Sow More Kingdom Seeds
“Sow More Kingdom Seeds” Matthew 13:1-23
by Clancy Nixon
January 10, 2010
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
My title today is “Sow More Kingdom Seeds.” Sow More Kingdom seeds, and reap a more abundant Life!
Many magazines have retrospective articles about the hard-to-name decade we’ve just lived through, the years 2000 – 2009. We’ve had the eighties, the nineties, but what should call the last decade? Are they “the 2000’s?”; “the aughts?”; “the double zeroes?” “The Lost Decade?” Here are some images from the 00’s – September 11th in New York; Saddam Hussein’s statue being ripped down; the Beijing Olympics and the rise of China. In the last ten years, your money invested in the S&P 500, a basket of the stocks of 500 biggest American companies, lost about 1%. Not only that, but fewer Americans are employed now than ten years ago, even though our population grew by the millions.
I’ve been around for a few years now – as my daddy used to say, “since dirt was young” – and in my lifetime, if ever there was a decade where Jesus’ words in Matthew 13:22 about the “deceitfulness of wealth” choking out the Word of God, this one was it. Wealth is deceptive because the world wants you to believe that you can rely on your job or your savings to be your security. Beloved, hear me: any security we have is not of this world. The only things that are certain in this life – well, except for death and taxes – are the Word of God and the Love of God. The Word of God does not change, and it is as reliable now as it was when it was written. Amen? Not only that, but the love of God does not change, either. [Call and Response] God is good – all the time. All the time – God is good. I lost a good chunk of my personal retirement savings in the last ten years, but I do not believe that God loves me any less! God demonstrates to us not to put our trust in our jobs or our savings. And His ways of showing his father’s love to us can feel pretty painful, like the last ten years. I think The Lost Decade is not a bad handle for the aughts – not because of the savings and jobs we lost - but because our culture is becoming more and more lost to the claims of the gospel. More of our young people are lost to the church. The antidote to deception is sound teaching of the Word, in church on Sunday, and in your families every day of the week. Be found in the Word of God written, and the Word of God incarnate will fill your imagination.
Let’s look at the completely reliable word of God, this love letter from our perfect Father in heaven, in Matthew 13, verse 1, page 968. Notice the setting by the Sea of Galilee. Verse 2: “Such crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore.” See what Jesus is doing here? He’s flinging seeds!
Point #1: Teach and love and heal in all the places God has called you. Jesus taught and healed and loved as a lifestyle, wherever he was. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus often taught in synagogues; but now, the religious leaders began to look for a way to trap him, so he tended to avoid them. Jesus brought the Kingdom of God to men and women wherever he was - on the open roads, on hillsides, in people’s homes and workplaces. Here, Jesus makes a boat into a pulpit. A great choice, because sound travels well on water! I’ve learned that if you can’t preach in a church, you preach in a school gym with symbols like that huge mountain lion looming over us, what has charitably been called a “Lion of Judah!” We teach and love and heal in all the places God has called us. For most of us, no crowd has gathered to hear us, so we teach and love and heal and bring the kingdom in with one or two people as God gives you opportunity. Like the sower in the picture, fling that seed wherever you are. Because the seed is the word of God, you never run out of seed! You never know where the seed might take root, whether in the plowed field, or on the path. If the soil seems rocky, it can be transplanted later.
Quarterback Colt McCoy of University of Texas had a heartbreaking injury at the start of the BCS Championship game this week, and he stood on the sidelines as his team lost. After the game was over, a microphone came his way, and he was asked, “Are you disappointed not to play?” Millions heard McCoy say that he trusts in the Lord, that God’s plan was for him not to play in that game that everybody wanted him to play, and he gave all the glory to God. Colt was flinging seeds. God did get the glory at that moment, because Jesus is Colt McCoy’s example. Let Jesus is our example, too: Jesus had an urgent message to deliver. Whenever a man or woman has an urgent message to deliver, he will do whatever it takes to deliver it.
I love to go to lunch with Jim Craft. Whenever I do, he makes friends with the waiter or waitress. He asks them questions about themselves, and finds ways to connect with them personally. He often commends the waiter’s excellent work to the manager, even writing letters to them. It’s an adventure! He has often opened up opportunities to pray for these people, and come closer to God.
The second thing I want you to notice is that THE WORD WORKS. As Pastor Clinton Utterbach says, “God is alive and well, and His Word will work for you.” As Jesus tells us in verse 19, the seed in the parable is “the message of the Kingdom of God.” The seed is the gospel of the Kingdom, the message that God’s reign is breaking in to our realm - bringing healing; bringing love; bringing hope; bringing eternal life.
If the word of God does not seem to be not working for you, if the Kingdom is not manifest in your life on a regular basis, there is an impediment somewhere. Where would that be? We start by acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with the seed; there is nothing deficient in the Word of God. The difference in fruit produced is determined by the soil, not the seed. The Word works! The soil is the heart of the believer. The Kingdom manifests differently depending on the soil. Look at verses 22 and 23. Jesus tells us that when the Word takes root in good soil, and is not choked out by the worries of this life or the deceitfulness of riches, then the fruit it produces is thirty, sixty, one hundred fold!
What a blessing, what a promise! You and I can be seeing this kind of fruit on a regular basis, daily or weekly, in our lives. [RAISE HAND] How many of you want to see this kind of abundant fruit in your life? If we’re honest, most of us are probably not seeing this kind of abundant fruit, or multiplied disciples in our lives. Some of us may never have seen this kind of fruit. Others of us have had such periods of fruitfulness in our lives in the past, but some of us are just plateaued in our ministry, after great growth. What does it mean if we’re not as fruitful as we once were? Does it mean our hearts are hard? Have our hearts really changed?
What if you don't have this kind of fruit; how do you get it?
- YOU NEED TO CONTINUALLY PREPARE THE SOIL.
When I moved into my neighborhood, I had the worst lawn on the cul-de-sac. Until recently, grass did not grow for me like it did my neighbors. But my weeds, they grew really well! After three seasons struggling on my own, I swallowed my pride and asked the guy in the Garden Department at Home Depot what to do. He told me about soil preparation. He says that you can do all the sowing of seed you want, you can have perfect sun and water conditions, but if the soil isn’t right, you can forget about everything else. Soil prep is Job #1.
You see, in Ashburn, when they build the houses, they don't just cut the trees, dig a hole an build a house. They cut the trees, dig a hole and they strip off the top 16 inches of black, fertile soil. You know what they do with it? They put it in bags and sell it back to you at Home Depot! All that’s left of your “soil” when you buy a house here is the clay underneath. They put some seeds on it, and it grows - sort of; it’s pretty thin. That soil has been deprived of its natural ability to nurture soil. I believe that this stripping is a picture of what happened when Adam and Eve fell – we humans became less receptive to the seed. It’s also a picture what the world - particularly the secular media - does to the hearts and minds of our children to strip them of what is left of their natural ability to receive the seed of the Word of God. Our children, and we, have been designed by God to be antennas for communication with God. Brain research has advanced to the point where we now know the part of your brain that lights up when you pray or meditate.
The first type of soil described in this parable is ‘the path.’ Footpaths were packed down hard because of all the people walking on them. The seed being sown did not penetrate the soil, and so the seeds remained on top of the ground as easy picking for hungry birds. Jesus is referring to people whose hearts are so hard that the truth of His word does not penetrate their lives. They are ignorant of the message of the gospel– they aren’t evil, they just don’t know any better. Many people have never seen a healthy, functioning Christian community. I grew up with a family that never went to church. My sisters have never experienced a community of people who love one another, care for one another, and bear one another’s burdens the way Jesus talks about. They have seen what God and Church have done for me, but they have not experienced a community of love for themselves. They have never explored either Church or God very deeply.
What can we do to prepare the soil to reap a harvest? It starts in our minds – in the mind of the believer. We prepare the soil of our own minds by understanding who we are - our Kingdom roles. The Parable of the Sower is a parable of the Kingdom of God. We need to understand ourselves as sowers of the Word and regents of the Kingdom. You and I are agents of the King, ambassadors, princes and priests of our God. Do you think of yourself that way? Look at Revelation 5:10. Let’s say it together… We will reign with God forever, and our work now is to be prepared to reign with him.
Part of Kingdom work is to be prepared to rule, both now and forever, as vice-regents of Jesus, as priests of God. Turn to your neighbor and tell them that: Say, “You are a regent of the King.” What’s the work of a regent? The primary work of vice-regents in God’s Kingdom is to extend God’s reign and rule until the King returns personally to rule. When Cramer wrote the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, young Edward VI was King of England, but he was too young to rule, so a regent ruled in his place. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What is it like in Heaven? There is no sin there; no sickness; no tears; no unsaved people; no arguing or complaining. There’s worship and fellowship and enjoyment forever. As agents of the King, we are to bring as much of heaven here on earth as we can. Kingdom life means praying for the sick, and seeing them recover; it means sharing the gospel, and seeing people saved; it means caring for the poor, and seeing them lose their shackles of poverty; it means visiting the prisoner, and seeing them set free.
Sow more Kingdom seeds. Cultivate the soil of your heart and mind by adopting an attitude of reception. Then continue with weeding. Living in the Washington area, it’s clear to me that the soil condition that is most prevalent in believers’ hearts in this area is weedy soil, where the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, stunting growth of godly fruit. There is growth, but it is stunted.
So we tend our gardens. It’s not enough to sow seeds and prepare the soil; we need to pull the weeds, too. Those dandelion root balls are down there, and you can’t just pull them from the top or expect the chemical weed killer to get them. Mine are stronger than those dandelion chemicals - roundup works, but that kills everything in a five meter radius! I’ve found that I have to dig down and get those root balls out. If you use your hands and fingers alone, you’ll not succeed in pulling that sucker out. You need a tool, a hand spade, to dig out that thing. Sin patterns that interfere with fruitfulness in the Kingdom are like that. You can’t just cut them off at the top; you have to address the root issue. That often means prolonged attention toward your weaknesses; it can mean radical surgery on our schedule, on our budget, on your character.
[Close with pruning story]
