Expository Sermon on Matthew 13
for the baptism of Courtney Van Hise
and the dedication of Sofia Velasco
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 5/22/2021
©2021 by Maylan Schurch
To listen to the service, which starts with the introduction of baptismal candidate Courtney, click the link just below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsz7Zmd8Zmo
Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13.
As I mentioned earlier, two daughters are being dedicated to the Lord today. At the end of the sermon, Sofia Velasco’s parents will bring her forward for dedication. And we’ve just seen how Courtney Van Hise has put her faith into action by following Jesus’ own example and being baptized. (By the way, if any of the rest of you hasn’t been baptized by immersion, talk to me afterward about it, and we’ll work toward your own baptismal day.)
As I also mentioned, Jesus’ Parable of the Sower was one of the passages Courtney suggested. So this morning we’re going to listen as Jesus Himself teaches these two daughters and their families what’s really important about their spiritual lives.
Matthew 13:1 [NKJV]: On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. And great multitudes were gathered together to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
And of course in that huge crowd were many daughters. Some of them were as young as Sophia, some of them as young as Courtney, some of them as young as Melinda, and some of them as young as Melinda’s mother Barb.
And as Jesus spoke, the women must have been taking at least as much interest in His farming story as the men were. It’s a story about planting seed – and while in those days it was the men who were mostly the seed-sowers, it was the women – the daughters – who worked with the seeds to make them edible. The women turned millstones which ground the wheat into flour. The women baked that flour into what was probably something like pita bread.
And Jesus knew that everyone listening to Him, both sons and daughters of any age, needed to hear some very important lessons. So I would suggest that you and I pretend we are among that multitude listening to Him. Because thanks to Matthew’s faithful reporting, we can hear these life-changing words as well.
Verse 3: Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow.
Back in those days, the sower had a large bag of seed slung over his shoulder, and he would reach into that bag and fling the seed every which way.
And right now, before we go any further, we need to find out where you and I are in this parable. You and I are not the sower, you and I are not the seed. The truth is that you and I are the dirt. We are the soil.
And that is exactly what we were to start with, of course. Genesis 2:7 says so. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
Just outside that window over there, just beyond the baptistery, is dirt. But you and I are “enhanced dirt,” “enhanced soil.” Through God’s miraculous power, we are Courtney, we are Sophia, we are Miguel and Clarissa, we are Melinda and Milton and Barb.
But in this parable, we are still soil. So since this parable is talking about us, we need to listen carefully.
In this story I can find three pieces of advice Jesus gives us. Let’s look at them, one by one. And as we do this, we’re going to move back and forth from the parable to Jesus’ explanation of it, which happens later in this same chapter.
Verses 3 – 4: Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
Now let’s jump down to where Jesus explains this to his disciples.
Verses 18 – 19: “Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.
So here comes the seed, flying through the air, and it lands on the dirt. But the dirt is trampled down, because it’s “wayside” dirt or “path” dirt. It’s so compressed that the seed just bounces off and lies there on the surface, and the wicked one (the devil) hurries over and snatches it away so it can’t take root.
When I read this parable as a kid, I would say, “That’s too bad about the seed that fell by the wayside. But what could the soil do about this? It’s trampled down. It can’t help itself.”
We’ve got to keep in mind that even though you and I were originally dirt too, we are enhanced dirt. We are soil that our loving Creator formed into flesh and blood and life. So there’s something we can do that the original dirt cannot.
If you’re taking sermon notes, here comes Sermon Point One. So what can we do to make sure that seed of God’s word gets treated better when it comes to us?
Cultivate your trampled soil.
Back on the South Dakota farm where I grew up, dad had a heavy iron cultivator which he attached to the back of the tractor. Once he had plowed the soil, he dragged that cultivator over it, around and around, and it broke up the clods and made everything soft and easy so the seed could take root.
If you’re like me, there are parts of your life that are really trampled, really beaten down by a lot of people and a lot of ideas. This week I heard about a man who really enjoyed listening to a famous and controversial political commentator. His wife said that he “worshiped” that commentator.
What that probably meant was that every time this commentator’s program came on, this man was there to listen, allowing the commentator’s ideas and emotion to trample on the man’s ability to see both sides of complicated issues.
We can be trampled down in other ways as well. Fortunately, the very first verse of the very first Psalm gives us permission not to feel we have to hang around people or ideas which can damage us spiritually:
“Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;” This doesn’t mean we need to be hermits, but it does mean that we’ll be “blessed” (“happy”) if we avoid being influenced by such attitudes.
And if we think we’ve been affected—trampled down—by these and any other kind of bad attitude, we can cultivate our soil by allowing the Holy Spirit to be the “cultivator.” In Ezekiel 36:26 and 27, God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Ezekiel 36:26 – 27)
And now Jesus shows us something else that can happen to the seed of God’s Word.
Verses 5 – 6: Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.
So here is soil that isn’t very deep. Let’s see how Jesus explains this part of the parable.
Verses 20 – 21: But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.
And the reason this soil doesn’t help the seed to develop roots is because of all those stones. That brings up Sermon Point Two:
Cultivate your trampled soil—and dislodge its stones.
Back in South Dakota, and probably all over the croplands of the Great Plains, you can look in the corners of some of the fields and find piles of rocks. That’s because before a farmer could plant crops in that field, he often had to remove the rocks. Otherwise he would damage his plow every time he tried to lay down a furrow.
You got rid of the rocks with a “rock picker,” an implement you pulled with horses (and later tractors). The more modern rock pickers have a flat blade that goes into the ground, and it scrapes up the rocks, and the rocks and the dirt are passed up along a rotating screen, and the dirt is shaken out through the screen back onto the ground, and the rocks end up in a box at the back of the rock picker.
When it’s full, you drive over to where you want the rocks, and dump them. And now the farmer can sink his plow into the soil and plow straight furrows without breaking the plow.
So, what are some of the stones which could show up in our lives which might prevent God’s Word from taking root? I think one of the biggest stones is the time we spend on activities which could be used for better purposes. Maybe our phones could become stones! Maybe online games could become stones.
We have to do our own “stone inventories,” of course, but anything in my life that makes me impatient about spending time with God’s Word has got to be looked at very seriously. Maybe it would be a good idea to sit down with a notebook and ask God to reveal the stones in your life, and to help you bring things into balance.
Cultivate your trampled soil—and dislodge its stones. Now let’s look at Jesus’ third teaching in this parable which Courtney chose for us this morning.
Verse 7: And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
So these thorns are actually worse than those stones. The stones just sit there and take up space which could be filled with more of the cultivated soil. But the thorns are active – they attack.
Once again, let’s go down to verse 22 to see how Jesus applies this part of the parable.
Verse 22: Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.
Do you see that word “cares”? It’s the Greek word merimna, and it means “worry.” That’s the exact same Greek word which is used over in 1 Peter 5:7, which says, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” The verb form of that word is what Jesus uses in Matthew 6:25. There He says, ““Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
And Jesus said there’s another “thorn” which can attack us.
Verse 22: Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t simply say that “riches” can attack and choke us – it’s the “deceitfulness of riches.” Nobody on this planet will ever be richer than the people who will welcome Jesus as He arrives in the clouds at the Second Coming, because they will go to live in a city whose streets are made of gold.
But the people who make it to heaven are the ones who haven’t been deceived by wealth. They have read Bible verses like Deuteronomy 8:18: “And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth . . .”
The Parable of the Sower isn’t the only time Jesus talked about the dangers of money-love. In Matthew 6:24 He said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Mammon was the Aramaic word for “riches” or “money.”)
Paul talks about the deceitfulness of riches when he says in 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
That’s the deceitfulness of riches, right there. If you’re not deceived about riches, you calmly tell yourself, “I’m not going to be obsessed about how much money I have, because in heaven, gold is used not for payment but for pavement.”
So here comes Sermon Point Three. What is Jesus’ third lesson for us daughters and sons?
Cultivate your trampled soil, dislodge its stones, and be wary of worry and wealth.
Worry and wealth often go together, don’t they? We tend to worry if we don’t have a lot of wealth, but we might worry even more if we do have a lot of wealth.
One way to evaporate your worry about wealth is to follow God’s guidance in using it. For decades, I have made it a point to be very faithful to the Lord in my tithes and offerings. And He has been so faithful to me that now I honestly do not worry about money. And I know other people who are just as tranquil for the very same reason.
So what’s the bottom line of this parable? Jesus tells us about what happens when the “enhanced soil” of our lives allow His Word to change us:
Verses 8 – 9: But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
What is that “crop”? Since the seed is the Word of God, the crop is whatever the Word of God produces when it’s allowed to grow. The Bible has a lot to say about what God’s Word can do for us. Here are just a couple of examples:
Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.”
Romans 15:4: “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”
Psalm 119:9: “How can a young man cleanse his way? [Or, How can a young daughter cleanse her way?] By taking heed according to Your word.”
Are you interested in becoming a better grade of “enhanced soil” this week? I know that I am. Would you like to commit following what Jesus taught us this morning? Let me see your hands if that’s what you would like.