Mark 4:1-20
Listen Link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw
Author blogger Bronwyn Lea recently wrote: I got that lead-balloon feeling on Sunday when our pastor pointed out all the things Paul didn’t pray for in his letters: people with cancer, busy schedules, promotions at work, successful ventures, hard pressed finances, strained relationships…. Not that those things don’t matter, or that we shouldn’t pray for them, or that God doesn’t care about the minutiae of our lives, but they weren’t on the apostle’s regular prayer card.
It raised the old question for me again: why do I always find my prayer list filled with immediate needs, when I know that matters like the Kingdom come, His will be done, missions, justice, global worship etc. are weightier and worthy of prayer? Why is it that when I do sit down to pray (and my struggles with that are lengthy and complex) I pray for the “light and momentary afflictions”, and so seldom for the eternal things?
I don’t have an answer for that, but this weekend I found one little word which is helping me close the gap between the daily-needs-prayer and the weightier-matters-prayer.
Here it is: instead of praying “God, make it better”, I need to pray “God, make it count.”
Then she gave some examples of that kind of prayer and since we are talking today about the thorns of the cares of this world and desiring riches, I decided to share with you up front just one of her examples to pray: “God, money is tight for so many dear ones. Everything in me wants to ask for more, to make it better. But please Lord, make these tight days count. Teach us to be wise stewards, teach us to give generously now while we feel hard pressed, teach us to pray for daily bread, and to learn the secret of contentment whether we have plenty or little. Make these days of economic hardship count.”[i]
For my illustration of the troubled plant today I brought in our schefflera. This plant is as old as Matthew. We got it as a present the day he was born. It was delivered to the hospital in Marinette, WI. It was just a little baby in a small ceramic planter shaped liked a boot. I think it had a reference to the old woman who lived in a shoe with so many children. Maybe that was a hint. But Matthew was our first child so that might have been pushing it a little. I have also brought before you this other schefflera. What a difference! We really wish our own schefflera could look more like this bushy one!
Our schefflera is an example of a stressed out plant, worried by the cares and sorrows of this world. We know this is true because it used to be a much more bushy and good looking plant. But a move from Maine, a new curious cat, and our darling little granddaughter Maddie, have all contributed to make it what it is now.
Today we are talking about the stunted growth of the over stressed plant. This is the third type of soil and is probably the first kind that may actually be Christian, with new life actually taking root and growing from the seed. You have to see that the first two kinds of soil can’t really represent Christian people at all. In the first, the seed was forgotten as soon as it was heard. Like Judas, even if that kind of soil person is sitting in church every Sunday, if the word does not abide in that soil because the devil immediately snatches it away, then that person must be un saved, not a Christian, a functional atheist, inoculated against saving faith.
The second type of soil must also be of an unbeliever because it does not allow the seed to take root and make any changes in the inner life. This is the kind of religious person who may have their favorite bible verses, but only the ones that match up with the life they want to lead, and pays no attention to anything that might challenge their own ideas about religion, like the Jewish people who walked away from Jesus when he said something they didn’t like. These are the people who think they are religious enough to get saved, and they probably are religious, but they are not in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and they refuse to be discipled in the Spirit of Christ.
Next Jesus speaks of the third type of soil. “Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.” “Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.”
Now are the third soil type of people saved Christians? Well if they are, they are not very good Christians. As I said, new life may actually be taking root and growing from the seed, but something is preventing them from bearing fruit. Jesus says its weeds like the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.
I heard a good line on worry. It doesn’t really keep bad things from happening. It just keeps you from enjoying the good things. Jesus specifically commanded his followers to not worry. So it must be a pretty serious weed that actually needs regular hoeing down. Worry actually means you don’t trust God. So if you really do trust God it follows that you will not be consumed with worry. You won’t worry about it.
On the deceitfulness of wealth. Money is a source of security apart from finding security in God. Many people think that if they have enough money they will have no worries! That turns out to be exactly the same as not trusting God. Even though in God we trust is printed on all our money, it remains true that the real motto for many people is, “In money we trust.” But money is deceitful because it so easily takes wings and disappears in a moment. We have all heard of the lottery winners who soon lose it all again in foolish spending. A stock market crash or anyone of several kinds of disasters can wipe you out and you have lost everything. Money is not a source of security. Only God can fill the bill.
Then there’s the desire for “other” things. Back before there was money. Back before there was anything to worry about because the world was perfect and nothing could go wrong, Adam and Eve had a desire for something other than God. In acting on that, they broke the world, ended their sovereign rule and handed everything over to satan. They brought about the disaster of original sin that leaves us in the dark and broken world that we have today; all because they acted on a desire for other things, in their case specifically the forbidden fruit of the garden of Eden.
These three things, worry, riches and desire, remain the chief obstacles to spiritual growth that spoil the ground of every believer today who allows those weeds to grow and choke the fruit out of them. All of these things grow in a life that may be religious but is actually not well grounded in a relationship with God.
How can you know whether or not you are choked by any of these weeds? Here is an easy test. Do you tithe? I mean, do you literally give ten percent of your annual income to the Lord’s work? And is it the first check that you write after payday, the first tenth? Do you trust God? Or do you worry that you can’t afford to do it? You may think that you can’t be tempted by the deceitfulness of riches because you don’t have any riches! So you think you are too poor to tithe? But wouldn’t that be to believe the lie and the deceitfulness of riches? Money is saying you don’t have enough. But who ultimately provides the money that pays the bills? Is it not God? Don’t you trust him? Or do you trust more in your own accounting for your money? Or could it be that you are consumed by the desire for other things? Perhaps the real reason you don’t tithe, that is, the real reason you don’t trust God with your money, is so that you will have enough money to do those other things that you desire to do.
Here is a sobering statistic. Studies show that the number of Christians who attend church and actually tithe is as little as 2-4% of the total population in church. That would mean that more than 90% of Christian fruitfulness in ministry is being choked out by the weeds Jesus talked about in his parable. Economic analysis of that statistic yields the further conclusion that if all Christians attending churches would tithe, then we would all also pay less taxes! That is because the tithes in the church would pay for most of the social services work that the government is doing wastefully!
Now I am not going to go all legalistic and start insisting that Christians must tithe. That is strictly between you and God. And I don’t want you to get the idea that I am talking about his because of the financial stresses we are facing in this congregation. The truth is, I am concerned about you and all the blessings you are missing out on because of not trusting God enough to believe that you can tithe.
But I can ask you a very serious question, if you don’t tithe, how do you really know if you are a Christian? On what do you base your belief that you are Christian? Do you know that Muslims believe that they are following the one true faith, and they hold on to that just as tightly as Jews and Christians hold on to theirs? But the Muslims claim that the Bible we read is corrupt. The Jews claim that Jesus is not the Messiah they are waiting for so they don’t believe our new Testament is the word of God, but do you?
People of all religions hold on to false faith for emotional and cultural reasons. Even religious people raised in Christian culture do so. But faithful people look to God’s Word for life! Do you realize that if anything in God’s word upsets you or offends you and doesn’t make you hungry to understand and live by it, then your faith is most likely based on what you think the truth should be more than on what God says it actually is? Another way to say it is, you only believe what satisfies your own ideas of right and wrong. You don’t really care what God’s word says unless it supports your belief and doesn’t challenge your belief.
True faith is not based in what you believe anyway. It is based on whether or not you obey God. Lets’ suppose the devil wanted to join the church. The pastor might ask him, “Do you believe in God?”
The devil would answer, “I most certainly do.”
So then the pastor asks, “Do you believe that Jesus is the son of God?”
“Do you believe he was born of a virgin?”
“Yes.”
“Devil, do you really believe that Jesus died on the cross?”
“Of course I do, I watched it happen and actually I caused it to happen.”
“Do you believe he rose again from the dead?”
“Yes. I must believe it. I have seen him. I believe all that, so why can’t I be a member of your church?”
The pastor says, “There is one thing more. Do you submit to his Lordship and control of your life?”
And that, my friends, is when the devil would storm away mad, because the one thing he will not do is submit to God and obey his will. For as James said in his little letter. 2:19, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” Nevertheless, one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Even the devil will one day begrudgingly and painfully submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But why wait until you are forced?
Do you believe you are a Christian just because of what you say you believe? Or is your faith demonstrated by your action of submitting to God’s will in all things? Do you study to know the Word of God regularly and deeply enough to let it change your life? Are you willing to be disciplined by God’s Word? Do you think of yourself as a disciple of Christ? Are you a person learning how to serve the Lord and do his will, not for your own sake, but for the sake of those God would save through your ministry? If you say you are, would you be willing to do that work in fellowship with others by doing your Bible study and discipleship with other Christians? Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Yes, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Put your faith in him and all your sins will be forgiven. That’s where you start, salvation by grace through faith alone. And if you are truly blessed by so great salvation and filled with the Holy Spirit, then you will have let the word of God take root in your life, so you will know you are not the hard packed soil of the stony path, you will know that you are not the shallow soil that will shrivel up and walk away when living for Christ gets hard, and you will also know that you have nothing to worry about, and you will have all the spiritual riches in Christ and everything you need to fully trust him, and serve him, and live for him a joyful, fruitful life, a life that counts! Amen.
Author blogger Bronwyn Lea recently wrote: I got that lead-balloon feeling on Sunday when our pastor pointed out all the things Paul didn’t pray for in his letters: people with cancer, busy schedules, promotions at work, successful ventures, hard pressed finances, strained relationships…. Not that those things don’t matter, or that we shouldn’t pray for them, or that God doesn’t care about the minutiae of our lives, but they weren’t on the apostle’s regular prayer card.
It raised the old question for me again: why do I always find my prayer list filled with immediate needs, when I know that matters like the Kingdom come, His will be done, missions, justice, global worship etc. are weightier and worthy of prayer? Why is it that when I do sit down to pray (and my struggles with that are lengthy and complex) I pray for the “light and momentary afflictions”, and so seldom for the eternal things?
I don’t have an answer for that, but this weekend I found one little word which is helping me close the gap between the daily-needs-prayer and the weightier-matters-prayer.
Here it is: instead of praying “God, make it better”, I need to pray “God, make it count.”
Then she gave some examples of that kind of prayer and since we are talking today about the thorns of the cares of this world and desiring riches, I decided to share with you up front just one of her examples to pray: “God, money is tight for so many dear ones. Everything in me wants to ask for more, to make it better. But please Lord, make these tight days count. Teach us to be wise stewards, teach us to give generously now while we feel hard pressed, teach us to pray for daily bread, and to learn the secret of contentment whether we have plenty or little. Make these days of economic hardship count.”[i]
For my illustration of the troubled plant today I brought in our schefflera. This plant is as old as Matthew. We got it as a present the day he was born. It was delivered to the hospital in Marinette, WI. It was just a little baby in a small ceramic planter shaped liked a boot. I think it had a reference to the old woman who lived in a shoe with so many children. Maybe that was a hint. But Matthew was our first child so that might have been pushing it a little. I have also brought before you this other schefflera. What a difference! We really wish our own schefflera could look more like this bushy one!
Our schefflera is an example of a stressed out plant, worried by the cares and sorrows of this world. We know this is true because it used to be a much more bushy and good looking plant. But a move from Maine, a new curious cat, and our darling little granddaughter Maddie, have all contributed to make it what it is now.
Today we are talking about the stunted growth of the over stressed plant. This is the third type of soil and is probably the first kind that may actually be Christian, with new life actually taking root and growing from the seed. You have to see that the first two kinds of soil can’t really represent Christian people at all. In the first, the seed was forgotten as soon as it was heard. Like Judas, even if that kind of soil person is sitting in church every Sunday, if the word does not abide in that soil because the devil immediately snatches it away, then that person must be un saved, not a Christian, a functional atheist, inoculated against saving faith.
The second type of soil must also be of an unbeliever because it does not allow the seed to take root and make any changes in the inner life. This is the kind of religious person who may have their favorite bible verses, but only the ones that match up with the life they want to lead, and pays no attention to anything that might challenge their own ideas about religion, like the Jewish people who walked away from Jesus when he said something they didn’t like. These are the people who think they are religious enough to get saved, and they probably are religious, but they are not in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and they refuse to be discipled in the Spirit of Christ.
Next Jesus speaks of the third type of soil. “Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.” “Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.”
Now are the third soil type of people saved Christians? Well if they are, they are not very good Christians. As I said, new life may actually be taking root and growing from the seed, but something is preventing them from bearing fruit. Jesus says its weeds like the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.
I heard a good line on worry. It doesn’t really keep bad things from happening. It just keeps you from enjoying the good things. Jesus specifically commanded his followers to not worry. So it must be a pretty serious weed that actually needs regular hoeing down. Worry actually means you don’t trust God. So if you really do trust God it follows that you will not be consumed with worry. You won’t worry about it.
On the deceitfulness of wealth. Money is a source of security apart from finding security in God. Many people think that if they have enough money they will have no worries! That turns out to be exactly the same as not trusting God. Even though in God we trust is printed on all our money, it remains true that the real motto for many people is, “In money we trust.” But money is deceitful because it so easily takes wings and disappears in a moment. We have all heard of the lottery winners who soon lose it all again in foolish spending. A stock market crash or anyone of several kinds of disasters can wipe you out and you have lost everything. Money is not a source of security. Only God can fill the bill.
Then there’s the desire for “other” things. Back before there was money. Back before there was anything to worry about because the world was perfect and nothing could go wrong, Adam and Eve had a desire for something other than God. In acting on that, they broke the world, ended their sovereign rule and handed everything over to satan. They brought about the disaster of original sin that leaves us in the dark and broken world that we have today; all because they acted on a desire for other things, in their case specifically the forbidden fruit of the garden of Eden.
These three things, worry, riches and desire, remain the chief obstacles to spiritual growth that spoil the ground of every believer today who allows those weeds to grow and choke the fruit out of them. All of these things grow in a life that may be religious but is actually not well grounded in a relationship with God.
How can you know whether or not you are choked by any of these weeds? Here is an easy test. Do you tithe? I mean, do you literally give ten percent of your annual income to the Lord’s work? And is it the first check that you write after payday, the first tenth? Do you trust God? Or do you worry that you can’t afford to do it? You may think that you can’t be tempted by the deceitfulness of riches because you don’t have any riches! So you think you are too poor to tithe? But wouldn’t that be to believe the lie and the deceitfulness of riches? Money is saying you don’t have enough. But who ultimately provides the money that pays the bills? Is it not God? Don’t you trust him? Or do you trust more in your own accounting for your money? Or could it be that you are consumed by the desire for other things? Perhaps the real reason you don’t tithe, that is, the real reason you don’t trust God with your money, is so that you will have enough money to do those other things that you desire to do.
Here is a sobering statistic. Studies show that the number of Christians who attend church and actually tithe is as little as 2-4% of the total population in church. That would mean that more than 90% of Christian fruitfulness in ministry is being choked out by the weeds Jesus talked about in his parable. Economic analysis of that statistic yields the further conclusion that if all Christians attending churches would tithe, then we would all also pay less taxes! That is because the tithes in the church would pay for most of the social services work that the government is doing wastefully!
Now I am not going to go all legalistic and start insisting that Christians must tithe. That is strictly between you and God. And I don’t want you to get the idea that I am talking about his because of the financial stresses we are facing in this congregation. The truth is, I am concerned about you and all the blessings you are missing out on because of not trusting God enough to believe that you can tithe.
But I can ask you a very serious question, if you don’t tithe, how do you really know if you are a Christian? On what do you base your belief that you are Christian? Do you know that Muslims believe that they are following the one true faith, and they hold on to that just as tightly as Jews and Christians hold on to theirs? But the Muslims claim that the Bible we read is corrupt. The Jews claim that Jesus is not the Messiah they are waiting for so they don’t believe our new Testament is the word of God, but do you?
People of all religions hold on to false faith for emotional and cultural reasons. Even religious people raised in Christian culture do so. But faithful people look to God’s Word for life! Do you realize that if anything in God’s word upsets you or offends you and doesn’t make you hungry to understand and live by it, then your faith is most likely based on what you think the truth should be more than on what God says it actually is? Another way to say it is, you only believe what satisfies your own ideas of right and wrong. You don’t really care what God’s word says unless it supports your belief and doesn’t challenge your belief.
True faith is not based in what you believe anyway. It is based on whether or not you obey God. Lets’ suppose the devil wanted to join the church. The pastor might ask him, “Do you believe in God?”
The devil would answer, “I most certainly do.”
So then the pastor asks, “Do you believe that Jesus is the son of God?”
“Do you believe he was born of a virgin?”
“Yes.”
“Devil, do you really believe that Jesus died on the cross?”
“Of course I do, I watched it happen and actually I caused it to happen.”
“Do you believe he rose again from the dead?”
“Yes. I must believe it. I have seen him. I believe all that, so why can’t I be a member of your church?”
The pastor says, “There is one thing more. Do you submit to his Lordship and control of your life?”
And that, my friends, is when the devil would storm away mad, because the one thing he will not do is submit to God and obey his will. For as James said in his little letter. 2:19, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” Nevertheless, one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Even the devil will one day begrudgingly and painfully submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But why wait until you are forced?
Do you believe you are a Christian just because of what you say you believe? Or is your faith demonstrated by your action of submitting to God’s will in all things? Do you study to know the Word of God regularly and deeply enough to let it change your life? Are you willing to be disciplined by God’s Word? Do you think of yourself as a disciple of Christ? Are you a person learning how to serve the Lord and do his will, not for your own sake, but for the sake of those God would save through your ministry? If you say you are, would you be willing to do that work in fellowship with others by doing your Bible study and discipleship with other Christians? Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Yes, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Put your faith in him and all your sins will be forgiven. That’s where you start, salvation by grace through faith alone. And if you are truly blessed by so great salvation and filled with the Holy Spirit, then you will have let the word of God take root in your life, so you will know you are not the hard packed soil of the stony path, you will know that you are not the shallow soil that will shrivel up and walk away when living for Christ gets hard, and you will also know that you have nothing to worry about, and you will have all the spiritual riches in Christ and everything you need to fully trust him, and serve him, and live for him a joyful, fruitful life, a life that counts! Amen.
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