Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Good Soil
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. Today’s Gospel is Jesus’ famous Parable of the Sower. A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear. Dear Christian friends, Jesus calls you and He calls me “good soil” in today’s Gospel. “As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the Word and understands it.” You and I both have indeed heard the Word and we have understood it. (At least, we have heard and we understand as far as our human minds are able to comprehend the divine mysteries God has revealed in His Word.) If you believe in Jesus—if you are truly a Christian and not an every-Sunday pretender to pew—then you are good soil, plain and simple. “Seeds fell on good soil” says Jesus, “and produced grain.” · The seed of the Word did not land upon the hard places of your heart and mind, snatched away by the devil before it could implant itself within you. “This is what was sown along the path,” and perhaps you know people who have heard and yet have refused to believe. I certainly know such people, and I know that they are not you and they are not me. Yes, we are each guilty of not taking God’s Word seriously enough. Yes, we are continually tempted by hardness of heart, that is, lack of love for God and for neighbor. Nevertheless, neither you nor I are not the trampled and hardened soil along the path, with no good seed of God’s Word anywhere to be found. The devil has not been allowed to snatch the good Word of God away from us. To think otherwise would be to regard ourselves as unbelievers, and that is simply not true. · You might know some people who seem enthusiastically Christian for a short time, but then suddenly disappear from our pews. Jesus explains in this parable that such people are like “rocky ground… they do not have much soil.” Then Jesus explains, “This is the one who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy [but] he immediately falls away.” I regularly meet such people. They darken our doorway for a while and they frequently express their desire to become members of the congregation as soon as possible. I encourage them to develop the habit of worship with us for a few weeks before they begin confirmation—sort of trying on the clothes before they buy, so to speak—but in a few weeks’ time such flash-in-the-pan visitors are gone again. By comparison, I see you here all the time. You see me here all the time. Most of us have been looking at one another for years. By God’s grace and mercy, we have not fallen away. We are not stony soil with “no depth,” where the seed of God’s Word has “no root.” · “As for what was sown among thorns,” says Jesus, “this is the one who hears the Word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, and it proves unfruitful.” None of us would dare to deny a little bit of weed in our lives. Each of us has our own dandelion temptations and crabgrass sins, which we would be wise to admit and never to deny. Praise be to God! We still believe, even when severely tempted. Praise be to God! His Word mercifully raises us up, even when we deliberately fall. The seed of God’s Word has somehow, miraculously kept root in your soil and mine, even when crowded on all sides. We still faithfully return here to our Sunday-morning taste of heaven, even when the rest of the week has been hell. Amid care and deceit and other torments, the precious plant of the Word has NOT been choked away from us. Hardened soil; rocky soil; thorn-infested soil: Since you and I both are so clearly none of the above, by the grace and mercy of God alone, we have no choice. We must count ourselves as good soil. “For what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the Word and understand it. He indeed bears fruit.” We probably should not allow our self-infatuation to grow, simply because we are called “good soil” in today’s Gospel. Cow manure makes pretty good soil. Jesus does not tell this parable so that you would take a longer, more adoring look in the mirror. The point of this parable is not to suggest that · you are somehow different than all other people, simply because you have the Word growing within you. No, as the song goes, “the same black line that was drawn on you was drawn on me.” Your body will rot just as easily as everyone else’s will. · you were somehow pre-disposed to hearing the Word of God and believing, that you were more inclined than others to hear the Word even before God spoke the Word to you. Some theologians would like for you to believe such nonsense, but that is all it is: nonsense. You were not pre-disposed or preconditioned or born with “good soil” in your heart. God raised you up from the dead when He baptized you. Your faith is God’s miracle, which He has performed. God made your soil good through the work of the Holy Spirit in His Word. As every gardener knows, no soil is good all by itself. Even the famously black and rich topsoil of central Illinois had to be chiseled and busted and tilled before it could be planted with worthy seed that would produce a decent crop. Each year, farmland needs to be treated and re-treated in order maintain its good, crop-yielding quality. The same thing goes for you and me: we may be “good soil” according to today’s Gospel, but that does not mean we were born that way. God gets as much credit for the good soil as He does for the precious seed that grows so beautifully within it. · The thick sod of our hearts needed to be chiseled open and torn away by means of God’s Law. Even today, Jesus still needs to bust us up again and again, in order to prevent us from hardening over like the trampled dirt you might find along a pathway. That is why the Law of God always accuses us and never goes away. That is why trial and difficulty assault from every side. That is why peace is so difficult to find. With just a little bit of rewording to reflect today’s Gospel, the book of Hebrews might be taken to say, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as [good soil]” (Hebrews 12:7, NIV). Submit to the plow so that you benefit from the seed! · Every gardener knows that soil needs to be kept watered if the seed is to do well. Baptism happened once and long ago for you, but Jesus calls your Baptism “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Stated along the lines of today’s Gospel, the miraculous water of Baptism continually keeps your “good soil” in good condition, thoroughly watered and full of nutrient. · Today’s Old Testament is worthy of your memorization because it paints such a good and clear picture of how your soil got to be so good: For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11). “A Sower went out to sow,” says Jesus. In telling you this parable in today’s Gospel, Jesus is giving you both a word of warning and an abiding source of comfort: · The warning is that you learn from how others have heard the Word of God, but then failed to receive its benefits. See to it that you not follow after them. If you do, the Word planted in you will not remain for long. · The comfort Jesus gives you here will be evident in your everyday life. “As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” By calling you “good soil” and then pointing you toward to the harvest, Jesus is giving you permission to look at your own life as a source of Gospel comfort. What I mean is this: Think about the way the seed of the Word has worked in your life. Think about the faith that has grown within you, the good works you have done, the love you have expressed, and the patience by which you have borne your afflictions. All of these things are miracles that God has produced within you! All of these things are the fruit of faith! All of these things are the good result of God’s Word, planted and growing within you. Whether you see in your life “a hundredfold… sixty… or thirty,” give thanks and praise be to God! His powerful Word of forgiveness of life is truly living and dwelling within you like a lavishly planted seed, which shall grow up to life eternal. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster. Subscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons...@cat41.org Unsubscribe? 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