Sermon Central
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Thorny Ground - Riches Series
Contributed by Troy Campbell on Mar 10, 2016 (message contributor)
Summary: The Parable of the Sower
The Parable of the Sower – 8
“Thorny Ground: Riches”
“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.”
So far we have learned, in this parable, that:
➢ God is the sower
➢ The Word of God is the seed
➢ We are the ground
Last week we started talking about the Thorny Ground individual. In our text we find three different things that can be indicators that we are the thorny ground person. The first one was the cares of this world chokes out the Word. We covered this last week. This week we are going to briefly talk about the other two things that happen to the thorny ground person.
DECEITFULNESS OF RICHES
Mark 4:19, “And the deceitfulness of riches…choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”
➢ Greek word for deceitfulness is “apate,” and it means the delusion of.
➢ Greek word for riches is “ploutos,” and it means wealth, possessions, materials and abundance.
I want to make something abundantly clear before we even begin this message! God is not opposed to you having riches. He is very much opposed to them holding the wrong place in your life, but He is not against you having riches. If Satan can’t stop you with the cares of this world, he will definitely try using material things to choke out the Word.
Don’t ever allow money to determine whether or not you obey God. If money has become a deciding factor of you obeying God, than it has become a delusion. If you think that money is more powerful and can do more for you than God, you are deceived, because there are many things that money can’t do.
➢ Money can buy you a doctor, but it can’t buy you health.
➢ Money can buy you a warm body, but it can’t buy you love.
➢ Money can buy you an abundance of possessions, but it can’t buy you joy.
That’s all you have to do is look at the lives of Hollywood celebrities whose lives are messed up drugs, divorce, and multiple marriages to realize that money cannot buy happiness, joy and peace. Ultimately, money can’t buy you the most important thing of all and that is salvation.
We do a lot of things in the name of prosperity and blessing, but if it causes you to go into debt, then you are deceived with riches. We live in a society that teaches us and shows us that it is completely normal to go into debt and that is way life should be. This deception is from the devil. He wants to keep us bound by all of life’s things. This is the deceitfulness of riches. We believe God wants us to be blessed, so we go into debt to get blessed, when that is totally backwards to what God wants for us.
My wife and I owe money on our house and our van and that is it! We refuse to go into to debt to buy more things. With the exception of those two things, we are completely debt free. Being debt free happens under the blessing of the Lord, and the blessing comes from obeying God, from being in your assigned place. My wife and I are in God’s assigned place for us right now. He told us to be here, and until He tells us to go, we are going to stay here because we want God’s blessing on our lives and that only comes with obedience and being in your assigned place.
God has an assigned place for you. You are a soldier in God’s army. Soldiers get orders and soldiers are expected to obey. A soldier can’t tell his commanding officer, “I would rather not do that.” A soldier stands at attention and salutes and says, “Yes sir!” When you get orders, it is the commanding officers duty and job to make sure that you have everything you need to fight a good fight. You have to trust the commander.
There are too many soldiers who are missing in action. They are MIA because God assigned them a specific place and they went somewhere else because they thought that was a better choice. People in ministry are all the time moving from place to place for more money or less problems or a bigger church or a higher position. We don’t even consider what God has called us to do or where He wants us to go. Don’t let money dictate your decisions! EVER!!
