Well, good morning, everyone. How are you all doing today? Back from spring break, Ready for the final push, potential? We’re almost there. You’re almost there. Well, it’s good to be back with you all again here. If you could go ahead, open up your Bibles to Matthew, chapter 13. We’re going to read this passage together here today. It’s the parable of the Sower. Who here is familiar with parable of the Sower? Okay, if you’re not, you’re going to be today. But before we read this passage, I want to ask a question to all of you. Why is it that two people can sit in the same room, hear the same Bible being taught, grow up around the same truth, and yet respond in completely different ways?

I mean, why does one person hear the word of God and remain unchanged, but while another person hears it and their entire life is transformed? Jesus answers that question in this parable. So follow along with me as I read. Starting in verse one, it says that same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea, and great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told him many things in parables, saying, a sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil.

But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among Thorns. And the thorns grew up and choked them. But their seeds fell on good soil and produced grain some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. He who has ears, let him hear. And then skip down to verse 18. This is great. This is one of the few passages in the Bible where you get the answers. Verse 18. Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what it has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground. This is the one who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy.

Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and in tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word. But the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold. And another 60. And another 30. Let’s go ahead and pray. Father, we ask you now that you would bless the reading of your word to our ears. Father, give us ears to hear. Father, give us hearts to receive.

Lord, keep us from being hardened, from being shallow or from being choked out by the cares of this world. And, Father, cause your word to bear fruit in us for your glory, for your son’s sake. Amen. So our theme in chapel today is that all of you, as ambassadors of Christ, you are commissioned as sowers. Now, this passage, of course, is a really good one to cover that Jesus is showing us that not only what kind of hearts hear the word, but also what kind of posture that we must have as those who carry his truth into the world. And if we are, as ambassadors, commissioned as sowers, then will we need to understand both the seed we have been given and the kind of soil that it will overcome.

Now, before we talk to the forest soils here, I want you to notice what does not change in the parable. Now, the sower stays the same. Okay. The seed stays the same. The sower goes out. Sows. Can you guys hear me if I put this microphone down here? Yeah. Okay. Because I don’t want to hold it.

All right.

So the sower, back in these days, they would have this bag strong across their chest, and they would walk across these fields and they Would broadcast the sea, see this light? The wind would pick it up. It would go all over the place, okay? That is what the sower would do. What the sower did not do. The sower did not change the message, right? The seed is the message. Message. The seed is the gospel. He went and he sowed it, and wherever it fell is where it fell. He didn’t worry about the soil, okay? Seed is the same in every case. The issue is never the seed. Sometimes I plant things in my garden and an entire thing doesn’t grow because the seed is junk, okay? But the seed of the gospel is never like that.

It is always good, it is always perfect, it is always precious, and it will have its way. It depends on the soil. It depends on the heart that receives it, okay? Now that matters for all of us in Christian settings, such as at school, at chapel, or at church, or at home or wherever it is. We all need to understand this. Not just all you as students, but also me and all the teachers, parents, everybody, right? Because if Christ has commissioned all of us as sowers, then our calling is not first to be impressive enough with how we share the gospel. It’s not about how funny we can be. And thank goodness for that, because I’m pretty boring, right? Josiah? Doesn’t matter how clever we are when we articulate and spread the gospel message, right? Our calling is to know the seed.

To know the gospel and be able to share it. To love the seed. To love the gospel enough to share it, to speak the seed, and to trust God with what only he can do. Now, as we get into this parable, we see Jesus begins by telling us that some seed, it fell along the path and the birds came and, well, they. The seed, right? The path was basically just hard packed dirt, okay? It wasn’t open, it wasn’t soft, it was not prepared to receive the seed. The seed lands on it, but, well, it never gets into the dirt, okay? And Jesus explains in verse 19 that this is the one who hears the word of the kingdom and doesn’t understand it. And the evil one, the devil, comes and snatches away what has happened zone in the heart of this person.

This, of course, is the hardened heart. The heart that is hardened against God’s word, just like Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, right? This is the person who hears the truth but wants nothing to do with it. The word lands on the surface, but there’s no penetration. No brokenness, no receptivity, no tenderness, no humility. The heart is hard. And when the heart is hard Satan is more than happy to come and snatch the seed away. Now the problem is not that Satan is too strong for the seed. The problem is that the heart is closed to it, right? The word is rejected, the truth is resisted and there’s no room for it. I mean, we can preach the truth perfectly, right? We can share the gospel faithfully and we can say exactly what needs to be said.

And still a hard heart very well may reject it. But what we always need to remember is that does not mean that the seed failed. It means that the soil was hard. Now that’s important for all of us because you know, you’re sitting here hearing this in chapel, right? I’m sure you’ve heard about this in Bible class or church or at home, right? We can all be around the truth a lot and we can yet still have hard hearts towards the truth, right? We can know all the right answers. We can have all of the answers to our Bible tests, right? But we know in the scriptures that even the devil and the demons know all of these things, right? It does no good when we only know it in our head and it never makes it to our heart, right?

Being near the seed is not the same thing as receiving the seed. And hearing the truth with our ears is not the same as really truly embracing it in our heart and letting it change our life. And that’s important because all of you are growing up and your parents faith cannot be your faith. Your parents can have perfect faith in the gospel. But it doesn’t matter how good their faith is, because their faith will never save any of you. Unless that seed, that gospel message has taken root in your heart, there will never be saving faith for your parents. Faith will never achieve that. Now Jesus then says that some seed fell on rocky ground. Think of it as some softer dirt. But there’s a bunch of rocks mixed in. Anyone ever have to pick rocks out of their grandparents garden?

This is what we’re talking about here. Just like a lot more right now in this, the seed sprang up quickly because it had no depth of soil, okay? But when the sun rose, it got scorched, okay? It had no root, it withered away. Jesus says that this is the one who hears the Word, immediately, receives the gospel message with joy, but yet has no root in himself. There’s no roots, right? They ran into rocks, there was some soil, but the roots got stopped with rocks, right? This is the one who hears the Word, embraces the Word, endures for a little while. But when tribulation or Persecution arises on account of the Word. He immediately falls away. Translate this to hearing the Gospel message. Embracing the Gospel message.

But the second some of your friends want to go off and do something that is contrary to the Gospel, you go right along with them, right? That is an example of this. Now, this is the shallow heart, right? At first, everything looks very promising. There’s enthusiasm, there’s excitement, and there is a visible response. Now, you might look at this person and think something real is happening here. But the problem, though, is only just below the surface. There’s no depth, there’s no root, and there is no staying power. So when suffering comes, and it will. When pressure comes, it will. When obedience becomes costly, when the Gospel demands something of us, and when following Christ stops feeling easy and starts feeling expensive, well, this person falls away. Because what looked alive was never truly rooted.

This is why immediate excitement is not the same as genuine conversion. Emotion by itself proves nothing. A quick response by itself proves nothing. The real question is whether the person endures, whether they continue, whether they remain, whether they abide in the Word. When it becomes costly to do so, this is the person who. Who’s okay with Jesus as long as Jesus doesn’t expect too much out of them. Then Jesus says that some seed fell among thorns. The thorns, they grew up. These are weeds, and they choked it. And in verse 22, he explains that this is the one who hears the Word. But the cares of the world, the distractions of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, they choke the Word and it proves unfruitful. Well, eventually, these competing loves, they choke out the Word.

Jesus says that it’s the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. And what a phrase that is, because riches really are deceitful, right? They lie to us. They tell us that security is found in our possessions, peace is found in comfort, and satisfaction is found more. But it’s not just about money. It’s about anything in this world that rises high enough in our hearts to crowd out Jesus, right? It may be our career, it may be our family. Maybe it’s our reputation, entertainment, comfort, sports, hobbies, pleasure, whatever it might be. Maybe it’s popularity. Maybe it’s the approval of our peers. Maybe it’s our image or our performance or the fear of being left out. I think that’s called fomo. Fear of missing out, Right? Yeah. I’m hungry. So what do I know?

Now, that is one of the sobering lessons of this parable. Okay? People do not always fall away all at once, okay? Sometimes they just get crowded out, okay? Their schedule gets crowded out, okay? The devil is more than happy to fill their life with distractions that take them away from the truth. Their attention gets crowded out. Their desires get crowded out of their love. Or Christ gets crowded out. And it’s possible to be around the things of God, to hear the word of God, to appear interested in the things of God, and yet still through unfruitful. Because we never really let go of the world in our heart when we came to faith in Jesus Christ. The first three soils, they all end in the same place. Different reasons, but the same result. No fruit.

But then Jesus tells us about this fourth soil, right? He tells us that the fourth soil fell on the seed, fell on good soil. It produced grain, some of it produced a hundredfold, some only 60 fold, some 30 fold. And in verse 23, he tells us that this is the one who hears the Word, understands the it. And he doesn’t just hear it and understand it. It went from his head to his heart, and it went outwards in the bearing of fruit in this person’s life. This is the receptive heart. This is the heart of someone who will truly be saved to the end. This is a heart that receives the word, understands it, embraces it, and bears much fruit from it. And notice the fruit is not small, right? It’s abundant, 30 fold, 60 fold, a hundredfold. This is supernatural fruitfulness, okay?

This is not the result of some human cleverness, some polished technique or. Well, the sower is just really impressive. Remember, the same sower sowed the same seed. The difference is only here that the seed fell on the good soil that was prepared and it bore fruit. This, of course, is the true believer. This is the one whose life has been changed by the word of God. It’s the one who does not merely hear it, but hears it, understands it, not only intellectually, but they hear it in their heart. And what they know in their head to be true has made it to their heart and really made true. The truth gets in and takes hold and it changes them. A good example of this is Saul, who became Paul. What Saul used to do, he stopped doing when he was changed by God.

He was conformed further into the image of Christ. And as we know through the accounts of the New Testament, he was clearly commissioned to be a sower of the Word. And it’s from people like Paul who are faithful in this, who are truly changed by the Gospel, that we get to stand here some 2000 years later and read much of the New Testament written by someone like Paul. This is our calling here. We are commissioned as sowers to pick up where Paul left off. To pick up where our parents left off, where whoever shared the gospel with us left off. We spread the seed. We don’t change the seed. We pray for the hearts that will receive the seed. But there is nothing that we can do that is going to change the soil. God works in the heart.

Our only duty here is to spread the gospel. Now, as we move to close here, I just want to give two simple lessons. Lessons here and kind of summarize this. First, we have to faithfully sow the word, right? We know that the Great Commission is. What? What’s the Great Commission? What is that? Go out and make disciples of all nations. Yep. Go out and make disciples of all nations. What would we call that? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with C. It ends with. Oh, man. Command. Good job. Good job. It’s a command. And what does it mean if we are given a command by our Savior Jesus and we do not follow it? Good, you guys are getting it. It’s a sin. For he who knows what to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin.

The Great Commission is a command. Our duty, if we truly believe, is to spread the seed of the gospel, right? That’s a command. And we fail to obey it at great cost. The problem is never the seed. Right. We don’t need innovation in the message. Right? We so. Right. It is so easy when we look out in the Western world and some churches around, we seek to modify the message. We try to make it soft and sensitive. We try to take the offense of the gospel away. We try to give the salvation of the gospel message of Jesus Christ, but we seek to remove the offense of the cross out of the message. Right?

If we have to take the bad news out of the good news in order to share the gospel, we are not sharing the gospel because there would be no need for the good news of the gospel if there wasn’t first bad news, which is that you, me, all of us, were sinners, eternally separated from God because of our sin. And we need that gospel message. And I look back to the person who was faithful in sowing that seed into my hard heart some 15, 16 years ago, and I can only imagine what that person might have seen in me. Because I was a horrible. I was a horrible child growing up. But that person did not give up on. They pursued. They kept sowing the seed. They didn’t change the gospel. Message when I first rejected it. Not once, not twice. Many, many times.

So we should never lose heart, we should never give up when we are witnessing, when we are sharing the gospel. Because it’s not our duty to be worried about the soil. We suffer, sow the seed. The seed falls where it may, and we leave the growth to God. We pray for the soil. We preach faithfully, we preach consistently, and we preach boldly. And we take the commissioning that we’ve been given as ambassadors to be sowers of the good seed. That’s our job. So let’s do it, shall we? Yes. Yes. Okay, let’s pray. Father, I thank you for this time today. Father, I thank you for this opportunity that I’ve had to share your word here. Father, I pray that the truth of this passage would work in our hearts, would change our hearts.

Father, for those of us who know you, who have saving faith in your Son, Jesus Christ, Father, I pray that you would help us to take up the responsibility, the command that you’ve given us, to obey the Great Commission. Father, help us to spread the seed faithfully. And, Father, help us to not lose heart when we don’t see the fruit. Father, help us to obey the command to sow, knowing that yout alone give the bread.

And Father, if there be any among us today that do not know your son, Jesus, that do not have saving faith in your Son, Father, I pray that you would prepare their heart to be the one that prepares the good soil by your Son, that through your spirit, you would work in their heart, that you would soften it, that you would take their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Father, I pray that anyone that does not know your son, Jesus, that they would grasp on to the good seed that has been sown upon their heart and to accept it and to bear fruit and to one day see you face to face when you will say, well done, good in faith, servant, enter in to the joy of your master. Father, that is what we ultimately long to hear.

Father, we look forward to seeing you one day. Until then, help us to be diligent in sharing the gospel message. Father, we ask this in Christ’s name and for his sake. Amen.