Sermon for Matthew 13:1-23
July 13th 2008
“As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold.”
Like I mentioned, this past week I had the privilege to serve as Camp Pastor at Lutheran Hills in Nashville Indiana. I say a privilege, because it is not very often one has the wonderful opportunity and awesome responsibility to have 61 high school youth as a captive audience for one uninterrupted hour each and every day to share with them the most important words they may ever hear in their lifetime—The Word of God.
I’m not sure if you have ever noticed that many of our worship weeks center a round a central theme. And today it just so happens to be the Word. The Word of God. Look at the front of our bulletin, the prayers, the readings, even the songs all point us to that Word of God.
So now I ask the exact same question I asked when I sat down to prepare for Servant Camp. What exactly is that Word? And I now I share the basic same message I shared with 61 high school youth in a wooded chapel for some 5 hours, with you today—minus some 4 hours and 40 minutes, for the same reason. It just may be the most important words you may ever hear in your lifetime.
As I have said many times in the past, God comes to Us, and while God can come to us anyway God chooses, God promises to come to us through the Word. And so I began the lesson with the 61 inquisitive minds the same way I begin today by saying what a thing really is.
There are only two possibilities when it comes to the Word of God, and the promises found in the Holy Scriptures. The Word of God is either true or it is not true. It’s true or not true. How’s that for simple. If the word of God is not true then guess what folks? It won’t mean squat for us in this life or the next.
I think the apostle Paul says it best in 1st Corinthians 15:17, “If the words of this book are not true, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Simply put, if the claims made in the Holy Scripture are not true, we are wasting our time and I don’t know about you, but I’m not real fond of this possibility.
The other possibility is that the Word found in the Bible is true. And if God’s Word is true then you and I are promised strength, comfort, healing, forgiveness, guidance, hope right here, right now, and life eternal in the future. If the Word is true then it has enormous meaning and impact upon not only my eternal life, but for my daily life, and the lives of those around me.
So I asked these little searchers as I ask you, If the stakes are so enormously high and there really only two possibilities don’t you think that one should invest the time and effort to closely examine what is found in a book that may contain a Life Saving—Life Giving—Living Word?
So for the next five days that exactly what we did. We started at the beginning, Genesis and examined these stories to see for ourselves if they might be true. What we found was amazing.
We learned that the first line of the Bible may be the only line of the Word that requires a lot of faith. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” Yet most of us deep down know that God/Something created all there is.
All one needs to do is reflect upon the majesty of it all, the diversity, the order and say wow! Now all one has to do is say to oneself, “If God created all there was, all there is, and all there ever will be, then how difficult would it be for this awesome Creator to change my puny little life?” Not very hard!
So then we looked at the creation of human beings, something we know to be true. Human being that are rather different than the rest of creation, for the simply fact that we can ask what I call the depth questions. “Who am I? Who made me? What is my purpose?” We are free creatures not programmed by instinct, but free to obey and not obey, free to love or not to love.
And God then gives you and I the world on a silver platter and says, “I give you two simple commands—One, be fruitful. Meaning to take care of this glorious creation and all that is in it—including each other. And two—trust Me—don’t eat from that one single tree in the middle of the garden—the tree of knowledge. You don’t need it and you for sure can’t handle it. You don’t need to know everything—like what you are going to be in 20 years, when you are going to die, that God’s task. God simply says, “Trust that I have your best interest at heart.”
Now we start to see and understand the truth of the Bible, because we realize that we do not trust that God has our best interest at heart, and so we reach up and grab that forbidden fruit without even thinking about God’s command and we eat because it is pleasing.
However, the truth of the matter is that there are consequences to our actions—we know this to be true also. Because of our distrust—life now becomes more complicated.
Sure God is always with us, but when do not trust that God has our best interest at heart, the task of becoming fruitful and taking care of creation gets harder and harder. Now we no longer have those long walks and talks with God in the garden.
But through the Word we learn that God never abandon his children. He sends them out clothed with everything they need and gives to them children, Cain and Able. Maybe to show Adam and Eve how it feels. Just a thought.
Anyway, these two seem to doing just fine in following God’s command of being fruitful. Cain is a farmer and Abel a rancher. The two of them even bring to God offering without even being command to do so. Cain his first fruits of the ground and Able a burnt offering of Lamb.
Here’s where the Word gets weird, but here too we begin to see the truth of God’s Word. God accepts Able’s offering and not Cain’s. Why? Some might say it was his heart or attitude, but the text tells us nothing about this. All we learn that something happened that Cain did not like.
God answers Cain by saying basically, “Why are you angry. If you do good you will be accepted, if not sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must learn to master it.” Cain did not master it. He kills his own brother. And get this he kills his own brother over the worship of God. Now this book is really getting truthful.
You see, here we learn that in our life “stuff happens.” That’s right, “stuff happens,” where we don’t quite understand God’s reasoning. I may work my tail off and get further behind, while some bum gets everything handed to him on a silver spoon. Once again relating back to God’s knowledge.
But how to we handle these situations? What do we do when situation arise in our lives that seem to have no logical explanations. At that point can we trust? Can we begin to master the sin that is lurking at our door? Well the truth of the Bible teaches us NO!
Within six short pages of Genesis we are already at the story of Noah and the Ark where not one single person has taken seriously the command to trust in God and be fruitful, not one single person has learned to master the sin that lurks—except for one--Noah. And so like a grieving parent the Lord saw and I quote, “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
After the flood and the damage is done we learn another extremely important truth about the nature of God. The flood is over and Noah makes an offering to the Lord. Then God says, “I will never curse the ground again because of the wickedness of humankind, for every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts is only evil continually.”
It’s odd because the same reason for sending the flood becomes the same reason for never doing it again. We see a God who punishes but doesn’t want too. We see a grieving God bent on doing everything so that his children will someway somehow listen. We see a God now will to set limits for himself through a wonderful promise, “I will never ever again destroy every living creature. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” God will never destroy the earth. We may, but not God.
So we come to the part of the Word we should begin to see as ever so true. A place where God without taking away our freedom, the gift of who we are, free to love, free not to love, free to obey, free not to obey, must decide as to how in the world is God ever going to get through to His children those two simply commands, trust that I have your best interest at heart, and be fruitful—take care of creation and each other?
Here we learn simply that the entire balance of the Word of God is the story of that effort. God seems to have decided to work through individuals such and you and I to carry this Life Giving, Life Saving, Living Word of God into the world.
We learn the truth about everyday normal people who make a difference in their world by simply trusting that God has their best interest at heart, and then they fulfill their purpose to be fruitful by taking care of creation and all that is in it. There’s Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Deborah, Samson, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, on and on, sharing with us truth stories of this Living Word.
Yet the sad truth of the matter is that there are many who still to not listen, and so God once as always come to us as the Word, this time made flesh—in the person of Christ Jesus. Teaching us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that our life and death have meaning and purpose—to be fruitful.
The disciples and saints that follow finish up the Word of God by taking that Life Giving—Life Saving word into the World making a huge difference for those that trust that God has our best interest at heart.
I finished up my time with these 61 young saints and sinners of God, just as I finish up with you older saints and sinners with another teaching regarding the Lutheran Faith. We teach something very unique.
It is that we are the Priesthood of All Believers. You and I basically have the same job title. You are ministers/priests serving the world just like myself—and our purpose like those biblical characters before is to be fruitful and take care of creation.
You may not be pastors, but whatever profession you have chosen, clerk, teacher, labor, accountant, it doesn’t matter. Whatever profession—we are the Priesthood of All Believers. Not only that, while our nature is similar to many of the Biblical characters of the Word, we are actually a continuation of that Word—God’s Word.
And folks that in a nut shell is the Word of God we are singing about, praying about, reading about and hopefully living about. It is a Word that if true then you and I are promised strength, comfort, healing, forgiveness, guidance, and hope right here, right now, and life eternal in the future.
If this Word is true then it has enormous meaning and impact upon not only my daily life, but for my eternity. And since the stakes are so enormously high, and there really only two possibilities don’t you think that one should invest the time and effort to closely examine what is found in a book that contains a Life Saving—Life Giving—Living Word?
“As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold.” Word of God. Word of Life. Amen.
