Weed the Garden

Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Sabbath! Good to see all of you here today. I got kind of distracted during the sermon as soon as Larry Benson raised the prospect of everyone in the world being an accountant. Of course, I could see my wife cringing next to me. Maybe we can have a bit of a contest after church between those married to accountants and those married to engineers to compare which is more excruciating.

Might be a close call. Certainly make for a good debate. Well, it's good to be here with everyone today. I'm conscious of the fact that this for many is the third sermon that you're hearing in about 24 hours' time. So we'll try to keep it interesting and keep everyone awake here today. I'd actually like to start where Mr. Thomas left off yesterday in 2 Corinthians 9.

This is the springtime, and I think we don't always think about all the correlations that happen with the time of year that we're in and some of the things that we do in terms of the holy days that we keep and the schedule of worship that God laid out. But there's a lot, really, that is tied in between the two.

I think that God brings the holy days and the seasons together for a reason, and it's so that we think in ways other than simply looking at the Bible and studying the Bible, that we think in practical ways also about the things that we're experiencing, what they mean in our lives, and how our lives operate. 2 Corinthians 9 and verse 10, where Mr. Thomas was near the end of his message yesterday, Of course, he was talking about the progression from the time that we've just completed, the Days of Unleavened Bread, the Passover, looking towards the next festival of Pentecost.

We heard a lot yesterday about Jesus as the bread of life, and importantly, how he grows through multiplication.

And seeds, when we think about that in nature, are one of the big ways that God multiplies when we look at it.

I'd like to focus today a little more on seed and maintaining the ground in which seed is planted so it can take root and be effective and produce fruit.

As we go back even to the Passover ceremony and some of the verses that we read in John as we wrap up the Passover ceremony, we read about the fact that Christ is the vine and there are many branches, and how the branches are tended and pruned.

And the goal of all of that is to bring forth fruit. And what is it that we see around us and we think about, for those of us who tend to garden, for those of us who care for a yard, those things that are happening at this time of year in the springtime. We're planting seeds, we're seeing things grow, we're cultivating tender, sometimes very delicate shoots, and hoping that they'll grow up and produce some fruit. So let's think a little more about how that happens in the plant world.

Now, I'm not a big gardener myself, but I've had yards to care for in different places that we've lived over the years. The last house that we had, we had a patch of ivy, and the people who had lived in that home before us had planted a small patch of strawberries, kind of in a clearing in this patch of ivy.

And being busy and not necessarily an avid gardener didn't really do too much with it. And a year or two later, it just amazed me looking back at strawberries. Has anyone dealt with strawberry plants?

Okay. Strawberry plants, to me, are just incredible, because they grow, and they're just these little plants, they drive a very deep root that goes straight down. Some of them are double.

You try and rip it up and you get one of the roots, the other root is still there, and it'll grow a new plant very quickly.

But what I find intriguing about strawberry plants is they get to a certain age and they send out these shooters, and they go and they hit the ground, and where they hit the ground, what do they do?

They lay out roots. And those roots embed. And if you let those things go for a couple of years, you talk about multiplication, geometric progression. You've got one plant that's going to send out three or four of those shooters.

Those three or four plants the next year are going to send out three or four of their own. And pretty soon, even in something that's as aggressive and ground-covering as ivy, that whole area, in our experience, was covered with strawberry plants.

Because these things just multiply. They go all over the place. And God created them that way. That's the way that the life it propagates itself, in this case, with those fruits.

Now, raspberry plants are a little bit different. A few years back, when we were living in Colorado, we had raspberry bushes in our backyard, and I always enjoyed those. We had to cover them up with nets so the birds wouldn't come in and steal all the raspberries before we could eat them.

But raspberries have a different way of multiplying themselves. For those of you who've dealt with raspberry bushes before, they go underground.

And so we'd have this raspberry bush, and it was sitting in the yard, in the corner area of the yard, and as we'd go and tend to the yard from time to time, what would we find?

But all around this raspberry bush, there were sprouts coming up. And there were new raspberry bushes trying to come up out of the ground, as they were multiplying themselves. And they shoot out roots underground, which then pop up and start new sprouts, which are going to start new plants. So you have to actually go and aggressively dig down. I've tried before with gloves just yanking on them, being kind of a shortcut gardener that I am. And of course, you yank harder, harder, harder, and you've got this big trail of root that goes back to the main bush. And that's how the raspberry plants multiply themselves. And of course, birds and animals, we know, as they eat different fruit, in their droppings, they'll leave behind the same root.

And those seeds, partly fertilized by those droppings, will grow more bushes wherever in the world those animals end up. So it's this incredible progression of how life multiplies itself and how growing things continue to go on. But multiplication doesn't only happen, at least when we look at our gardens, with the good things. And in fact, often when we look at our gardens, it's the bad things, the weeds that are multiplying all over the place. And lately, I've been doing a fair amount of gardening. We don't really grow much in our yard, because the deer tend to enjoy anything that grows that's to their taste, which seems to be just about anything I can think of. So, in fact, the first year we moved into that house, my wife was looking, and there were nice little sort of caverns on the mailboxes on our street, where you can put plants. She was saying, wow, you know, it's so nice you've got this. You can put flowers up, and nobody on the street puts any flowers out here. I think I'm going to do that. And so she set them out, and of course the flower boxes are just the right height, that a sort of medium-sized deer can just go and munch the tops off of all of them right away, which is what happened to us within about a day of doing that. But we've got a bunch of flower beds, and they have mulch in them, and they have different types of landscaping in them. And again, being the kind of gardener that I am, I've let them go a little bit. It's been busy the first year and a half or so that we've lived here.

And as I've gone through this spring and tried to clean it out, again, it's just amazed me because in this case it's these weeds. There's this incredible, like, clover-like stuff, and it does the same thing that the strawberry plants do, and it just starts spreading out its tendrils, and it grows all over the place. And unless it's maintained on a regular basis, it's nearly impossible to get these things out by their roots, right?

And they just spread all over, and they'll choke out anything good that you're trying to grow. So, today we're going to talk a little bit more about weeds. So if anyone is looking for a title to the message, you can simply title it Weed the Garden. Weed the Garden. And for those of you who are more avid gardeners than I, I've certainly learned this lesson. It's all about maintenance, right?

Maintenance and vigilance. Because letting it go for a year or two means that it's going to take an incredible amount of time to get through this stuff, and a lot of will to go through and dig up all of this stuff that's grown up. It makes me think of a scientific term, which is called entropy. Entropy. And it means the gradual decline into disorder. It's one of the alternate meanings of it.

And it's something that we experience, I think, in all different parts of our lives. One place that we can often observe entropy is in our basements.

Another place would be in the garage. Another place might be in the car, after we don't empty it out for a month or so, and we've got junk lying all over the floorboards of it.

But in whatever part of our life, it just seems to be built into us as human beings, things just kind of decline, right? If we're not looking after them, we're not taking care of them on an ongoing basis.

I've had talks with plenty of people who say, yeah, my basement, you know, we just keep throwing boxes down there, never really get around to looking at it. We know we need to. Other people, it's the garage.

There's always something. If people have attics, attics get overstuffed. And until we take the time and dig into it and take a lot of time with it, it just slowly accumulates and slowly deteriorates.

So let's think a little bit about vigilance or maintenance, if we want to call it that, because it's an important part of our spiritual lives.

I think we can probably think already of different analogies that are used in the Bible about weeds and gardens and how they grow. And God certainly does use nature to teach us.

And certainly a lesson that I've been learning as I've been trying to take better care of our yard over the course of the last few months is the fact that constant maintenance and constant vigilance is something that's needed.

Now there's a great commercial out right now that I always get a kick out of. It's for one of the services that looks after your identity theft.

They go through this thing and say, what would you pay for somebody to monitor for you? And they have these scenarios that they lay out where there's a bank robbery going on and somebody calls up and says, I'm monitoring your bank and there's a bank robbery going on. Thank you very much. And the phone goes down and nobody does anything about it. And of course their big pitch is, you don't just need a service that's monitoring your credit history. You need somebody who's going to jump in and do something if there's a problem. Right?

And that's the way our lives are as well. We have to not only monitor them, but we have to jump in and we have to do something with the vigilance.

And I think it's a good lesson at this time of year because, as we've already heard in the other messages, at this time following the Passover, we've taken a good inventory of ourselves and our lives.

We've thought of a lot of things going on in our lives. We've considered things that we want to do. But without that ongoing vigilance and action attached to that vigilance, what's going to happen?

The same idea of entropy, the same thing that we see happening in our gardens, the same things we see happening in our garage or in our basement if we're not monitoring it and taking action based on the things that we see. And that is that the clutter comes back, the weeds come back. Things tend to grow back and go back into the shape that they were in before unless we're actively and vigilantly taking care of them.

Turn with me, if you will, to James 1. James 1.

We'll read verses 22 through 25 of James 1. James 1.22 says, Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone's a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.

For he observes himself, he goes away, and he immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work. This one will be blessed in what he does.

So what's this analogy talking about? Well, think about it as you just woke up and got out of bed and you looked in the mirror and you say, wow, rough night.

And you walk away, you get on your clothes, and you go to work. Of course we don't do that, do we? We look in the mirror, we do something about what we see, right? Ladies, we might put on some makeup, we do our hair. Men, we do the same thing. We wash our hair, we shave so we don't look like grisly atoms walking into work.

We do something about the things that we see in the mirror, and that's exactly what this passage is talking about as well.

And we've spent a fair amount of time, I would say, in the last weeks leading up to the Passover looking in the mirror.

And as we move forward and as we want to bring forth fruits and have that multiplication in our lives, it's important then that we keep that vigilance, not only seeing what's there, but determining to do things about it, turning to God, and doing things about what we've seen in the mirror.

Turn with me, if you will, as well to 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5, verses 8 and 9. Again, talking here about the idea of vigilance.

1 Peter 5, verses 8 and 9. Here it says, Be sober and be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

So again, we're called by the Bible, we're called by God and His Word, to be vigilant in our lives.

So what about the weeds? I'd like to spend the rest of our time today in the sermon thinking more specifically about the weeds.

Turn with me, if you will, to Mark 4.

Now, often at work, if you're having a discussion, they're going to say, we don't want to get deep into the weeds on this, but this time we are going to get deep into the weeds.

Mark 4, and we'll read, starting in verse 3.

This is probably one of the better-known parables that Jesus Christ gave. It's the parable of the sower.

Mark 4, starting in verse 3.

And Jesus Christ, talking to the multitude, says, Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it.

Some fell on stony ground, where it didn't have much earth, and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth.

But when the sun was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away.

And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.

But other seed fell on good ground, and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced, some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

And he said to them, He who has ears, let him hear.

We won't read through the rest of the discourse, where they're wondering what in the world he's talking about. He talks about the purpose of parables. But in verse 13, he then explains to the people listening what it is that these parables mean. Verse 13, Jesus said to them, Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?

The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness. And they have no root in themselves, and so they only endure for a time. And afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises, for the word's sake, immediately they stumble.

Now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in, entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

As we heard in the sermon yesterday, the idea of multiplying, right? Bearing fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. Where I'd like to focus on the rest of this message is when we look in verse 18 and 19, what was sown among the thorns. And to me, what's really instructive here, when it talks about this, is it says nothing about the soil being bad.

Just like the ones where the seed takes root and sown on good ground and bears forth fruit, there's nothing wrong with the soil that's mentioned here about the seed that's sown among thorns. The problem is that the thorns come up and they choke out what's happening to that seed. And there are three things that are mentioned here that do that. Cares of the world, deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things. And so what I'd like to do in the balance of the message today is just focus on those three things. Because I think all of us who are sitting here are people who've heard the Word. The Word has taken root of some sort in our lives. And the vigilance that we need to have is we need to watch for these thorns, and the way that they grow up in our lives, and the way that they can choke out the Word, and the way that they can make us as Christians unfruitful in our lives. Certainly not the situation we want to be in.

So first of all, the cares of this world. Let's talk about the cares of this world and what they do. There's a lot that can be said about the impact that worries have on us. There's an old saying, so I'm a bit of a geek about quotes and trying to figure out where they came from. Someone told me there was an old quote from Mark Twain. It talked about the fact that he had a lot of bad things happen in his life, but actually not many of them really took place. So I was chasing that quote back a little ways and found that back in the 1830s, an English writer first released a book called proverbial philosophy, where he had this concept come up. And if you'll pardon the old English, he wrote the following paragraph. Thou hast seen many sorrows travel-stained pilgrim of the world, but that which hath vexed thee most hath been the looking for evil. And though calamities have crossed thee, and misery been heaped on thy head, yet ills that never happened have chiefly made thee wretched. So it's the idea that we fret about and we worry about so many things, most of which never actually end up happening, and they burn up so much time and so much effort. Another quote that used this probably 50 years later was a story being told of an old man who'd endured many ills in his life, and he said in the end to his friends, Yes, my friends, that is too true. I've been surrounded by troubles all my life long, but there's a curious thing about them. Nine-tenths of them never happened. How often is it like that for us in our lives? I know I've got the ability to do what psychologists call catastrophizing, the ability to take whatever it is that happens, whatever situation you're in, and figure out exactly how that can cause a catastrophe in my life. I'm sure many of us have that capability, and sometimes we contend to go down this rabbit hole of our worries and just think about all the awful things that could happen because of the situation that we're in. I ran across an article from the Daily Mail newspaper, it's titled, What Worrying Does to Your Body? I'd like to read just a bit of that article to further underscore the idea of worries and how it can choke out a lot of things in our lives.

When you worry, it says, your body responds to your anxiety the same way it would react to physical danger. To help you cope with the physical demands you're about to ask your body to perform, your brain releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. They trigger a range of physical reactions that will equip your body for action. Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes heavier, and you may sweat more. You may also become pale as the blood moves away from the skin toward the muscles to help them prepare for the fight-or-flight situation that your worry has created.

The fight-or-flight response is your body's instinctive reaction to danger. Unconsciously, your body prepares itself to either run away from danger or becomes very alert in order to fight away whatever threat is coming. But many of the things we worry about today can't be dealt with by fighting or running away. Credit card bills, bad relationships, or stress at work can't be dealt with physically, so our body remains in a state of anxiety ready for action. This means that the stress hormones are still circulating in the bloodstream.

Teresa Francis Chung says over a prolonged period of time, raised levels of these chemicals can start to have a toxic effect on the glands, nervous system, and the heart, eventually leading to heart attacks, increased risk of stroke, or stomach ulcers. Because your body is tensed, ready to respond to the threat you're feeling, this muscle tension can turn into aches and pains, causing headaches, back pain, weak legs, and trembling.

This tension can also affect your digestive system and affect your stomach. You may also become more prone to infections. It goes on to talk about the toll that worrying takes on our brains, disturbing peace of mind, making it difficult to fall asleep at night, and even the circle that some people can fall into where, once they're suffering from insomnia, many worriers start to worry about insomnia, which makes their symptoms even worse.

So it's easy to fall into these circles and these cycles, isn't it, as human beings, as we worry. Let's turn to 1 Peter 5 and verse 7. Right before the passage we read just a few minutes ago about vigilance, 1 Peter 5 verse 7, a very simple statement, very difficult to perform, but a very simple statement for us to think about. 1 Peter 5 verse 7 says, Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Matthew 11 verse 27 through 30 has a similar passage. Matthew 11, we'll read verses 27 through 30. I like the way this passage starts out, and I think it starts out that way for a reason. Matthew 11 verses 27 through 30. All things, Jesus says, have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

So come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. There's no doubt there are responsibilities, there are requirements, there are things that we do as a result of being called by God. As His Spirit is working in us and as we try to keep His way, at the same time, though, God promises to us that if we're weary and burdened, He will, through His Spirit, give us rest.

And I love the way, again, that this passage starts out in verse 27, saying, All things have been committed to me by my Father. So Jesus Christ is saying, Look, I have all power. It's all been given to me by the Father. So come to me and I'll take care of you.

You don't have to worry about the things that are happening in life. He will work through them with you and will take care of you in the long run. So as we think about our gardens, as we think about the weeds that can choke up and make us unfruitful, the question we have to ask about ourselves to ourselves is, How diligent are we in taking those burdens and casting them upon Him, versus trying to carry those burdens ourselves?

Do we always try to struggle and game ourselves out of our own problems, thinking that we can find an angle to make it work? Or do we drop to our knees and ask God for His help? Think about the ways in which we might not be following Him or His way as we're trying to work our own way through problems, and cast it on Him and look for His solution. Last scripture in this section is Matthew 6.

Matthew 6 makes this very clear again in pointing towards nature and laying out the way that God wants us to relate to Him in terms of our worries. Matthew 6 will start in verse 25.

So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don't toil or spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not a raid like one of these. And if God so to close the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore don't worry, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?

For after all these things the Gentiles seek. If your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things, but seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. As I read this, I can picture my own overgrown planting area in front of my house and all the things that grow up in that.

And it's very easy to liken that to the worries that crowd my mind so often and make me forget about the big picture. The fact that God has a direction for my life, and that He will care for me and see me through whatever it is that's happening. And so the thing that we need to make sure of, so we're cutting through those weeds so we can be fruitful in our lives, is this focus on God, focus on His Son Jesus Christ and His way, and trust in Him to take care of the things that are burdening us.

Never forgetting to just get down on our knees when those pressures are getting great, get on our knees when the pressures aren't getting great, and put those things in front of God. Ask Him to take care for us, just as it points out here in this passage, the way He cares for all of His creation. Let's go to the second point that's brought up back in chapter 19 that we wrote, the things that choke out the good seed and make us unfruitful, and that's the deceitfulness of riches.

The deceitfulness of riches. What is it that's being talked about here? It's not necessarily wealth itself that's being talked about, but it's the drawing power of it. It's what it does to our minds. That's what it's talking about. What is it that's deceitful about riches? I would maintain that it's the idea that with enough material wealth, you can make yourself self-sufficient, and that you can put yourself into a place where you don't need God.

And when we have material comfort, it's easy to believe that we have everything that we need, because when we're materially comfortable, we can often fool ourselves into believing that we're also spiritually taken care of, and that we don't have any needs outside from anyone, including from God. And it's this idea of autonomy or self-sufficiency that can get us into a lot of trouble.

That's the deceitfulness of riches. Wealth is not a virtue, but especially in our world, it's often mistaken for one. We tend to judge the worth of people based on what they have, based on prosperity, in advertising, movies, everything that's out there tends to draw that parallel, right?

Now, occasionally, we'll hear other things. We'll have the Bernie Sanders of the world and the rest who come in and vilify those who are rich, and sometimes for good reasons as well for the things that they do. But the marketing message that we get is typically that if you have more, you're going to be better off, and you're likely to be better as a person. It's interesting, though, because one of the hallmarks of a failing society that's repeatedly mentioned in the Bible is oppression of the poor.

It's perversion of justice. It talks about the things that people with a lot of means can do when they feel like because they have a lot of wealth, they can do whatever they want to do. And so the Bible repeatedly, especially if you read the prophets in the Old Testament, talk about how Israel has perverted itself, and the hallmarks of that are oppressing the poor, no justice for the widow, no justice for the poor, and being able to basically buy off proper and righteous judgment.

And those are the things that can tend to happen when people who have a lot of means believe that because they have wealth, they can do whatever they want to do, become a law unto themselves. Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Timothy 6, further to this idea of the deceitfulness of riches.

1 Timothy 6, and we'll read verses 17 through 19. Paul here talking to Timothy and instructing him. 1 Timothy 6, 17, he says, Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so they may take hold of the life that is truly life. The Old Testament repeats this type of concept as well. If you'll turn with me to Deuteronomy 8.

Deuteronomy 8. We know that when, at this time of year, God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, He brought them into the Promised Land. And He gave them a land that had all of the things that they didn't have, especially on their own in Egypt.

In Egypt, they were in slavery. They had very little. What they ate, what they did, was all under the command of someone else. And then He brought them into the Promised Land. He gave them homes. He gave them land. They could build homes. They could farm. And they had an eternal inheritance on that land that He gave them. But He warned them as well, because He knew what could physically happen when we have things and as we get comfortable in the things that we have.

Deuteronomy 8 and verse 10. He says here, When you've eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He's given you. Be careful, though, that you don't forget the Lord your God, failing to observe His commands, His laws, and your decrees. In verse 12, He says, When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart, if you're not careful, will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You may say to yourself in verse 17, My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. But remember, He says, The Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms His covenant, which He swore to your ancestors as it is today. So, in the Old Testament and the New Testament alike, laying out this injunction about, again, the deceitfulness of riches.

And it's inherent, I think, in our human psyche, that when we have things, when we feel like we're comfortable, we feel like we're self-sufficient, we forget where it comes from. We forget the blessings that caused those things. We begin to think that we created it ourselves, that we don't have need of anything outside of ourselves. We won't turn there, but I think many of us are aware of the injunctions in the book of Revelation.

In Revelation 3, when the book is written to all the different church areas that were around the area at that time, in the Church of Laodicea, the thing that was written to the Church of Laodicea was, you say that I'm rich and don't need a thing, but you don't realize you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. So again, pointing at the idea of this deceitfulness of riches, where people, when they had enough, and even more than what they needed, began to think that they didn't need God anymore.

So the deceitfulness of riches is something that puts physical blessings above spiritual fruitfulness, puts physical blessings above spiritual fruitfulness. And as we forget that we need God, we need to produce fruit by His Holy Spirit and look instead at physical things that we have or that we strive for, we begin to let that seed, God's Spirit, within us get choked out and to become unfruitful. Let's look at the last thing that's laid out here in verse 19, and that is the desire for other things, or in some places it might be translated as the desire for the pleasures of this life, that are said to choke out the Word of God.

This speaks very expansively of anything that can take our attention away from the priorities of God. So it's not talking just about sinful behaviors. There are all kinds of things out there that aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, that can still take away our attention. We can get focused on them to the point where we begin to ignore the spiritual priorities that we have in our lives. And those are also things that we need to look out for in our lives, to make sure that we're putting God and His priorities in first place. Turn with me, if you would, to 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3. In verses 1 through 4 here, there's a list of things, conditions that Paul lays out that are going to happen in the end times.

It's referred to here as the last days, but 1 Timothy 3, and starting in verse 1, it says, And it goes on, and the last thing that it lays out in verse 4 is, And again, that doesn't always refer to sinful pleasures.

It can refer to prioritization. It can refer to the things that we direct our lives towards. I think we probably all know people who have hobbies, passions in their life that they enjoy doing, and they let them get to a point where they might even neglect their families because they're going to play golf or other things. Things aren't necessarily bad, but when they start to take over your life to the point where you can't think of anything else, where you can't spend time on anything else, they become more than what they should be, and they can choke out the priorities that we should have.

If you turn to Luke 21, it lays out another similar situation. Luke 21, and we'll read verses 34 through 36. Luke 21 verses 34 through 36. Again, talking about being vigilant here. Luke 21 verse 34, It may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man.

The thing that we have to watch is our own spiritual condition, as it were, the garden that we've been given to tend. And it's more than just watching it and saying, oh, there's some weeds growing up there. I think that's going to choke off all the plants that I planted. I think we understand. It's not just saying, it's not just observing, but it's watching and doing something about it. As we watch and we see the weeds growing up, going in and plucking them out and clearing the garden again and keeping it well-maintained so that our lives can bear fruit.

So as we conclude today, observing nature at this time of year is something that can teach us a lot about our spiritual condition. I'm always amazed when springtime comes, when things that you think are dead, trees that are in the backyard, you really can't tell the difference at the end of winter between a dead tree and a tree that's about to come alive. But then springtime comes, the sap starts flowing those trees, and the buds grow, and leaves come out, and those trees just leaf out again. And it's always amazing to me, and I think it points out how God is never finished with us.

Even when we look around, we think we might be hopeless, we think sometimes other people might be hopeless, but we can't see what it is that's going inside there, going on inside there, right?

And God is there, and is working with people, even when often we don't see any sign of it from the outside. And he's working on the inside. He brings things back to life. And they grow the leaves, and they become fruitful. And so God gives us all of these examples that we see in nature, so we understand more about him, we understand more about the condition of our lives.

And just like the garden that we have, the different plots of land that we might tend to, where the weeds are going to overgrow it if we don't keep an eye on it, where they're not going to grow good fruit unless we pluck out the bad things, we tend to the good things and take care of them, likewise we have to look out in our own lives for the weeds that can choke out the fruitfulness of our lives. As we saw in the parable of the sower, those three things that are laid out are the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things.

So as we move forward through the upcoming days towards the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of First Fruits, we encourage all of us to be vigilant in our lives, to look at what it is that's growing there, to actively tend to our gardens, to our minds, to our lives, and pluck out the things that don't belong there, so we can be fruitful, so we can multiply 30-fold, 60-fold, or 100-fold.