How should I respond when someone I love seems far from God?
WATCH
Standalone from August 30, 2026
“Jesus gives us goodness whether we receive it or not.”
Luke 8 :4-18 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon uses Luke 8’s Parable of the Sower to show that God generously gives His word to everyone, but people respond differently depending on the condition of their hearts. Pastor Michael encourages listeners to honestly examine their faith, keep growing toward God, avoid distractions, and pray for others because Jesus offers goodness whether people receive it or not.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
📰 Blog Summary for this message
Readings
📖 The Picture (Luke 8:4-10)
📖 The Meaning (Luke 8 :11-15)
📖 The Implications (Luke 8:16-18)
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Well, good morning, church. Welcome to our neighbors. Typically here at neighborhood church, we go through books of the Bible in some kind of a series. So my assumption is that for the average person on the street, if I were to, like. If they were like, if I came and invited them to church and said, hey, I really like you to come to church.
We're learning a lot. It's really, really good. And they said, great. What are you studying? If I say, well, we're getting ready to do 30 weeks in Galatians, the average person on the street would be like, oh, I thought you wanted me to come.
Like, I thought you said we were going to learn something. And I don't even know what a Galatians is, and I certainly don't. If I don't even know what it is, then what am I going to do with 30 weeks of it? That's just too much. So typically, what I'll do is I'll take a book of the Bible and we'll break it up into smaller chunks, and I'll look at the major themes of the chunks, and then I'll use those chunks, those themes, to be a title for a series that's a little bit more manageable.
So we have done a significant. We went all the way through Galatians from first to last over. Where did we start? We started in March, I think, maybe in February. But it didn't.
Like, if you were with us the whole time, maybe it didn't feel like we were, oh, we're in Galatians again, because we kind of broke it up into chunks. And so it's typically how we like to like to do things. It makes it.
There's this weird dynamic, and I think Pastor Ryan was just highlighting it, too. There's this weird dynamic where, like, God is doing God stuff, and then he also invites us to be a part of it. And so there's this dynamic where, like, it's my responsibility to, like, feed the flock, to, like, talk about whatever it is, like, to know what it is that we need to be nourishment, be nourished spiritually. And the fact of the matter is, like, I only know what he tells me. And so there's times where I can get in my head and think about, like, okay, I need to.
The church needs this. And, like, I try to make a thing, and then it just doesn't ever land. And so sometimes when he just leads us to a text and we spend time sitting in that text, whether it's Psalm 23, we started off the year Spending a ton of time there, whether it's Galatians, like, there's stuff in the text that it wouldn't have occurred to me would be helpful. And yet the Lord has written his word and he communicates it in a way that actually, like, interacts with our spirit. Like, surprise, surprise, surprise.
The crazy thing, God does God's stuff. So typically that's what we do. We tracking. Have I lost us already? Okay, so I say all that to say this morning is not that this morning is.
We call it dealer's choice on the preaching schedule. We call it dealer's choice. And these are like, the hardest weeks to do because it's like, okay, what's going on in the congregation? What are people dealing with? What's something I can say that'd be helpful?
And it's like, it's a higher stress decision. I think, however, one of the things, this picture, this image has come up in a number of different contexts for me over the last month or so, and it has just continued to remind me how to approach difficult relationships. Does anybody have a relationship you describe as difficult? Okay, a couple of us. The rest of you, maybe you need to teach us.
But like this, this, this passage, this text of Scripture has come back to mind over and over again as I'm trying to deal with difficult relationships. And how do I, like, walk with people, how do I interact with people, how do I, like, keep my hands off of their throat during the week? Like, I don't know. You guys are holier than me, I'm sure. And so it just occurred to me, like, this may be helpful.
This is a text that oftentimes gets referenced in a sermon. Like it's a point, a sub point, or a supporting point. But I really think that if we sit with this, we'd spend some time kind of looking at it and digesting it for ourselves, that it'll be profitable. So can we look together in Luke chapter eight? If you want to navigate there.
Luke chapter eight in the blue Bibles, that's around the. Around the church, probably tucked under chairs behind you or in front of you. It's on page 998. If you need to navigate there, 998 in the blue Bibles. And if you don't have a Bible in a translation that, like, you enjoy reading, or if you just want to write your name in the front of that one and take it home, let it be our gift to.
I got invited to come do a Bible study at a homeless shelter. And so I came to the Bible study And I was like, all right, guys, what do you want to study? And they're like, I don't know. I was like, all right, so get your Bibles. And they were all like, huh?
So in order to do a Bible study, I had to bring the Bibles. So I just want. I'm not assuming that you have one. I want you to take it. One of my big goals is, like, I'll spend all the money in Bibles.
Make sure that you got one. The best Bible translation is the one that you'll read. So we're going to be in Luke chapter 8. I need to pray. Maybe you need to pray, too.
I don't know if our clicker is going to click, but you got me today, self. All right. Teamwork makes the dream work. Pray together. It's our habit as neighborhood church to pray the disciples prayer.
This is the model of prayer that Jesus left for those who are, like, following him. And I'm not smart enough to invent a new way, so I just keep doing what he said. So let's pause real quick and let's take a deep breath.
And let's pray together.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen. Amen. So we're navigating to Luke chapter 8. Jesus is going to tell a story. He's going to start kind of teaching a sermon to people.
But I just want to make a point there. At the beginning of chapter eight, that first paragraph, Jesus has gone through and he's appointed like 12. We will refer to them now as apostles, because later on he sent them out. And that's what apostle means. It means they were sent.
But we think of, like, who were Jesus disciples? There was 12 of them. Well, there's 12 main guys, and then there's a bunch of other guys that hang out with him too. But then in chapter eight, Dr. Luke makes a point to name the women who are a vital part of Jesus ministry. And so, like, when we're close to these passages, I just want to point out that Jesus loved women.
He honored women. And his ministry was, like, super supported by the work of the Holy Spirit through women at the time. So just would like to say that we're going to start our passage in verse 4, Luke 8, 4. And when a great crowd was gathering around. From town after town came to him.
People from town after town came to him. He said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled under foot. And the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock.
And as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. And as he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God.
But for others, they are in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand. I'll pause there. Okay, so you've got Jesus. He's doing his ministry. He's bringing, like, he has a team of people around him that are supporting his ministry.
And he's like, things are going great. There are great crowds of people who were traveling to hear Jesus speak, which is kind of a big deal because this is before we had, like, digital communication. So information about Jesus had traveled to far regions. Like, he was becoming popular. And then the other thing that's kind of crazy is like, this was before bicycles and this was before cars.
Like, if people wanted to hear somebody speak, they couldn't just, like, download their podcast, or they couldn't just, like, flip on the TV and listen to the latest speech. Like, they physically had to walk, Get to where they were speaking and listen. Like, there are very few people in my life that I'm actually going to walk outside in the air condition to go and hear them talk like, I love. There's lots of guys that I like a lot, but I don't even really want to walk across the street to hear people talk most of the time. Time, right.
So this is just a different world. There are great crowds of people. Many, many people are traveling from all over in different regions, and they want to hear Jesus talk. Right? And now as they are coming, I've got a picture here, they're walking through, like, the Jerusalem area, and they're noticing these.
These farms that are along the street, along the sides as they go. This is a model of farming, a system of farming. It's called terraced agriculture. Can you say that? Terrorist.
Terrorist agriculture. Where you build terraces in order to be able to make.
You can Bring more soil in, healthier soil. It helps with retaining moisture in an environment that's kind of dry. And it's really, really labor intensive. You've got to build up these walls and kind of backfill the soil and all this kind of stuff. So as all of these crowds of people are coming to hear Jesus, they're actually walking through the countryside.
And the countryside looks a lot like this. There's these roads that are going through these fields, but the fields are not flat. This isn't Indiana, this is Israel. And so they have these. These terraced gardens, these terraced farms that they've been walking through.
So all these great crowds of people have showed up to hear Jesus speak. And he looks at these great crowds of people and he speaks to them in a parable. A parable is like a Bible word for he tells them a story, he gives them an illustration. So these great crowds of people have come, they've traveled to hear him talk. And he says, what'd you notice on the way?
What kind of environment were you walking? Like, what was the road like on the way here? He says, you know what? Let me teach you something. A sower went out to sow his seed.
And as he sowed, some fell along the path. It was trampled under foot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock. As it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up in it and choked it.
And some fell in good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. And after he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.
You're welcome. You guys can go now. Like Jesus, you got crowds and crowds of people that are coming to hear you talk. And you give an illustration about the road trip to get to see you, and then you send people home. He's like, yeah, if you have ears to hear, you'll get it.
I don't get why this Jewish rabbi got so famous. Like, he might have been a good communicator, but, like, he really was not gunning for the crowds. Like, this is not. This is not scalable. You guys would be pretty disappointed that you carved out an hour of your time for me to give you not even half a sermon, the introduction to a sermon, and sent you home and said, figure it out, right?
Kirsten's like, yeah, I'm out already. I'm ready to go home. Stop talking.
He who has ears to hear, let hear. And even his disciples, the guys who've been traveling with him. They're like, hey, Jesus, you gave that speech to all those great crowds of people.
What did you mean? And he's like, oh, well, I guess I'll explain it to you. But like, I'm giving the truth whether or not people hear it or not. I'm giving out goodness whether or not people are willing to receive it.
Okay, we tracking. So that's the picture. Can you give me the next one? This is kind of a zoomed in one, if I remember correctly. You can see there's like these walls of stone that they've built up.
Then they put some soil in and they plant kind of in there. And so the next picture is going to be a different view. Right. Where you're actually on the terrace. You're seeing the terrace, seeing the place in the middle that's kind of planted.
All right, so. So let's dissect his illustration because he took some words. I can just give you a picture. Let me give that next picture. Here's our terrace.
You've got path soil. So as you've got these terraces, there's places where people walk in order to get to the places. And so there's soil along the path. And what happens when you walk back and forth across the dirt? What happens to the grass?
It gets smooshed out. The ground gets really hard. Like, even in Florida, where the ground is literally like sand, like, you can just make a footpath. Then you've got rocky soil. And that's like, near the areas where there's a transition piece.
So sometimes this is like near the irrigation, but it's still like super duper rocky. And then you've got thorny soil. Like, who has. Like who. This is dangerous.
Who doesn't use their weed eater as much as they know they ought to. Don't even have a weeder who's like, the edges of the yard can take care of themselves, right? Yep. And the more land you have, the more you're like, I'm not weed eating those fences. I'm gonna get out the roundup.
Yeah. So before roundup, what happened is they just let the edges go, let the edges care for themselves. The closer it got to the wall, there are all these kind of weeds and stuff that would grow up. And you're not planting stuff in there, but there are all these weeds and stuff that just grow up around the edges. Okay.
And then you've got the plot that you're actually taking care of the good soil where when you put seeds in it, something grows out of it, right? Do we see the picture? We see the illustration, right? And they. And again, we got great crowds of people that the whole way they're like, we're gonna go, we're gonna go hear from Jesus.
We got a word from the Lord. It's coming down and they're like, not even looking. And then they get there and he's like, hey, did you notice what you saw when you're walking through Kingdom of God's like that? What? If you have ears, you'll get it.
Oh man, all this time I thought I had ears. All this time I thought I. And the disciples are like, hey, hold on a sec, can you explain that for me? So he gives them the picture. The next section is the explanation.
Alright, so we want to hear Jesus explain the picture Good, because he's better at it than me. Verse 11, Luke, chapter 8, verse 11. Now the parable is the seed is the word of God. Verse 11. The seed is the word of God.
The ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy. But these have no root. They believe for a while and in time of testing fall away.
And as for those who fell among thorns, they are those who hear. But as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life. And their fruit does not mature as for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the Word, hold fast and in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.
So we'll pause there. So he says, I've given you a parable. I've given you a picture. And the picture is of four different kinds of people. And four different kinds of people as they interact with God's word.
He says, the seed is the word of God and the seed falls on different kind of ground, four different kinds of people. And he kind of converts this imagery, this picture that they've just walked through and they got there and he's like, okay, it's just like that. So now he's giving them a framework to understand the picture that he's giving them. He says, those. Give me the next slide.
Those who are where the seed fell on the path. Those are people whose faith has been suppressed. So he even says it falls on the compact soil and then it's easy pickings for the birds. The soil is hard and then birds will come by and they'll eat the seed, which is the word of God. And so right at the outset, he says, your relationship with Jesus doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Like, we tend to think of life as kind of neutral. And then when we start to move towards God, we're like, yeah, we're just drifting towards Jesus. And he says, no, no, no. There's nobody who accidentally drifts towards Jesus. The way that the world works is the soil is hard and the enemy is hungry.
The enemy is out prowling around. The enemy is flapping. He's looking for places where God's doing work and he's trying to scoop up that work so that the people do not hear. Or if they hear, they do not believe. Their faith, their trust in what God's word says has been completely suppressed and removed.
And they don't believe and they are not saved. There's a group of people who hear the Word and because of the influences that are around them, because of their experiences in the past, they just reject it outright and say, this is not for me. It's not for me. Then there are people who, the seed falls on the rocky ground. This is like the places where there's a transition, where the soil's not very, very deep.
So the seed falls. And what verse am I in?
Verse 13, the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, they receive it with joy. Is that right? Yeah, they receive it with joy. But these have no root. They believe for a while, and in time of testing, they fall away.
So there's people who hear the word of God and they're like, yes, that makes sense. I believe that. And then when life gets hard, they're like, I thought that this was, like, a free ticket to an easy life. Why is life hard? And as soon as things get difficult, they don't have a root, they don't have a base, they don't have.
They don't have any kind of depth to having, like, wrestled with the hard parts of faith. And then when life gets hard, they just get cooked. Like, literally, the root is cooked because they didn't grow deep. They have a shallow faith.
Then there's some seed that falls among the thorns. What does he say about those? As for those who fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. So there are some seeds that grow up, they start to struggle up, begin to bear fruit. But then there are other, like, priorities that start to creep in.
They drift away from, like, the good thing that God has planted in them. And they just get distracted by the cares, distracted by the pleasures of life. Now, is pleasure a bad thing? No. In fact, like, the God of the universe thought it was who could do anything he wanted to.
He said, you know what? I love these humans. I'm going to provide for everything they need. And he could have just said, I'm going to give you a nutritional sludge and this is how you're going to get all of your nutrients forever. But what God did is he gave us taste buds and he lets us experience the joy of eating good tasting food.
That was completely optional. You know, God could have cared for all of our needs and not cared at all whether we liked it. And yet he has blessed us with taste buds. Amen. Some of us grew up Baptist.
It was me.
He makes the world in color. Like, have you ever, like, looked at a rainbow and go, that's incredible. Why is that just hanging out there? There's no reason. It's just there in the sky.
We were out at the beach the other day and we're looking at the clouds and look up in the clouds and half of the cloud turned into a rainbow. Why? I don't know. Because God just makes pretty things sometimes for the sake of making things pretty. Pleasure is not a bad thing.
The problem is when pleasure becomes our God and it's a distraction from the thing that God's trying to grow in us. Because if we're going to go deep, we're going to have to lay aside some of those things, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently, where we say, God is worth more to me than the gifts he gives. And so for the seed that falls among the thorns, they get distracted by even good things.
And their fruit ultimately aborts. Their fruit doesn't get mature.
And as for that, in the good soil, there are those who hear, who hearing the word, hold fast to it in an honest and good heart. In an honest and good heart. Like, that's. There's times where, like, I read texts and I hear Jesus and I hear him talking. I'm like, man, you just gotta be perfect if you're gonna walk with Jesus.
And he says, no, you just gotta be honest. Like, just give it a shot. Because there's times where I've been mad at Jesus because I have compromised myself. And he's like, you and I both know that you weren't holding on very hard. Like, just be honest.
If you want me, then walk with me if you want that Then go get it. But it's not going to give you what I got.
So that's the meaning. We've got the picture, and now we've got the meaning. Are we tracking so far? Okay, let me read in verse 16, and we'll come to some implications here. No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on the stand so that those who enter may see the light.
For nothing is hidden that will not be manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care then how you hear. For the one who has more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away. So he closes off this illustration with some implications. He says, listen, at the end of the day, nothing is hidden.
Whatever secrets you think you're keeping from your family, whatever secrets you think you're keeping from God, ultimately, at the end of the day, somebody's going to turn the light on and those things will be discovered. In fact, I have found that the more you try to hide a secret, the more likely it is that you're going to uncover it yourself.
So he says again, the good soil is those who hear the word hold it fast, with an honest and good heart. Those who are just honest and transparent. Of like, man, I am really struggling with this. I am distracted by this. I want to be good.
So, like, I want to let go of those things that are distractions. Like, that's what he's looking for. And he says, don't kid yourself. God's not. You're not smarter than God.
You're not going to outmaneuver God. You're not going to be able to hide the pieces of your life around in a way that he's not going to know. And after lighting a lamp, nobody lights a lamp and has this moment of realization and then immediately tries to hide it, like, oh, God's really working in me. Oh, he's showing me things I don't want to see. Let's just cover that up.
That's not what we do. If you came to God looking for illumination, he gave you light. Just put it on the nightstand. Well, I don't want him seeing what's going on in my bed. Okay.
Why did you pray for illumination if you didn't want to see what he had to show you?
So can we see?
I'm trying to think of what my slides are. I'm out of is the what.
Oh, okay. Yeah, let's.
One sec.
Sorry. Usually I can see a preview and I know what's coming, and it's helpful sometimes. Also, usually the more notes I have, the shorter I preach. And I've only got one page, so you guys are today.
Do you see that? What he's doing in the picture is he's making distinctions. He's drawing out differences between different kinds of people. Is that kind of clear? Just want to ask, what are some things that are the same for all four?
Faith. They hear the word. I heard seed. Any other ideas? What's.
What are things that are the same? They're all dirt. Yeah. Thanks. Jesus.
I really wanted to be reminded that I'm just dirt. The same message. They're all planted. Yeah. So a couple of, like, I just saw, like, in my summary, I saw kind of two main things that are the same in the parable.
The first is an enthusiastic sower. I don't know any farmers that are, like, as enthusiastic as whoever this guy is. Because when I buy a bag of seed, you know what? I actually, I just bought a bag of seed. And you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to be very, very careful. I'm going to sow two seeds in every cell to make sure that I don't waste any and hope that I get a harvest right. And if you're a farmer and you got a bag of seed, you're going to go down the row and you're going to make sure that all the seeds go in the row. Right. This guy takes a bag of seed and he's just yeeting it everywhere he goes.
He's just like, I don't care if it falls on the good soil. I don't care if it falls on the wall. I don't care if it falls on the next thing over. I'm just throwing the soil or throwing the seed everywhere I go. I'm just throwing it, I'm dropping it, I'm feeding the birds.
Nobody sows sunflower seeds, hoping the crows will eat them. And this guy is just like, dump it out, take it, birds. I don't. He's just sowing the seed. He is enthusiastic about sharing the word of God.
And then the other thing is, it's good seed. There's nothing wrong with the seed. You notice the seed falls in rocky soil. It is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong nutrients and the wrong water, and it takes root, it sprouts. The seed is good.
The fault is not found in the word.
And so our big idea, this Morning. Is that Jesus gives us goodness whether we receive it or not.
He's enthusiastic. You realize he published a whole book.
Realize, God, I want you. Sometimes we come to God. We're like, God, would you just tell me what to do? And he's like, I did. Did you pick it up?
Did you read it? Did you try to understand, like, the problem is not with the seed. Jesus is giving us goodness whether we receive it or.
God. You're so mysterious. You're always hiding from me. I wrote my whole biography down. Jesus, I just don't know what you mean by what you said.
I gave you four different biographies from four different guys writing the same thing over and over. What do you need? How much would I have to give you? God, it's just not enough. It's just not enough.
It's just not enough. There's nothing wrong with the seed. Jesus gives us goodness whether we receive it or not.
So that's something that I think is the same for all four soils. Let's look at the differences a little bit. If you're like me, when I hear a sermon, what happens in my head is I start thinking about all the people who should have been here today. Right? How many of you guys are like, I should have invited that one friend to.
They really needed to hear this. Right? Okay, let me show you a spiritual growth spectrum. This is something that I think that is super helpful when we kind of grab ahold of it. Can you give me the next slide?
When we think about people on their journey with God, for Christians and for people who have, like, grown up in church, what's the main thing that we want for people to do?
Louder. I'm old. Grow. Grow. Okay.
Grow. Sure. Spread the gospel. Anybody think that, like, our goal as a church is inviting our neighbors to meet and follow Jesus? Like, we want for people to know who Jesus is.
We want for them to trust him. We want for people to be saved. We want people who are dead to be brought to spiritual life. Right? So the.
And that's a lot, right? So we make a big deal of the cross. I think, appropriately, I think Biblically, like, we look at people and we're like, man, you gotta get saved. You gotta get saved. You gotta trust Jesus.
You gotta trust Jesus. I believe that's true. However, for us. Let's just think about for a minute. If you know somebody whose, like, relationship to God is at, like, a negative 5.
Am I on the right side? It's like, a negative five. Okay. And you're spending time with them, and they Want nothing to do with God. They don't want to listen.
They're grumpy. They're angry at you. Why are you bringing this up again? And you continue to share Jesus with them. And maybe they move from a five to a four and they listen a little bit more.
They're still kind of grouchy about it, but they're thinking about it. And then they move from a four to a three. And then eventually they're like, at a negative one. They have moved from negative five to negative one. Math, people.
What's the increase? Four plus four. That is not four is not more than the two to cross over.
If they're at a negative one and they decide, I'm gonna go with Jesus, I'm gonna trust him for salvation. That's a step of two.
And that's the thing that we get fixated on. We're like, yes, they did it. And that's the goal. We do want people to get saved. We want people to trust Jesus.
If you don't know Jes. You don't think you trust him. I'd encourage you that you do that today. Like, that's the thing. But, friends, we have work to do that I would call soil work, where we have to go to the negative fives and spend time with them as they process their negative 5 to a negative 4 to a negative 3.
And sometimes God will get in there and he'll grab them by the collar and he'll jerk them all the way over from a five to a one. But not always, Because I don't know if you noticed, but farming takes time. That's why we don't do it anymore.
I love watching people on Instagram. I spent $500 making a raised bed and installing irrigation and planting this tomato plant. I got one tomato.
I went to the grocery store. I bought a whole box of them for $5 or whatever it is. I don't know. Farming takes time, and it's hard work. But what God does from a negative five to a negative one is significant growth.
And we should celebrate people who are far from God moving in the right direction. Okay? And we should celebrate absolutely when people cross from death to life, because that is a miracle. It is not assumed. It is not guaranteed.
It is not the trajectory of most people.
And, friends, the warning here is for the 1 to 5.
The warning here are those who have heard the word and have responded positively and are still sitting at the one.
He's not just driving us towards a decision. He's inviting us on a journey to Grow into him and nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest and nor is anything secret that will not be made known and come to light. We need to celebrate steps in the right direction for others. But Jesus instruction to the 1 to 5 is, take care. Then how you hear.
If you're like me and you hear a sermon and you're like, oh, I wish they were here. Jesus hears that and he says, hold on a second. This isn't meant to be a rock that you start chucking at people. You should have done better. You should have been here today.
It was awesome. You would have loved it. They wouldn't have loved it.
But he says, you take care. Then how you hear, who's he explaining to?
The disciples. The disciples are the one that get the interpretation. The disciples are the one that get the explanation. The disciples are the one that get the point. And the point is, take care.
Then how you hear the word, Take care, how you hear. If you are reading that, just think a moment. Like, if you had to put yourself in the picture, how would you describe the soil of your heart?
If you're somebody who is like, I'm not there. I'm still in the negatives somewhere, haven't crossed that line, and trust in Jesus, I'm in the negatives, then my encouragement to you would be, take care. Then how you hear. Be mindful of who you keep company with. Who are you listening to?
What influences are you allowing into your life? Because if you fill your head and fill your heart with hot garbage that hates God, you know what's going to come out? Hot garbage that hates God. That's not a God problem, that's a trash problem.
So if you are somebody who's like, yeah, I'm not there yet. Michael, hey, I'm glad you're here. I want to be known as an enthusiastic sower. I want to just throw the seed out there. In fact, I do.
Do you realize, do this like we do free podcasts. You can get this on the Internet all day long. You can go back and listen to me preach for years. I don't recommend it, but you could.
Mind your company. Pay attention to who you're walking with, because who you're walking with is going to depend the direction that you end up in. You don't walk with people anyway. I'm going to drag that on. If you're somebody who is like, yeah, I've received the word.
I received it with joy. And then, man, it just seemed like life got so hard all of a sudden.
My encouragement to you is to go deeper, to dig deep into hard truths. There's some stuff like, you're on board with Jesus. You're like, yeah, Jesus is the answer. I don't know all the questions, but I know that Jesus is the answer. And then you come across something in scripture or somebody in your world asks you how scripture applies to this certain situation, you're like, I don't know.
This is hard. And life keeps getting harder, and Jesus hasn't made it easier. And I just. It's too much to think about.
Ask the hard questions. But don't make camp in them. Work through them till them up. Dig them out, pull the rocks out of the soil, push them over somewhere else. Don't just hope that somehow God's going to magically make a plant grow where there is no water or where it's just hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.
Dig into hard truths. If you're somebody who's like, yeah, I've asked the hard questions. I've even done a theology class. I think I'm okay doctrinally, but, like, I just. I just don't feel it.
I'm just not there anymore. I just don't know. Then I would say, be mindful that you're not, like, letting those thorns grow up and choke out the good seed that Jesus has planted in you. And in order to do that, I'd ask you to interrogate your idols.
Idols, Michael, what are you talking about? Idol is anything that wants to kind of nudge God out of his place at the center of your life. And there's a lot of good things that are awful gods if you let them be. Your emotions are a gift from God. They're good.
However, they make terrible gods. And so sometimes if I'm just trying to get my emotions to be in, I'm just trying. If I can get emotionally stable, then finally I'll be able to walk with Jesus. Your emotions actually cannot give you peace. Peace comes from the spirit.
Interrogate your idols.
Family's good. Kids are great. Like, that's a commission from God that you should be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. You should have kids. You should raise your kids.
You should point your kids towards Jesus, and your kids can become your God, and you can build your life around your kids. And the good thing, the pleasure of parenting can take over what it means to walk with Jesus. Interrogate your idols. Work is good. Do you know that work existed before the fall, before sin entered the world?
God put Adam to work.
And, guys, we can look at work and be like, this is the only place where anybody gives me an attaboy. Everywhere else I go, everybody's just always telling me how I haven't done enough. And so I'm just going to go to work and I'm going to keep getting that promotion, I'm going to keep getting that print and I'm going to keep building and climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing. And the good thing that God built into the goodness of the fabric of creation, not only that he created work, but he man made humanity to do work, can become the God that ultimately chokes out the good word of faith.
Interrogate your idols.
And if there's some of us who are like, I think, I wouldn't have thought it before, but I think I might be good soil. Like, I've done a lot of weeding in my life. I've pulled a lot of stuff. I've dug out some rocks and kind of got them out of there. And I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm trying.
So I think I might be good soil.
Then sow some more seed.
Get a bag of the word of God and just start chucking it.
Well, what if people don't respond? What if they get distracted? What if they respond and then they fall away?
Last year, we spent some time together starting an initiative to pray for our neighbors. Like, I genuinely believe for all of the ways that Jesus is speaking to us, he's also giving us a peek behind the curtain into how God works. And nobody grows spiritually apart from the work of the Spirit of God. And so if you're like, I don't even know where to start, start with praying. Ask that God would be doing the work of helping people to grow and to change and to.
And to root out the things in their life that are gonna keep them from him. And so we wrote this as it is, as foolproof as possible. I don't know what to pray. We literally wrote some prayers for every day of the week of how you can pray for people who are wandering and far away from God, for people who are on the journey with you and need to grow, and for people who are a little bit ahead of you that still need to be locked in with Jesus. So we call it 3, 2, 1.
The point is to pray for three people at 2 o' clock every day. So set an alarm on your phone. 2 o'. Clock. What do I do at 2 o'?
Clock? You pray. Well, what if I. What do I say? Here's some words.
I got two copies here. I Thought we had more laying around, but you guys have stolen them since I gave them away last time. So I got two copies today. You can get them on Amazon or I can send you the file. I'll send you the PDF, I'll give you whatever you want.
Like, we want to help you, but like, if you're good soil, if you think you're growing, if you can't think of anything big that needs to change, like, then sow some seeds and help. How do you sow some seeds? You pray to the Lord of the harvest. And if we're not praying for our neighbors, they got no hope. You guys are great.
I love you a lot, but you're not going to save anybody's soul. It's only Jesus that does that. And so he asks us to partner with him.
Remember that Jesus gives us goodness whether we receive it or not.
Take care then how you hear. For to the one who has, more will be given and from the one who has not, even what he thinks he has will be taken away. Let's pray.
Lord, there's just a lot of hard truth to turn over. Lord, the picture is so simple. The illustration, the explanation, the meaning makes sense. But God, I think we can spend a lot of time wrestling with the implications.
So Jesus says, as is kind of our natural bent, would you help us to use this framework to understand where people are at in our lives and to be patient with them as they go through the process?
And Lord, by your grace, would you use this framework as a mirror for us to be reflective and ask where we're at today? Lord, would you help us not to doubt that you are giving goodness?
Would you open up our eyes and ears to see the ways that we have refused to receive or we've been distracted from receiving your word?
Would you help us to trust one another enough to ask each other for help in knowing where we're at?
In other words, would you be the one who grows us?
Would you send us out to our neighbors who don't know you? Would you help us to be patient with them.
Even when it seems like they're walking the wrong direction, no matter what we say?
Would you help us to love like you love?
We can't do it on our own, so we ask that you would lead us and guide us and that we'd trust you in the process.
It's in your name we pray. Amen.
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
