The Powerful Seed of God's Word

[Below is the message from both of today's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You also will find live stream video of both services. I hope you find it helpful. Have a good week!]

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I want to begin with two words of promise, of gospel, for you.

First, Romans 8:1: “...there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…”

Second, Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If, by the power of God’s Word, given to you by the Holy Spirit in Scriptures and in Holy Baptism and in Holy Communion, you trust that Jesus, by His death and resurrection, has conquered sin and death for you, you are saved for life with God that never ends.

As the old hymn puts it, “The strife o’er, the battle done!”

You belong to Jesus!

I begin this way because I want to inoculate you against the second-guessing of your salvation that so many preachers, including this one, may have planted in your minds over the years in our preaching on today’s gospel lesson. In fact, I became so convicted about this that last night, I deleted all the sermons I’ve preached on this text from my blog. (I think I got them all.)

So, I want you to know that if you believe in Jesus, you can know that you have been saved–justified–by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. You need not doubt that!

We will then take great care in considering the parable in our gospel lesson today because our familiarity with it may prevent us from understanding it and because the parable deserves careful consideration.

The parable Jesus that teaches there, along with the explanation of it that He offers privately to us disciples, is familiar. Matthew says that Jesus tells the parable not in “the house,” that is the Church. Instead, He goes out by the lake and climbs into a boat in order to preach to the crowds surrounding Jesus. This is key to understanding the parable.

The crowds to whom Jesus goes to teach aren’t following Him out of conviction. They do so from curiosity or in the hope of getting something out of Jesus. They want blessings without discipleship; salvation without repentance; assurance without faith. They want to keep their options open in case some other savior comes along with a better offer.

Most in the crowds will hear Jesus’ story, yawn, and move on.

In fact, the truth that may shock you is that Jesus intends precisely this reaction from those who refuse to listen or believe in Him. And while Jesus teaches the parables with the desire that some would have their curiosity piqued and might come to repent and believe in Him, He doesn’t teach them directly, but obliquely, symbolically, in this parable. That’s because, as He puts it elsewhere, Jesus doesn’t throw pearls to pigs. Those who do not want to hear Jesus usually won’t.

Later though, Jesus freely explains the parable to the Church, to the disciples, to those in whom His Word creates a desire to hear His saving Word.

In Jesus’ parable, there is a Sower. This is Jesus Himself or any disciple who seeks to share His Word–the seeds of life in God–with others.

And the soil, the dirt? That’s me and you.

Now, our Old Testament lesson for today, from Isaiah, reminds us of the power of God’s Word: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

God’s Word always does what it sets out to do. There are no exceptions.

According to Genesis, God unleashed His Word on chaos and brought life into being. In New Testament days, Jesus, God the Son, the Word of God, gave His life as the sinless sacrifice for our sin and rose from the dead so that He could by His crucifixion and resurrection, speak eternal life into all who repent and believe in Him, into you and me.

Now, remember that God speaks two words to us, as you know:

His law that convicts and condemns sinners and

His Gospel about Jesus that sets sinners free of condemnation now and forever.

Keep that in the back of your mind.

In the parable, a sower liberally scatters seeds on the dirt.

Some seeds fall on the path and are immediately eaten by birds. Jesus later explains that the birds represent Satan.

Many people have never heard the good news of new and everlasting life through Jesus because Satan, still desperately at work in our world, sweeps it away from them before they ever have the chance to have the gospel about Jesus grow into faith within them.

And I have seen this so many times. So many times, I’ve been with people who were spiritually-disconnected, who did not know Jesus Christ. They’ve known I was a Christian and a preacher and they ask me what the Christian faith is about. And just as I’ve been ready to tell them about Jesus, something happens. A phone rings. A child screams. Some distraction comes along. When that has happened, it was never an accident. Satan is always trying to distract unbelievers from hearing the Word of God that might save them from sin and death.

This is why we need to be consistent and persistent–all of us, clergy and laity–in sharing the gospel and scattering its seed everywhere.

Every time we scatter that seed, it may not grow. But we need to keep on spreading the good news of Jesus because people need Jesus, don’t they? They need Jesus for everlasting life!

And Satan is our implacable enemy.

Some seeds fall onto rocky ground. Jesus says this pictures those who receive His Word and initially believe, but when they go through tough times or opposition to their faith, they leave Jesus and His gospel behind. They figure this whole gospel about Jesus is a made-up thing because it doesn’t prevent the hard realities of this world from falling onto them. But, in fact, the gospel gives us the power to face life’s hard realities: to face grief, to face death in the certainty that beyond grief and death, all who believe in Jesus will live with Him in His perfect kingdom forever.

Some seeds fall onto thorns. This describes people who initially receive the Gospel Word with faith but then let this life’s distractions or wealth lead them away from life with God.

Finally, Jesus says, some seeds fall on good ground. Some people receive the Gospel, the good news of how Jesus, God in the flesh, died for their sins and brings forgiveness and everlasting life with God to all who trust in Him. They receive the gift of faith. God lives in them, Jesus says, and through them, God blesses not only them, but all the people whose lives they touch. He even uses them to spread the seeds of His gospel to family members, friends, and others.

Now, when we hear that parable, the first thing we’re likely to think is, “I hope I’m good soil. I don’t want damnation and hell. I want to be with God forever. I hope I have a saving faith.”

And preachers, like me, God forgive me, have even preached sermons on this text in which they–and I–end the sermon by saying, “Be good soil.”

Now, friends, let me ask you a question: Can soil change itself?

The answer is, No!

So, why does Jesus tell this parable?

The first disciples wonder the same thing.

In the verses that fall in Matthew’s gospel between the two blocks of verses in today’s lesson, Jesus answers that question: Why does He tell these parables?

Jesus quotes words spoken by God to the prophet Isaiah back in the eighth century BC, when He first called Isaiah to be a prophet.

God tells Isaiah that He’s calling Isaiah to preach His Word, to call people to turn from sin and to trust in God, and then He tells Isaiah that most people to whom he gives God’s message, the vast majority of Isaiah’s hearers, will never repent and never believe. “Isaiah,” God effectively says, “I’m calling you to be a prophet and you are going to be an abject failure!”

Now, as I approach the end of my time as a full-time pastor, I sometimes wonder, “What have I accomplished in the past forty years?” I have to tell you that when I think about that question, I haven’t been able to even list the first accomplishment.

But the reason for that is simple. I wasn’t called to accomplish great ends. I was called to preach the Word of God, in season and out of season, to scatter the seeds of the Gospel and leave the results to God.

Churches, as well as pastors, get hung up on all sorts of programs and activities rather than focusing on its one mission: making disciples by sharing the Word of God.

And so, God tells Isaiah at the beginning of His ministry as a prophet to proclaim His Word and to know that most people will reject the Word he preaches.

God says to His unwelcoming people through Isaiah (and Jesus quotes these words in that section between the two blocks of Scripture that make up our gospel lesson): “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” (Matthew 13:14-15; Isaiah 6:10-11, LXX)

During his ministry, Isaiah would, in words we cherish in the Church today, often call people to repent and believe in God, to turn to the God we all now know in Jesus and live with God forever. Some did so. Most didn’t.

Listen: The only thing that can turn exposed, rocky, thorn-infested soil–the only thing that can turn the hard-hearted, the self-obsessed and the worldly, the worried and the self-satisfied–into good soil, into sinners receptive to the grace of God given in Jesus Christ that makes us saints…the only thing that can make us good soil is the Word of God.

You can’t make yourself good soil.

But God’s Word can and does!

Your being good soil and your salvation doesn’t depend on you. It depends wholly and completely on the Word of God that you receive from outside yourself.

If, friend, you believe in Jesus, you know that God’s Word has made you good soil, that God is living in you even when you don’t perceive Him, and that He is doing good, God-honoring things through your life.

The miracle of new and everlasting life belongs to you because Word and Sacrament empower you to say, “I believe Jesus is my God and Savior!”

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus told parables to bad soil in the hope that some might turn to Him and live, but also to speak a condemning Word, a Word of Law, to those who refused to believe.

God’s Word never returns empty!

His Word of Law condemns the unrepentant.

And His Word of Gospel gives everlasting life to those who receive it with faith!

Friends, by the power of the Gospel Word, I get to tell you again this morning what I love to tell you, that in Jesus Christ, your sin is forgiven and you have life with God that never ends. It belongs to you.

Certain of this truth, I urge you to scatter the gospel liberally and indiscriminately and trust Jesus and the Holy Spirit to do with that seed what He wills.

Amen

In Christ, You ARE Salt and Light

[This message was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 5:13-20

The God we know in Jesus Christ speaks a powerful Word. 

When God spoke over ancient chaos, saying things like, “Let there be light,” “Let the land produce vegetation” and “living creatures” on land and in the sea, He brought all the physical worlds we have ever seen or will ever see into being. 

When God speaks over the waters of Holy Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He declares us part of His new creation, His children. 

At Jesus’ transfiguration, the Father said to Peter, James, and John--and us--”This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5) 

The Father says this because His Word has power and when we listen to it, it transforms us. "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ." (Romans 10:17)

That’s why God tells us in Isaiah: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

In Matthew 5:13-16, the first four verses of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus, the Word of God, God the Son, makes two powerful declarative statements. He tells us, “You are salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” 

In making these declarations, Jesus is not saying that we should be salt and light, or we have to be salt and light, or we need to become salt and light. 

If, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit-powered Word given to us in the Scriptures and in Baptism and Communion, we can say, “We believe in God the Father...We believe in God the Son...We believe in God the Holy Spirit,” we are salt and light. 

Even on those days when our faith seems weak. 

Even on those days when we wonder where God is and whether He cares. 

Even on those days when we're not "feeling it."

God’s Word always accomplishes what God desires, always achieves the purpose for which He sends it. And His Word says that disciples are salt and light.

But what does it mean to be salt and light?

Take a look at verse 13. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

From ancient times, the Jewish rabbis have associated salt with wisdom. True wisdom, you know, always comes from God (Proverbs 2:6). And, Paul says that even the foolishness of God (if God could be foolish) is wiser than the smart-alecky cynicism that passes for wisdom in our world (1 Corinthians 1:25). The ultimate wisdom that God reveals to a human race bent on “being like God” sounds foolish--insane--to the world. This wisdom says that life, everlasting life, as we are meant to live it begins with a cross and only culminates in a resurrection of those who have trusted in Jesus. 

As Paul puts it elsewhere: “...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) 

Jesus says that you and I--He uses the plural form of you, roughly equivalent to "y'all," meaning all baptized believers--are the wisdom of God for a world gone foolish, born foolish, from sin and death. 

We are the salt of the earth, God’s ultimate wisdom staring the world in the face. Jesus has spoken His saving Word to us. His Holy Spirit has empowered us to believe the good news of new life for all who repent and believe in Him. We are the salt of the earth.

But what if salt loses its saltiness? We know that sodium chloride can’t lose its salty quality. Salt only loses its salty influence if it becomes diluted. 

Our saltiness as disciples is diminished when we allow it to be diluted in us. 

When Christians say things like, “The Bible is good, but I don’t think God knew as much back then as we do now,” they’re trading in God’s wisdom for human wisdom, trading in Jesus for the world. 

When we hear Christians utter blasphemies like, “I think Jesus is a Republican” or “I think Jesus is a Democrat,” their saltiness is diluted and they’re at risk, as Jesus says, “no longer [being] good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” Whenever we try to add our finite, imperfect, short-sighted “wisdom” (some people call it common sense), for God’s wisdom, we lose our saltiness. 

We become faithless. 

We dilute the power of God’s wisdom over our lives and the power of our witness for Jesus to others in our world. 

In fact, where Jesus says in our translation, “loses it saltiness,” the word it translates in the Greek in which Matthew wrote--μωρανθῇ, from which we get the word moron--literally means become foolish. 

We lose our saltiness when we foolishly dilute the truth of the Gospel and of the Word of the Bible. 

We avoid becoming foolish by remaining in close daily contact with the God Who has brought us to faith in Jesus and has declared us His own. 

But listen: Jesus makes us salt of the earth so that we have life with God that never ends through faith in Jesus, for sure. But He also makes us salt of the earth so that we can season the whole world with the truth of the Gospel, the ultimate wisdom of God.

Jesus carries this theme on in His next declarative Word for believers. Verse 14: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Wait a minute, we might think, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the “light of the world”? Yes, Jesus is “the true light that gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). 

To speak of Jesus as the light of the world is to speak of the God of  blazing perfection, Who gives illumination and direction to those who follow Him, Who burns away the sin and impurities that can mar our relationships with God and others. 

This Light, Jesus, is living in us, guiding us, making us new, warming us in the glow of God’s tender love for us. 

In the Light of Jesus, His Word, whether we consider it together as we are now or in our own daily quiet times we God, “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 

Jesus tells us today that we need to keep the fires of His light stoked within us by remaining connected to Him and His Church.

At the end of today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says something that would be disturbing if He hadn’t already declared us to be His salt and light. 

“For I tell you,” He says, “that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  

As Christ's Word enables you to believe in Him, your righteousness does exceed that of the Pharisees and all the other fussy, self-righteous, chest-thumping, judgmental, holier than thou religionists you can name. 

Why? 

Because Jesus has declared you to be His salt of the earth and His light in the world. 

And because, in daily repentance and renewal, in regular worship with God’s people, and regular attention to His Word, You turn again and again back to the One true God we know in Jesus Christ lives in you. 

The tastelessness of sin and death are gone. 

So are their darkness or their ability to make us be afraid or to worry. 

You can say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

That’s what it means to be salt of the earth and the light of the world. 

This is the powerful Word Jesus speaks to you today  and you can believe it. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Holy Spirit, Scream Into My Heart!

I’m a bit behind on the Bible readings for my daily quiet time with God. I haven’t been keeping up with the assigned readings of the ‘5 by 5 Bible Reading Plan’ produced by Navigators. So, since today and tomorrow are appointed as days for reflection, with no assigned readings, I’ve decided to read two chapters, rather than the usual one, for today. This was important to me because I didn’t want to miss out on reading 1 Peter, one of the important and often overlooked gems among the books of the Bible. That’s wonderful because God showed me something I hadn’t really noticed before in the first two chapters of this book!

Look: “...Now that by your obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves and have come to have a sincere love for other believers, love one another earnestly with all your heart. For through the living and eternal word of God you have been born again as the children of a parent who is immortal, not mortal.” (1 Peter 1:22-23, Good News Translation)

The apostle Peter wrote the letter we call 1 Peter to the largely Gentile churches in Asia Minor, an area we now call Turkey. The churches there were facing some kind of rejection, although recent scholarship tends to think it was more like what we face in the United States: marginalization, not overt persecution.

Peter’s basic message in the letter is, “Hang in there, Christians! By your faith in Jesus, you are reposing your trust in God the Father, and no matter what happens to you, you belong to God and can be God’s credible spokespeople for the good news of new life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus as you remain faithful to Him.”

In the two verses of 1 Peter, chapter 1, cited here, Peter says, first of all: “Now that by your obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves…”

Peter isn’t here talking about some moral or ritual law that the first-century Christians obeyed to be purified. The “truth” to which he refers is mentioned in 1 Peter 1:21: “Through [Jesus] you believe in God, who raised him from death and gave him glory; and so your faith and hope are fixed on God.”

The Christians of Asia Minor, Peter is saying, were purged of sin and its consequences--death, darkness, futility--by their faith in Jesus. To have faith in Jesus is to obey God. It’s also to know God and to have life with God. Jesus says, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29, New International Version)

The obedience of faith in Christ ushers into the eternal presence of God. Why? Because, “The Son is the image of the invisible God...in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him...He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17, New International Version) Jesus explains things more succinctly in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.” (New International Version)

(Peter, himself a Jew, points out elsewhere in chapter 1, that Jesus is precisely who the Old Testament prophets had been looking for.)

To have faith in Jesus will cause people to love the Church, Peter says in the next line of the verses above: “...have come to have a sincere love for other believers, love one another earnestly with all your heart.” Believers in Christ--the Church--are called to love one another because we are all sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus. We have experienced the same love of God and are called to live it out together.

When the world marginalizes us or deems the gospel (the good news) too good to be true, or impractical, or difficult to accept, we encourage one another.

When our own faith is flagging or we fall into sin, the Church is there to call us to repentance and new life through Jesus.

Besides all that and most importantly maybe, the Church is Christ’s body in the world. To be contemptuous of the Church is to be contemptuous of God Himself. Colossians 1:18: ‘[Christ] is the head of the body, the church…”

But, if we’re tempted to think that all this obedience and faith and love he commends in these verses are our achievements, Peter reminds us of the truth: “For through the living and eternal word of God you have been born again as the children of a parent who is immortal, not mortal.”

I am given new life--born again--not when I decide to be obedient, faithful, and loving. If I could decide to be obedient, faithful, or loving, Jesus would not have needed to die on the cross.

But Jesus did need to die on the cross because I’m a big fat clump of sinful and unredeemed and dead humanity without Him. The “eternal word of God,” the word about Jesus to be found in the Law and the Prophets in the Old Testament, the gospels in the New Testament, and all the rest of the Bible, is spoken to me, in words and in the sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) and, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who composes the Word and makes it possible for others to speak it to us--whether in simple conversation, the reading of the Word, the preaching of the Word, the imposition on us of water enlivened by God’s Word, bread and wine made to also be the body and blood of Jesus by this same Word, or by other means--brings us to never-ending life with God. By this Word, I am made the child of an immortal parent, the God revealed to all people in Jesus!

Listen: Peter’s words tell me that the main business I need to attend to in my daily life, whatever I’m doing and whether what I’m doing is deemed by the world to be “holy” or “churchy” or not, is to keep coming back to God’s Word.

When I turn to God’s Word, to Jesus, God the Holy Spirit rolls up His sleeves and goes to work on me. He pries open my will and lets Jesus live in there to change me from the inside out--often little by little and with frequent setbacks and near evictions of the Savior because I’m a great sinner who, despite all of God’s love, still want my way when it comes to...everything.

But the Word is powerful. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) God’s Word does what it sets out to do: “My word is like the snow and the rain that come down from the sky to water the earth. They make the crops grow and provide seed for planting and food to eat. So also will be the word that I speak—it will not fail to do what I plan for it; it will do everything I send it to do.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

And the truth is that Jesus, God the Son, is the Word that was spoken to primordial chaos to bring life into being (Genesis 1-2).

This is how the apostle John identifies Jesus:, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth...from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” (John 1:1-3, 14, 16-18)

The incessant, consistent, unwavering, tenacious, loving, powerful Word of God in Jesus comes to us as it once did to the chaos on the first day of creation and creates us anew.

That happens every time His Word comes to me. He creates within me faith, obedience, and love. When I, weak, finite, mortal, and sinful, hear this Word again, I am born again, just as I was at my Baptism, all over again.

It’s all Jesus, not me. Thank God!

Respond: Today Father, as I face challenges, doubts, decisions, joys, temptations, or marginalization, when I’m tempted to give my opinion rather than speaking Your Word, or live out of my purported wisdom rather than Your truth,  cause the Holy Spirit to scream into my heart, “Turn to Christ! Turn to Christ! Turn to the saving Word!” In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]