So wonderful to be with you. It is good to see all those lovely smiling faces—some I know, some I do not know. It is always good to see the Lord adding to His people.
I know that there are many brothers and sisters who would want me to bring greetings to you. My wife and I just returned from a trip to the Northwest—from Washington State, Oregon, and British Columbia—and I know those dear brothers and sisters would want me to bring their greetings to you, along with the brothers and sisters in Port Charlotte, Florida.
So, it is wonderful to be in the family of God. Amen.
The thought that came into my heart, as I considered before the Lord what He would have us fellowship about this morning, was a very familiar portion of Scripture: Matthew 13, usually referred to as the parable of the sower.
So, if you would turn with me there this morning, we will read the first twenty-three verses of Matthew 13 and trust the Lord to speak to our hearts words of encouragement, instruction, and life.
Matthew 13, beginning with verse 1:
And on that day Jesus went out of the house, and was sitting by the sea.
And great multitudes gathered to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat down;
and the whole multitude was standing on the beach.
And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Behold, the sower went out to sow;
and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up.
And others fell upon the rocky places, where they did not have much soil;
and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil.
But when the sun had risen, they were scorched;
and because they had no root, they withered away.
And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.
And others fell on the good soil, and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
He who has ears, let him hear.
And the disciples came and said to Him, Why do You speak to them in parables?
And He answered and said to them, To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.
For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance;
but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
Therefore I speak to them in parables;
because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
And in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,
You will keep on hearing, but will not understand;
You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive;
For the heart of this people has become dull,
And with their ears they scarcely hear,
And they have closed their eyes,
Lest they should see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their hearts,
And return, and I should heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, because they see;
and your ears, because they hear.
For truly I say to you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it;
and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.
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 has been sown in his heart.
This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road.
And the one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word, and immediately receives it with joy;
yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary;
and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.
And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word, and understands it;
who indeed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
Could we have another word of prayer together, please?
Lord, we do want to thank You that, as we gather here in Your presence this morning, we have the assurance of Your presence with us. Lord, You are here not only in a general way, but in a very specific way.
So we acknowledge You as our Lord, and we come today to sit at Your feet and to say, “Lord, You alone have the words of life.” We remember You speaking and saying that the words You speak are spirit and are life.
We pray today that You would take this portion of Your Word, and the word that is spoken, and use it to be a living word to each one of our hearts. Lord, we are a people who need very much to hear from You.
We remember again that Your Scriptures say:
Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
So, Lord, we ask today that You would breathe upon us and breathe upon Your Word, and open the eyes of our understanding, that we might perceive what it is that You are seeking to say to us this day.
We open our hearts and our whole being to You, that we would be good receivers; and then, Lord, that we would also be good actors, that we would act upon that which You would speak to us.
Deliver us now from just hearing and not obeying, but make us to be a people who carry out Your Word in our daily lives. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As most of you, I am sure, are aware, the theme of this particular Gospel is the King and the kingdom.
When John the Baptist began his ministry, he began by proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” When our Lord Jesus began His ministry, He repeated those same words. Throughout this Gospel, the focus is on this matter of the kingdom of God.
When our Lord Jesus came to this planet, He came to introduce that kingdom in His own person—not just to teach us about the kingdom, but to show us the kingdom of God in a living reality, to introduce it, and to make it possible for us now to enter into that kingdom.
Now, we all know, I trust, that there is a day coming when our Lord Jesus will return to this planet. He will set up His kingdom, and there will be an outward manifestation of that kingdom. He will be the King, and God’s righteous rule will reign supremely over all the affairs of men.
But until that time, the kingdom of God is still available. We are invited, and we have opportunity to enter in and participate in that kingdom.
As our Lord Jesus began His ministry of demonstrating and proclaiming the kingdom, there seemed initially to be a wonderful response to His message. But the more He proclaimed, and the more He lived out His life and demonstrated the kingdom, the more opposition began to arise toward Him.
When you get partway through the Gospel of Matthew, you discover that various ones are in opposition to our Lord and to His message—particularly the religious people and religious leaders of His day. They were becoming very antagonistic toward Him.
So we find here in Matthew 13 that things begin to change. Notice there in verse 1: “And on that day, Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea.” Matthew seems to want us to understand that a transition is occurring in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus.
We begin to see that He is going to take a different approach to His teaching ministry. Now He is going to begin to teach primarily through parables. Up to this time, that had not been the case. Our Lord had simply spoken the truth in plain, everyday language.
Yet opposition arose. So our Lord, out of His great wisdom, now proclaims the word of the kingdom in parables.
Now, we might ask ourselves this morning, what is a parable? I think the clearest and simplest definition is that it is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. A parable is a truth presented in such a way that a story is told to convey the major truth being communicated.
Up until this time, our Lord Jesus had proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom—not just the gospel of forgiveness or the gospel of grace, but the gospel of the kingdom. That is why there was resistance. There is no resistance to grace; the resistance comes when the issue of the kingdom comes in. That is where the resistance starts.
When our Lord Jesus began to see this resistance outwardly, He changed His method of teaching and began to use parables as a way of conveying the truth.
The disciples were amazed at our Lord’s adjustment in His teaching. In verse 10 it says, “The disciples came and said to Him, Why do You speak to them in parables?” Apparently, this was the first time they had recognized that our Lord had chosen to use this method to communicate the word of the kingdom.
Then notice why our Lord chooses to use parables. He says in verse 11, “To you”—that is, to you disciples, to that inner core—“it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.”
Then notice verse 12:
For whoever has, to him shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance;
but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.
This is not the only time our Lord uses these exact words. We also find them in Matthew 25, where the Lord is again seeking to set forth a very important principle. If you do not read that verse carefully, you probably will not gain from it what you need to gain.
What is our Lord saying here? Why is He beginning to use parables as a way of communicating the word of the kingdom?
He says, “For whoever has, to him shall more be given.” What is it that he has? Then further down He says, “But whoever does not have.” What is it that they have, and what is it they do not have? If you have it, you are going to have more; you are going to have an abundance. If you do not have it, even what you have will be taken away from you.
So what is it that you have or do not have? It is the key.
The Lord Jesus is saying that there is something you need to be in possession of in order to receive and allow the word of the kingdom to do its work in you. If you have it and use it, you will get more. If you have it and do not use it, even what you have, you will lose. So it is important that we know what it is.
Our Lord is trying, I think, to find His way through, because we know what He wanted to do in His heart: to communicate clearly and fully the truth about the kingdom of God.
It is not that He is trying to hide anything from anybody who does not have a real desire to know. I think that is the key. For those who have a real desire to know the truth about the kingdom, they will gain it, and they will have an abundance. For those who have no desire to know, even what they have will be lost.
The Lord Jesus is helping us understand that there is a key issue in the life of every individual that must be faced: What kind of desire do you have in reference to the kingdom of God?
Remember Matthew 6:33. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says:
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Something has to be of great desire. There has to be something in us that causes us to be willing to seek. If we have that desire, then what we have will be increased. But if we do not have the desire, what we have will be lost.
I believe this is the reason our Lord Jesus begins to use parables as a means of communicating the truth about the kingdom. For those who have a desire to understand the kingdom, to enter in and live in that kingdom even now—if there is a hungering and thirsting in their hearts—then the truth about the kingdom conveyed through the parable will be understood.
But for those who have no desire, it will simply be an enigma to them. They will not understand what He is talking about. They will think He just tells stories. You know, there are people who are good storytellers. They can tell wonderful stories, but there is no point to them; they just tell stories.
If you do not have a desire to know the word of the kingdom and to enter into the kingdom, these will simply be stories to you about a man who went out to sow some seed one day. But if you have an honest longing in your heart to know the kingdom of God in reality, then there will be an increase that will occur in your life.
Our Lord helps us understand that there is one fundamental matter that must be considered in light of this: the condition of our heart.
If you allow our Lord Jesus to paint this picture through words—because, to me, parables are verbal pictures—they paint a picture for us. The Lord Jesus tells us this parable about a sower who went out to sow.
He does not go into all the details of what was done in preparation for the sowing. He simply tells us about a sower who went out to sow some seed. As he sowed the seed, it fell on different types of soil.
It may help us to get the broader picture. Here is a man who owns a field, and he wants to plant wheat in his field. But in order to do so, he has to prepare it. He has to plow it and get it ready for the seed to be sown.
This field has different types of soil in it. There is soil alongside the road where people walk. There are other places where there is a hard, rocky foundation with only a thin layer of soil on top. Another part of the field is still overgrown with thorns. Then there is the other part of the field, which is good soil.
So our Lord tells us, first of all, about a sower; then about some seed; and then about the soil.
In reference to the sower, basically it means those who communicate the truth about the kingdom of God. That is what our Lord Jesus was doing, and that was what would become the responsibility of those whom He chose afterward: to be those through whom He would communicate the truth about the kingdom—the word of the kingdom, the message of the kingdom.
It is not our purpose this morning to go into detail concerning their responsibility and qualifications, and so forth. Simply, they are to be a means whereby the message of the kingdom of God is communicated.
Then you have the seed that is being sown by these people. It is very clear in these verses that this seed is the word of the kingdom. It is the Word of God, the living Word of God.
We need to look at something for just a few moments here. This is the Word of God from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. From cover to cover, it is the Word of God.
But you could read it from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, and God never speaks to you. Why? Because if it is just written-down words on paper, then it can be just words. But it needs to become a living word to everyone.
There has to be a transaction in which the Holy Spirit takes this written Word, breathes upon it, and communicates it into our hearts as a living word.
In the Scriptures, as most of you know, there are two words translated “word” into English: logos and rhema. For instance, in John 1:1, it says, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Greek word there is logos. It means the message, the overall message of what God wanted to communicate to us.
Our eternal God has chosen to speak to us. If He had not chosen to speak, there would be no way that you and I could ever know Him. But He has taken the initiative to unveil Himself, to tell us about Himself, what is in His heart, what He is like, and what He expects of us. God has spoken to us.
In Hebrews 1, we discover that God has been in this business of speaking for a long time. Listen to what the writer says:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.
God has been faithful to speak down through the centuries of human history. He has spoken in various ways, in many portions and in many ways, to the fathers in the prophets. But God has chosen to speak in a very unique way in these last days: He has spoken to us in His Son.
Everything God has wanted to say to us is now all caught up in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He Himself becomes God’s Word to us. That is what John is saying: “In the beginning was the Word.” He is God’s message to humanity.
But for that message to get through and have any impact upon our hearts, it needs the anointing work of the Holy Spirit upon that written Word so that it becomes a rhema, a living word in our hearts.
Look with me, for instance, in Luke 1. The angel has come and spoken to Mary. In verse 38, it says:
And Mary said, Behold, the bondslave of the Lord;
be it done to me according to your word.
Notice the word “word” there. There it is: rhema. In other words, it was not just a general thing; it was very specific to Mary’s heart. She understood in a very personal way what was being said to her.
So she said, “Let it be done unto me according to what you have said.” I understand it. It is real. It is personal. I receive it.
Notice also Luke 22, another situation in which a spoken word became a living word.
In Luke 22:61:
And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.
And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had told him, Before the cock crows today, you will deny Me three times.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
That is what a living word does to us. It impacts our inner being so that something changes within us.
These words, these seeds that are being sown, need to become something living—something that finds a place of lodging, becomes living, and has an impact upon our lives.
Do you know, brothers and sisters, there is a real danger of us coming here week after week after week and listening to the word, the word, the word, the word, the word. You know what the danger is? It can simply become something that has no impact upon our lives.
Here our Lord Jesus is trying to help us understand that there is the sower, then there is the seed, and now we also need to consider the matter of the soil.
This is the real issue our Lord Jesus is seeking to communicate to us. In most parables, there is only one truth being communicated. I know that when you read some books about the parables, they go off on this tangent and that tangent, and by the time you are finished, you are more confused than when you started reading the parable.
But basically, the Lord is trying to communicate one central truth: the condition of the human heart determines how effective the word of the kingdom will be.
When the Lord Jesus came out of the house and sat down by the sea, multitudes gathered around Him. He got into a boat and went out upon the sea. When He looked upon the multitudes, He told them this parable of the sower because He saw within that multitude four types of soil, four kinds of hearts.
The condition of people’s hearts determines the effectiveness of the seed that is sown.
Let us get it clear: there is nothing wrong with the sower. Our Lord Jesus is a perfect sower. We cannot say that about all other sowers, but we can certainly say it about our Lord Jesus. When He spoke, He was the Teacher. There was no hindrance in Him to prevent Him from clearly communicating the truth about the kingdom.
Secondly, what He spoke was nothing but the Word of God. It was living. He said:
The words that I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life.
So the problem is not with the sower. The problem is not with the seed. The problem is with the soil—the condition of the human heart. The condition of the human heart determines how effective, and what kind of impact, the seed—the Word—will have upon human beings.
I remember a number of years ago, when I was a student, I heard someone preach on this. Their conclusion was that our Lord Jesus was facing failure in His ministry: that He looked upon all of this and saw that seventy-five percent of the people did not listen. Of the twenty-five percent who did, only some brought forth thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some a hundredfold.
So their conclusion was that the Lord was facing failure in His ministry. Well, I do not know where they got that from, but that is not what I get out of this as I meditate upon it. I do not think the problem is with the Lord. The problem is with the soil, the condition of the human heart.
When our Lord Jesus looks out on the multitudes, He understands that people’s hearts can be in a variety of conditions. He wanted them to understand that because He wanted them to be willing to do something about it.
If they found that, when He spoke about the kingdom, it made no sense to them, the problem was not what He was saying. The problem was the condition of their hearts.
I do not know anything about anatomy, but as I read these words in Matthew 13, I discover that the nerves running to our ears and our eyes are directly connected to our hearts. That is, your heart condition affects what you hear, what you see, and what you understand.
Physically, that may not be true, but spiritually that is the case. If you come to a place where you are hearing the Word of God ministered on a regular basis—with a measure of anointing, clarity, and relevance—and somehow it is not having an impact upon you, then there is something wrong with the condition of your heart.
Our Lord, out of His mercy and great concern for the multitudes—and, may we say, even for us today—indicates where the problem is so that we will be willing to do something about it.
Our Lord understands perfectly that people’s hearts can basically be put into four categories: hardhearted, shallow-hearted, half-hearted, or wholehearted.
You can be the kind of soil that is beside the road, the kind that is rocky, the kind inhabited by thorns, or you can be good soil. I do not think for a moment that what our Lord Jesus is talking about applied only to those people in His day, nor that it applies only to unbelievers. It applies to all of us.
Our Lord begins by talking about the seed that fell beside the road. It is important to understand that in the first three types of soil there is no fruit at all.
No fruit comes from that which is planted beside the roadside because it is hard and has been trafficked. People have walked there, and the soil has become very hard. When the seed falls upon it, it simply lies on top of the soil. The birds come and snatch it up, and it never gets a chance to fall down in, die, germinate, and grow.
Some people’s hearts are like that. The word that came to me is that they are impervious. I know that is not a word most of us use every day, but “impervious” means unable to be penetrated.
Jesus says there are certain conditions of men’s hearts that make it impossible for the seed to penetrate. No matter how much seed is thrown upon that soil, it simply lies on the outer surface. It will never produce any result. There is no response at all.
It is hard, impervious, fallow ground. It has not been plowed. It will not receive the seed—the word of the kingdom.
In Jeremiah 4:3, part of Jeremiah’s word to Judah is this:
Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem,
Break up your fallow ground,
and sow not among thorns.
Particularly in reference to soil by the roadside, the Word of God calls for the fallow ground of our hearts to be broken up.
I do not know whether many of you are aware of what you must go through to take fallow ground and make it something that can be planted and produce fruit. But, as a teenager—quite a few years ago—I used to go every summer for two or two-and-a-half months to work on my grandfather’s farm.
He had a two-hundred-acre farm in western Pennsylvania. He had all different kinds of crops: hay, wheat, oats, corn, barley, buckwheat, and all these kinds of things. But not all of the farm could be cultivated because some of it still had trees on it and had never been planted for many years.
I remember one summer it was our job to take a certain plot of ground that had never been cultivated, remove all the trees, and take out everything that would hinder it from bearing. Right in the middle of that plot of land, we found a big stone, perhaps twelve by fifteen feet, and very heavy.
My grandfather was determined that thing had to be taken out of there. That fallow ground had not been used for growing wheat, and it now needed to be prepared.
We took out all the trees, and then we came to this big rock. We tried everything. We had a tractor, horses, and all that kind of stuff, but it just would not budge. So finally we had to drill holes underneath it, put dynamite under it, and blow it up. Then we had to go around and pick up all the pieces of rock.
But my grandfather was determined that it was not going to remain there because he knew something we did not know. First, he knew that the first time he tried to plow that field, that big rock would probably break half a dozen plow points before the field could be properly plowed.
He also knew what our Lord was talking about in the second type of soil: you can have something that looks nice, with a nice layer of soil on top, but underneath there is not enough depth for roots to go down. The roots will come up, and it will never bear fruit. It will die off.
What we are told concerning this first type of soil is that it needs to be broken up. Do you know what kind of heart God is really looking for?
A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.
I do not think for a moment, dear brothers and sisters, that just because you are a Christian and have been one for many years, you are immune to having a hard heart. You are not.
What kind of people were in opposition to the message of the gospel of the kingdom? It was not the average sinner in the street in Jesus’ day. It was the religious leaders.
He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
There is a real danger, brothers and sisters, of going through the motions of so-called spiritual life and not being real, because our hearts can again become hardened. So they need to be broken up.
We know from experience that this is not something we can do on our own. It is something God Himself must do. Just as a field cannot plow itself, neither can we break our own hearts. But God is able, through circumstances, experiences, His own work in us, and His Word to us.
When Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him in Luke 22, what does it say he did? He went out and wept bitterly. Do you think he had a broken heart? You better believe he had a broken heart.
But it could not be done by his own effort. Peter thought there was nothing wrong with him. He said, “Lord, everybody else will deny You, but I will not.” He was so confident that everything was all right with himself, but he did not see the condition of his own heart.
When that word came and found lodging, it began to do the breaking work, and he went out and wept bitterly. We know from Peter’s history that changes were made in his life after that.
The second kind of soil is what our Lord Jesus referred to as soil on rocky ground. Most people who have studied this in depth tell us that in Palestine there is quite a bit of soil where you have a very thin layer of soil, and underneath it are gigantic layers of rock.
It all looks good from the outside. When the seed is sown upon it, it even grows faster than the rest. Why? Because the rock underneath is warm, and it causes the seed to grow. Secondly, it does not have to go down because it cannot go down, so it comes up quicker. It looks good in the beginning.
But we are not looking at the beginning, are we? We are looking at the end product, which is fruit.
Our Lord Jesus tells us that the soil on rocky places is shallow, superficial, emotional, and temporary.
We do not want to suggest—I do not think our Lord is suggesting—that when we respond to the kingdom there is no emotion involved. But it is not emotion alone.
Some of the great evangelists of our day would testify to this. If we could have a one-on-one conversation with Billy Graham, for example, and ask him, “What is the greatest problem you have faced in your evangelistic association?” I think he would tell us: people not hanging in there very long.
Oh, there are thousands. You can see them on television. You can come to the crusades and see thousands of people coming forward. But a couple of months later, you will have trouble finding very few of them. Why?
Many times, the soil upon which that seed is sown is superficial. There is not that depth. As our Lord Jesus says, there is no root in himself. It does not get down inside of you and change you from the inside out.
What God has to get hold of is our will. Remember, we are talking about the gospel of the kingdom, brothers and sisters. Who is going to rule and reign in your life?
We are not talking about whether you are going to heaven or going to hell. That is not the issue this morning. Our Lord Jesus is talking about whether you are going to be part of the kingdom, whether you are going to live in the kingdom, and whether there will be a living reality in your life.
If it is going to be reality, it has to get all the way down into your will, where you make decisions about how you live, what you say, and how you act. That is what our Lord is after.
When you have this superficial, shallow, temporary, emotional response, it all looks good in the beginning. But when people begin to suffer difficulty because of the word of the kingdom, they consider it too much. So they become a casualty, a statistic, and that is all there is to it. There is no fruit.
The soil beside the road produces no fruit. Rocky soil produces no fruit. There may be good plants in the beginning. It may look good and be very impressive to some people. But it still produces no fruit.
The third kind of soil is the soil our Lord Jesus said was sown among the thorns.
Again, I think because of the limited ability of the farmer to prepare the ground fully, he had to leave some soil where there were still thorns and such in it. Today, with all the great equipment we have, we could probably get rid of all of that. But for the point of our Lord Jesus’ parable, there was still thorny ground—ground where thorns were growing.
Some of you know we live in Florida. The year before last, we had a very severe drought. You know what I discovered? The grass does not grow, but the weeds do, even when there is no water. Some of the rest of you have found that out too, huh?
These thorny things can grow without any care, without water, without cultivation. They just grow on their own.
Our Lord Jesus says the third kind of soil, the third condition of people’s hearts, is that they have cluttered hearts. I do not know how else to put it. They are preoccupied hearts.
They are occupied with things other than the kingdom. Remember what we began with: What is the thing that you have to have? A desire—a hungering and thirsting for the reality of the kingdom. If that is not there, then what you have, you will lose.
This kind of heart is a cluttered heart, a preoccupied heart, a divided heart. Basically, this person wants the best of both worlds. They want everything there is of the kingdom of God, but they also want to live high and good here in this world. They want everything this world has to offer them.
But it does not work that way, brothers and sisters. Jesus made it very clear in Matthew 6:
You cannot serve God and Mammon.
You cannot have everything this world offers you along with everything available to you in the kingdom of God. A decision has to be made.
For the person who receives the word of the kingdom into their heart along with everything else, do you know what is going to happen? What Jesus says will happen. The thorns grow faster than the wheat, brothers and sisters. Somehow they endure under very severe situations. They grow up and choke out the seed.
This can happen to people who have known the Lord for years—sometimes fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years. Do not think that it cannot happen.
I have to sadly report to you that I know people—I could give you their names, addresses, and telephone numbers—who had a real, genuine, deep experience of the Lord and were used wonderfully among the Lord’s people to minister to them.
Today, they count for nothing except something negative in reference to the testimony of the Lord Jesus, because the riches of this world grew up and choked it out. They are not available today. There is no fruit in their lives.
Now, is that not sad? Is it not sad that there can be this effort on the part of the sower to go out and sow this precious, precious seed? It falls into the soil, grows, and becomes a beautiful plant. But then it was sown into a condition where there were a lot of other things—where the soil was cluttered and preoccupied with thorns and thistles, other issues, and other desires.
It is a divided heart. These other things grow up, become stronger, and choke out the real word of the kingdom. The person is no longer available, and there is no fruit.
When you look at this only from the vantage point of the three types of soil we have mentioned, it becomes very discouraging, huh?
If people’s hearts can be hard, shallow, and half-hearted, and you get no fruit out of it, what is the use of going on proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom?
But when our Lord Jesus looked out upon this multitude, and when the sower looked out upon his field, He knew there were things that stood in the way of fruit-bearing. But He also knew there was some good soil there. Our Lord knew there were hearts out there ready to receive the word of the kingdom.
Our Lord Jesus says the fourth kind of soil is good soil:
And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word, and understands it;
who indeed bears fruit, and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.
What our Lord Jesus is ultimately interested in is a good harvest in reference to the word of the kingdom.
Do you know, brothers and sisters, that every one of us, when we are born into the human race, is born with a nature of rebellion? No one had to teach us to be rebels. We were born that way. None of us had to enroll in Sinning 101, did we? It just comes naturally to us because that is the condition of our hearts.
Our Lord has to take this situation and find a way to get the truth of the word of the kingdom down into our hearts so that it can begin to bear fruit. He must take these rebels and transform their lives into people who, in reality, live in the kingdom now.
It takes a miracle. It takes God getting His Word down inside us—this living Word down inside us—and changing us from the inside out, changing our hearts.
That is why the Lord says there must be a certain condition of heart in which the seed can fall, die, germinate, grow, and bear fruit—some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some even a hundredfold.
Remember in John 15, our Lord Jesus tells the parable of the vine:
I am the vine; ye are the branches.
Our Lord is looking for fruit, more fruit, and much fruit.
Again, the condition of our hearts is the matter that is uppermost.
If you were to take your Strong’s, Young’s, or Cruden’s Concordance—Strong’s for the strong, Young’s for the young—and look up the word “heart,” you would find that in the Old Testament alone the heart is mentioned eight hundred and sixty times.
Does that say something to us? What does it say? It says that God’s focus and interest are upon our hearts.
He does not look upon the outward. We can all put on a good show outwardly, but you and I have no way of fully knowing another person’s heart. God does. That is where God focuses His attention: upon the heart.
It is not that He does not want to change the rest of us, but He cannot change us from the outside in. He wants to change us from the inside. So He wants to get the word of the kingdom down inside us and, by His Holy Spirit, cause it to grow and increase in us.
The result will be fruit produced in our lives. That is, the reality of the kingdom will become something that can be seen by God and by other people: that we are living in the kingdom of God now.
The kingdom does have a future dimension, and we need to be concerned about that. But our primary concern needs to be this: Are we living in the reality of the kingdom now?
Remember, our Lord Jesus says:
Fear not, little flock;
for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
To give you rulership; for you to be able to live in the reality of Jesus being the Lord of your life today.
The condition of the heart is mentioned eight hundred and sixty times in the Old Testament and almost two hundred times in the New Testament. So, well over one thousand times, we find the word “heart” being used. That should speak to us loudly.
From this day forward, our primary focus ought to be: What is the condition of my heart? Not, “How do I look to other people?” but, “How does God see my heart? What condition is it in?”
Is it like the good soil our Lord Jesus talks about—properly prepared, cultivated, watered, fertilized, and simply waiting for the word of the kingdom to come into it, to be received, to germinate, to grow, and to produce results in our lives?
We are not going to make reference to all eight hundred and sixty passages in the Old Testament and two hundred in the New Testament. But I thought we would choose seven this morning as representative of the whole, okay?
We only have a few minutes. I noticed you have a clock up there now. I had not seen that before. Six minutes to do seven, huh? That is going to be hard. That does not work out, does it? Okay.
Let me quickly mention these, and I hope this will whet your appetite so that you go home, get out your Strong’s or your Young’s or whatever, and begin looking up these references to the heart.
The first is to have a clean heart. In Psalm 51:10, David had unfortunately allowed himself to become caught up in something that was a tremendous disgrace to him and to the testimony of God.
Psalm 51, as well as Psalm 32, is thought by most to be David’s response when Nathan the prophet came and confronted him about the situation with Bathsheba. Notice his cry to God in Psalm 51:10. This is not just something written down. This is a cry that came from deep down in a broken heart:
Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
A clean heart is a heart in which clutter, preoccupation, and the other things that interest us have been set aside. We have a clear, clean perspective on what it is we have been called to do. From our hearts, there is only one thing that we want.
The second point almost falls in line with the first: to be pure in heart.
Blessed are the pure in heart:
for they shall see God.
When we think about someone who was pure in heart, Nathanael comes to mind. Remember when the Lord Jesus met him in John 1? What did He say?
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.
No deceit. Is it not wonderful to meet someone like that? You know they have nothing to hide, nothing hidden. Everything is out in the open. That is a pure heart.
A clean heart is one in which there are no big boulders in your life. The heart has been cleaned out. The clutter has been removed. The things that preoccupy us have been put in their proper place.
Perhaps the person who comes to mind concerning a clean heart is Job. Remember his testimony at the end?
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
but now mine eye seeth Thee.
Do you know what Job had to go through to come to that conclusion? Do you have any idea? If Job were here today giving his testimony, I think he would say, “It was great to go through it, but I do not want it again. I would not take anything for the experience, but no thank You for the second time around.”
But you see, something happened to Job. His heart became purified. It got cleaned up. There were things in there that he did not know were there. God knew they were there. Even his friends did not know they were there. But God knew. He knew Job was a self-righteous man, and so He exposed it all.
When we are talking about having a clean heart, brothers and sisters, it means God is purifying our motives. Why are we involved in things? God is not just interested in you doing something; He is interested in why you are doing it. Where does it originate? Is this something you ought to do?
We know experientially that there is no greater place on the face of the earth for us to be phonies than among so-called spiritual things and religious groups, because we all learn the language and we all learn how to act.
Yet the issue is: Does it come from here? There is always this temptation, when we are in a group of people, that somehow we have to be a ham. I guess there is no other way of putting it. We like to be thought highly of by other people.
You may be thought highly of by other people, but that is not really the issue, brothers and sisters. Has what you have said made its way to the very heart of God? If it has, it is because it originated out of a true heart, a clean heart, a pure heart.
The third characteristic is an eager heart. If soil were able to talk, and it was well cultivated, clean, and pure, it would almost be lying there hungry and thirsting for someone to drop a seed into it so that something wonderful could be produced.
There ought to be an eagerness, a desire, a burning desire in the heart for the reality of the kingdom of God.
There is an example in Acts 17. Paul had been in Thessalonica and gotten into trouble there. Acts 17:10 says:
And the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night unto Berea;
and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica,
for they received the word with great eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so.
This points out to us that we need not only to have an eager heart individually, but what about us as an assembly? When was the last time we followed the practice of the Bereans?
How long has it been since you took what was shared with you on Sunday morning, went home, and searched it out for yourself in the Scriptures to find out whether it was so? Or did you just assume that it was?
When you plant seed, it is not good to let it lie on top. It is good to cover it over with a little soil. That is what you can do when you go home: search it out for yourself. Do not just take it from somebody else.
Be eager about this matter. When God speaks something to you, do not walk out and act as though He never said anything. Take it home. Ponder it in your heart. Think about it. Search it out. Find other places in the Word of God where it is mentioned, so that it becomes yours, gets into you, and becomes a part of you.
Fourthly, an occupied heart. We talked about a preoccupied heart, but now we need an occupied heart.
Ephesians 3:14–17 says:
For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
We have talked about our hearts being preoccupied with other things, but what are they supposed to be occupied with? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Is your heart occupied by Him? Have you turned over every key to your heart to Him and said, “Lord, You have free access. You can go into any room in my life—not only to visit and check it out. I want You to come and live there. I want You to dwell in my heart.”
That is the kind of heart He wants. How do you do it? By the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes that which is of Christ and brings it down and deposits it in our human hearts.
When we know He is occupying our hearts, it makes all the difference in the world. It means that what we do comes out of our hearts in the reality of Christ: our worship, our prayer, our lives, and our relationships, all originating out of the indwelling Christ.
Oh, brothers and sisters, how we as a people today need to let the truth of the indwelling Christ become so real, precious, and practical to us. Our hearts need to be occupied by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Paul goes on a little further: “That you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” Whew! You think about that one, do we not?
The next condition is a heart that is ruled. Colossians 3:15 says:
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
The word there means to act like an umpire. In other words, if the peace of God is ruling in your heart, then whenever you are confronted with something that is not of God, what happens? “Foul ball. You are out. Strike two.”
The Holy Spirit brings the very peace of God Himself to indwell our hearts. Whenever that peace is disturbed, we stop. It is a red light from God: stop. Do not go any further.
It is our conscience, brothers and sisters, properly functioning. Do not ignore it. It is our hearts enabling us to know the direction God wants us to go.
Two more things. An obedient heart. Romans 6:17 says:
But thanks be to God that though ye were slaves to sin,
ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which ye were committed.
Brothers and sisters, when you and I receive some word from God into our being, there is part of us that says, “The good that I would, I do not.” We know a civil war immediately erupts when God drops the word of the kingdom into our hearts, because the old rebel still wants to do his own thing.
You have a war on your hands immediately. The thing we have to learn to do is obey from our hearts. That is where it begins. You are there: “Lord, I am willing. I choose. I stand on Your side, even against myself.” Yes, against myself.
No one else can hinder you, really. But when you, out of your heart, make the decision that you are going to stand on the side of what God has said, then the greatest part of the battle has been won. It is simply a matter of going in and putting your foot down in the other areas and making the victory yours in practical terms.
Lastly, Proverbs 4:23:
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
for from it flow the springs of life.
As I thought about this verse in reference to the field, I remembered that many times in the Old Testament they talk about building a tower in the field or vineyard, or building a fence around it.
Once you have this beautiful field and it is producing good fruit, you need to protect it. You need to build a fence around it and put a tower in the middle of it. You get up in the tower and make sure that nothing is entering your field or destroying it, preventing the fruit from finally being harvested.
Now, brothers and sisters, I know some people would have us convinced that things are going to get easier. I do not believe that. I wish I could say differently, because part of me would like to say, “Hey, from now on it is going to be great, brothers and sisters.” But it is not going to be.
It is going to cost something to be a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. The place the enemy is going to try to get at you is in your heart. You need to build a guard around it. You need to build a fence around it and build a tower in it.
Watch over your heart. Guard it. Keep it. Do not let things come in that you know should not be there. Do not expose your heart to things that you know will end up being detrimental and may even keep you from producing the kind of fruit you hope will be produced in your life.
Well, I did not make it in six minutes.
But may the Lord find among us, brothers and sisters, hearts that will produce much fruit for Himself. May the word of the kingdom always find a place of warm lodging in our hearts.
We pray together, please.
Lord, we thank You so very much for Your faithfulness to us—for the way You speak to us, encourage us, and, Lord, even sometimes bring correction to our understanding.
Lord, we want to acknowledge in light of Your Word today that You alone know the condition of our hearts. Lord, our hearts are deceitfully wicked; who can know them? But, Lord, You know them.
We want to lay them out before You this morning and ask You, Lord, that You would expose, in Your own time and in Your own way, anything in our hearts that would hinder the word of the kingdom from being able to produce fruit to Your glory and praise.
We ask it in Jesus’ name.