He who has ears to hear, let him hear
Luke 8:4-15
February 7, 2021 anno Domini
The Parable of the Sower is not about the sower or the soil. It’s about the seed. The seed is the Word of God. The seed is Jesus. The seed brings life that produces good fruit, but that doesn’t mean the sower and the soil have nothing to do with it. The sower sows. The sower might be anyone who scatters the seed of God’s Word – moms and dads, teachers, pastors. A sower cannot do anything about the seed after he plants it. He cannot keep the birds from devouring it, the plants from withering in the heat, nor can he prevent weeds from choking out his crop. You cannot make a seed grow either. You can pray and watch for rain clouds and count the days of sunshine, but the life and the bearing of fruit is all in God’s hands.
It’s the same for the soil. The soil is dead. The seed is life. You are dead. Jesus is your life.
This might make you think there is nothing you can do to bear fruit in the Kingdom of heaven. It’s all up to God. If I bear the fruit of faith – to God be the glory. If I don’t – I guess God didn’t want me to. But such a conclusion is not Biblical because it teaches that God is whimsical. Even worse it teaches that God is the author of death. God decides and presto you are either grow or don’t grow, you either produce fruit or you wither, you are either saved or damned. If that is how God works I wouldn’t bother with church. I wouldn’t bother with baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, or confessing of my sins. In fact, most churches that believe in this false teaching, which is called double predestination, (which means God saves some and damns others) do not believe in infant baptism, the power of the keys in confession, or that the body and blood of Jesus are in the Lord’s Supper. They simply believe in whimsical nature of God and His choice of life or death for you.
God’s Word says He alone does the work of salvation. Titus 3:5, Eph 2:4-5. The Father did all the work of life in His Son, Jesus of Nazareth. He staked up the Tree of Life – Jesus to the killing tree of the cross where Jesus died. He planted His dead Son in a garden tomb. Then because that one death, the death of God, paid the cost of our sins, Christ rose. Where there is no more sin there is no more death. Where there is forgiveness of sins there is life and the resurrection. Jesus Christ is your forgiveness and your life. The soil, the rocks, and the hard ground, do not produce life. The Seed produces life.
But this life is not magical or whimsical. It is mysterious and it is given by means; by means of a man. The Son of God became a man – a man who was born of a woman, a man who ate and drank and slept and woke. A man who could be whipped and spit up and nailed to a cross. A man who died. A man who walked out of His tomb alive and was hugged and touched and fed and seen.
Your salvation was accomplished by a man. It is given to you in the Word. God is very much like the sower sowing His seed. The Sower uses seed. God uses His Word. God casts His Word out with water in baptism, with the Word of forgiveness from the mouth of His preachers, and with the body and blood of His Son under the bread and wine. The seed is aimed at the soil – which is you. The water of baptism is poured on your head. The Word of forgiveness is preached in your ears. The body and blood of Christ is laid on your tongue.
This is where we come to your part. Jesus says you have a part in this. (vs. 8b). Jesus says, “If you are dead dirt, be planted with the seed of My Word.” You do nothing, except take time to hear God’s Word, not just once a week, or at your baptism, or until you get confirmed, but until you are done growing in the faith. When are you done growing? At the final harvest when all the fruit of God’s children will be revealed.
The Sower needs to be patient, but so does the good soil – so do you. So Jesus says in vs. 15. The problem with all the other places the seed fell was it had no time to patiently grow.
Consider the path. (vs. 12). Jesus says, “they have heard.” That’s past tense. It means they are done hearing. When I was a pastor in Saskatchewan couples of newborn children would come to me and say, “I want my kid done.” I didn’t know what they meant – then I figured out they were asking for baptism. There is some good theology in saying, “You want your kid done” for in baptism God does all the work and delivers all the gifts of Jesus. But there is some really bad theology in that too – some people think baptism is eternal magic. Once done, always done. Once saved, always saved. That would be the equivalent of thinking that once your child is born all the work of keeping that child alive is done. Sometimes people are saved by hearing the Word of God once, but if once is all they heard the Word, if once for baptism was all they were in God’s house, the devil will come and snatch away the word.
Consider the seed among the rocks. (vs. 13). This soil has more time with the Word because they hear it and receive it with joy. They believe for a while, but theirs is a shallow faith. You think your faith is done at confirmation or at some other point in life. But when testing comes, when your faith is challenged by your rulers, when your kids rebel at your old fashioned faith, when your employer tells you to speak untrue words about someone’s gender, when the heat comes you will wither. You have no depth of God’s Word. Christ is not in you very far, so it doesn’t take much to pull Him out of you.
Consider the seed that fell among thorns. (vs. 14) Is this not your greatest temptation? God’s Word has been planted in your ears regularly, for a long time. You are on the way to eternal life, but your faith is choked by “the cares and riches and pleasures of life.” The Devil is more wiley with those who have been on the road the longest. He can’t quickly grab the Word away from you or wither you with testing so He deceives you with devious detours. He gets you to travel a little bit on the frontage road of pleasure, of weekend sports, of trips to the cabin, of work and riches and pleasures that can only be had on Sunday. You hear the Word but you also hear the preachers of wealth and worry and pleasure. What is the aim of the news media right now except to cause you fear? We’re all going to die from COVID, wear a mask, wear two masks, get your vaccine, don’t leave your house. Trust the government. Trust the Pharmaceutical Companies. Trust Trump. Trust Biden. Oh, that you were as afraid of losing your faith in Jesus as much as you are of Covid or Republicans or Democrats.
Good soil receives the Word, not once, not for a little while, not for long while, but until the harvest. Good soil is a 100 year old Christian who reads her Portals of Prayer using a magnifying glass every morning. Good soil is a 97 year old who drives to church 20 miles in the winter. Good soil is welcoming your pastor into your home, even during COVID to give you the Lord’s Supper. Good soil knows that the Devil will never leave you alone, not after you’re confirmed, not after you’re fifty, not even if you lived in Christ a hundred years. Christ’s death and resurrection is deeply planted in good soil. Good soil is never done with Christ until Christ says, “Time’s up, the harvest is ready.” Good soil hears the Word, holds it fast in an honest and good heart, and bears fruit with patience. “ Good soil is regularly and richly and continually planted with God’s Word. There is something you can do. Jesus says so. (vs. 8b) In the name of Jesus. Amen.