SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard of Jeremy Clarkson?
SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: All the kids were sitting over here today on this side, and all the people who've heard of Jeremy Clarkson are on this side.
SPEAKER_00: Is that possible?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is Jeremy Clarkson up there.
SPEAKER_00: He is a British celebrity.
SPEAKER_00: He was um kind of became world famous by being one of the main presenters on the BVC show Top Gear.
SPEAKER_00: It's a car show.
SPEAKER_00: He was on that for 25 years, and then uh some things happened.
SPEAKER_00: He became uh the host of kind of a follow-up show called uh The Grand Tour.
SPEAKER_00: But for these past, I think, five years now, Clarkson has veered off the tarmac of car shows and into a different field altogether, like literally.
SPEAKER_00: His latest show is Clarkson's Farm.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just what it sounds like.
SPEAKER_00: Clarkson has a farm.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the show features his trademark wit and humor and goofiness while he learns how to run a farm, breeding animals and raising crops, and of course, driving a tractor made by none other than Lamborghini.
SPEAKER_00: But despite its comedic nature, the show also takes a pretty serious look at the very real challenges that farmers face every day.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremy Clarkson learns that a farmer can faithfully sow all he wants, but he can't really control what happens after that.
SPEAKER_00: And he experiences this in all sorts of ways as months and months of work are repeatedly undone by torrential rain and drought and slugs and pigeons and crows and disease and fluctuating market prices, and above all, government regulations.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the most memorable scenes from the show are when Jeremy is lamenting the latest disaster so often on the show.
SPEAKER_00: Things just aren't going well.
SPEAKER_00: Things don't really seem to be going well for Jesus either in our gospel reading today.
SPEAKER_00: Much like our gospel reading last week.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, Jesus' response to the trials that he was facing was that beautiful text from Matthew 11, where he rejoiced that the Father had chosen to reveal his truth to little children.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we who have nothing to offer him on our own.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus made us that incredible promise to give us rest.
SPEAKER_00: Well, his response to adversity this week, the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most famous parables Jesus ever told, and can almost picture Jeremy Clarkson in a comical reenactment of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, from my sermon title today, I almost went with so far, so good.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that have been a good one?
SPEAKER_00: I'm both a pastor and a dad, and there's this unfortunate convergence when it comes to jokes in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And also, that's kind of what the sower does here anyway, right?
SPEAKER_00: But in the end, the poor grammar, for those of you who know me, was just too much for me to swallow.
SPEAKER_00: So instead, I just decided to go with so what?
SPEAKER_00: I know, right?
SPEAKER_00: And aside from just preserving the undeniably hilarious pun that we're all enjoying so much, I think this title actually fits pretty well too because it's a question that is often asked in response to Jesus' parables.
SPEAKER_00: So what?
SPEAKER_00: What are we supposed to do with it?
SPEAKER_00: What are we supposed to learn from it?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' parables could sometimes be confusing.
SPEAKER_00: He even spends time in Matthew 13 talking with his disciples about how his parables are unintelligible to those who reject the kingdom of God because they've thrown away the interpretive key, who's Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so today I'd like to try to answer that question: so what?
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus teaching us in the parable of the sower?
SPEAKER_00: So let's take a look at this story that Jesus has to share with us today.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the obvious place to start is with the sower himself.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time when we hear this passage talked about, preached on, meditated on, talked, talked in in groups about, I think most of the attention is often given to the different types of soil that the seed falls upon.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't call it the parable of the soil.
SPEAKER_00: It's the parable of the sower.
SPEAKER_00: And rightly so.
SPEAKER_00: Because this guy that's throwing about seeds in this parable is not some NPC who's just there to help move the story along.
SPEAKER_00: He's the main character.
SPEAKER_00: His actions kickstart everything else that happens.
SPEAKER_00: And his actions, I think we can say, are a bit unorthodox.
SPEAKER_00: You know, even Jeremy Clarkson could tell you that proper planting requires careful attention to detail.
SPEAKER_00: He learns to drive his tractor in exactly the right places in the field to maximize his investment.
SPEAKER_00: But this sower, he does something unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: Something extravagant, something that some would even call reckless.
SPEAKER_00: He scatters seed all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: This is not normal.
SPEAKER_00: This sower, unlike other sowers, casts seed without apparent regard for where it lands.
SPEAKER_00: He sows copiously, perhaps even a little bit irresponsibly.
SPEAKER_00: And the seed gets everywhere, on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and then some in good soil.
SPEAKER_00: The church father John Chrysostom points out that it would be absolutely foolish for a farmer to plant seeds like this sower, but not in the case of human souls.
SPEAKER_00: No, this parable is a story pointing to something far deeper.
SPEAKER_00: Far deeper truths about the kingdom of heaven are being revealed, and this sower is no ordinary sower.
SPEAKER_00: This sower is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in this parable of his that we could in some ways call autobiographical, Jesus is putting his stunningly gracious character on full display.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the sower who sows seeds with reckless abandon.
SPEAKER_00: As we've already seen this summer, Jesus came to call even sinners to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus invites all, all who labor and are heavy laden to come to him and find rest.
SPEAKER_00: And in this parable, as in the kingdom of God, grace triumphs over productivity.
SPEAKER_00: Love is prioritized over efficiency.
SPEAKER_00: And this love is demonstrated by the spreading of the seed.
SPEAKER_00: This is the most basic answer, by the way, to our question: so what?
SPEAKER_00: What is sown?
SPEAKER_00: The seed.
SPEAKER_00: It goes all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where it lands, the seed remains the same.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change.
SPEAKER_00: And this seed, as Jesus will explain to his disciples, is the word of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This sower going out to sow is a picture of the word of God going forth into the furthest reaches of the world.
SPEAKER_00: We heard from Isaiah today how the word goes out and accomplishes every single purpose for which God ordains it.
SPEAKER_00: It waters the earth, it makes it bring forth and sprout.
SPEAKER_00: It gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, Isaiah says.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't return empty, it brings life.
SPEAKER_00: God is telling his people all of this through Isaiah in his particular time because they've not understood this.
SPEAKER_00: And they're in danger of missing what God's word is accomplishing among them.
SPEAKER_00: And so it makes sense that Jesus would call the word a seed.
SPEAKER_00: Seeds, by the way, or maybe cloves in some cases, are not really all that impressive at first glance.
SPEAKER_00: They don't look like much.
SPEAKER_00: But contained within them is the germ of life, this precious gift in an unspectacular and vulnerable vessel, one that can be devoured by birds and scorched and choked, but one that will also bear the greatest of fruit.
SPEAKER_00: How and where all of that works is, of course, dependent upon its reception, which brings us to the soil.
SPEAKER_00: The seed goes everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: The word is offered to everyone, but what happens from there varies based upon the conditions in which the seed finds itself.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus outlines for us four possibilities.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we look at them, I want to offer one quick caution.
SPEAKER_00: The temptation is to treat this parable as a moral lesson for us.
SPEAKER_00: Last week I gave the same warning about Jesus' offer of an easy yoke and a light burden.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't saying there that he wants to exchange our heavy burden for a different heavy burden.
SPEAKER_00: He's offering to relieve us of our burden entirely.
SPEAKER_00: And in a similar way, I don't think that what follows here in the parable of the sower is meant to be understood as Jesus placing more expectations upon us.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it's a description of what God does for us through his word, despite the fact that so many reject it.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I don't think the message here is that we better be good soil or else.
SPEAKER_00: I think the message is one of encouragement for us because we are good soil, because we have heard the word of God and we've been made alive by it.
SPEAKER_00: But first, Jesus outlines three reasons that the seed does not bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: The first, I'm going to call the riptide of rejection.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been caught in a riptide?
SPEAKER_00: It's not fun.
SPEAKER_00: They're notorious in certain places over on the Oregon coast.
SPEAKER_00: They can cause you to lose your footing and drag you off to somewhere that you don't want to be.
SPEAKER_00: They've even been known to rob people of their lives.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus says happens when the seed lands on the path and is eaten up by the birds, or as he will explain to his disciples, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it's important that we that we notice that Jesus is not just talking about a lack of conceptual understanding here.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's speaking much like he did last week in chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: To understand the word here means to receive it like a little child, to apprehend it, not primarily by the intellect, but by faith.
SPEAKER_00: But Satan will do everything he can to prevent that.
SPEAKER_00: He will devour the word like a hungry, hungry hippo.
SPEAKER_00: There's an ongoing battle for the souls of people, and in some cases, Satan pulls them away from God's life-giving word and they reject it.
SPEAKER_00: In such cases, it's here today, gone tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: We are full of puns this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you're enjoying them.
SPEAKER_00: The picture that comes to mind for me is it's like a candle being blown out right along with the match as it begins to catch flame.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've felt like that before, like your faith is in the process of just being eaten alive.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you've encountered what we'll call the hurdle of hardship, the second reason that the word doesn't always take hold.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rocky ground, the place where the seed struggles to put down roots.
SPEAKER_00: And this person, Jesus says, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes initial belief is snuffed out by the personal difficulties or opposition that we face because we cling to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus promised us a couple of weeks ago that we will be hated by all for his name's sake.
SPEAKER_00: But notice it's not the persecution, but the lack of roots that is appropriately the root cause.
SPEAKER_00: For those not deeply embedded in the Word of God, it can be easy to be scorched and withered.
SPEAKER_00: How many have drifted away from God because they feel He didn't come through for them?
SPEAKER_00: He didn't prove Himself, He didn't fix the problems that they had or removed their suffering.
SPEAKER_00: They misunderstood what the deal was in His Word.
SPEAKER_00: How many people's relationship with God is injured because of the injury caused them by God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the third reason Jesus gives, and this one is two-pronged, the flood of fear and the seduction of success.
SPEAKER_00: These are two very different sides of the same coin that Jesus flips for us here, and they take our hope and they choke it, they asphyxiate it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus describes them as the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches.
SPEAKER_00: Both those things which cause us anxiety in this fallen world and the false pleasures that the world has to offer us.
SPEAKER_00: Both are grave distractions.
SPEAKER_00: Thorns, you could say.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps nowhere else do we succumb so easily to Satan's deceptive sleight of hand.
SPEAKER_00: We abandon the source of true security and true joy, and we run off to counterfeits.
SPEAKER_00: We forego the very thing that will give us life, and then we find ourselves surprised when we feel like we can't breathe.
SPEAKER_00: Hear again what Jesus says to this.
SPEAKER_00: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: And he does.
SPEAKER_00: He has.
SPEAKER_00: Because here at the end of Jesus' story, he tells you your story.
SPEAKER_00: As for what was sown on good soil.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one who hears the word and understands it.
SPEAKER_00: He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case, a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.
SPEAKER_00: You are good soil.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard the message of the gospel and you've received it with faith.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus isn't talking about intellectual understanding here.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about repentance.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the new life that you receive when you cling to his promises fulfilled by the sower himself.
SPEAKER_00: And what comes of this is no ordinary crop, because this is no ordinary seed and it is sown by no ordinary sower.
SPEAKER_00: It blossoms into a return of magnificent measure, into a relationship with our God where we can call him Abba Father, like Paul did today.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually love how Jesus doesn't decipher exactly what type of fruit he's talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think he's talking about all of it.
SPEAKER_00: The good works that spring forth from gratitude for his mercy, the privilege that we have to share the gospel with those around us as we fling the seed into every nook and cranny of this hurting world, the new and eternal life that we have received from the one who once told another parable involving a seed.
SPEAKER_00: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.
SPEAKER_00: But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, at the risk of mixing our metaphors this morning, in this case, the seed is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died and was laid in the heart of the earth, just like a seed.
SPEAKER_00: And just like a seed, he sprung forth into life.
SPEAKER_00: And the resulting bounty was nothing short of miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: You are part of his harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes tried to picture what it would look like for the sower in today's parable to throw his seed everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: You know, did he take it from the sack at his side and kind of gently toss it underhand?
SPEAKER_00: Did he use both hands and dig in and just throw it everywhere?
SPEAKER_00: I tend to think that maybe he took his seed and did something like this.
SPEAKER_00: The shape of a cross.
SPEAKER_00: This is what your sower has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: He went to the cross, arms wide open, and did something unexpected and extravagant there.
SPEAKER_00: Something that some would even see as reckless.
SPEAKER_00: There he sowed copiously and graciously, and there is his holy blood watered the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You sprung to life.
SPEAKER_00: So what?
SPEAKER_00: What are we to take from this parable?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first we can rejoice that we've been given the word and made fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: We are the good soil, not by our own doing at all, but by the mercy and grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Second, we can be encouraged that when it looks like the gospel has failed, like it did in Matthew chapter 13, we can know that God is still working just as he promised and purposed.
SPEAKER_00: Third, we can heed the warnings of Jesus against the work of Satan and the fear of suffering and the allure of wealth, and cast aside all that would distract us.
SPEAKER_00: And then most importantly of all, we can fix our eyes on the graciousness of the sower who gave everything for us and caused us to bear fruit for an eternity.
SPEAKER_00: So there.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May the peace of God, which transcends our understanding, guard your hearts and guard your minds in and through Christ Jesus our Lord, now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.