Parable of the Sower

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Better hook up. Alright, good morning to all of you in Buffalo. Soon we are all hooked up and ready to transmit, broadcast. We started about 10 or 15 minutes late this morning. I guess that means I can quit about 10 or 15 minutes early, doesn't it? Somebody back there said no. I see the clock on the back wall there, and I can barely make out, so I better pull my watch out and put it up here so I can see.

I've got to open some of the dads' watch and big letters here so I can see it. They used to go to the minister of the church years ago, known for his long-winded sermons. He used to tell the story of the minister that his watch off and set it up there on the podium and lay it there. A little boy out in the audience would say, Daddy, what does that mean when the minister puts his watch up there like that? Dad would look at him and say, I think so.

So I'll try to stay the time with us here this morning. We have enjoyed our time in New York, the Elmira area here, since coming in on Wednesday. We've been staying with Mr. and Mrs. Lambert to join their hospitality. And their food. And their food. And I see there's more food back there today to eat. I don't know what you folks are going to do today if it's home. You'll have to have food in a different form or whatever.

But I see that you're keeping up the church of God tradition with good food. And I hope all of you up in Buffalo have some food for the day as well. We'll try to give you some spiritual food here. But we've enjoyed our time as short as it has been. The weather certainly reminds us of Indiana. We have many days like this as well over caddis and rain. So we go right at home.

We got out and saw a few of the sites yesterday. Traveled around the area. Went up one of the lakes, sent to the lake just a short distance. Stopped at a couple of wineries and saw some of the beautiful areas. Always wanted to see the Finger Lakes.

I've never been to this area before. So we saw a Finger Lake. Part of a Finger Lake. I crossed that one off the list of things to see in this land and other places. Another item that we saw was Mr. Johnny Lambert's garden. He has a big garden to the side of his home. We were looking at it last evening before sundown. It got dark. He's noticing that his garden has been neglected because he's a busy man. He's gone to part of the summer where weeds will take over if one does not tend the garden well. But he still has a lot of fruit out there.

A lot of tomatoes that were set around. Cabbages and other items there. So he's had a productive garden. I recently pulled up the remnants of my small backyard garden in our home in Indiana. We always have a small garden. It's nowhere near as big as the Lamber's, nor as productive. But I always have to have a little plot of land. I've got a little area that I've worked up over the years. I always have to put on dust and plants and have something growing. Just to put it around and give it a few things to eat.

Especially some tomatoes. You can't have too many good tomatoes from a backyard garden. This year I had a fairly good garden. The tomatoes, wherever I went to get my green house tomatoes this year, I think they had someone had mismarked the plaques of tomatoes. I wound up with a whole garden full of cherry tomatoes. It doesn't take worth really one plant to get a lot of cherry tomatoes. You can imagine. We had a lot of cherry tomatoes. But they did well. The one plant that didn't do too well this year, should have done well.

They always do. That's squash. I had to reseed about three times to get a few hills of decent squash coming up this year. Once they finally came up, the third time of sowing the squash seed, they germinated. The seed came up. We had zucchini squash, yellow kryptonite squash, all we could keep up with. It worked out that well. But not all the seed germinated. I always have to give a sermon every year. It seems to be some lesson from the gardens. When I was thinking about the experience with the squash and having to reseed, and some of the seed just didn't do too well, it reminded me of the parable that Jesus spoke in Matthew 13.

The parable of the sower and the seed. I'd like for you to turn there this morning because I want to go through that parable and draw out some lessons that I think are very important to us. As Christ gave this parable in Matthew 13, because as you know, it talks about the sower going out to sower. And as with all the parables that Jesus spoke, they also are talking about the Kingdom of God, telling us some aspect of the Kingdom of God.

They were stories that dealt with everyday occurrences in life at his hearers, that the audience could relate to. In this case, the sowing of seed. We all can relate to that. We probably sown some seed, whether it's just a few plants, or some flowers, or a vegetable garden, or a big truck patch, or maybe people think they're living in agriculture. We all know the reality of life is dependent upon seeds germinating and bearing fruit. So Christ told this parable to the sower and the seed to illustrate one of the very important lessons about the Kingdom of God.

I can't say this is the greatest of lessons, but it is extremely important. It's one of the first ones that he tells, and it's one of the longer ones. And it's not overly involved. It's easy to understand. But it packs a great deal of information and message here in this very instructive parable about the Kingdom of God. Now, a parable, let's just kind of get a little bit of the mechanics out of the way at the beginning, is a story that is designed to make fruit into a picture.

The Kingdom of God can be kind of an abstract term of salvation, reconciliation, justification. These terms that we use to describe so many aspects of the truth in God's plan can be rather abstract. What do you mean? How do you really picture that in your mind? That's why Jesus told parables. They were stories that made a large, abstract kind of a topic become reality. In this case, the Kingdom of God. What do you mean by the Kingdom of God? What is it? To a first century mind in the ancient world, it wasn't quite as difficult as it might be for you and I in our 21st century world. We have nation states today. We have democracies. We don't have kingdoms. Unless you live in Great Britain or maybe a few other places in the world today where they are so called the Kingdom like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With a ruling family like a monarch, the Queen of England. We have presidents. We have prime ministers in the Western world. We elect our representatives. We don't have anything like that. We don't use those terms anymore. To an audience, to Jesus's audience, it meant something they could understand better than perhaps ours today. But it was the Kingdom of God. It wasn't the Kingdom of Caesar. And it was something in the future. So Christ had to weave various pictures together to help people understand. And these pictures live before us today to help us to understand in the church in the 21st century exactly how it works. What it is that God is building toward and what the Kingdom of God is.

How one enters the Kingdom of God. How one should approach the Kingdom of God. And various parables illustrate various points about that as you move through them. This one, the parable of the soul or the seed, is quite instructive, I think. Especially to us at this juncture in our experience in the church. To help us understand why certain things happen.

And to help us get our mind around why. What is this that we're all about? What is this whole experience that we call the Church of God? In our time of the last 30, 40, 50 years, however long you've been a part of the Church of God, whatever name you want to put in front of it. What's this all about? Someone was asking a good friend of mine in the ministry in recent months after this past year's experiences. What's all this about? What have I been a part of for 40 years? Why all of this? What exactly are we a part of? And they were a bit burned and hurt from the events of the last year, and raising that type of question. I think this parable goes a long way toward helping us to answer some of those questions at various times. It's important to look at. So let's go into it. Let's open our minds and ask God to give us an understanding as we go into the Scriptures to explain this and understand some deep aspects of the Kingdom of God. Let's look at this. We'll start just going through it here in Matthew 13. And let's begin in verse 1. The parable of the sword. You have a heading there at the beginning of your chapter. It says, On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. Great multitudes were gathered together to him, so that he got into a boat and sat, and the whole multitude stood on the shore. So he had a natural amphitheater. He started talking out across the water. One voice carries out across the water, no matter what type of setting he would be. So Jesus had a natural amplification system here. And he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, in this case, Behold, the sower went out to sower. And as he sowed, some sea fell by the wayside. And the birds came and devoured him. Some fell on stony places where they did not have much earth. And they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. This is the second category. Verse 4 is one category of seed that falls by the wayside, and it's coming to eat it up. Second is on stony places, where there's not a whole lot of earth. Verse 6, he goes on, and when the sun was up in the second category, they were scorched. And because they had no root, they went their way. So a third category, some fell on thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. Verse 8, a fourth category, but others fell, the other seed fell on good ground and yielded a cross, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. And then he concluded that he who has ears to hear let him hear.

And so, in the verses, he mentions four different categories of places soil, where the seed fell. We can say this because, at the outset, the seed is the word of the message of the Kingdom of God.

Other parables illustrate that and explain that to us. This is the seed of the message, the gospel, the truth being spread out here. And this is where Jesus goes into it to make this plain. Now, his audience in this setting would immediately begin to understand this picture. A sower went out to suck. Because in Galilee of this time, the majority of people, probably eighty-five percent of the population, were involved in the work of the soil agriculture. A higher percentage of the population than we're used to today.

Things have changed in the modern world. We are all dependent upon large farms and trucks and trains to bring food to us from all over the world, literally. We grow what we made in our backyards during the growing season that we have. But we all know that we're all dependent upon transportation to bring in food from larger enterprises. But that was not the case in the first century.

Everyone was involved in it to one degree. So Jesus could use this in a way that they would understand. He's also explaining methods of sowing the seeds that are a little bit different than we would understand today. Because you and I drive through the fields, through the agricultural areas, we're going to see fields of corn, wheat, soybeans that are just perfectly laid out. Large acre tracks and the seed is sown there mechanically.

Just the exact spacing of the seed between the plantings and between the rows. I drive to Indianapolis and Fort Wayne every time I go up to Skeve up there. I'm just going through field after field, past field after field, corn and beans in the west. And you just look right down those lines of corn and they're straight as an arrow. And it perfectly spakes because it's all done by machine.

In Jesus' day, a sower went out to sow and there were essentially two methods by which he sowed the seed. One would be a broadcast method by hand. He had a grain, sack of grain, and it would slough over his shoulder and he would go and he would sow that seed into his field. And the fields were much slough than what we are used to today. It's a plot of land that they would have had. They would have worked it.

They would have been narrow, long in some cases. They would have been divided by pathways that would have been packed quite hard by traffic, human traffic and animal traffic going through. They would have been separated by trees or by rock fences. In that part of each country, there are very fertile soils and there are also some that are not so fertile. They would have had to work those soils. And so, as a man would have gone and sowed by hand, you can well understand that it's not going to be all that efficient. There's going to be some seed that's going to fall by the wayside.

In other words, the wayside then would have been a hard-packed pack that would not be conducive to that seed burrowing down, germinating. And going down the roots, then up with the fruits. And seed, the birds could have come and snatched it away, like that if it had been laid around that long. There was another method of sawing the seed in that stage, and that was probably the lazy man's way of doing it.

They would have used a donkey. They would have slung, if they had a bigger area, perhaps, they would have slung two bags of seed over the back of the donkey and put some holes in the bottom of those bags and sent the donkey off through the fields.

And the swaying back and forth of the donkey would have caused the seed to filter out of the bag into the soil. But it didn't work. Which is going to be a good way to do it. It's a little easier while farmers kind of setting under trees to watch them get done or just kind of maybe walking along.

When that donkey would get to the end of the road and make a turn, he's not going to turn exactly on a dime and come back. Or he may go off on a wayside or into a stony area that seems still dropping because there's no automatic shuttle. So the seed would have fallen into some of these places that Jesus described here. Stony ground, wayside, hard packed earth. And again, all of this were pictures going through people's minds as they understood a bird swooping in and picking up the seed.

The first home we ever bought was a family years ago. It was a brand new home. It was not until long. So I had to sow the seed. Dressing out there gets me stressed. I remember putting out bags of grass here at a large backyard. And it didn't all get covered over, or germinated time. And I can remember looking up one morning and looking out and seeing birds out there, just eating my grass seeds. And I got my oldest son, Chris. And I said, Chris walked out there and run through the backyard. And he was probably four or five years old at the time.

So I sent him out there waving his arms so the humans were scared to grow and scattering his birds. So the birds would need to devour all my seed, and it would have been sown in the backyard. And we managed to get some grass growing that year. So, again, these are the pictures that people would have seen in their minds' eyes.

But you know something? Jesus wasn't just telling them a good story. He wasn't just talking to them about burpy seeds and, you know, pictures of grapes and apples and corn and beans out of a catalog. That's not what he wanted them to understand. You know, there's something about our world that all of us should understand. And it's what Jesus was going to show these people to hear about life and about their world, and what we should understand about our world.

And that is, this world is not what it seems to be. There's something more. There's something beyond the physical. And what we see as a physical in the raw elements of life, of a farmer, a sower going out to seed, sowed seed in his field. The most elemental, basic aspects of life.

Jesus is saying to the Lord and his people, and just family. You see that every year. When you engage in it yourself, there's something for us all to learn. Something deeper, something spiritual, something beyond the physical. This world is not what it seems to be to the naked eye. This is what Jesus wanted them to understand. That's one of the reasons that he did speak in parables, as he did. Whether it's talking about a field of value, a pearl of great price, or other elements that he used.

He's wanting them to see something deeper, something spiritual. And that's the main lesson for us today. That is what we should understand. And that's why he, in a sense, kind of cloaked his message in these stories. Yes, they were to bring understanding, but not everyone heard it. That's why he says in verse 9, he who has ears to hear, letting hear. We all have ears. But I think as we all know, we don't all listen. We don't all listen to what we hear.

I'm probably the chief culprit, the one who does not listen. It's been a lifelong challenge to me, and I'm a minister. And if I recognize, I'm not always listening. And as much as I try, there's a distraction. Or sometimes you can hear what's being said, but do you really hear? My life is always coaching me on this, and I'm learning something. You can hear somebody's conversation. You can hear the report to you. But as we all have had experience, there's also, in most cases, especially when someone is troubled.

We need somebody to talk to you. There's more to what we're saying. There's more to what we're saying. I had a gentleman in my congregation one time who came by and took me for a ride with him.

To go out to his little trailer home on a little lake community. And it was one of the coldest days of the year. He wanted to go and see if it was the pipes that froze. Called him, drove by, said, let's drive down to the country. And made the trip with him. And along the way, he started telling me what was going on at work, and this and that. People that he was having to work with, this and that. And he was telling me a story, but he was, after I realized, he was telling me of a sin.

I won't go into all the details. It took me a long time to figure it out. But that trip was his way of getting me as a minister in a position where he could tell me something that he couldn't tell me.

And I was listening. I didn't hear at all. I heard his story about coworkers and people that he knew. But he was even telling me a different story. I figured it out later. I was thinking about later. So we have to train ourselves. We have to really be a cute listener as to what is really going on in people's lives. And that's a challenge. It's a lifetime of discernment.

Some people have gifts of that that I truly believe. But Jesus wanted his audience to hear. And that's what is in this parable. Now, Jesus went on to explain the parable. As you all know, I'm sure, in this one, by getting maybe one of the longest of parables, it seems, he explained it. Then he jumped down to verse 18 here in Matthew 13. He said again, Therefore he, parable of the sower. And he's going to begin to explain. Now, let's look at it in a little bit more detail here.

Let's understand these categories. We listed four categories that Jesus had here. Let's go back and look at this along now with his explanation. And let's see if we can bring this a little bit closer to understanding for us all. He said, Here is the parable of the sower. Verse 19, When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and staches away what was sown in his heart.

This is he who received the seed by the wayside. So Jesus was showing that it was, again, there is more to this than beats the eye. This idea of a sower throwing seed out by the wayside, a hard-packed pathway, that may have separated the fields, that was kind of the streets, the pathways of the day. As people went from one village to the other, from one farmstead to the other, they walked. As people walked in their carts with them and their animals, they packed it down. The seed fell on that hard-packed earth, and it couldn't penetrate the soil to germinate.

So it was just laying there exposed. Birds and other things come along and devour the crisis. No, that's the wicked one. That's the devil who comes and staches. What is sown in his heart, what people may hear. And in this first category, Jesus is talking about a group of people who hear the Word, and it somehow reflects off of them.

They consider it, but there's no understanding. There's no depth to it. It is very quickly snatched up by the evil one. It is a perfect description of our world. Look, we can send out... the Gospel can go out and have an audience of millions of people reading, listening, clicking on the Internet now today, being exposed to the truths of the Kingdom of God. But there's no place for it to go because of their life.

And it gets quickly snatched away. Society, the culture, is designed to do that. With just life itself, making a living, dealing with illnesses, dealing with tragedies, dealing with our dreams, dealing with our ambitions, dealing with the culture and the distractions of life that we all see about us. Everything from media, music, activities, sports... I realize I get more specific on the depth of somebody's program. We all have to take it where it comes. But we all know our lives. And, look, there is a God of this world who has designed a world that is not conducive to the Kingdom of God, the values and teachings of the Kingdom of God, the true knowledge of that Kingdom.

That's why you see this smash where people just don't pay any attention. Oh, it's just another religious message, another guile television, another religious tract, another message. I've got my own, or I don't need it. I'm not interested. I don't believe. Whatever it might be. That is most people. They hear that there's no understanding. And Satan very quickly snatches away what is so. Even when they're seeking something.

We live in a world that has surprised itself so many people on being spiritual, wanting and seeking some meaning. We have these terms that people use to describe their journey, their walk in life, and they are spiritual. Which is a kind of a catch-all phrase to mean what everyone wants to mean, or believe. They put together their own little pastiche of religion from various sources and ideas. To be a little New Age this, a little Eastern that, a little self-idea here, and then they call it Christian.

And it has nothing to do with Christ. Because they may not even believe Christ is the Son of God. He's a good teacher, but not the Son of God. And that's our world, and it's hard to penetrate that world. It is very difficult. I gave a sermon in Indianapolis last week. I was telling the brethren of a situation that some of them didn't even know about. In the midst of the Indianapolis congregation some 25 or more years ago, there came a man and his wife.

And he must have sat there at least a couple of times as visitors in the congregation at that time. He came with a family member, father-in-law, who was a member of the church. And he was much younger. He was a very ambitious individual. He was building a business. But he was also looking for certain spiritual values. And his father-in-law invited him to come to church. And they sat in the high school auditorium where the church met at that time, for a couple of times.

And I met the man some years later after he became a multi-millionaire business man in the city. And he was nowhere. He wasn't a part of the church. He came a couple of times with his father-in-law and never came back. And he went on to build one of the biggest businesses in the city. Today his name is on two prominent buildings in town. And his empire rose very quickly. And he rode quite high for a long period of time.

For a short period of time, actually, by comparison. And then certain decisions were made and the business plummets had overnight. He still quite well-demanded people like that to the squirrel-weighted things. They never do go back to their former lifestyle. But I had a couple of deals with him over the years as I was the pastor of his father-in-law at the time.

And I got acquainted with him. And I realized, you know, he came amongst us a couple of times, but the scene didn't take any fruit there. He had his own life. He was on his way to building his own kingdom. And he did. He built his own kingdom of... He didn't need the kingdom of God in the spiritual perspective because he literally built his own kingdom.

And he came in with... And instead it's an object lesson in itself for another sermon. Maybe out of the book of Ecclesiastes sometimes. But there's something... How many people have come through our midst like that over the years? They've come once or twice, but then, boom, they get distracted. Jesus was saying, people will hear in various ways and they may entertain it for a moment. Maybe not even a moment. It gets snatched away very, very quickly.

A seed that is sown by the wayside. Let's go on here in verse 20. But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now, he hears. One of the things you should notice in each of these categories, the people that Christ is describing, they all hear. They hear the word. All four categories describe people who hear. That's why he said back in verse 9, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. They all hear the word to one degree or the other. In this case it says that he receives it with joy. He answers some questions at the moment in their life, where they are. He gives them hope, explains some things from the Scriptures. But there's no root. There is no root. And they endure it only for a while. For tribes, persecution arises because of the word and they stumble. Now, sometimes people, again, can be drawn to the Word of God, drawn to the message of the Kingdom of God, and respond to it. In this case we are told that he receives it, and he hears the Word, and he receives it with joy. And he can be other way sincere, and perhaps this type of person would stay among the people of God for some time, continuing to hear the seed that is being sown. But things come along, and they're people who live their life kind of at the mercy of the moment. And events change, and they change. Persecution. How many times do people have their joy squelched when someone challenges it on their belief? Or they lose their job, or they're threatened with it, or they just lost their job, or somebody leaving them. They become a part of the strange religion, ideas. And they are faced with a challenge, and a decision. To continue with this, and bear whatever cost it might be. Or do I put it on the shelf, and treat it in a different way, and maybe it's always there? Maybe they know about it, they don't harden their heart against it, but they put it aside.

And they live at the mercy of the moment. This is a seed on a stony ground. There is not the ability to put down roots that will endure gain, a drought for a period of time, because of the culture worry. If you've ever worked a plot of stony ground, you can sit and know that there could be growth in stony ground.

But no fruit. I once had a garden in the spot that we lived in in eastern Kentucky. It was a rental house that we moved into. Oh, I lived there a little more than a year, year and a half, probably, through one growing season. Well, I had had a garden. So I got out there in the lot next to the house and started working on the soil. And here was half a shovel full of dirt, half a shovel full of rock.

So I picked the rock out and put it inside, turned it over another shovel full of dirt, half dirt, half rock. And I just kept working down the road like that. And it was stony ground. And the more rocks I picked out, the more there were. I worked the big stones. They were just smaller rocks. I had a pile of rocks off to the side. But there was some dirt there. Finally I dug enough and said, well, I'm going to put the seed out here. I already had the seed. I planted it. And it was a few years ago I never had in my life. It was stony ground. There were plants there, but not much. Beyond that, the roots weren't strong enough to produce. It's really insane. So again, Jesus is talking about a category where there can be appearances of growth or interest, but again, no fruit. And it's stony ground, and it just doesn't endure. Now, let's go on and look at this third category. The key to receiving the seed among the thorns is he who hears the Word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke out the Word, and he becomes unproof. As if to say that they may have produced some fruit, but then they become unproof. They receive it. There's thorns there. And they hear, which means that something begins to be produced. They hear. But there's other things that are worth the cares of life, the seduction of riches. Things begin to choke out. They don't really endure long enough to the harvest. So what is being described here? Because they just don't bear any fruit that is going to endure or is going to last. And interestingly, this third category describes seed among the thorns.

A thorn is going to be quite an interesting part of the agricultural seed, because a thorn is not a vegetable-producing plant, and yet it's a plant that can grow right alongside the vegetables.

It is a plant that can put down deep roots, endure a lot of dry weather, but at all the same time is growing right alongside the good stuff. And in doing so, it is taking away nutrients, water, nutrients from that which is supposed to be the fruit. It's occupying a place. And even, can we say, occupying a seed? And a place right next to that one which is growing and beginning to the legitimate plant of the seed that has grown there. A thorn is a very interesting category here to note.

You know, we could leave our point right here and just jump down to the next parable that Christ gets into, which is in verse 24, the parable of the wheat and the tares. And to perhaps help understand this particular category a little bit clearer, because in the parable of the wheat and tares, beginning in verse 24, Jesus describes a sown seed that is sown.

But in verse 25, while men slept, his enemy came and sold tares among the wheat and went his way. The grain was sprouted and produced a crop that tares also appeared. And they were growing right alongside one another. And the workers come and say to the owner, you know, shall we go in and rip out the tares from your field? And they say, an enemy has done this in verse 28. You want us to go and gather them up. And verse 29 says, no, while you gather up the tares, you also approved the wheat with them. Let them grow together until they harvest. At the time of the harvest, I'll say to the reapers, gather the tares, bind them in bundles to burn them. And I'll say, I'll gather the wheat into my barn. Thorny ground, where tares and thorns may grow up, can produce local life types of plants. Sometimes when my tomatoes are growing, I'm out in the garden. When I really worked in my garden early, I do try to keep mulch down and keep the weeds out. I don't want my plants to have the best opportunity. But every year, there's some weed that they get to have. It grows up through my tomato plants. And I must miss it when I'm pulling the weeds because they look so much like it's a tomato plant.

And I may go out there a few weeks later and look at it and realize it's got a stalk that's going around to one of my fingers. And it's grown up right next to the tomato plant and it's finding itself in there. It looks kind of like a leaf of tomato plant, but it's not a tomato plant. And I say, you ask me. So I pull it out because it's occupying space. I don't want to talk. It's taking water, it's taking nutrients from my tomatoes. I pull it out. It's a tare. But it looked like tomato plant. Jesus is describing things that occupy space in and among the church, the field of the kingdom, that place where the good seed has taken root and people are growing toward hearts.

And he's describing the reality here that can tend to be the heart reality because who wants to call somebody a tare? Who wants to be called a tare? Or be a part of the thorny ground? Nobody. And yet it is a very distinct reality that among God's people at any given time there are those who are not really laboring with the Spirit of God.

And he's saying, understand that. He hears to hear, understand that, recognize that. It is one of the hard facts of life in the Church of God. You want to answer why sometimes? We've gone through three categories here.

And those of us that are listening here today and as we sit and we understand and try to understand events and our experience in the Church, along with the collective experience of all of us in this room here today would be, I go back to the early sixties. Some of you came into the seventies. Some of the eighties.

Some of you here came into the Church in the fifties or began to hear about it in the 1950s. As I said earlier, it's a number of years of experience. What's it all about? What's God been doing? For those of us in this modern era of the Church of God, as we look back over sixty-seventy years, those of us that know the history of what we have been a part of in our own experience of the Church of God, what's it all about? Why have so many people come and gone? Why have so many ministers come and gone?

Some come, preach fabulous sermons, and then in some cases almost overnight their lives come apart and they don't even meet again.

And members who come and have gone.

Mr. Lambert and I were talking about just this area of New York. Years past, the numbers of people that used to be a part of the Church. What it is now? Gathered up all the various groupings of the Church of God fellowships that we have now. It's a small number. The people still holding to the thing. What's happened? Why? Again, you have to go to the parables.

Jesus knew what He was talking about. He says, if you have ears to hear, understand. And it can be difficult, challenging, and it can be hard. But for those of us hearing, we better understand it. Because I like to think that I'm hearing the Word and understanding the message of the Kingdom of God and moving toward that Kingdom. That's the vision. That's what I learned when I was 12 years old and began to hear it.

My mother dragged me to church. She did drag me to church. She had dragged me off the streets because I was playing street football. I remember the first Sabbath service that I went to, that I went to, I went to. The first Sabbath service she went to was a piece of trumpets. I didn't go to church with her.

My dad drove her up and dropped her off to the morning service. My dad took my sister and I to the zoo. He went to the zoo. He came back and picked my mom up later. About a year or two later, when the church moved a little bit closer, she was going to go to church. She was going to take my sister and I.

Remember the day she found me in the street. We always played football in the street. He told me I was going to cross the street. I said to my sister, come on, we're going to Harrisburg, Illinois. The church. There we go. So, I begin to hear. I begin to listen. I was not a model kid. I had one put in the church, one put out of the church. For a long time, I don't pretend to be anything but that.

But I can say that when I heard, what I did begin to hear began to make sense. I never just believed it. I just didn't want to live it. But it made sense, especially the Holy Days. I began to hear those sermons and I had that open my mind. It's a lot of things. Those are the first ten years. Eventually, it became my church. I had to make that decision. I've been going along with this.

I turned 60 this year. I'm some age 12, so it's defined my life. It has yours. When I look at these things, I'm looking at them just like you and I. You're like you wanting to understand, wanting to hear. It's hard for us to sometimes even admit. You don't want to admit that this is what has happened. We wonder why we've been through the persecutions and tribulations because of the word that we have. There's reasons. You have to read the story. One of my members was asking me, very troubled, recent months over what had happened in the church. You know, is this going to happen again? What's the use? Is it going to happen again?

I said, yes, it will. Stick around. It will happen again. You need to read your Bible, it said. You need to understand church history beyond the Bible. Yes, it will happen again. I just read your Bible. This particular parable is one for all of us to understand. Not to get discouraged about it, but to understand that God's still sowing the seed out there. This is an encouraging parable because it helps us to understand not only what has happened and why, but what will happen.

As we see when we come to this last category, let's look at the last category that he describes. Verse 23, He who receives seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who deep bears fruit and produces. Some 100 fold, some 60, some 30.

There is a harvest. There is a fruit that will be harvested. That's the good news. The seed keeps being sown. This is an ever-present parable of the fact that God is continuing to sow the seed. And he knows where it's falling. He knows why it's being snatched away. He knows to whatever depth it may go in a person's mind. That's his business to judge.

Not mine. But he's continuing to sow. If this person, they hear the word. Verse 23, And it falls on good ground. As you've ever, again, gone back to your backyard garden lot, I don't know what you've got in yours. I've tried to work mine over the years to create good soil. I have a compost pile right next to it. I put all my clippings on there, and I dump stuff out there, and all the organic material that I can get my hands on. And I've tried to build up a little plot over the years that's rich in nutrients. Good soil is free of weeds. It's free of rocks. This little nutrients, you can go out there in the spring of the year and almost turn it over with a fish fork.

Because the worms have been working it, and the organic material keeps it loose. And you know what good soil is? You have to have good soil to produce a good crop. And there's a whole science to that. Our elders have made a whole living helping farmers on a large scale to farm organically without a lot of pesticides and herbicides to pollute the soil. And he knows how you can balance it out to keep the weeds out and to produce a good crop. And has some good success with that. It is a science, and it can be done. Good ground is clean. It's rich in nutrients. And it will lead to bearing fruit. Now, let's pause for a moment. As I said earlier, all four of these categories we're told here, they hear the word.

How do you think they hear the word? What does that mean? The word is the gospel. The message of the kingdom that's being sown. And it goes out. How do people hear? Well, it's very simple. They hear by preaching the gospel. Put your marker here. Turn back to Romans chapter 10.

Here in the middle of a very complicated discourse, Paul makes a statement as to how people hear and respond. In Romans chapter 10 and verse 14, he's talking here about Israel. But he says, How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?

This is a question. How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? They have to hear about God. They have to hear about the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, the Son. How will they call on him? How will they believe on him that they've not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? One who is communicating the message of the gospel by word. This is the context of what he's talking about here, taking it to Israel. Verse 15, How shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things. Who preach the gospel of peace, good tidings of good things, the gospel of the kingdom of God. How will they preach it unless they're sent? If they're sent, the implication is people they won't hear. So the answer, all four categories of people back here in the room is terrible. They hear because the gospel is preached and is disseminated in their language by any means that is done, print, television, radio. And the mission is fulfilled just as Christ gave to the church to all the world and to preach the gospel to every preacher.

Which is the very reason for the church to exist in this age. And which the United Church of God is committed to do, have been committed to do from the beginning of our existence. Because there was an atomic time where the gospel had been squelched.

Again, for those who have been a part of the various periods of cycles of the church and our own experience of colleges and youth programs and big churches and seeing the work grow and develop and expand and publications and three college campuses and accredited this and youth camps. All the things that we've been through, been a part of, supported, understood. We recognize that the how these things have developed.

We should. I will have to share an observation with you, something that has come to my understanding as we've gone through the events of the last year.

And this helps us understand what we are doing in the United Church of God, what we wanted to do in the very beginning. And it's to preach the gospel. It's a complex what Paul said here.

But the reason you and I sit here today is because somebody preached the gospel at some point, and we've heard it.

Now, my mom, for me, some of you, you heard it through your dad or mom, or maybe first, and I don't know how it all worked. I explained my situation. My mother heard it because her grandfather, her father, my grandfather, used to sit and listen at 12 noon every day next to this big old fill-co radio that we had sitting in the house. He tuned in through all the static and listened to this man at noon every day preach about the world of Mars. And he'd come into the living room where I was about eight, seven, eight years old and shake his finger at us and say, I know what he's talking about. I know what he's talking about.

And then, you know, he never came into church. My mom did. The seat was sewn on his heart, but it didn't take root. When she finally, after reading magazine and took the course by us, she asked for a ministry to come on the property. He didn't know what to talk to the ministry. He got mad when he'd send him money. He made a co-worker. Got a letter one day, he said, make your co-worker. I don't want to be a co-worker. I guess he was the only one so far, just like so many. My mom, they came in. My dad never did. My sister and I were about the same age. I grew up in church. She long since has gone her way. And my brother came in among us and went off with his own ideas. Has his own ideas to this day. And here I am. Still believing what my mother believed, but she heard, came to believe in its folders. And here I am talking to you today. Why are you sitting here today? Because somebody preached the Gospel. You're not sitting here because we had a college. You're not sitting here because we had a summer camp in Fort Minnesota or anyplace else. You're not sitting here because we had a social, hot luck social. All those things came afterwards.

If you don't want to be in the recent one and talk to some of my former members, they have no idea what the church is all about. And how the church that they grew up in, raising their children in, came to be. They thought the church came to be because we had a wonderful why are you program? Or summer camps?

And that's how the church that they see or know, that's what they know. And I said, no. All that came because there was preaching of the Gospel. All that was important. And it came. And it helped to prepare. And they just rolled for good, or, you know, efficiently, not so efficiently in some cases.

And I teach at the Ambassador Bible Center. I believe in, you know, I've been part of the camp program. Laurie knows that. I don't know the value of it all. But I also know that that's not what built the church. That's why I didn't feel that I was going along with that story. But there was a preaching of the Gospel. And all of the other things came along as people were called, converted.

And the work grew. But all of that was to be a part of the continuing effort of sowing the seed of the Gospel in the Kingdom of God.

But there's the development idea that it was the college that built the work. Or it was a camp program that built the work. No. No. Those are, they're out further, in a sense, from the main trunk of the tree, past that they're preaching the Gospel.

Now, the United Church of God, when we came into the meeting in 1995, the Gospel was being throttled back.

And I saw that at the time, as a result of the founding of the United, recognized that, well, we're all in for this, so let's do what we have to do.

To ramp up. God gives us the ability of Gospel preaching effort once again.

But I was also part of the first camp programs, and when ABC started, I was there as a first year helping to contribute there as well. It's not all the value of it all. It's not, there's only denigrating any part of it. I just, I think I got to get the ability, and so many of us, we know the place of how it all fits. And then you have to have a, the work has to be going forward that the Gospel has to be sown.

The scenes have to go out. Or how would they hear? And how would they believe if they didn't hear what Paul was saying? Blessed are the feet of those who preach the Gospel of peace. The United Church of God has committed to this mission. I believe God has given us a gift in recent months with the focus upon the seminars, the Kingdom of God seminars.

And how that has come about is an interesting story in itself, but He's given us a gift as a bottom line. To help us get focused upon our mission, to sharpen our focus on the inherent mission of the Church.

And it's important that we hear that. It's important that we understand it. Even all of us within our own midst.

We've gone through this parable, and there's explanation for, as I said, the decades of experience that we have had to help us realize why some have come and gone, why some have endured for a while and didn't. And that's not meant to denigrate anyone. That's not meant to take away from anyone's past efforts, good contributions or whatever.

God's ways of dealing with us and working with us in this journey toward the Kingdom of God is greater than you and I can understand our feeblest abilities. I don't judge anybody except by what may be in front of us or what we have to deal with in terms of certain evaluations. God's our ultimate judge, and we just have to keep moving forward. And as we do, we can heal up, find up the wounds, move forward together without getting into the tribulation and anything like that. Because for all of you and I sitting here today, or rather, if we look at this particular parable, there's something for us to learn and apply to ourselves. And I ask you at this point, where do you fit in this spirit? Where do you fit? And you can say, well, I'm in the fourth category, okay? We're all sitting here. And I hope and pray that we all are, I hope that I am. But let's look at what we've already noted. All four categories of people here.

So let's ask ourselves, where do we fit in our own hearing? If you look back at the first category, that which is the seed that is sown on the hard ground, that person, for whatever his calling in life is, they're closed-minded. It's not open to understand the seeds of the gospel. It's hard ground. The pride of life prevents God's spirit from penetrating. And they may see an example of your example as good as it may be, or hear a moving broadcast or read an inspiring article, but it doesn't penetrate.

It just doesn't go any further. That mind is closed. We want to make sure we have open minds. To be able to hear and to be taught by God by one another. Make sure that the pride of life doesn't prevent you and I from letting God's word penetrate into our minds and hearts at any given time in our life and in our needs.

The second category is those who receive the seed from the stoning places, and yet there's no root that they endure for a while.

That type of a mindset is an interest I'm going to consider as well, because it's a shallow mind.

There's no critical thinking that you take from see from sign. Live life vicariously. Don't plan for tomorrow. Life's already dealt with a heart blow.

Whatever the family or the lot they were born into, they don't care for their health. They don't care for anybody else, except those who are the absolute closest to them.

That's why there are some people who shoot up drugs, use alcohol, smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, live a fast, hard life, and they don't care about holding a breath.

They don't care how much faster they're done. You know people like that. I've known them too. They were born into a life that is pretty hard and can be pretty short.

And they work hard, and they may have good values in many ways, but also they're not thinking about the kingdom of God.

There's not even critical thinking. Some people never finish what they start. Some people move from one idea to the other.

Always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth, I'll describe them. They're driven by emotion sometimes.

So that category of mind, the description here, is rather shallow. We want to make sure that we're using God's Spirit to think critically and properly on all matters, proven all things, holding fast to what is true, staying with and enduring, not being distracted, not taking off.

The third category of hearing is the one who receives seed among the thorns, and they hear but the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke it out and become unfruitful.

A person can have many interests in life, be very busy. Be good people, doing good things, but too busy to listen to the word of the Gospel.

I have a story that I carry with me a few times concerning, I didn't bring it for this one, but it's one of these made-up type of stories that illustrates a point, maybe it's a parable of one's sense, but it talks about Satan calling the convention of all his demons.

He sends them out with a mission to distract all the believers, get them involved in life, work, challenges, sports, need, culture, building their lives up with movies and distractions so that they can't really focus on the Bible and our God.

And at the end it says the demons all went out and were all very successful.

And it's a pretty good description of life for a lot of people. It will be a description of yours and mine.

It was making fun the other day of somebody who was about our smartphones and we're always wired in and always connected.

And the challenge to manage that in our life, for those of us that have to live by it, is dynamic all the time.

I think my wife at times is going to slap my phone out of my hand and start to pull it out. She doesn't object at the time.

There's the gentleman. Good people, well-intentioned people, get real busy.

And that's life. So that's what this particular here description is.

Then there's the fourth category of mind. It is like the good ground. They truly hear. They stop to listen.

And they stop to really listen. And they push away the distractions.

They learn to listen to a message and take it to heart. They learn to listen to a friend. They learn to listen to a wise counselor, a parent, a mother.

Learn to listen to God.

I can't show it to you today, but I carry, even in most days, I put my father's World War II dog cat on.

My brother, I thought they were all, I thought they disappeared from our home.

And it was a long year ago, and my brother said, I got something for you.

He pulled out my dad's watch, and they pulled out two dog tags. He carried the World War II, and he gave me one of them.

So I put them on a chain. Got a dog tag-tag chain. And I wore it.

My dad's name, his service number, a little P, which he did in those days, was Protestant.

I said he was a Protestant. I never saw him in the Protestant church too much, but that's what his talk was.

I put that on most days. And I think about my dad. I think about his values.

I think about what he taught me, what I listened to, what I didn't hear.

But it becomes kind of what Proverbs talks about in life.

The admonitions of your parent become like a chain around your neck.

And it becomes that, you know, it's kind of a symbol for me.

The longer we go in life, hopefully the more we stop and just listen.

And listen to a message, and seek understanding, and obey.

Because that's what the good ground is. It is really talking about.

Where we develop a spiritual hearing. If you go back here to Matthew 13, we skipped over this section that Jesus talked about being the purpose for the parables beginning in verse 10.

Because his disciples came to him and said, why do you speak to them in parables?

And he said, because it's given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not the beginning.

Again, we go through this one day at Pentecost and another time to understand that God's plan of salvation is ultimately going to encompass everyone.

But literally, Jesus is showing that not everyone is being called in this age.

There will be a time for that. Why we could get to the last great day and get to that wonderful message.

Whoever has to him, what will be given? He'll have abundance.

Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

Therefore, I speak to them in parables. Because seeing, they do not see in hearing, they do not hear it.

Or do they understand? We went on to quote from Isaiah, we skip down to verse 16. He said, Blessed are your eyes. They see, and your ears for the ear. Surely I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see, and did not see, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear.

Instead of the beginning, this world is not all that it seems to be.

And that's why Jesus spoke in parables. Open up a spiritual convention of reality through the minds of this audience, and the purpose of this parable is in front of us today.

To get our minds to hear, to listen, to hear, and then to understand.

And we can, if we have the right mind.

We've kind of described four soils, four types of ground in this parable. Different responses indicated by those different soils, people's different responses to the message of the kingdom.

Has that message taken root in your life? The kingdom of God is the most, it's the heart of the gospel. Genesis, I explained the other day when I turned to Genesis 1.26, that's where the gospel begins.

That's where we make man in our own image. And it carries all the way through the end of Revelation. God is going to bring His purpose about. And that's the most inspiring and encouraging part of it for us to understand out of this parable. Which is, what comes and develops out of this fourth category. There will be a harvest. There will be a harvest.

There will be fruit born some hundred, some sixty, some thirty-fold. People will respond. They will hear. The seed keeps being sown.

And the kingdom of God is sometimes like that little grain of mustard seed. It grows to become the largest in all the earth. And everything comes to a boost and make homes in its shaft. There will be a harvest. That's really the most important message out of this parable. That as one who sows, we look for hope in that harvest. There will be a harvest. It does come. It is true. So we keep sowing the seed. We keep putting out the message of the kingdom of God without discouragement.

Regardless of what has happened before, you get knocked down, you get back up. You need opposition. You need persecution. The one who's truly got a heart to sow gets back up, starts throwing it out. Keep going. Keep making it happen. Because there will be a harvest. We sow in patience. We sow in hope. This harvest, as we know, is pictured in detail through these holy days, which we are now in the midst of.

We sow in trumpets, come all the way through to the last great day. We put it all, it wraps up in a beautiful, beautiful picture of hope that God gives us for all the main time. Those who fell by the wayside, those who had it snatched away at the very beginning of their, some part in their life when they may have danced across, came into, you know, veered into contact with the gospel, but it didn't take, they'll have their chance. They'll be a part of that harvest. We know it all. Because God has revealed it to us. We see it. That's when the work of the church, through the ages, the work that began in Pentecost, that's when it will be realized when that harvest comes. So we want to keep sowing. We want to keep our eyes focused upon the kingdom of God. We want to hear, and we want to be producing fruit. God will have His harvest. Let's be a part of it, and let's keep sowing the seeds so that God, as He, in His wisdom and mercy, knows, calls and adds those who too will bear the fruit that will be a part of the coming harvest.