Nowen was on this circuit doing the things that speakers like that tend to do. And he writes in his most recent book how he found that his own heart was starting to shrivel up. He found that the professional opportunities that he was pursuing were not fulfilling him. And so he made a choice to step out of the circuit, to resign his positions at those influential institutions, and to take a job, a staff position as a nurse in a mental care facility in Toronto, Canada, where he just simply served the patients. Henry Nowen writes in his latest book that over the last three years, there's been a profound change in him. He didn't just do it for two weeks to see what the other half lived like. He committed himself. He made a point when he was asked to speak at other places from time to time to take one of his mentally retarded patients with him. He made a point of engaging them and interacting with them and sharing their burdens and their needs. And he writes, I'm beginning to be soft again. I'm beginning to receive God's word. I'm beginning to bear a harvest. I read that and I said, Lord, I don't know if I could do that. But I thank God for someone whose example is whatever it takes, Lord, keep the soil of my heart fertile and soft and black and rich that I can bear a harvest 30, 60, 100 fold. That's my prayer for each of you as we go into this autumn. I'd ask you to make that your prayer for me and for our staff and elders as we serve you. Let's stand together.