OPEN: One of the most beloved of American artists was Norman Rockwell. But, though many of the common folk loved and cherished his paintings, many other artists did not, deriding him as nothing more than a common illustrator.
Rockwell once explained the difference between his style of painting and that of many modern artists with this story:
Ten or fifteen years ago a Bohemian art student – complete with the beard, long hair, sandals – kept hanging around a studio I’d rented… One day he interrupted my work on a painting of Johnny Appleseed which showed an old man with an iron kettle on his head and a burlap sack for a coat striding across a hilltop, flinging out handfuls of seed.
“Whatta ya do it that way for?” the art student asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Whyn’t ya do it with more feeling?” he said. “Like this.”
He pulled out colored chalk out of his pocket & outlined a tall rectangle on a big piece of paper. “Now” he said, filling in with light-brown chalk a shape like a hawk’s beak, “that’s old Johnny’s body. It was browned by the wind and sun. O.K.?”
I nodded, startled.
“O.K.,” he said, and he divided the rectangle into a red area and a white area. “He was kind of a religious fanatic, right?”
I nodded dumbly.
“So the white’s his spirit,” he said, “and the red’s the physical part of him and they’re contending, the physical and the spiritual.”
He rubbed blue chalk over the area below the hawk’s beak – “that’s nature.” He made the base of the rectangle dark brown – “that’s earth.” And then he added a hand casting a seed.
When he’d finished I said “But, nobody knows it’s Johnny Appleseed. Only you know it’s Johnny Appleseed. Nobody else can tell who it is.”
“So? What difference does it make about anybody else? I know it’s Johnny. I’m painting it for myself. Who cares about the unwashed masses?”
(Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post Jan./ Feb. 09, p. 48)
APPLY: Rockwell’s point was that “modern” artists often painted only for their own satisfaction. The story of Johnny Appleseed merely served as a backdrop to illustrate that truth.
But Appleseed’s story also serves as a kind of backdrop for the truth Jesus taught in this parable. Every where Johnny Appleseed went – he planted apple seeds… and preached about Jesus. You could say he was a steward of both kinds of seed.
He wanted apples to be easily available to everyone.
And he wanted the message of Christ to be easily understood by everyone.
He did this because he cared!
But that modern artist didn’t care.
He didn’t care whether the fruit of labor was easy to get at or that his message would be easy to understand. His objective was simply to please himself. AND If you didn’t understand what he’d painted… that was your fault.
As I studied today’s text, it occurred to me that Jesus doesn’t want us to have that kind of attitude when we handle His seed. IT’S not about pleasing us - it’s His seed/ His message. And He wants us to CARE whether or not His message is easily available/understood.
Matthew 28 tells us the last instructions Jesus left His disciples before He ascended into heaven:
“… go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:19-20
In other words: Be good stewards of the seed.
Go and tell others what you’ve learned about Jesus.
Make disciples of them… baptize them… and then teach them what He’s commanded.
And our parable this morning implies that this is more than just a “good suggestion”.
But, before we get to that, let’s back up a little and revue the story we’re told here in Luke 8.
• 1st – a large crowd has gathered and Jesus begins to tell them the parable of the 4 soils
• Then - after Jesus tells the parable His disciples pull Him aside and ask Him what the parable meant.
• Jesus explains that He taught the others in parables so that NOT EVERYONE would understand what He had to say: They had ears to hear but they weren’t really listening all that well.
• By contrast, He expected the disciples to HEAR and understand the parable, so He explains that:
o The Seed was the Word of God
• The different Soils represented the hearts of different kinds of people. And how these people rec’d the seed into their hearts reflected what kind of soil they were.
Many commentators believe that’s the end of the parable. But I don’t think so. I believe that (for the benefit of these disciples) Jesus expands a little on this parable by telling them another parable.
He says to the disciples: "No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.” Luke 8:16
In this 2nd parable Jesus shifts from telling about the way His message is received by others to explaining HOW/ and by WHOM that message is given.
He’s essentially telling His disciples - YOU’RE IT. It’s your responsibility.
He’s entrusting them with His light, and He wants them to place His light in such a way that it shines everywhere – and the world can easily see and understand His message.
And Jesus was also declaring that He expects whoever follow Him and love Him to also be good stewards of His seed/ and of His light.
You know what that means, don’t you? It means YOU’RE IT. And I’m it.
It means we are expected to be the farmers who spread the seed
It means we are the housekeepers who place the lamp up high - so that others can see.
This is so important to God that Paul explains it this way:
"’Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?
And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" Romans 10:13-15
Unless people hear about Jesus from YOU – they may not know what God has offered them. They may go to hell because you/I decided not to cast the seed into the field. But instead, we just left that seed in the sack to rot because we felt something else was more important.
ILLUS: One of my preaching friends named Ryan told of a friend of his that recently attended the funeral of one of his family members. During their personal time, this man talked to his family about the need to belong to Jesus… and he knew before he started that this would offend some of them. He explained to Ryan “I’d rather have them offended with me and go to heaven than for them NOT to be offended with me and go to hell.”
(PAUSE)
But… what if I don’t want to do it?
I mean – I’m not really all that “qualified” to go talking to people about Jesus – so I really feel I should leave this to someone who has more experience than I do.
Now, I understand. I really do.
But – if you believe that - somebody’s sold you a bill of goods. There are churches cross the land who have convinced their people that you have to be ordained to do the work of the ministry. And that’s simply not true.
ILLUS: I recently talked to a young man this past week and explained that if he brought someone to Christ, he could baptize them. He was amazed! He said that he’d been to several churches before this one and he’d never heard of such a thing. Baptizing people into Christ was something ONLY preachers got to do. Those churches he’d attended had implied that you had to have a seminary degree to be able to handle something as important as doing a baptism.
But that’s simply not true.
Once you and I became Christians, we became priests of the most High God. (I Peter 2:5,9)
We have the privilege of handling cup and the bread at communion.
We have the honor of being able to share our faith
And we’ve been allowed the joy of bringing others into the Kingdom.
As priests of God – we are allowed to handle the sacred things of God.
And God deliberately made these things as simple as possible.
For example: If you think about it… how hard can it be to go out and throw a handful of seed on the ground? How many of you have ever put grass seed on your lawn? How hard is that? You don’t need a degree from Ivy Tech to spread it around the yard, you just need to go out and get the job done.
And that’s part of the message in the parable Jesus tells us here:
A farmer goes into the field and he scatters the seed.
He’s out there throwing the seed anywhere and everywhere he could.
This farmer threw the seed
• on the weeds
• on the foot-path beside his field
• on shallow ground, and on the rich land.
• The seed landed everywhere.
He wasn’t particular where the seed landed because farmland was expensive and the seed was cheap. The way farmers of that day had it figured – you put good seed on good ground you’d eventually get a good crop.
A farmer didn’t have to be particularly skilled to throw seed on the dirt. A 3 old could do this! But if you were going to get a crop – somebody had to do it.
So – there are 3 lessons to be learned from this parable:
1st – spreading the message of Christ is easy.
All you have to do is tell others what Jesus has done in your life.
In 1st John 1, that’s what the Apostle John said he did
“That which was from the beginning,
• which we have heard,
• which we have seen with our eyes,
• which we have looked at and our hands have touched—
o this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” 1 John 1:1
You don’t have to
• Have a degree a lot of theology
• Be able to read Greek & Hebrew
• Or spend vasts amount of money for God (not that there’s anything wrong with that)
But casting the seed of the Kingdom is as simple as it gets:
JUST tell others what Jesus has done for you.
ILLUS: In Washington State, there’s a church that trains new Christians to do just that. When people come down front and become Christians the Evangelistic team has a certain philosophy they teach these new converts.
They explain that when a baby is born you can tell it’s alive by one specific thing it does.
(Ask the audience) What is it that a baby does that shows it’s alive? That’s right it cries. In fact if it doesn’t cry, the doctor will often smack it on the bottom till it does.
For that reason, the evangelistic teams in this congregation ask these new people:
“Who do you know in town that you would like to tell about this decision right now?
Then they guide that new Christian to a nearby phone in order that they can immediately call someone and share the decision they’ve made. Now they try to make sure the person called
is someone who understands the significance and will be supportive of the decision, but the whole idea is to get these new folks used to the idea of sharing their faith right out of the baptistery. They teach baby Christians that sharing their faith isn’t that hard.
The 2nd lesson we learn from this parable is that the power of converting people to Christ isn’t in us.
It doesn’t matter how hard a farmer works.
It doesn’t matter how long a farmer stays out in the fields.
The crop depends upon the power that lies (not within the farmer, but) within the seed itself.
The SEED is the Word of God.
Hebrews 4:12 tells us “…the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
In Jesus’ parable the farmer scattered His seed all over the place trusting that the seed would bear fruit. And in Isaiah 55:10-11 God promises that it will: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
The 3rd lesson to be learned from this parable is that when we share people will respond.
In Jesus’ parable – one out of the 4 soils yielded a good crop.
ILLUS: A survey back in 2006 found that – of the people they interviewed people who’d been formerly in church but had left and hadn’t been back for some time. They found:
• 62% of formerly churched people are open to attending church regularly again, but not actively looking.
• 58% simply feel it’s time to return to the church;
• 41% say they’d go if a friend or acquaintance invited them;
• 35% would return if they knew there were people there like them;
• 31% feel God is calling them to attend church;
• 25% would resume if their children asked them to go with them;
(Christian Post 10/19/06 based on a survey conducted by New LifeWay research).
That means that all we have to do is try and we have at least a 1 in 4 chance of getting someone to come to church. Isn’t that interesting? That’s just the odds, Jesus gives in His parable.
CLOSE: Jesus calls us to be stewards of His most important message. He wants us to be the stewards of the Seed of God’s Word of salvation. He trusts us… and wants to make us His partners in building His church. You and I have been honored to be included in building something that will last.
ILLUS: When the noted English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, was directing the building of a famous cathedral, some of the workers were interviewed by a passing journalist. He asked three workers the same question, "What are you doing?"
The first said, "I’m cutting stone for ten shillings a day."
The second replied, "I’m putting in ten hours of my life every day on this job."
The third answered, "I’m personally helping Sir Christopher Wren to construct one of London’s greatest cathedrals."
So, what are you doing?
Are you just putting in your time at church? Or are you personally helping Jesus Christ construct one of the world’s greatest kingdoms the world has ever known?
Our instructions are simple:
“… go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:19-20
(This Sunday we had two people come forward along with a friend who’d brought them to church which allowed me to reinforce this message of bringing people to Jesus).
