Parable of the Soils-Understanding Hard Times-Part 2

First of all, as to these wayward emails you get from Pastor John or Pastor Steve or Pastor Rob or somebody telling you, do you have PayPal and will you get a cash card? A number of you in the church got that email and I want to tell you that when you’re an email like that, unless Jim Wilson, and delivers that email to you at your home and then does an Irish jig on your porch, ignore it. But we’re not alone. Thousands of attorneys last week got an email me included from the president of the Oregon State Bar and it said, John, I sent you a confidential questionnaire. Did you get it?

If not, let me know and I’ll send it to you again. And of course, being the president of the bar, I sent him back an email and said, I didn’t get it. And of course, that was a scam and it didn’t go any farther than that because the bar warned all six zillion attorneys in the state of Oregon that there was a scam that’s gone on. So we are in a weird world. But more importantly, we’re in a strange world because of the events of yesterday.

And though I’m like Ironside, I believe I should be complimented for the humor I say and I should be credited for the humor I say and complimented for what I don’t say. In politics, it’s the same way. And last time, the only time I talked about politics last time, was Romans 13 in submission and it was appropriate there. Now, we’ve kind of been blown apart, so to speak, by the events of yesterday. And frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen before yesterday because the rhetoric in our country has gotten very serious and very inflammatory and it’s coming from both sides.

I illustrated within my venue in vernacular in the recent Supreme Court where they took it to astronomical extremes in terms of official services of sending out the secret service to kill your political enemies. I wouldn’t expect that of a high schooler, much less of a Supreme Court justice. All to say, here’s what I’m saying, take a breath. We need to ratchet down the rhetoric in our country and moreover, though it was only providential that President Trump was not killed yesterday, we need to pray for all of those people who are in authority over. I wasn’t going to tell you this but I’m going to tell you.

I had an hallucination last night. I get these things, these optimistic hallucinations. And I imagine that our current president today would get up and say, okay guys, knock it off. Knock off the rhetoric from my party. Knock off calling people names that ratchet people up, knock off those Supreme Court justice comments that go to crazy, non-sensical extremes.

I would hope that that would happen today. I don’t think it will. But from what other voice, whatever it comes, we need to pray for our country and pray that everything will ratchet down in a fashion that’s orderably orderly as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2, the purpose is not to build up one party, the other purpose is to live quiet and tranquil lives and all godliness so that we as a church can continue to prosper and promote the one who is our Savior Jesus. So that’s the prayer. And if that’s too political for you, I’ll back off now for a few weeks but I think that’s appropriate.

We are in the parable of the soils and we’re in part two in Mark chapter four. And it’s really appropriate today because we’re going to talk about the word of God and its application in our life in this parable. The disciples were in trouble. This is the third year of Jesus’s public ministry and they are a people, a group under siege. The enemies of Jesus have got the number two man.

They’ve killed John the Baptist, Herod Herodias, the daughter of Herodias, brought him John’s head on a platter. And the disciples knew full well that enemies surrounded him so much so that last week I said to you, one of the disciples, Thomas, in commenting about following Jesus to the home of Mary and Martha said, “Well, let’s just go with him. We’ll die with him.” And that wasn’t an comment. It was, “We don’t know what tomorrow is going to hold.”

So this parable is set not within the context of a book club where we sit down comfortably and say, “Well, let’s hear something interesting today and see how it works.” This is in the context of people following Jesus and understanding that that requires a whole commitment. The story is told of a couple that were having marital trouble and they heard about this marriage seminar that they could go to for the weekend. And it was one of these unfortunate marriage seminars which is overbalanced in the area of the place of the man and the marriage. And so all weekend, the speakers talked about leadership of the man and the way they’re supposed to leave their families and their wives in extreme terms.

And of course of this couple, the man enjoyed it. And on the way home, he said to his wife, “Well, what’d you think about that?” I thought it was great. And she said, “Nothing.” So he got home, he pulled into the garage, he got out of his car and he said to his wife, “Okay, this is the way it’s going to be.

I’m going to be the head of this house and we’re going to go that direction.” He was interviewed a couple weeks later and he said, “You know, I didn’t see my wife for a couple weeks after that until one of my eyes opened and the swelling went down. So if you’ve always said whether it’s in a church or whether it’s in a marriage, if a man says he’s the head of the house, he’s probably not. He’s got to assert himself that way. If a man says he’s the pastor of the church and he’s got to exert himself based on principles and titles, then he’s probably somewhere extreme from that.

And I’m happy that in those emails that went out almost without exception, those of you that talked to me about it said, “John wouldn’t have referred himself as pastor John Moore.” And you’re right. I mean, we’re all brothers and sisters together. Leadership positions like the elders and deacons do here, like Rob and I do on an interim basis. We are people who are devoted to following Jesus, who’s our Savior.

And he’s teaching Jesus in the midst of this strategic drama of the third life of his, third year of his ministry, teaches in Mark chapter four that in fact we can liken ourselves to the farmer who plants the seed in the farmer in the first century planted barley and wheat by hand and took it out of the bag and spread it on the field to create a crop. Mark chapter four, if you’ll turn there, verse one says, And the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on 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.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew and choked the plant so that they did not bear grain. And other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop. So we learned last week a couple of things. First of all, we learned that the three variables in this parable are the sower, the seed and the soil.

The sower in this parable is Jesus. The seed is the word of God and we’re very clear on that because as this parable is explained, Jesus said, so is the word. So it’s appropriate that you have your Bibles. It’s appropriate we talk about it because we’re not left guessing in terms of what pleases God. The seed is the word and third, the variable is the soil and the soil is the heart.

In fact, if we were to look at this parable in Matthew 13, we’d see that when it’s talking about the seed sown into the soil, it says it’s sown into the heart. So Paul is right in Ephesians 1 when he says, pray that your heart will be, the vision of your heart will be enlarged. So the task for us as followers of Jesus is to look at our heart this morning. Last week we found out that the very first of the soils is seed falling along the path and Satan comes like the burden eats it up. And we learned that in the Old Testament, seven books of the Bible mentioned Satan.

In the New Testament, every book of the Bible mentions Satan. And so out of the blocks, as we talk about what it means to be a disciple, to be a Christian who’s following Jesus, we understand it’s first of all, not a battle that’s horizontal. It’s first of all, it’s a battle of the unseen. It’s in the heavenlies. And Satan, who was cast out of heaven as the red dragon with a third of the angels in rebellion against God the Father, then came to earth and since then he has been roaming the earth considering how he might destroy or affect the faith of the believers.

And we said last week, and we’ll get on, we’ll set last week, he’s not omnipresent, he’s not everywhere at once, he’s localized, him and his evil spirits, he’s not omnipotent, he’s not all powerful, he’s restricted in his access to you and me as Christians, and we learned last week in Job chapter one that you as a Christian, once you believe in Christ, you have a hedge, I think you also have guardian angels, but you have a hedge around you as Job did in Job one. And

Satan came and said, have you considered, the Lord said, have you considered Job? And Satan said, yeah, but you put a hedge around him. And so for whatever we say is gonna happen to us as Christians today within the warp and woof of direction and growth as a Christian, it only filters to the hedge to the extent that God allows it. And he is in charge of your life and mine the very days of our life for sure.

We learned as well that last week that the desire for Satan is to affect the faith of the believers, but the promise of the New Testament is that we resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. And the second soil, the soil that has to do with where the word is sown. And it starts in our Mark four verse 16, others like seed sown on rocky places hear the word and it warrants receive it with joy, but since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. That’s the second soil.

Seed has rooted itself in your heart in a shallow manner. It’s shallow because the cultivation of your heart is not deep. And you have sometimes impulsively, sometimes without thinking about it. You’ve responded with joy. You understand that the, and I take these as believers, that these believers have been redeemed, but they’re not careful about their walk.

Now when we talk about shallow soil, we need to talk about troubles and hard times that don’t qualify. They include things like me driving down the road using my phone and texting it and getting a citation from the police officer. There’s no reason to complain to God about that. I was just being stupid. And I needed to be more responsible as I drove about the attention and the laws that come with driving a motor vehicle.

It’s certainly true that there are things that happen in life that in fact are a result of our foolishness. And that’s not what this text is talking about. I remember getting a phone call early on as an attorney for a man that said, I want to sue Home Depot. Okay, what happened? Well, my friends and I went into Home Depot and we saw this hot tub we really liked.

So one of my friends snuck behind the counter and got one of these sold stickers, slapped it on the Home Depot and all four of us picked up a hot tub and we were leaving the store with a hot tub. And a security guard stopped us and tackled us. And as he tackled me, he hurt me and I want to sue Home Depot. I think though it was years ago, my response was, are you a human wasteland? That’s not what this text is talking about.

If you act in a foolish manner, if you treat your body in a foolish way, if you act financially irresponsibly, such that you’re buried now, those are not things that God has structured and intends for your life in a primary sense. It’s very specific in this text. This is persecution that comes because of the word. It is the word itself and our interaction with and serious commitment to following the purposes of Jesus and the things that come after that that really are. The things that this parable talks about.

For example, as we develop the roots of our life and our hearts, we find that in Joseph, and we go to examples in the Bible to find this, Joseph said to them at the end of the whole series of events where his brothers attempted to do him away and sell him into slavery, don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me. But God intended it for good to accomplish what is being brought about, the saving of many lives. That’s deep soil.

That’s somebody who says, even though you meant it for evil in my life, I’m structuring that in a way in believing that God means it for good. Maybe the classic illustration in the Old Testament is Job. And Job there, where we were last week, you remember, had the struggle in chapter one and chapter three, first of all, with losing and all of his possessions and his family and then his health and being stripped down so that he was merely barely living. And with a wife who said, curse God and die, that was less than the proper support that the wife should have been given to Job in that time. And Job and the midst of that whole thing and friends who came and they had one thesis, they said, Job, you’re in trouble because you’ve done wrong.

Wrong, that’s wrong. And the Bible’s gonna correct that. And in the midst of all that, chapter 31, Job surfaces out of that chaos and says, even though my flesh is flayed, I know my redeemer lives. We don’t see any sin in the book of Job with Job, but there was a lesson to be learned. So after his three sins and after Elihu in chapter 38, God begins to instruct Job.

And we get to chapter 42 and the crux of the book is in front of you. Job said, my ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. You know what that says? It says that every Christian goes through a training process which includes hard times, everyone.

Every one of us need to move from the spiritual hearing to the spiritual site. We need to enlarge our capacity for trusting God, for knowing him, and being confident that when I’m confused and there’s a trouble in my life, God’s hand is in it. And Job said, this worked itself for my spiritual vision to understand with my eyes who God is. And in that regard, I’ve corrected my view of God and repent in judgment and ashes. In the New Testament, in Romans chapter five, we find that Paul writes, not only this, but we glory in our sufferings because we know that our suffering produces perseverance.

Perseverance character and character hope and hope does not disappoint, does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Some have said, well, be careful about praying for patience and perseverance ’cause you’re gonna get suffering. Well, the answer is God has that plan. And the plan for us anyway. Every one of us has a blueprint that God has in our life that says it’s gonna include hard times because it’s only in hard times that we learn who God is and who we are and how we more fervently can trust him with the circumstances of our life.

The understanding of Paul in Romans five was even as he was one who struggled at times with his own understanding of what happens. He says, you know, I was given a thorn in the flesh and it was given to me as a gift from God to show me that I need to trust in him and not myself. So Romans says that Hebrews chapter 12 is a great passage for teaching about faith. And it says in Hebrews 12, one through three, therefore, since we are surrounded by

such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hammers us and let us, that we may, that entangles us, that we may run with perseverance, the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and protector of our faith. It is the experience of many who have been Christians who’ve gone before us that in fact, the circumstances of our life are the very training wheels by which our faith is enlarged.

She asked her father about that and I’ve used this instruction of my children as I raise them. She asked her father, why are you hiding the Jews? Her father said, Corey, that’s a black suitcase. It’s too heavy for you. I’ll talk to you about it when you get older.

It’s good advice when you’re raising your children. But Corey later on wrote, she said, there is no pit too deep. But that he is deeper still. Alexander Sogelnitsen, who suffered a whole range of afflictions and persecutions, said, wrote later on in the book by Phil Lancy, it’s only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sense within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually, it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through human hearts.

So bless you, prison for having been in my life. That’s the flip side of hard times for us. The persecutions we go through because of our commitment to Jesus are honorable in the way they treat us, they train us and teach us to grow in our faith. And as we look back, we say, as James said in James 1, consider it pure joy. The word joy starts at the beginning of that sentence.

Even before you know the outcome of the hard times in your life, the scripture says, God hasn’t made a mistake. Consider it pure joy, my brother’s James Wright, whenever you face trials of many times, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, that perseverance finishes work. So that you may be maturing complete, not lacking in anything. So in fact, the structure of our life is such that as Jesus taught his disciples, when persecutions come because of the word, watch your heart. Make sure that you have a depth in your values and your commitments that lets you weather those circumstances in a way that’s honorable to God.

The theme of this parable of the soils is this. We are most blessed as a Christian people and most affected in our Christian life when we are people who cultivate the condition of our heart so that when things come be they understood or not understood, it is certainly that we can be believing that it came from the hand of God. The story is told of a woman who had a daughter, a five-year-old daughter, who was dying of lung cancer in the hospital. She made trips every day to the hospital to visit her little girl, and the doctors were trying all kinds of medicines to try and stave off the illness. Periodically, the little girl would say to her mother or to the hospital staff, I hear bells.

I hear bells, mommy. And the hospital staff was worried about that and felt like the medicines they were giving her were causing her to hallucinate and wondered if in fact they should give a different kind of medicine. The story is told that the next day the mother walked into the nurse’s station and asked, “How’s my girl doing?” They said, “Well, she’s continued hallucinate. She keeps talking about hearing bells.

It’s probably the medication.” She stopped and pointed her finger at the nurse and said, “Now you listen to me. She is not hallucinating. She is not out of her head.” I told my daughter weeks ago that when the pain comes and it gets so bad that you can’t breathe, when it gets really bad, then that’s when you’re getting ready to go to heaven and you should hear bells from heaven.

And so little little girl in faith in following the instructions of her mother and listening for the bells said, “They’ll be ringing. They’ll be ringing for her in heaven.” That’s a depth that handles the almost unimaginable hard things of life and says, “God hasn’t lost control. John the Baptist has been martyred. Our enemies are plotting at every venue to kill Jesus.

And those of us that are with him are going to suffer the same fate. So much so that sadly before Jesus’ death, all of his disciples deserted him. Even so with that, Jesus said, “It’s the depth of your soil and the application of the Word in your life that’s going to give you stability.” So instead of popping up in a way that kind of prematurely stretches out in a way that says, “I think God’s in control of my life, but they don’t have the depth to believe it and having the life live to live it, Jesus warns that we need to slow down.” One of the windmills I kind of went up against when I was at the Bible College teaching was the practice by which it was an honorable practice that our students went through Multnomah and came out and committed themselves to being youth pastors, pastor missionaries.

And other kinds of church leadership. And while that’s wonderful and God has honored that there is a hitch in that giddy up. It’s that these people are still very young. And the scriptures teach that you need to watch out in terms of going too fast. Now we love the fact that Marissa Rebley is heading into the mission field and we honor and support her and God will do great things through her.

But the scriptures teach us in 1 Timothy, that leadership is to come out of experience, out of experience of raising a family, out of experience of understanding in fact that God is our portion and we have a lifestyle that has proven that. The scriptures teach the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrel, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that the children obey him with proper respect. If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a recent convert or he may become conceited and fall into the same judgment as the devil.

You see that warning? Says don’t move in terms of breath too fast before you move in depth. When I’m training men and women to be attorneys or when I’m instructing my workers in the winery and vineyard, the phrase I often say to them is first you get good and then you get fast. And in a similar sense in our Christian life, first we go deep and then we go broad. In this text warns us that as Christians who have received the word with joy settle down, slow down in a way to make sure your life and your walk measures in the experiences of life as you then move through the ages that God, the years that God gives you.

The instruction that has come in that has come from a writer that really was looking at Psalm 46. Where it says be still and know that I’m God. That writer said, slow me down Lord. Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace of the vision of the eternal reach of God.

Give me amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tension of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music. Of the singing streams that live in my memory. This is good stuff. Teach me the art of taking minute vacations of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, a patter dog, to smile a child to read a few lines from a good book.

And then more seriously, the author says, slow me down Lord and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values. So I may grow toward my greater destiny. Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift, that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Jesus taught his disciples during hard times, receive the word with joy, take it into your life, root it in your life. Be in that word on a daily basis so that your job of reading will activate the Holy Spirit’s job of applying the word to your life and let that happen within the context and circumstances that you find yourself.

There really are three conclusions that we come to from this second soil. The first is hope. I hope that you’re not overly frightened by the soil because the scripture teaches you teaches that when you believe in Jesus and you receive the word with joy, that you pass from death to life. You’re one, as is said in the John 10 in the section on Jesus as the good shepherd, the following. Jesus said, I did tell you, but you didn’t believe the miracles I do in my father’s name.

My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all to one who can snatch them out of my– no one can snatch them out of my father’s hand.

I am the father of one. So as you look at this passage and as you consider the fact that you need to go deep into your walk with God and you’re following of Jesus as you stretch out and move forward, don’t be frightened that when you stumble, you question again your spiritual condition. While 2 Timothy says, only the Lord knows those who are his, James 3 says, we all stumble in many ways. It’s the common experience for every Christian in this assembly. My company included that life is not perfect and that as you move out in life, you’re going to make decisions and things that while you thought you had your act together, a casual word, a comment, a conduct, a decision comes in a way that is inconsistent with what you know God wants you to be and do.

That doesn’t undo your walk with God. He holds you, as Jesus said, the father, in the palm of his hands. When you believe in Jesus, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and you should be confident. And you should be confident about that. Second conclusion.

Be careful about impulsiveness. Be careful about moving forward too fast. Say, well, John, it’s kind of contradictory to all the needs that the church has and all the opportunities for Christian ministry that we have. And yet it’s not counterintuitive. It says we operate in breadth out of the depth that we have in our walk with him.

So take the time and the circumstances that you find in life as a single person, as a married person, as one who is in the later stages of your life, that God is working in your life now to deepen you and him in a way so that while you may run into things in the future, you’ll be prepared for it. Don’t run too fast in that process. And third, it really is true that the character of the heart defines the effectiveness of the word. So you and I have been privileged to have been presented the message of the gospel in Jesus. And we don’t have any doubt about what he wants us to do.

Some that’s come to me in past years and said, well, John, I can’t really serve God until I know what my spiritual gift is. And I say to them, relax. Every spiritual gift is also found as a command in the New Testament. You don’t need to worry about whether you have the gift of giving. You’re to give sacrificially.

You don’t need to worry about whether you have the gift of hospitality. You’re told to be hospitable. So take it as a command, take it as a direction, and don’t wonder what God has for you in your life. Because in fact, we all are on a pilgrimage. And the parable of the soil says, we first of all understand our enemy.

He roams about like a roaring lion. Seeking whom he can devour. But we are hedged out by the grace of God to be protected, to be ones who are established in our way that we go in a way that grows us up. And secondly, be deep in your walk with him before you’re fast in your walk with him. Because that will serve you better in circumstances that you’re in now and circumstances that you may face in the future.

Let’s pray. Lord, we’re grateful that we have the direction of Your Word. And as this parable says that we are ones who don’t need to guess about the kinds of things that honor and please You. We understand that You are the giver of good gifts to us. They’ve come down from the heavens in a way that applies to us and allows us to be to run the race.

We’re thankful that Your Word tells us that as we run into things that we don’t understand, we can ask of You who gives generously to all without finding reproach. And so it’s our lives and our future and our well-being and the lives of this church and the life of this nation that we commit ourselves to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,345 words.