Isaiah 55:10-13; Hebrews 4:9-13; St Luke 8:4-15
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This parable is a sad one. The sower sows his seed but it chiefly ends without fruit. So it was with the preaching of Jesus. In John chapter 6, 5000 people follow Jesus out into the wilderness to hear His Word. Having compassion for them, He feeds them all, 5000 men, not including women and children, but by the end of the chapter everyone has left, everyone except the Twelve disciples. And one of them ends up betraying Jesus, another denies Him, and the rest run away in fear as He is arrested and crucified.
The preaching of Jesus often appears to fail. People refuse to hear. Others don’t take it seriously. Still others hear, but then make other things a priority. Its not the Parable of the Soils, get that out of your head first thing. Its not about you. Its about Jesus for you. This parable is the Parable of the Sower. It is about the Seed. About the Word. And this parable preaches to us the Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”
First of all the Sabbath Day is not today. Technically its Saturday. So why are we here today and not yesterday? The short answer is that the Sabbath, like all the ceremonial and civil laws of Israel, came to an end when Jesus fulfilled them in His life, death, and resurrection. He rested in the tomb on the Saturday after His crucifixion and so fulfilled the Sabbath rest for you. And the disciples of Jesus began meeting on this day - the first day of the week, right away in the Gospels and Acts - not to keep an old law but to live in the new creation, the day of resurrection which follows the Sabbath. Every Sunday is a mini-Easter.
Like circumcision and the restriction of meats and the sacrifice of animals, the Sabbath Day was part of the ceremonial law that pointed forward to Christ. Now that the resurrection has come, we do not deal in shadows but in substance.
So the Sabbath Day as a regulation is done away with. But what was it for? What was the purpose of the Sabbath in the first place? It was there from the beginning, even before the Fall into sin, God rested on the Sabbath and set it apart as holy. In the Large Catechism we learn there is something greater than the day: the deeper reality of the commandment is in the power of the Word of God. Its not the day that is holy, but the Word. The Word of God is the holy thing and it makes not only this day, but all things holy.
So keeping the Sabbath Day holy is not only to come to church, but to gladly hear and learn the Word of Christ read and preached. In other words you can come to church every day of your life, but never actually obey the Third Commandment. You keep your heart as stone, refusing to let the Word come in and do its work, calling you to repentance and faith, and producing the fruits of faith, that is, good works done in love for the sake of your neighbor.
The parable reveals to us three enemies, three things that will keep us from being faithful and fruitful to the end. The first is the devil, who like a bird pecking at seeds snatches the Word away quickly so that people do not pay it any attention. This is like the seed on the path. The Word goes in one ear and out the other. You hear the Word as you sit in the pew, but then leave it there as you walk out the door and into your daily vocations.
We expect the devil to come with horns and a tail, but you are more likely to encounter him in laziness and boredom; or the classroom of a government school, elementary or college, shaping the minds of students so that they regard Christianity as moralism or superstition. It is not enough to hear it. “If the Word merely lies on the surface of the heart, so to speak, and does not penetrate deeper, Satan comes [in any manner of ways] and rips the Word out of the heart. As a result, the person does not believe and is not saved” (Walther, God Grant It, p212).
And if someone would believe, then the time of testing comes. “The sun shines brightly and rainfall is sparse, the green plants begin to dry up as quickly as they shot up. Their roots had not descended far enough to secure for them in adequate supply of moisture” (ibid, p214). In other words, life gets difficult, and the joy and eagerness once had over Christ and His Word, fades away and they are ultimately lost.
Again, this happens in so many ways. Perhaps its old temptations and sins become too alluring. Perhaps its association with unbelievers and a hostile world. Maybe its hanging around with other so-called Christians who lead unchristian lives. Why do half of the children baptized never make it to confirmation? And of those confirmed why do half of them fall away before the end of college? Who can count all the ways in which people lose faith?
But get past all of that and life gets not just difficult, but busy. The cares, riches, and pleasures of life occupy your thoughts. You will tend seriously to Christianity later. First there is a career to be built, a family to be raised, health and leisure and myriad of problems and distractions the world throws your way. “Even if the heart is a field well cultivated by the Word, it retains something of its old, evil thoughts and desires, and the weed of sin can continue to grow. Even the best and most experienced Christian must be diligent, or it will not be long before the weed of sin overgrows the crop of the Word and chokes it” (ibid, p216). Little by little, these two weeds, cares of this world and riches, choke out the Word and faith slips away, and soon your life before God becomes increasingly like your relationship with a distant relative.
Jesus says that the one who endures is the one who keeps the Word in his heart. If you look at how that term “keep” is used in the Bible you will find it is where something is grabbed hold of and bound up tightly; to retain. It is used earlier by St Luke to describe the crowds who were looking for Jesus and came to him and tried to keep Him from leaving them (4:42). Or consider how St Paul uses the word keep as he writes to the Christians in Corinth or Thessalonika:
I commend you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly/keep to the traditions just as I passed them on to you (1 Cor 11:2) and he goes on to instruct them to hold fast to Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.
Or elsewhere, I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast/keep the Word I preached to you - unless you believed in vain (1 Cor 15:2).
And again, Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise preaching, but test everything; hold fast/keep, what is good. Abstain from every form of evil (1 Thess 5:19-22).
And to the Hebrews: Let us hold fast/keep the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful (Heb 10:23).
Keep. Κατεχϖ. Related to our word, catechesis.
Now think about what occupies your heart. What grabs hold of your mind? What is retained in your thoughts? You pursue love, you seek to advance in your work, you carefully plan for your retirement or your children’s college fund. You lie awake tossing and turning as you consider the angry words someone said, how you would like things to be different, and mad dreams of murder or death even take over some of your thoughts.
You can recite sports statistics or political polling, you carefully track the temperature, your up on all the latest Netflix shows, you hit refresh again and again to see the latest email or Facebook feed, but your mind wanders before the Pastor is done announcing the lesson.
What would happen if you took the Word of God seriously? This is not about information. You can and should carefully learn the Scriptures. But when Jesus tells you to hear the Word of God and keep it, to hold it fast, to keep it close to your heart, He is not talking about great feats of memory or scholarship.
The Word of God is at its core the message of Law and Gospel. The Word of the Lord teaches us not only about God, but about who we are: human beings created by God, out of love, but now fallen. Mortal, selfish, corrupt we are, and we cannot educate or advance in the way of virtue such that we can rescue ourselves. The world is a wonderful, horrible, confusing, sorrowful, beautiful, deadly place. Only this truth - that we and the world are made by God, but everything had gone drastically wrong - can make sense of the beauty and misery we often see side by side. We don’t know why certain soils don’t produce. We don’t know why some and not others. Thanks be to God any are saved at all! He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
You, beloved are given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. It is written, Your hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:2). The mystery of Christ is that He is the kingdom of God enfleshed in the humanity of Man. He brings the reign and rule of the kingdom down in His persona and work, at great personal risk to Himself. Jesus doesn’t identify who the Sower is, maybe because He identifies Himself so closely with the Seed, the Word, which is so extravagantly and graciously scattered. For Christ is the Seed which fell into the earth and died. He was driven into wilderness, the beaten path, in order to be tempted by Satan. He relied on the sufficiency of the Word alone, showing Himself to be a faithful catechumen, a true hearer and doer of the Word. He had proper contempt for the allurements and luxuries of this world. And upon the Cross He endured the thorns for you. He is the Seed of the Word who bore the punishment and wrath saved up for you. And He bore them with patience. He is the enemy of Satan, the flesh, and the world, and His only weapon, by which He conquers, is the weakness of His Word.
He went forth from the Father and did not return to Him empty, but accomplished the purpose for which He was sent. For the joy set before Him He endured the Cross. To bestow upon you the peace of His Father He spent Himself in death on your behalf.
And this Word of Christ, read and preached, is sharper than any two edged sword. It slices and dices, cutting between joint and sinew, bone and marrow, cutting you to the core, uprooting and cutting out all the weeds of your sin and cares for this world. His Law discerning the sinful thoughts and evil intentions of your heart, bringing you to repentance. And the Word is living and active. It makes good soil out of bad. He makes righteous people out of unrighteous.
Do not become secure. Do not only hear God’s Word, but seek to understand it and let it penetrate into your heart. Lay a deep foundation in true, earnest, and daily repentance and faith that you may not dry up and wither in the heat of temptation. The Word of Christ shall not return to Him void. It accomplishes His purposes. He shall cause it to sprout and grow, producing the fruits of good works done in love, which He prepares in advance for you.
Dear people loved by God, Christ is your Sabbath rest. His Word alone gives comfort to your terrified and stricken conscience. Hear it and hold it fast for your eternal salvation. And come, receive the pledge and token of His honest and good heart toward you, His Body and Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins, for the strengthening of your faith toward Him and fervent love toward one another.
In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This parable is a sad one. The sower sows his seed but it chiefly ends without fruit. So it was with the preaching of Jesus. In John chapter 6, 5000 people follow Jesus out into the wilderness to hear His Word. Having compassion for them, He feeds them all, 5000 men, not including women and children, but by the end of the chapter everyone has left, everyone except the Twelve disciples. And one of them ends up betraying Jesus, another denies Him, and the rest run away in fear as He is arrested and crucified.
The preaching of Jesus often appears to fail. People refuse to hear. Others don’t take it seriously. Still others hear, but then make other things a priority. Its not the Parable of the Soils, get that out of your head first thing. Its not about you. Its about Jesus for you. This parable is the Parable of the Sower. It is about the Seed. About the Word. And this parable preaches to us the Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”
First of all the Sabbath Day is not today. Technically its Saturday. So why are we here today and not yesterday? The short answer is that the Sabbath, like all the ceremonial and civil laws of Israel, came to an end when Jesus fulfilled them in His life, death, and resurrection. He rested in the tomb on the Saturday after His crucifixion and so fulfilled the Sabbath rest for you. And the disciples of Jesus began meeting on this day - the first day of the week, right away in the Gospels and Acts - not to keep an old law but to live in the new creation, the day of resurrection which follows the Sabbath. Every Sunday is a mini-Easter.
Like circumcision and the restriction of meats and the sacrifice of animals, the Sabbath Day was part of the ceremonial law that pointed forward to Christ. Now that the resurrection has come, we do not deal in shadows but in substance.
So the Sabbath Day as a regulation is done away with. But what was it for? What was the purpose of the Sabbath in the first place? It was there from the beginning, even before the Fall into sin, God rested on the Sabbath and set it apart as holy. In the Large Catechism we learn there is something greater than the day: the deeper reality of the commandment is in the power of the Word of God. Its not the day that is holy, but the Word. The Word of God is the holy thing and it makes not only this day, but all things holy.
So keeping the Sabbath Day holy is not only to come to church, but to gladly hear and learn the Word of Christ read and preached. In other words you can come to church every day of your life, but never actually obey the Third Commandment. You keep your heart as stone, refusing to let the Word come in and do its work, calling you to repentance and faith, and producing the fruits of faith, that is, good works done in love for the sake of your neighbor.
The parable reveals to us three enemies, three things that will keep us from being faithful and fruitful to the end. The first is the devil, who like a bird pecking at seeds snatches the Word away quickly so that people do not pay it any attention. This is like the seed on the path. The Word goes in one ear and out the other. You hear the Word as you sit in the pew, but then leave it there as you walk out the door and into your daily vocations.
We expect the devil to come with horns and a tail, but you are more likely to encounter him in laziness and boredom; or the classroom of a government school, elementary or college, shaping the minds of students so that they regard Christianity as moralism or superstition. It is not enough to hear it. “If the Word merely lies on the surface of the heart, so to speak, and does not penetrate deeper, Satan comes [in any manner of ways] and rips the Word out of the heart. As a result, the person does not believe and is not saved” (Walther, God Grant It, p212).
And if someone would believe, then the time of testing comes. “The sun shines brightly and rainfall is sparse, the green plants begin to dry up as quickly as they shot up. Their roots had not descended far enough to secure for them in adequate supply of moisture” (ibid, p214). In other words, life gets difficult, and the joy and eagerness once had over Christ and His Word, fades away and they are ultimately lost.
Again, this happens in so many ways. Perhaps its old temptations and sins become too alluring. Perhaps its association with unbelievers and a hostile world. Maybe its hanging around with other so-called Christians who lead unchristian lives. Why do half of the children baptized never make it to confirmation? And of those confirmed why do half of them fall away before the end of college? Who can count all the ways in which people lose faith?
But get past all of that and life gets not just difficult, but busy. The cares, riches, and pleasures of life occupy your thoughts. You will tend seriously to Christianity later. First there is a career to be built, a family to be raised, health and leisure and myriad of problems and distractions the world throws your way. “Even if the heart is a field well cultivated by the Word, it retains something of its old, evil thoughts and desires, and the weed of sin can continue to grow. Even the best and most experienced Christian must be diligent, or it will not be long before the weed of sin overgrows the crop of the Word and chokes it” (ibid, p216). Little by little, these two weeds, cares of this world and riches, choke out the Word and faith slips away, and soon your life before God becomes increasingly like your relationship with a distant relative.
Jesus says that the one who endures is the one who keeps the Word in his heart. If you look at how that term “keep” is used in the Bible you will find it is where something is grabbed hold of and bound up tightly; to retain. It is used earlier by St Luke to describe the crowds who were looking for Jesus and came to him and tried to keep Him from leaving them (4:42). Or consider how St Paul uses the word keep as he writes to the Christians in Corinth or Thessalonika:
I commend you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly/keep to the traditions just as I passed them on to you (1 Cor 11:2) and he goes on to instruct them to hold fast to Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.
Or elsewhere, I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast/keep the Word I preached to you - unless you believed in vain (1 Cor 15:2).
And again, Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise preaching, but test everything; hold fast/keep, what is good. Abstain from every form of evil (1 Thess 5:19-22).
And to the Hebrews: Let us hold fast/keep the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful (Heb 10:23).
Keep. Κατεχϖ. Related to our word, catechesis.
Now think about what occupies your heart. What grabs hold of your mind? What is retained in your thoughts? You pursue love, you seek to advance in your work, you carefully plan for your retirement or your children’s college fund. You lie awake tossing and turning as you consider the angry words someone said, how you would like things to be different, and mad dreams of murder or death even take over some of your thoughts.
You can recite sports statistics or political polling, you carefully track the temperature, your up on all the latest Netflix shows, you hit refresh again and again to see the latest email or Facebook feed, but your mind wanders before the Pastor is done announcing the lesson.
What would happen if you took the Word of God seriously? This is not about information. You can and should carefully learn the Scriptures. But when Jesus tells you to hear the Word of God and keep it, to hold it fast, to keep it close to your heart, He is not talking about great feats of memory or scholarship.
The Word of God is at its core the message of Law and Gospel. The Word of the Lord teaches us not only about God, but about who we are: human beings created by God, out of love, but now fallen. Mortal, selfish, corrupt we are, and we cannot educate or advance in the way of virtue such that we can rescue ourselves. The world is a wonderful, horrible, confusing, sorrowful, beautiful, deadly place. Only this truth - that we and the world are made by God, but everything had gone drastically wrong - can make sense of the beauty and misery we often see side by side. We don’t know why certain soils don’t produce. We don’t know why some and not others. Thanks be to God any are saved at all! He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
You, beloved are given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. It is written, Your hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:2). The mystery of Christ is that He is the kingdom of God enfleshed in the humanity of Man. He brings the reign and rule of the kingdom down in His persona and work, at great personal risk to Himself. Jesus doesn’t identify who the Sower is, maybe because He identifies Himself so closely with the Seed, the Word, which is so extravagantly and graciously scattered. For Christ is the Seed which fell into the earth and died. He was driven into wilderness, the beaten path, in order to be tempted by Satan. He relied on the sufficiency of the Word alone, showing Himself to be a faithful catechumen, a true hearer and doer of the Word. He had proper contempt for the allurements and luxuries of this world. And upon the Cross He endured the thorns for you. He is the Seed of the Word who bore the punishment and wrath saved up for you. And He bore them with patience. He is the enemy of Satan, the flesh, and the world, and His only weapon, by which He conquers, is the weakness of His Word.
He went forth from the Father and did not return to Him empty, but accomplished the purpose for which He was sent. For the joy set before Him He endured the Cross. To bestow upon you the peace of His Father He spent Himself in death on your behalf.
And this Word of Christ, read and preached, is sharper than any two edged sword. It slices and dices, cutting between joint and sinew, bone and marrow, cutting you to the core, uprooting and cutting out all the weeds of your sin and cares for this world. His Law discerning the sinful thoughts and evil intentions of your heart, bringing you to repentance. And the Word is living and active. It makes good soil out of bad. He makes righteous people out of unrighteous.
Do not become secure. Do not only hear God’s Word, but seek to understand it and let it penetrate into your heart. Lay a deep foundation in true, earnest, and daily repentance and faith that you may not dry up and wither in the heat of temptation. The Word of Christ shall not return to Him void. It accomplishes His purposes. He shall cause it to sprout and grow, producing the fruits of good works done in love, which He prepares in advance for you.
Dear people loved by God, Christ is your Sabbath rest. His Word alone gives comfort to your terrified and stricken conscience. Hear it and hold it fast for your eternal salvation. And come, receive the pledge and token of His honest and good heart toward you, His Body and Blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins, for the strengthening of your faith toward Him and fervent love toward one another.
In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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