SPEAKER_00: Imagine that you hired a landscaper to come to your house and to reseed your lawn.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine this guy gets out of his truck, slams the door, gets his bag of seed, and says, you know, I'll get started, and then begins chucking seed onto your porch, and then on your driveway, and then out into the woods, and then also on the lawn.
SPEAKER_00: Chances are you would probably fire this guy.
SPEAKER_00: He's not actually doing what you wanted him to do.
SPEAKER_00: But what's really interesting is this parable that Jesus gives us is that Jesus is telling a story where a sower seems to be doing precisely this.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very bizarre sower.
SPEAKER_00: This guy is throwing seed literally everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: He's throwing seed on the ground, fertile ground.
SPEAKER_00: He's throwing seed on rocky soil, he's throwing seed among the thorns, he's throwing seed along the path, along, you know, a sidewalk or a road.
SPEAKER_00: At times, this sower may even seem to be so indiscriminate and uh superfluous as to be even wasteful with his seed.
SPEAKER_00: He seems to have copious amounts of seeds, so much that he can just sow his seed everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in this parable, no doubt the people who are listening in to Jesus, and Jesus starts telling them a story about a sower who's going out and sowing seed and then throwing that seed everywhere indiscriminately, are no doubt kind of tilting their heads at Jesus' story and thinking, what in the world kind of sower is this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it turns out that the sower is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He'll go on to explain the parable.
SPEAKER_00: He's the sower, and the seeds are seeds of the kingdom, the mysteries of the kingdom, that Jesus is sowing indiscriminately and everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: What does this parable show us first about God?
SPEAKER_00: That the Father could have the Son sow seeds like this.
SPEAKER_00: What does this tell us about the Father?
SPEAKER_00: In many seasons in life, we'll go, you know, every life lived has seasons that it goes through.
SPEAKER_00: We have seasons just in our day-to-day life, and we have a spiritual season, and sometimes it's interesting how the seasons of our life and the spiritual season are intertwining, but there's no seasonless life.
SPEAKER_00: And some seasons feel like you know, mountaintop experiences where we are feeling like we're growing in the Lord and intimacy with God, we feel blessed.
SPEAKER_00: But other seasons we may feel spiritually dry, feel spiritually vulnerable, weak, or maybe just spiritually like apathetic.
SPEAKER_00: We may experience, now whether or not we would say this is one thing, but we may even experience God as something of a scarce or stingy Father.
SPEAKER_00: That we experience in our lives this feeling like we can't help but feel like God is holding back blessing.
SPEAKER_00: We feel like we're going through life that God is just holding back mercy or holding back favor, holding back blessing, holding back grace, holding back justice, that these you know the floodgates are not open and like coming down on us.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we see Paul say things, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, we look at our life and say, where is it?
SPEAKER_00: And this is an ancient spiritual diagnosis, this feeling that God is like holding back.
SPEAKER_00: We see this, in fact, in the story of Adam and Eve, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where the serpent tells Adam and Eve, no, the reason, the reason the Lord doesn't want you to eat the fruit is the Lord knows that when you do that, you're actually going to be wise.
SPEAKER_00: He's holding something back from you.
SPEAKER_00: So better to spurn the Lord's instruction and take care of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Eat the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: This feeling of scarcity.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the kingdom of God is like a limited pie, and we can only have you know so much of a slice of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And we go through seasons in our life where we just feel like, man, there's just not enough grace that could cover this situation.
SPEAKER_00: There's not enough mercy that the Lord could pour out to get some real redemption going, some real healing, and this feeling that this scarce, like stingy feeling.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is not the picture at all that you get in this parable.
SPEAKER_00: In this parable, the seeds of the kingdom are being sown indiscriminately everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: It is like the landscaper that comes to your house and is just throwing it like on your rooftop in uh the driveway in the woods.
SPEAKER_00: It's going absolutely everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see is that I believe that Jesus, when Jesus looks out into the world, that Jesus doesn't see scarcity, but the kingdom of God actually sees abundance.
SPEAKER_00: That when Jesus is looking out, what Jesus actually sees is the generosity and care of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when Jesus is engaged in ministry, he is literally being followed around.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the Gospels, he's constantly just being followed around by really needy people.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really needy people.
SPEAKER_00: People who are hungry, literally hungry, don't have any food, don't have any money, don't have any leaders in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And what's so incredible, just a little bit before this in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, and I don't think he's being naive, and I don't think he's being, you know, just uh cursory with how he's saying this, but Jesus can look, these people, these peasants who have hunger pains in their stomach, he can look at them, and I almost imagine like Jesus turning his head and he says, like, why are you worried about what you will eat?
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you worry about what you're going to eat?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the birds, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: They don't toil, they don't work, they're not worried about your father feeds them.
SPEAKER_00: How much more important are you?
SPEAKER_00: Or he turns his head again.
SPEAKER_00: Why are you worried about what you're going to wear?
SPEAKER_00: Again, talking to first century Palestinian peasants.
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine Jesus picks up a flower, plucks a flower, is looking at it.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this flower, Jesus says, right?
SPEAKER_00: Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like a single one of these.
SPEAKER_00: And yet this is here today, it's gone tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: How much more important are you to the Father?
SPEAKER_00: You see, when Jesus looks out onto the landscape, looks out into the world, Jesus doesn't see scarcity, but he actually sees the provision of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He sees the abundance and generosity and care of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And we see this even, but but even when Jesus sees this abundance, it doesn't cause him to be like cold-hearted or callous to real need.
SPEAKER_00: Like he's saying this to this people, and yet we also see repeated throughout the gospels, whenever the crowds come and they're hungry, Jesus says, I want to feed them.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get food.
SPEAKER_00: Looks at the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We know at one point there were 5,000 families around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They, many of them, had traveled to see him, had gone without food and water.
SPEAKER_00: They come up to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looks at them and he sees that they're physically hungry and he wants to feed them.
SPEAKER_00: And he looks at his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He says, We gotta feed these people.
SPEAKER_00: And his disciples look at each other like we can't do that, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Well, go find food.
SPEAKER_00: They find a kid, and this kid just has a little bit of bread and fish.
SPEAKER_00: 5,000 families.
SPEAKER_00: The only people that have something to eat is just this little kid, and they bring it up to Jesus, and Jesus takes this.
SPEAKER_00: What looks meager to the world, looks like nothing to the world, insufficient, insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus takes this meager meal from a kid and holds it up to the Father and says, Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Father, you provided.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your provision.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus then moves, they distribute the food, and then what?
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the story, there's baskets full of food.
SPEAKER_00: So they end with more than what they started with.
SPEAKER_00: Abundance.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God is abundance.
SPEAKER_00: But mysteriously, this abundance bears fruit in what to us looks meager, looks small, looks like nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the sower of seeds that we see in this parable, whatever season of life we are in, if our heart is hard, the Lord's sowing seeds.
SPEAKER_00: If we're all tangled up in the concerns and cares of this world, what is the Lord doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's sowing seeds.
SPEAKER_00: What we see is a father in Christ who is prodigal with the seeds of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Tim Keller is the first one that I can recall who said that parable of the prodigal son, better to call it the parable of the prodigal or wasteful father.
SPEAKER_00: That is a father that doesn't bat an eye to waste his blessings on wayward children.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: This is the abundance.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord doesn't bat an eye to waste his grace on me every day.
SPEAKER_00: The seeds of the kingdom are constantly being sowed.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus breaks this down and he says, right, there's four ways that these seeds are landing, and one way in which the seeds bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The other three we can understand in kind of the classical Christian threefold category of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
SPEAKER_00: So one, the one that lands on the concrete or the path, Jesus says, this is the one where the seeds are sown, but then the enemy comes and snatches it away.
SPEAKER_00: Through no fault of our own.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus just says, Yeah, those seeds were sown.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy came, snatched it away.
SPEAKER_00: Again, through no fault of our own.
SPEAKER_00: The other two, the seeds that were sown in the rocky soil and the seeds that were sown among the thorns, the rocky soil, Jesus says, these are the seeds that are sown, but when hardship comes, they throw in the towel, and the kingdom doesn't bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: They're unable to patiently endure, to bear up, to bear under hardship.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom cannot be fruitful without a deep resolve for patience.
SPEAKER_00: The seeds that are sown among the thorns, these are choked out, Jesus says, by the concerns and the cares and the love for the things of the world.
SPEAKER_00: So the kingdom does not flourish where our heart is attached to things other than the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: What we see in Jesus' teaching, if we want to be this people, this fertile ground, where the seeds of the kingdom come in to what looks like meager, but bear fruit a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold.
SPEAKER_00: To be this people is to be a people where the Lord is constantly sowing seeds of the kingdom, a people, Jesus tells us, who are capacious enough to bear hardship, to be patient.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the kingdom grows where there is some kind of like spiritual grit.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm not giving up, I'm not throwing in the towel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm staying.
SPEAKER_00: Kingdom grows there.
SPEAKER_00: And for those in the weeds, the kingdom is calling us to uproot all these things in our life that are competing for the growth of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The things that Jesus says, the concerns of the world uproot.
SPEAKER_00: The love of riches uproot, the love of power uproot, the love of status uproot.
SPEAKER_00: That the kingdom grows in that soil that looks at all the things of the world, the concerns of the world, and then looks at Jesus and is resolved to say that intimacy with Christ will give me more pleasure than any of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Intimacy with God better than all the promises of the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the kingdom grows.
SPEAKER_00: We see this vision in Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: I've just always, I've always loved this passage in Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
SPEAKER_00: He who has no money, come buy and eat.
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful picture of the abundance of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So our prayer is not, Lord, sow seeds, Lord, do a work, pour out blessing, pour out favor.
SPEAKER_00: But according to Jesus, this is coming constantly, everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is casting seeds to scribes, to Pharisees, to tax collectors, to the disciples, to the crowds.
SPEAKER_00: But rather, our prayer is Lord, cultivate in us a rich soil capable of receiving the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And James tells us, right, that this happens with meekness, with humility.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, here we see a patient trust and seeking of the kingdom above all else.
SPEAKER_00: So friends, whatever season of life you are in, I promise you the Lord is sowing seeds.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord doesn't bat an eye to throw the seeds of the kingdom into your life.
SPEAKER_00: May we hear, as Jesus says, he who has an ear, let them hear.
SPEAKER_00: Let them hear.
SPEAKER_00: May we hear what the Spirit is saying to each and every one of us.
SPEAKER_00: May by meekness and humility we cultivate the soil of our heart to respond to the work of the kingdom that the Lord is doing.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.