Soil: Preparing your heart for growth

This week at New Life we are talking about soil.  You might not have heard a sermon about soil before, so it's worth being there.  Jesus told a parable in Matthew 13 called the parable of the sower.  The message of the parable goes right along with our series: The Greenhouse Effect.  Good soil is an important ingredient in the greenhouse and spiritual growth.   I think Jesus' parable could be renamed the parable of the soils. Let's take a look at it.

In Jesus' parable there are four characters: 1) the farmer who sows, 2) the seed of God's word, 3) the soil of your heart, and most importantly 4) a variety of soils.  Jesus focuses on the four types of soil.  the soil represents our heart, so let's think of the soils as different types of people.  

First Jesus spoke about "pathway people".  "Pathway people" have hard hearts and therefore don't understand the message of the kingdom of God--they just don't get it!  If you want to understand Jesus and His message you have to step out by faith and repent of your hard heart.  Passages in the Old Testament like Hosea  10:12 talk about "fallow" or hard ground and command us to break up our hard hearts to receive God's word.  Pathway people can't receive the seed of God's word because their hearts are like a hardened pathway.

Second, Jesus spoke of "rocky road" people.  Rocky road people have no roots because they lack deep soil.  Jesus was saying that shallow hearts produce shallow plants with no roots.  If you want to grow spiritually and keep on growing you must have deep soil or a deep heart.  Jesus spoke about this when he taught us to love God with our whole hearts.  You can't receive the seed of God's word with half your heart and expect it to take root.

Third, Jesus spoke about "thorny people".  these are the ones that allow the distractions of life like money or worry to choke out the seed of God's word.  Many people today are well-intentioned when it comes to the things of God, but they allow other concerns in life to choke out God's kingdom.  

Finally, Jesus spoke of good soil.  When the seed enters the good soil it produces good fruit.  That's what the kingdom of God is all about.  If we will humble our hearts and break up our "fallow ground" with repentance, if we will love God completely, if we will remove anything in competition with our relationship with God, then we can expect to grow spiritually.

So much of our thinking about how God works in our lives focuses on God's activity and certainly there is no spiritual growth without God (see John 15:5).  But the parable of the sower reminds us that preparing our hearts to receive God's word is vital if we expect to grow up in the Lord.  This week let's prepare ourselves to receive the seed and to grow in fruitfulness. See you Sunday, Tom Ragsdell