Jesus Christ, Storyteller: It’s Like a Seed…”
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
We look today at the first of three stories in Matthew 13 in which Jesus uses seeds to illustrate how he will accomplish his work in our lives and our world. These three next texts have had an enormous influence in my own walk with God as well as in the way I view being a pastor. I pray they will speak to you as well.
Let me start with this reminder: Jesus did not come into this world only to offer you forgiveness for your sins. He did come to do that. He offers that to all who believe in him today. If that’s all Jesus did, it would be good. What a beautiful thing to have someone say, “I’ll die for you so that you can start over with a clean slate!” But, if that’s all Jesus came to do, then what would your future look like? If, for the rest of eternity, you were just as drawn toward sin and just as susceptible to temptation as you are now, you would have little real hope. You know yourself. You’d go back into your old ways.
Jesus did not come into this world only to offer you forgiveness for your sins… Jesus came to bring the kingdom of God into your life (see Mk 1:14-15). He brings God’s reign into your life and promises to begin to set you free from other kinds of powers – like your temptations toward all sorts of things that are wrong. And what he does in you and me, God promises to do in the lives of all people who follow Jesus by faith.
And you know the ultimate goal of all this, don’t you? The gospel about Jesus will go to all people groups in the world and eventually there will be a people of God from “every tribe, language and nation” with each one of us being complete in Christ. And, we will live in a world in which all things have been made right!
The Gospel and the Kingdom of God
Forgiveness is just the start of God’s work in you. It’s a necessary part. Sin is what messes up our lives and our world. Everyone needs forgiveness. But, that beginning step of receiving Christ’s forgiveness has to lead to a whole new life or you and I will be trapped in our sins again in a moment! Our messed up world has no hope without “the kingdom of God” beginning to operate among us.
That brings me to the gospel. What is the gospel? The gospel is God’s message, the good news that God loves the world so much that he sent his only Son, Jesus, who died for a perishing world so that whoever believes in him might have eternal life. The heart of the good news is that Jesus, God’s Son, came to rescue the world and to make it completely right again.
The kingdom of God is the power of God to enter into your life when you believe the good news and receive King Jesus as Savior. After you do, you are called to move out entire the world and, through your witness and way of life, be involved in God’s work of healing every kind of brokenness and failure. When the kingdom of God comes its fullness, all things will be made right. Every dimension of a human life: physical, emotional, relational and spiritual will be healed.
So Jesus forgives you and begins to change you when you believe in Jesus. But, that work of King Jesus in you isn’t just an individual thing. It starts with you when you believe. But, more than that, the work that God does in you individually leads to you becoming a part of a church of people committed to Jesus being Lord and king. You become a part of the church of Jesus. We all do! So, we’re in this together. As God does his renewing/healing in us, a church made up of imperfect people like we are at LAC will bring glory to God. The world should see us and know that God is working in us. As Denny Bellesi used to say, “LAC is a piece of work.” Yes, we’re God’s piece of work. He’s promised to make something beautiful out of us.
And, God’s work doesn’t just end with us in a local church like ours. God sends us into a deteriorating and hurting world as salt and light (Mt 5:13-16) to bring the message of Jesus and the power of the kingdom into the world – until God’s work is done and all things are made right (Rev 21-22). Everything, everyone, everywhere will declare what the Maker is like. Jesus called God’s right making mission “the kingdom of God.” Jesus came to make all things right.
How Will God Do This? “It’s like a seed…”
How will God accomplish this huge task? The world is messed up everywhere. Has anything pointed that out as powerfully as what we have observed in our nation and world over the past year?
I’ll tell you, Jesus’ plan to make all things right is different from the way the world in general thinks about how the world changes. Jesus sets forth his way of seeing God’s work through this series of seed-stories he tells in Matthew. The Foundational Principle in the Operation of the Kingdom of God: “The kingdom of God comes not like a bomb but like a seed.”
Powerful leaders in our world usually build their enterprises through coercion of force. For example, in business, when a company has been failing, and a take-over happens, many times the new leadership comes and completely gets rid of those who were involved, changes the brand, moves the organization. It’s like a bomb beign dropped. Think of the difference between the change a bomb makes and a seed makes:
- The bomb changes the ground externally; the seed internally.
- The bomb comes and does its work suddenly and forcefully; the seed slowly and organically.
- The bomb breaks the land; the seek transforms the land into a garden or forest.
- The bomb destroys; the seed draws upon the nutrients already there channeling them into life-giving processes.
One of the main things about a seed that is important in each of Jesus’ three seed stories is that there is life-giving power in a seed. I think we all know that if we plant a bomb in the soil, we can water and fertilize it all we want and it won’t grow. But, in a small seed there is the power to become what it is meant to be – a flower, a vegetable bearing plant, or a fruit-bearing tree.
Jesus is saying that human kingdoms might change our behavior for a short while through establishing new laws and rules and then enforcing them through power. But, God’s kingdom comes by giving us the truth, by entering into our lives, and then by penetrating our inner beings with his Spirit’s very presence. Jesus declares that this is how God will accomplish his work in our lives and in his world.
Do you believe him? Do you really? This is not at all the way the world thinks in general. When we see things that are wrong or unjust, we naturally think, “Who has power? Get him to use it? Get him to speak loud and long!”
Even John the Baptist seemed to wonder about the way Jesus was working so slowly and under the surface of things. In Matthew 11 he sent a messenger to Jesus to ask, “Are you really the one to come? Oh, I know I said along time ago that you were. But why is such a terrible ruler still on the throne? Why are the corrupt local people still in power? Why am I about to get my head cut off?”
Jesus simply told the messenger to go back and tell John the Baptist that the seeds of God’s kingdom are just beginning to take root and grow: “Tell John, the blind are receiving sight, the lame are walking…and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” In other words, evidences of God’s rule are breaking into the world.
So, what does this transforming kingdom work of God look like? Jesus says that God’s kingdom works not like a bomb but like a seed. Knowing this helps me to know what I should do each day as a Christian. I am to receive that seed of God’s Word into my life – and I am to pass it on to you.
How Does God’s Life-Transforming Seed Come into Us?
Both in Mk 4:23-24 and Lk 8:17-18, Jesus said, “God’s kingdom comes by hearing – so consider carefully how you hear…”
Jesus says that listening – listening well, listening deep, listening to understand and to respond – that’s the primary skill of the person who is going to be changed by the Kingdom of God. When you listen, you declare, “I need to hear what that other person is saying.” The good listener has the humility to confess, “I do not have all the truth. I am not complete all by myself. “
If you will let the power of God’s kingdom begin its work in you, you must humbly come to the Lord and say, “I’m listening to you today, Lord. I cannot do what is right myself. How would you have me live?” In other words: You must listen carefully to the Word of God and the message of good news that is found there.
As Tim Keller says, “Leaders on earth, whether in politics, business or any other ream build their kingdoms by getting a hearing. The kingdom of God comes into our lives by giving a hearing.”
Many church people think that hearing the message of the gospel in this way and then passing it on is not enough to change things. But, the Bible insists that it is!
In Mt. 13:19, Jesus’ specifically refers to seeds being the Word of God. That’s what changes us. In saying this, Jesus is drawing on Genesis 1. When God created, he spoke words and all things came into being. Now, Jesus is saying that the word of the gospel has the power to re-create your life. On a personal level, this all starts when you hear the gospel of Jesus and receive it, i.e., you receive Jesus into your life. When you do, Jesus forgives your sins and you move from spiritual death to life. You come alive to God.
Have you heard and believed the Word? Have you received Jesus into your life as your Savior? If not, receive him now. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
How Does the Seed Grow?
I started the message by pointing out that Jesus did not come into this world only to forgive our sins. He came to bring about our complete re-making. He’s going to do a complete and beautiful make-over in us and in the entire world that now is so marred by sin. In Mt 13:23, Jesus points out that we who were dead in our sins can become those “who produce a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” The power of God enters your life when you believe the gospel. And, hearing and receiving the word of the gospel as found in Scripture is the key to your growth in Christ as well.
Let me illustrate this. Jesus made it clear that one of the evidence of the life of the kingdom is that people would see very diverse people loving one another simply because following Jesus produces that kind of love in us. Therefore, when the seed of the gospel is growing in us, the outcome should be that we love one another in a church in such a way that that a divided world will see us and know we are Christians (Jn 13: 33ff; 17:20-22).
But, because God isn’t done with us yet and we’re still a “piece of work”, we still have times when we don’t love one another in spite of the work of God through the gospel in our lives. This is what was happening in the churches in Galatia when Paul wrote his letter. In those churches, the conservative Jewish Christians and progressive Jewish Christians weren’t getting along because the progressives associated with Gentile Christians and the others did not. Even Peter and Paul were at odds over this!
So, Paul confronted Peter about this. When he confronted Peter, Paul didn’t say, “Peter, Jesus gave us new rules against racism.” No, he said in Gal. 2:14 "You are not acting in keeping with the truth of the gospel!” He pointed out that we all are sinners saved not through being born into a certain bloodline or through keeping laws but simply by God’s grace received through faith in Jesus. That, in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, black white or blue, male or female (Gal 3:28). Paul declares that racism is a denial of the grace of God that is central to the gospel. Do you see it? This is how we work the message of Scripture deep into the practical issues of our lives through hearing the Word and allowing it to affect all our decisions.
I was talking this past week with some of our interns about this as they discussed a book they were reading together, Christena Cleveland’s Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart.” They thought I should read it and that I should ask you to read it. But, they said, “Each Christian needs to find another Christian that they disagree with about something so that they can seek God’s wisdom together.”
It may well be that, just like the healing of the walls between Jew and Gentile that existed in the 1st C was bridged by the gospel of Jesus, the same might be possible for us in our world in which we have walls of black and white (and all colors in between) and between black and blue (though those who wear blue are black and white and all colors in between). In the church, we say, through the precious blood of Jesus, God has made us one. We will listen to one and other and pray together until we truly are one! That’s what the gospel demands!
Or, after listening to both political parties’ conventions these past two weeks, I realized again how divided we are over what’s happening in our climate. Does the gospel have anything that gives us guidance about that so that we can live effectively and in unity for the cause of Christ in our world? Yes, it does! God’s 1st command to human beings was to rule over the rest of the world in such a way that his order, beauty and goodness would be sustained. We are God’s caretakers of a world he loves. And, one part of the gospel is that there will be a new heaven and new earth in a garden-like city! God will re-make all of his creation and we get to be a part of it! That basic gospel principle should be enough to have us sit down and say, “That’s what the gospel demands. Now, how can we work through all the world’s political divisions on this and fulfill God’s call upon us?
This is what we must do if we will be what I call a “gospel-shaped” church. We will hear God’s Word when we gather and then ask how that directs us as individuals and a church. In most of our world’s controversies, there are gospel-centered principles in Scripture that we need to allow to go deep into our hearts through Scripture reading, prayer, and life in the church community. This is how Jesus taught us to live.
God’s work won’t happen overnight. But, it will happen. God’s kingdom grows among us like a seed in a garden.
What Kind of Soil Are You?
Today’s parable is the best known of Jesus’ seed parables. It’s about a farmer who went out and threw out seed onto four different kinds of soil. That point alone caused a farmer friend of mine to say, “What kind of farmer is that? Who throws valuable seed out onto a hard path or into a bunch of thorns?” I can only say that the God who loves the people of this world is willing to throw the seed of his good news into all people, even when he knows how hard-hearted or thorn-infested we tend to be. Be encouraged by that.
Only one of the soils allowed the seed to take root and become productive. In the three other soils, the seed failed to take to go in, take root and thrive. The problem was a depth problem:
- The Hard Heart (13:19) -- In the 1st, the seeds didn’t get into the soil at all so that enemies devour them. The main problem with hard soil is usually intellectual. People already have their minds made up. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were often like this. They already thought they knew so much that they insisted on being the teachers and never the learners. How about you? Do you ever have times when you simply say, “God, I need to understand more than I do now. I need you to speak to me.” Usually the hard heart really is the sign of a hard head
- The Shallow Heart (13:20-21) -- In the 2nd, the seeds didn’t go in deep enough to take root. Oh, at first there may be great enthusiasm. When Jesus did miracles, people were always amazed but they didn’t allow their amazement to change their lives. I’ve seen this so often – one day, so much excitement but the next day, on to something else. Usually, this happens when a person wants Jesus to bless them, not to save them. To thrill them – not to change them.
- The Divided Heart (13:22) -- In the 3rd, the seeds go in at the same level as other weeds and thorns. It’s like Jesus is added alongside other loves in people’s lives. Jesus doesn’t become the Lord – but just another good add-on. Be warned: These people look like real Christians to most onlookers. But, they have a 1st Commandment problem: They believe in God but others things are just as important as God in their daily lives. You’ll know this person because, when difficulties come or some of the things they wanted are taken away, they are miserable. There is no one as unhappy as a person who thinks he’s a Christian but is really living for something else.
But, in the 4th soil, the receptive heart, there is a big difference. The seed goes deep and begins to grow. We can’t see it in our English translations very well, but when Jesus spoke, he changed his verb tense to one that calls for ongoing action. That means that Jesus didn’t just speak about this 4th soil receiving his word once – but over and over again. If this soil is you, you will long to hear a word from God again and again. You’ll seek to hear what God says, accept it, meditate on it and allow it to go deep. It will begin to change you from the inside to the out. See 13:23.
How do we let the word go deep so that we grow and produce? How does this word planted deep take us from where we are (in our addictions, anxiety, and other imperfections) to where God will take us – to being complete in Christ? Jesus just says, “It’s like a seed that you receive deeply and regularly.” Maybe I should just leave it at that and let God speak to you. But I’ll ask you to do this: Make sure you are open to whatever God would say to you. God’s kingdom comes like a seed – so take heed how you listen.
Is God saying anything to you right now? Is there a decision that you know he would have you make? A person you should help? A sin you should confess? Receive his word – respond to it even now.
Don’t give up when God’s work seems to be happening slowly in your life, in your family, in your church or in our world. God’s kingdom is like a seed. He makes beautiful things out of the dust.
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