Are You Listening?

Man, how are we doing today? Good, good. I’m super excited to be here with you all, excited for what God is up to in the life of our church. This is a, man, it’s just a really cool season of God’s activity here and His work. And, you know, I fully believe that God is doing something really unique and really special in our community and here at Sauldam Baptist Church. And I’m personally deeply eager to pursue Him in that.

As we begin 2024 and moving into whatever season God has for us, recently our church made two key investments into what I would say the kingdom. These are kingdom investments. Now, the first one was back with Lottie Moon, the Christmas offering. The last update that everybody got publicly was that we had raised $2,300. However, you see what we actually raised was $3,200. So that’s awesome. Man, our goal as a church was $1,500. So we doubled that just with our giving. And something that I think is super cool is that we also budgeted $1,500 out of our budget to give to that. So our church’s actual total contribution to Lottie Moon is $4,700. So I am super excited about that. Man, as a former Lottie Moon-supported overseas worker, I just want to say thank you. Because there’s a lot of folks around the world that now, because of our giving, are able to go a little bit further. And that’s a really cool thing. So that’s the first one.

The second one was back on December 31st. I call this a kingdom investment as well. We have another picture to pop up in front of you. We spent a time of prayer at the end of our service just humbling ourselves before the Lord. Some of us even physically kneeling here at the front asking God, God, would You please meet with me more deeply? Would You please move here at our church more powerfully? And that, that is an investment into the kingdom as well. Anytime we ask God to work inside of us, it always produces something outside of us as well. So I just want to say thank you for that. And we’re still feeling the positive effect of that. Not just in the good vibes we’re giving each other, but I think in the spiritual fruit that that Sunday is bearing.

So I want to actually invite everybody to something. Some of y’all know this. Most of y’all don’t. But on Sunday mornings at 9:30, I’ve been getting little groups of folks praying in the office. I’m not teaching on prayer. We’re not talking about prayer. What we’re doing is we’re sitting down and we’re praying. And we’re just praying for a few minutes, asking the Lord to bless our morning, asking Him to get a hold of whatever I’ve got to prepare for you guys. And that’s been a really special, warm, good time. And I just want to invite everybody to that. So here’s the deal. I’ve got a couple sign-up sheets on the back tables to invite you or for you to sign up. It says the boiler room sign-up list.

Anybody heard the name Charles Spurgeon? So you guys know how big of a church that guy pastored? He was like the first megachurch pastor back in the 1800s. His church in downtown London had like 15,000 people. And he also didn’t use a mic. I’ve got no idea. No idea how that man communicated because my voice naturally does not carry to that AV booth. So Spurgeon was made of something different in a lot of different ways. But his church of 15,000 members, he said, was vibrant not because of his preaching or because of their evangelistic excellence, but because they had a ministry called the boiler room every Sunday morning where 3,000 people gathered to pray for the services and to pray through the services as well. Now, if the secret of Spurgeon’s success was that that church did not just pray but was a praying church, then that means for us moving forward, we don’t need to just pray. We need to be a praying church. So that’s called the boiler room. I want to invite everybody to participate in that. So there’s a couple sign-up lists on the back tables, like I said. If you’re interested in praying with me and a few other folks, just put your name on that and we’ll make it happen.

So I want to kind of jump into our content today by recapping the past few weeks. We are in a series called The King and His Kingdom. And we are absolutely sprinting through the Gospel of Mark. By the way, I this morning am Preaching out of my CSP Scripture notebook, a little journal thing. We have some more of these on the back table. What’s really cool about this is that you’ve got Scripture on one side and you’ve got lines on the other. And if you want to take notes while I’m preaching, if you want to pass notes to somebody beside you, you know, you could do that and it’d be totally fine. But this is something you’re taking home with you, okay? So I’ve got them on the back table for you.

And we’re going through the Gospel of Mark and we are looking at the kingdom of God. Now, I defined the kingdom of God a few weeks ago as the King’s power over the King’s people in the King’s place. So week one, we looked at the kingdom announced. And Jesus shows up on the scene after John the Baptist has been preparing people. And Jesus comes and He’s preaching the gospel of the kingdom saying, the time is at hand. Repent, turn and come to Me. I am doing something new.

And then last week, Al preached for us. And I would say preached kind of on kingdom faith. As a group of guys carry their paralyzed friend on top of a house, pour apart the ceiling and lowers this guy in front of Jesus. And Al made the great point that Jesus’ greatest desire was to meet our greatest need. And the King comes and He heals the guy. But what He really does is He forgives the man for his sin.

And this morning, we’re going to continue in our series on the kingdom by looking at a critical moment for Jesus. He’s laying the foundation and the groundwork for what His kingdom would be like. And this could be, I think, interesting and illuminating for us. And I want to acknowledge something right off the bat is that kingdom, things like that, that’s insider language. If you are new to faith or new to church, some of this might seem a little odd or abstract to you.

And here’s the deal. In this moment, we’re going to look at today, Jesus is talking to His followers. He’s not talking to the, all the people He’s trying to get into the kingdom. So here’s the deal. If you’re new to faith or new to Christianity, just kind of relax. That’s all right. Jesus has kind, good words for you later. Today is mostly focused on the folks that call Jesus Lord.

So how about this? I’m going to pray for us and we’re going to jump into our passage. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank You. God, thank You for another day that I get to call on You. Lord, another day that we get to gather before You. Lord, I come to these Sunday mornings so eager to share what I believe You’ve taught me. Eager to share out of the overflow of my time with You. God, I know if nothing else, dealing with Mark chapter four has meant something for me this week. Lord, I pray that as I’m proclaiming Your word, God, that somebody would receive it and it would bear fruit in their lives. Lord, get rid of me in this process and please speak and do what only You can, Father. I love You.

God, Jesus, You called Yourself the light of the world. You said that we are the light of the world too. Jesus, You said that You would build Your church and Sauldam Baptist Church is Your church. So God be with us this morning. Amen.

How about this? In Mark chapter four, verse one, it starts this way. Again, He began to teach by the sea and a very large crowd gathered around Him. So He got into a boat on the sea and sat down. And while the whole crowd was by the sea on the shore, He taught them many things in parables.

Man, so immediately right off the bat, we see that Jesus has a problem. Okay. Jesus has a large crowd. Now, no doubt Jesus was very successful in His ministry. What we didn’t cover between Mark two and Mark four is the fact that Jesus has been going around. He’s been teaching people. He’s been calling on people. He’s been announcing, Hey, I’m the Messiah. I’m the guy you’ve been waiting for for thousands of years. That’s Me. And He’s been displaying the truthfulness of that by healing people, casting out demons. He’s been asserting Himself onto the world and people are coming to Him. So He’s incredibly successful. So successful. In fact, that He has this incredibly large crowd, but Jesus needs to keep teaching. So He comes up with an acoustic solution.

for the situation. He says, “Hey, I’m going to jump in this boat. Y’all sit on the shore, and that way my voice will be able to carry up the hill so that I don’t have to strain too much.” Once again, it reminds me of Charles Spurgeon. I think that’s how they did it. He was at the bottom; they were all in a bowl around him, and that man just talked. So that’s what Jesus is doing. He teaches from the boat, which, by the way, if you want to mark at the bottom of your notes, we will be looking at Mark 4, verses 35 through 41 next week, where Jesus stays in that boat and something else happens.

So He teaches a parable. He actually teaches many things in parables, the verses say, and let’s read what the parable is that He teaches in this moment. Verse 2 continues, “In His teaching, Jesus said to them, ‘Listen! Consider the sower who went out to sow. As He sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn’t have much soil, and it grew up quickly since the soil wasn’t deep. But when the sun came, it was scorched, and it had no root. It withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns came up, and it choked it, and it didn’t produce any fruit. Still, still other seed fell on good ground, and it grew up, producing fruit that increased 30, 60, and a hundred times.’ Then He said, ‘Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.’”

Simple enough, right? On its surface, the parable is not really very confusing. It’s about a farmer who broadcasts some seed on four different types of soil. It’s the first soil is just the path, and seed is immediately eaten up. Second is rocky ground, and the seed can’t actually grow deep enough to sustain anything. Third is the thorny ground, and as the seed grows up, so do the thorns, and all the growth gets choked out. And that fourth is good soil. It’s got this astronomical return, 30, 60, 100 times.

There’s four different types of soil, but there’s really only two results, right? There’s fruitlessness or fruitfulness. Fruitlessness or fruitfulness. Whether the soil fails to produce because of its hardness, its shallowness, or its thorniness, the end result is the same. The precious seeds that was broadcasted produces nothing of value. Man, who wants that experience? Anybody want that kind of return on your investments? I’m sure there’s somebody in the room who has invested money in some opportunity, you know, and you said, “Man, this is a sure-fire deal. I’m going to get some great returns on this stock or this fund or, man, I’ve got this buddy, and he’s got this idea, so I’m going to give him some cash because it’s going to pay off in the end,” and it just didn’t. Or maybe your relationship. You invest a lot of time and a lot of love and a lot of patience into a person, and that person, it just doesn’t pan out for you.

Well, hey, we’re three weeks into 2024. No doubt some of us made some new year’s resolutions, and you’re trying to establish some new habits, and you’re giving a little bit of time. Maybe you bought some new running shoes or walking shoes, or maybe you bought some other food, or you said, “I’m going to stop eating and drinking this food,” and we’re three weeks in, and some of that investment hasn’t exactly paid off. I don’t think any of us really want to experience that where you invest time and energy into something that doesn’t pan out, right? But in this parable, good soil does produce a return that farmers would die for.

I’m no farmer, surprise, but I could do a little bit of math. Maybe also surprise. A three-fold return roughly would be a one-for-one replacement. Every seed that you cast on the good ground would replace the three wasted seeds. A ten-fold return would produce enough seed to eat, sell, and sow again. That’s livelihood. That’s hand-to-mouth. You’re able to live. You’re able to sustain a small family on that. A 30-fold return, that means wealth. That means you are comfortable. That means that you do not have to worry about next month because next month is already in the crop now. And that’s also the baseline for Jesus’s expectation of the word. Now think about a hundred-fold return. Man, if a ten-fold allows you to sustain a family and 30-fold makes you a rich man, what does a hundred-fold make you? And that’s what Jesus said. He Said when the word goes and falls on good soil, it might even produce that much fruit. And this all feels simple enough, but the disciples understand that there’s something they don’t understand. Why would Jesus teach about farming if He’s establishing a kingdom? Right? Why would He not go a more direct way? Or how about this? Why would He begin and end His parable by saying, “Listen”? Look up in verse 3. It says, “Listen, consider the sower.” Then down in verse 9, Jesus pulls back. He says, “Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen.” Didn’t such a big crowd gather to Jesus that He had to sit in a boat and teach them on a hillside? Weren’t the people there to listen to Him? Why would He tell them to do what they’re already doing?

The disciples had these questions, and I wish I could have been there to watch them furrow their brow and scratch their head and just kind of sit looking at each other being like, “What’s Jesus talking about, Mary Lou? Why is He doing this? Doesn’t He have a kingdom to establish? Where’s the swords? What’s the deal?” But the disciples also have a little bit of pride, and they say, “You know what? Instead of asking all these people in front of Jesus, we’re going to wait for a quiet moment.” And that’s what they do. Verse 10 says, “When He, Jesus, was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parables.” Jesus’ response, He answered them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside everything comes in parables, so that they may indeed look and yet not perceive. They may indeed listen and yet not understand. Otherwise they might turn back and be forgiven.”

Anyone a little taken aback by Jesus’ response? Like, doesn’t Jesus want as many people to be in the kingdom as possible? Didn’t Jesus come to give us life and give it abundantly? Doesn’t the Bible say that God doesn’t want anybody to perish but for everybody to have everlasting life? Like, what gives? Why in the world would He make it hard for us to get into the kingdom? Verses 12 and 13 are a quote from Isaiah chapter 6. That’s the scene where God calls Isaiah the man to become Isaiah the prophet.

Let me set the scene for you. Yeah, it’s the year King Uzziah, one of the kings of God’s people. It’s the year that he dies. And God calls Isaiah to Himself and gives Isaiah this, whether it’s a vision or a physical experience with Himself, it’s kind of up for debate. But what’s not up for debate is that Isaiah sees the Lord seated high and lifted up on His throne. I get the vision that Isaiah is just at the base of a throne and he’s looking up and he sees, he sees God, Jesus. He sees Him on the throne and around God are these angels flapping their wings, looking real funny, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, holy.” And they’re just saying that to each other. Imagine being in this cathedral with angels flying around the ceiling, just shouting at each other, “Holy, holy, holy.” And that holy call is just echoing all around you. How would you respond in that moment? Would you say, “Man, I must be something. Look where I am.” No, you would fall on your face and you would say, “Who am I? Why in the world am I here? I am a sinful man. I come from sinful people.” And that’s what Isaiah does.

And then one of those angels grab some hot coals from this altar before the Lord and comes to him. And he’s bringing that hot coal. And I have to imagine if I’m, if I’m Isaiah, I am backing up just a little bit. Right. And the angel takes that coal and touches it to his lips and says, “There, cleansed you. Now, now.” This is what happens in that moment after Isaiah is cleansed. Isaiah chapter 6, verses 8 through 13 has this for us. “Heard the voice of the Lord asking, ‘Who should I send? Who will go for us?’ I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’” Of course you would. The God of the universe, the one that you recognize as holy and great and powerful that has just cleansed you and united you to Himself. Of course you’d say, “Send me. I’m the guy. Right here? Can you hear me? Can you see me?” He replied, God replied, “Go say to these people, keep listening, but do not understand. Keep looking, but do not perceive. Make the minds of these people dull, deafen their ears, blind their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their minds and turn back and be healed. Then I said, ‘Until when, Lord? How long will I do this?’ He replied, ‘Until cities lie in ruins without inhabitants. Houses are without people. The land is ruined and desolate. And the Lord drives the people far away, leaving great emptiness in the land. Though a tenth will remain in the land, it will be burned again. Like the terebinth or the oak that leaves a stump when felled, the holy seed is the stump.’

I mean, I don’t have time to unpack everything that we just read about. Clearly though, God was Isaiah’s messenger. He was the messenger of God to God’s people in that moment. But Jesus referencing that about Himself means that He is the true messenger. He is the actual one that that moment in time was foreshadowing and pointing to. And just like in Isaiah’s day, there’s a remnant of people in Jesus’s day. There’s a remnant that truly believed, a remnant that truly heard God’s word, a remnant that was more concerned with the Lord than with all the rest of life’s temptations, a remnant that was surrounded by a half-hearted rest.

Here’s the deal. Jesus was focused on the remnant. He wasn’t focused on the rest. He wasn’t focused on the half-hearted followers. He wasn’t focused on the crowd. That wasn’t His deal. So that explains the parable. But for us to wrap our minds around it, we need to know a few things about parables. See, the parables on one hand were 35% of Jesus’s teaching in the Gospels. One of every three stories or moments or teachings in the Gospels is a parable. The parables use everyday objects and events to illustrate spiritual truths. And the parables usually, but not always, focus on one single truth.

Now that’s what the parables are. But what are the parables for? The parables were meant to explain the nature, the coming, the growth, the consummation of the kingdom of God. The parables were provocative. They were surprising. They were meant to stimulate our thinking, cause us to contemplate things. The parables reveal truth to the receptive, but they hide truth to others. Simply put, or ultimately, the parables were meant to draw attention to Jesus as God’s Messiah and call us to make a personal decision as well.

Jesus, His ministry success drew a crowd, but Jesus did not come to gather the crowd. That was not His purpose. The parables in this odd way that God chooses to work were actually meant to keep some out while some got in. See, the parables were meant to filter. They were meant to separate. The parables would expose the hearts of the hearers as either truly seeking after self-sacrifice for God’s will or just simply wanting the self-serving benefits from God. The parables forced decision. Do I care enough about knowing Jesus that I’m going to work through understanding this?

So, Sauldam Baptist Church, I have a question. Are you listening? Twice in this parable, Jesus says, listen, hear me, consider this. Are you listening? Jesus wasn’t focused on the crowd and neither are we. You see, no one around us needs more groupies for Jesus. They just don’t. None of our spiritually disinterested family and friends need a social movement. Those who do not yet know Jesus, they need us to be the listening remnant. They don’t need us to claim benefits from God. They need us to be ready to sacrifice ourselves for whatever God has for us.

People around us assume that we are here today because God gives us things. They do. But a truly surprising faith for the watching world would be one that loves God through pain, not because of pleasure. My vision as pastor of Sauldam Baptist Church is not to amass the biggest crowd in the Lowcountry. My vision and my prayer and my hope is to shepherd the most spiritually hungry church in the Lowcountry. That’s my vision. That’s my desire. See, Jesus was focused on the hungry, on the remnant. And He said in verse 13 that this was a cornerstone teaching. If you don’t get this, you don’t get anything from Jesus.

Thankfully, in this moment, Jesus explains the parable for us, which is really good. So let’s read verses 14 through 20 and see what He says about what He says. Verse 14 starts, ’The sower sows the word. Some are like the word sown on the path. When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away what was sown in them. And others are like seeds sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy, but they’ve got no roots. They’re short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away. Others are like seeds sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the word, but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. And those like seed sown on good ground hear the word. They welcome it and produce fruit.” 30, 60, and a hundred times what was sown.

Man, those are life-giving words for me. Jesus defines a few things. He says the sower is anybody that sows the word, which then would be the seed. In this moment in time, Jesus is the sower. But this also applies to anyone that sows the word of God into someone else as well. Which means right now in 2024, I am a sower and I am broadcasting seed right now. So worse, they share the gospel with people that need to know the life or the message of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Sowers are parents and grandparents who are reading books about Jesus with their kids, just trying to plant some sort of spiritual truth in them. Sowers are the folks in our kids’ ministry that will begin teaching our kids the stories of the Bible. Sowers are like Lee Newton teaching the students on Wednesday nights. Sowers are like Donna Platt teaching Sunday school faithfully for decades.

That’s what it means to be a sower. You don’t have to get paid as a pastor to be a sower. You don’t have to have a recognized position like Donna to be a sower. To be a sower simply means that you take what is in this book and you try to give it away to somebody else. That’s what being a sower is all about.

If there’s a sower, if there’s seed, then that must mean there’s also soil. The soil equals hearts. There are different types of hearts that the word gets sown into. It’s not important for us as sowers to worry about the type of heart we’re targeting. We just are called to sow the seed, right? The path, those are hard hearts. The seed never penetrates them. Sow all you want. It’s just not going to do anything. The rocky soil, those are shallow hearts. They immediately seem to hear the word, but they never actually receive it deeply. And the moment that any type of change is required or any difficulty comes in to obey it, they’re out. The thorny soil, those are distracted hearts. They hear the word, but they care too much about what the world has to offer and what they have to worry about for the word to have any real effect in their lives. The word is just one more thing in their cluttered, fruitless lives. But good soil, that’s receptive hearts. These are ready to welcome the word. They embrace what it says, no matter how hard it is they change their lives to fit the word they don’t try to change the word to fit their lives the critical difference between the first three soils in the fourth is readiness to receive the difference between being fruitless in response to the bible and fruitful in response to the bible is whether you are going to receive what the bible has to say that’s the difference you just got to be hungry not an expert there’s a lot of experts with great advanced degrees teaching at seminaries that no longer believe jesus christ is lord there are a lot of spiritually hungry folks all around the world that only have tattered pages of scripture that are hungry for it and they truly know the sower you don’t you have to have the strongest faith imaginable you just need to take the bible for what it’s worth choose to believe it and orient your life around what it says that’s all it takes now we said at the very beginning of our series that mark’s gospel would offend us and it would call us to conform to christ’s kingdom i come back to my statement earlier this is about insider language because jesus is talking to the crowd of people that claim jesus as something and i believe that i would not be faithful to my calling to preach the word if i did not say that jesus would give this parable in this pulpit today he would look at a group of people that call on him for something and he would teach this parable and he would say some of us have hard hearts we come to church We sit under preaching and teaching, but we are so stuck in our ways and our thinking that the Bible doesn’t change us at all. This produces a legalistic, morally driven life that is concerned with having the appearance of godliness, but as Paul said, denies its power. Some of us, Jesus would say, have shallow hearts. We come to church, we hear the Bible, and we’re warmed by it, but just like a slice of microwave pizza, cools off just as quickly as it heats up. They leave church and they are cooled off. The Bible doesn’t have any impact on their lives, no lasting change. Jesus would say some of us have distracted hearts. We come to church, we hear the Bible as just another task to check off. The Bible never produces fruit in them because there’s always another worry with another day. There’s always another worldly desire that takes them astray. There’s another Bible challenge they just want to wish away. There’s another demand from the Lord they just won’t pay. But Jesus would say some of us have receptive hearts. We long for the Bible not because its demands are easy, but because they’re good. These folks know that following God’s way is hard, but He’s Lord, and these folks are prepared to offer their entire lives to Him. And as J.D. Greear, former SBC president, says, these folks know that Jesus is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all. Amen from the people in the back. Jesus is either Lord of all or He’s not Lord at all. These folks are constantly changing and growing because the Word is bearing fruit in their lives. And man, when you see a plant bearing fruit, that thing is changing. A tomato plant never becomes a lemon tree, but it does become a better tomato plant. And when God’s Word takes root in our hearts, it changes us. We go from a little tomato plant seed to something that bears fruit.

Becca and I, when we moved here, we left a potted tomato plant back at 331 Titus Street in Lexington. If you’re listening online one day, don’t write that down. But we left a little potted tomato plant, and I had to go back to Lexington a month ago to do something, and I looked at that tomato plant. That thing is still bearing fruit. And I’m like, that’s ridiculous. I’ve tried for years to grow things. And this, the one time I just, I set it and I forget it, and now it’s working. I don’t know what that says about me or my personality, but that tomato plant’s becoming more of what it’s supposed to be because that soil received the seed. The same is true for us. Those who have receptive hearts become who they are supposed to be because they receive the Word.

Now here’s the deal. The world expects us to be hypocrites. They do. They expect us to claim the moral claims of the Bible without living out some of the harder truths of the Bible for ourselves personally. And if we’re all honest, we all have moments where we are hypocrites. And I’ll be the first to say it. I am a hypocrite because I say the Bible calls me to live to a standard that I actually don’t measure up to. You know, I was baptized as an eight-year-old, not because I loved Jesus or because I wanted to give my life to Him, but because I was deathly afraid of hell. And I thought, get baptized, get out of hell free. That’s what I thought that was. So I’m baptized as a child. Somehow I passed the little tests that my church had and all that. But the buzz of that moment wears off like any buzz does wear off. And I just kind of fell back into my little eight-year-old ways. And you fast forward to when I’m 15 and I’m pursuing sin the way a 15-year-old boy would. And I had a friend who, just an incredible guy. His name is Luke. And one night we get home from youth group. He’s just another kid in the youth group. And he shares the gospel with me. And he just says, Jeremy, man, you call yourself a Christian. You’re part of this crowd. But man, you don’t live up to these, the standards of the Bible. You don’t even love Jesus. You, what’s the deal, man? And he just shares the gospel with me. And he calls me to believe it. And God used that in my life to draw me to Himself. I think left to my devices, I am shallow soil. Left to my devices, the Word would not penetrate deeply.

In me. And the moment any type of difficulty would come up to really obey this, I’d fall away. And that’s why God had to rescue me. God had to change me. He had to make me go from one type of soil to another. And I don’t have time to work out the theological arithmetic for us this morning. All I have to say is God changed me. And He keeps changing me by His grace through His word. And He can change you too. Not to make you better, but to help you truly live.

You were born to be an apple tree. You were born to be a blueberry vine. You were born to be a tomato plant. And God helps you be who you’re supposed to be. But that’s not by muscling your way into the kingdom. It’s not by saying, “I am going to be joyful today. I’m going to love you.” That’s not how He does it. He doesn’t, God doesn’t take fruit and staple it to a dead tree and say, “All of a sudden this fruit is bearing tree.” No, God changes the tree altogether. And He says, “You are a thorny person and I am going to make you beautiful. You are dead on the inside and I’m going to do a work to make you come alive. But that only happens if you receive what I have for you.”

It’s easy to read this parable and only think that Jesus is trying to keep people out. I think that Jesus is trying to woo people in. And Jesus is promising any heart that is open to my word will bear fruit. Regardless of where you’ve been in life, regardless of how you came in this morning, regardless of your track record so far, God’s word can change you if you receive it. Because this is what the Bible has to say about the Bible. It’s going to be on our screen from Isaiah chapter 55. “Just as the rain and the snow fall from heaven.” We know about rain here, right? We may not know about snow, but we sure enough know about rain. “Just as the rain and the snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout and providing seed to sow and food to eat. So my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty. No, but it will accomplish what I please and it will prosper in what I send it to do.”

God’s word always works on us if we allow it. Sometimes it’s the long awaited fruit of an acorn as a full grown oak tree. Fruit delayed for decades. Sometimes it’s the Newton farm blueberries that keep coming back week after week, year after year. Taking in God’s word is the same. Sometimes the word sown in you produces life change immediately. Sometimes the word sown in you won’t be seen for years until a moment where a promise from the Bible, a challenge from the text, or an encouragement comes at just the right time because it’s been germinating for a decade. Some comment that a Sunday school teacher makes to you about how good God is or about the ways of the Lord, and it just comes up, and you’re like, “Shoot, Jesus, I heard that a decade ago, finally got it.”

So I ask again, are you listening? The kingdom of Christ is inhabited by people of the good soil, not by Christians in name only. Here’s the deal, folks. The Great Commission is too simple. Hell is too terrible, and heaven is too lovely. Eternity is too long, and souls are way too valuable, and our resources here are too plentiful for us to sit back and not let God’s word bear fruit in us, spilling over into the lives of people around us and around the world, and that explains our new season in kids’ ministry.

So starting next week, we are launching our new kind of revamped kids’ stuff, and we’re using this curriculum called the Gospel Project, and we’ve got a short little video that helps explain what the Gospel Project is, and they’re going to get it cheered up for us in the back. “For generation after generation, we have gathered for one reason. Tell the story. For one that changes everything. That salvation is not found within Jesus. We tell it again and again, generation upon generation. We teach them the Bible isn’t just 66 books bound together. It’s one story. We see the Bible as one narrative. It changes how we read it. We see that Adam’s fruit led to Noah’s reign and Joseph’s pit. We see that Abraham’s Ram and Jonah’s fish and David’s giant foretold us of Mary’s manger and the one who would reunite man with God. We see that every story points to the one. It changes how we teach our kids. We see ourselves. We see God. We have one mission, one purpose, one job to do: share the story with them in as many ways and as many times as we can. This is the big story of the Bible. This is the one story that changes everything. This gospel project for kids. Let’s try something we’ve never attempted before this season. And I am eager to see what sowing the word into the hearts of our children is going to do because it’s going to bear fruit. 2050, it’s going to roll around and the kids that are in that wing back there are the ones that are going to be leading our church. That’s going to be the situation. And what sort of legacy do we want to sow into them?

The heart of the Bible, the heart of God’s word is the gospel. It is. It’s the story of how God has made a people for Himself, a people that are supposed to love Him and walk with Him and enjoy Him and represent Him to the world. But these people have fallen away from God and sin by choosing their own way. Something you and I do every day as we fail to live up to the standard of the word, the standard of God’s holiness. And like those first people, Adam and Eve, when they took that fruit and they ate it and they broke God’s commandment, we too have fallen into death and sin. But Christ came. The Son of God came, not just to tell us what’s wrong with us, but to live the perfect life for us. Something we could never do, but are called to do, Jesus does for us. And He not only satisfies the righteous requirements of a life well lived, but He dies a sacrificial death in our place. Something we deserve. We have an infinite debt against a good God and Jesus pays it on His own credit. And He says, “Hey man, I don’t want you to keep making withdrawals on credit, but I got you. You’re going to mess up.” And He says, “Hey man, I don’t want you to keep making a good life.” And He says, “Hey man, I don’t want you to keep a good life.” And I don’t want you to keep making a good life. A home with God now and into forever in a place called the new heavens and the new earth.

That is the gospel. That is the heart of God’s word. And that is what we are sowing in to children. That is what we are going to sow into more adults with a new Sunday school class. That is what we are sowing into women through the women’s ministry. That’s what you sow into people as you’re talking about Jesus over coffee. That’s what you sow into people whenever you are reading books about the Bible with your kids and your grandkids and the neighbor kids. That’s what you’re doing. So there’s an invitation for you. Do you want to live a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, you know, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Do you want that type of life? I know I do. The way to get there is for God’s word to get here. God’s word must get inside of us for lasting change to happen. We don’t effort our way to becoming loving. We don’t try harder to be patient. What we do is we embrace God’s word and we let it change us from the inside out and become the people God wants us to become.

The main point of all this this morning is that if you sow the word into hearts, you will receive a harvest. You may not see it in your life. You may not see it today. But you will receive a harvest if you sow the word. So I’ve got three invitations for you. I’ve already invited you to the boiler room prayer time, but I’ve got three more. The first one is something that I call 10 by 7 by 2. I want to invite you 10 minutes of Bible intake every day for seven minutes a day across two weeks. You got time if you watch the news at night. You got time if you read the newspaper in the morning. You got time if you spend any time in the car. You got time if you’re on Facebook. 10 minutes. 10 minutes across seven days a week across two weeks. That would be you sowing the word into yourself. That will bear fruit. I got a second invitation. Join Sunday school. This would be a community of believers sowing the word into a community. We have a new class starting up next Sunday. Donna is faithful. She’s going to keep teaching next Sunday as well. Jump into Sunday school. You’re already going to come to church. Just come to church an hour earlier.

The third invitation, I call it the red book invitation. I’ve got a little discipleship resource. It’s just 13 lessons on walking with Jesus. I’ll be happy to do that with you and then give you a second copy and you go do that with somebody else and you sow the word into yourself and then sow it in somebody else. Three invitations for you to sow the word.

You see Acts 2 as I’m wrapping up. Acts 2 says that the first Christians were devoted to the apostles’ teaching. They were people that received the word and it bore fruit inside of them. I believe that we can experience some of the same fruit as the early church in Acts 2. I believe that all we have to do is to open our hearts and receive the Bible and God will do above and beyond all that we can ask or imagine of Him. And as we do that, our community will see God’s work in us and as happened in Acts, some will be drawn to the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. I believe that.

Let’s pray. I believe, help my unbelief. God, I am a man that still today struggles to receive Your word. Pray that You would help me. God, not to try harder, but Father, You would give me the grace to yield to You and to submit to You to receive Your word. God, I know that Sauldam Baptist Church is a group of folks that receive Your word. And I pray, Father, that You would make us more receptive, that we would bear more fruit, that our lives would change, our church would change because of that. Lord, the folks associated with Sauldam Baptist Church that don’t come all the time, Father, they would change. Lord, ultimately that we would just become who we’re supposed to be. God, we love You. And I’m asking Holy Spirit that You get a hold of us the next few minutes, that if somebody needs to make a decision, God, about something we’ve talked about, that they would, they’d come forward. Lord, we love You.