In Scott Brown's sermon on the 'Parable of the Sower', he emphasizes the crucial role of how individuals hear and respond to the Word of God. The sermon delves into the parable's depiction of four types of soil, representing different responses to God's Word: the wayside, stony places, thorny soil, and good ground. Each soil type symbolizes a distinct type of hearer, from the hard-hearted to those who are fruitful. Brown underscores the importance of hearing with understanding and the transformative power of the Word, drawing parallels to natural processes like rain nurturing the earth. He explains that parables serve to both conceal and reveal truths about the Kingdom of God, highlighting the need for proper interpretation. The sermon challenges listeners to assess their own receptiveness to God's Word, urging them to be active sowers of the seed, fostering a fruitful Christian life. It concludes with a call to action for believers to evaluate their role in spreading the Word and to ensure their lives bear spiritual fruit.

Well, our Lord Jesus Christ is instructing us about the most important thing in all of life and that is how we hear the Word of God, how our hearts are prepared for it, and What happens to us when we hear it? And it's an interesting passage to engage in, in a setting like this, because we're all here now hearing the Word of God. So we have the opportunity to test the ways that we hear the Word of God. And it's always for God's people to consider the way that they hear and whether they hear with understanding. So here we have a wonderful opportunity to consider that.

When we were reading earlier in the Song of Moses and the words of God dropping like raindrops on the tender herb, like showers on the grass, what a blessing it is when that happens, when the Word of God is so sweet to you, when you love it with all of your heart, and your heart burns within you to go and apply it. I pray that every heart here is like that today, That you would know in your heart that you love the sound of your master's voice. And his words are like rain on a tender herb. Are you a tender herb today? Are you someone who's really with ears ready to hear?

The Lord Jesus Christ is saying, you know, he who has ears, let him hear. And here, just being in this passage just reminds us of the whole event of hearing the Word of God in the various ways that we hear it in our lives. Now you're hearing the Word of God being read and now preached. This passage is so important because it speaks about what advances the kingdom of heaven. And it's the sound of the Word of God.

This is the most valuable sound on the planet today. You think of all the conversations that you have in this life. The sounds of the Word of God are the most important, the most powerful, the most effectual sounds in the world. If you would fill your heart, if you would fill your mouth, if you would fill your home with any sound, let it be the sounds of the kingdom of God." Because this speech really of the power of the Word of God. You know, Romans 10, the apostle Paul said in verse 17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.

And it's interesting when you think about hearing, hearing precedes speech in the natural world. Children learn to speak by what they hear. And if they can't hear, it makes them very difficult to speak with a clarion sound. So hearing is so important because it precedes what comes forth out of the mouth and how it's framed and the content of it like that. And so if you cannot hear, you can't speak quite rightly.

So this whole matter of hearing that's on the table here in this passage is of enormous importance. And my prayer is that God would make us a people who hear the Word and understand it and bear fruit and produce some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. And so here in this passage Jesus continues to talk about what it means to be a true believer. Just immediately before this, in a house, Jesus answered the question, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And immediately now he's speaking of these other things here.

So the subject hasn't really changed at all in the text of the story here. And it's all about what happens when, what happens, what vibrates in the ear when the Word of God is spoken. Now, there's lots of discussion today about what's the mission of the church. And this passage helps us to know what the mission of the church is and what the mission of the individuals in the church happens to be. And he's describing here what goes on in every church and in conversations with those outside of the church.

What happens to people when they hear the Word of God. And there are four kinds of listeners. There are four kinds of ears, four kinds of people. And the words here, the sower went out to sow are some of the most beautiful words in the English language. Think of what it would be like if the sower had not gone out to sow.

Where would you be today if the words of God did not fall on that tender herb? Where would you be today? You just think about that. It horrifies me to think of where I would be and my family would be. It horrifies me to think of where I would be and my family would be.

It horrifies me to think of where we would be if we were gathered together as a people and the Word of God had never descended upon our ears. It would be such a tragic scene here in this room. Instead of the progress and the reformations and the forgiveness and the mercies of God, the growth in love, all the things that are happening, those things would be non-existent in this group of people here today. Think of the group that would be assembled here today without the descending of the Word of God on the ear and the hearing of it. Because the hearing of the Word of God is the most important sound in the world, And it's so powerfully transforming.

And I'm so grateful for the Word of God. You know, where would we be? We would be chewing on the chaff. We'd be feeding on the pig's food without God and without hope in the world. That's where we would be if the Word of God had not fallen upon our ears at some point.

I'd like to direct us to the setting and the thrust of this passage. In verse 1, we read about the setting, and on that same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. Remember there are these throngs around Jesus, he's inside of a house and now he's come out of the house and has gone down by the sea. And He has been in a house and has come out of it. It's remarkable to look at the places that Jesus conducts his ministry.

Up to this point, Jesus is conducting lots of his ministry in houses. But from here forward, you see, at least recorded by Matthew, far more public settings where there are throngs of people. He doesn't stay away from houses, but it seems to me as I read it that there's more in houses from this point backward and more out publicly from this point forward. But so Jesus is now by the sea. One commentator said his pulpit was the ship, because the crowd had pressed down upon him, and he had requested a boat.

He got in a boat. And now, if you can just imagine the seashore with throngs of people lined up on it, sitting, standing, trying to listen, like a natural amphitheater. The acoustics are very good in a setting where you have water and then an embankment behind it. And I just pictured this is the setting here, and Jesus is now speaking to the multitudes. He was able to speak to lots of people.

You know, Jesus probably had a really pronounced voice. He could be heard for a long wait. He was constantly speaking to gigantic crowds of people. Charles Spurgeon said, if you do not have the apparatus in your chest, you cannot be a preacher. Well, Jesus probably had the apparatus.

He was built by Almighty God for the purpose to declare the glory and the Word of God. And so he's, he, this is the setting here, he's, he's on, on the water in a boat and speaking about these things. And then in verse three, he spoke many things to them in parables. And so here, this idea that he spoke many things is important to understand. John says that if all the things that Jesus did were put into all the books in the world, all the libraries in the world could not hold the information.

So he spoke lots of things. Here are recorded seven parables. We're only going to consider one of the parables here today. The first, which we'll consider today as the parable of the soils. And then he'll go on to the tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, the hidden treasure in the field, the merchant seeking fine pearls, and then finally the parable of the dragnet.

That's what we have ahead of us here in our studies in our church. What a blessing this is to be here in the parables. And what we learn here is that Jesus is teaching in such a way that keeps the truth away from the understanding of the multitudes, but clear to the disciples themselves. And here the Lord is speaking in his classic form. He is so helpful.

He's so engaging because he uses the natural world so beautifully. He's already spoken of the salt and light, the birds and the lilies. He's spoken of the beam and the speck in the eye. He's already spoken about the two gates, the wolves in sheep's clothing, the good trees and the bad trees, the wise builder and the foolish builder. He's spoken of the garment and the wineskins and the children in the marketplaces.

And now he's moving on to soils and seeds and birds and thorns and rocks and wheat and tares and seed and leaven and treasure and pearls, all these kinds of things. The Lord Jesus is so good to us to cast the truth alongside of things that help us understand it. And the theme of these parables are all Christ and His Kingdom. And He's correcting false ideas about the Kingdom of God, that the Kingdom of God is at hand and the Kingdom of God is coming. And the Kingdom of God is broken into history.

Someday it will swallow up everything and it will dominate all things. And the kingdom of God is really the presence of God in saving sinners and taking them to heaven. So I'd like to give a number of thoughts about parables, five considerations regarding parables, as you can see it in your outline. First of all, the definition of a parable, since we're going to be in the parables for a while here, it means to place beside, to compare one thing to another. An earthly story with a heavenly meaning.

So the term parable just means to cast alongside, to put something next to something else, a spiritual truth with a physical reality to help you understand that spiritual truth, to put its right sense in your own mind. The purpose of the parables, number two, is both to conceal and to reveal the nature of the kingdom of God. Next week, we'll delve into this more clearly as we take the midsection of this passage and spend more time in it. But Matthew Henry said a parable is a shell that keeps a good fruit for the diligent but keeps it from the slothful. So the purpose is both to conceal and to reveal.

And then thirdly, the subject of the parables is the kingdom of heaven. The nature of the kingdom, the character of the kingdom, and the king, the character of the king's subjects, and the different ways that the various subjects respond. Number four, we need to consider how to interpret parables. And we need to think in terms of proper hermeneutical principles for the interpretation of parables. And here's just the short course on it.

They have one meaning. And one has to be very careful to refrain from finding a meaning in every single element of the parable. They're not allegories. And but they typically have one meaning. They are culture-bound.

But yet they have meaning beyond their own culture when you read a parable you need to observe the elements of the parable. And in this parable, you have the sower, which is Christ and his disciples who preach the word. You have the seed, which is the word of the kingdom of God, and you have the soil, the hearers. So these are the various elements. Every church has these.

Every community has these in their community. But in a parable to interpret it, you need to establish the main point. And then this parable does have one primary point. And then the function of these parables is really to fulfill prophecy. In verse 14, we learn that this is a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah.

It's a fulfillment of Isaiah, or Psalm 78. I will open my mouth in a parable. And so these are some of the basic principles that we have to understand when we consider parables. And then we find ourselves in verse four in the parable itself. And in verse four we read, behold, a sower went out to sow.

And I would just like to suggest that this parable of the sower and the soils, it's the key to all of the other parables that are listed here in Matthew 13, but it might actually be the most important parable ever spoken. I say that because in Mark chapter 4, verse 13, the Lord said, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all parables? So this parable is a key to all the other parables. The Lord Jesus said, if you can't understand this one, you cannot understand the other parables.

So there are some fundamental principles here that are critical for all understanding, all the rest of the six parables that follow it here in Matthew chapter 13. But it says here that the sower went out to sow. Now, this is one of the most significant events that ever happens on the earth. The sower goes out to sow. A single individual goes out.

He's in a home, he's in the streets, he's in a church, and he is sowing seeds. This is the most important thing that happens in the world today. And we don't know this man's name, he's just a sower that went out to sow. He must have been here at some point, but the sower goes out to sow. And he goes forth, he goes out, and in order to sow one has to go beyond often one's own individual life.

The sower goes out to sow. This is a critical principle of this whole story. And the sewing of the word is really, it's the hinge point upon which every person's life turns. And so it's such a critical thing when people go out to sow. And it's the greatest occupation on earth, and it's the most important occupation of a Christian.

And so here, the Lord Jesus says, a sower went out to sow, and then there's kind of a summary of the experience of the seed on the various soils that the sower sowed seeds upon. The first is in verse 4, the soil on the wayside. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the birds came and devoured them. Here the ground is hard, absolutely nothing can grow there. If you had 10, 000 pounds of seed and fertilizer, nothing would come up.

And it is, the birds come and devour them. They, in Luke, some of it is just kicked off by the trampling feet of those who walk over it. It's interesting, this same word devour that the birds do here is found in Revelation 12 4, where the dragon's tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth to devour her child as soon as it was born. This is the same kind of work of the devil to come and devour the seeds of the Word of God.

The devil is always at work when you're speaking the Word of God. He is seeking to kill and steal and destroy. So that's this first soil by the wayside. And then there's this soil in the stony places. Some fell on stony places, verse 5, 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's a picture of the kind of soil that you find really all around this region. We live what's called the rock.

It's one of the largest rocks, the largest single rocks in this hemisphere. And you're sitting right in the middle of it. And it's gigantic. And it crosses many counties, where under the surface there's not much soil in many places and because there's rock and here there's not enough soil to sustain a growing plant And then in the third kind of soil, it's the thorny soil, verse 7, some fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up and choked them. And so there's so many plants, there's so many weeds around the growth of the good seed that it just chokes it out.

It deprives the good plant of its nourishment and finally overcomes it and just chokes it out. And then finally the fourth kind of soil is spoken of in verse 8. It's the good ground. And it yields a crop some 100-fold, some 60, and some 30. And the Lord Jesus says, he who has ears, let him hear.

So after casting this vision of these various kinds of hearers, then the disciples ask him a question about the parable. And they say, why do you speak to them in parables? Because something has changed here. The whole preaching style of Jesus has changed and it's more confusing to the ears of those who are hearing it. And the disciples recognize that something is different and they ask him the question.

And then Jesus begins to explain why he is now speaking in parables. We're not going to deal with that section this morning. We'll deal with that section next week. And so he explains that because the Lord wants the disciples to know the mysteries of God, verses 11 and 12, that they're spoken this way to fulfill prophecy and that This is a special time of fulfillment. And then, in verse 18, the Lord Jesus begins to explain the parable.

And so we'll spend the rest of our time focusing on this section here. And he, first of all, explains the wayside soil in verses 18 and 19, where he says, 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 the word is heard, but it's not understood. And this is the person who is hard-hearted.

He hears the word, but he does not care about it. He does not want the authority of God in his life. He's not interested in the Bible. He's not interested in what it says about the devil. He's not interested in what it says about God or heaven.

And he has no sense of sin. He has no sense of lack. He has no sense of wonder. He has no sense of need. He's self-satisfied.

He's self-sufficient. He's self-confident. He does not need God. He does not need this word. He probably thinks it's a myth anyway, because that's what he's been told his entire life long.

And he just cannot relate to it at all. And While faith comes by hearing the Word of God, there are ears who are stopped up, and it is impossible for them to hear the Word of God. And this is the person who is unimpressed by the Word of God and has no capacity to consider it at all. And you know, when you think about this, you have to ask yourself, is there anything like that in me? You know, When I hear the Word of God, does it set me on fire or does it just leave me cold?

And you can know what kind of person you are by how you relate to the Word of God when it falls upon your ears. And here, Satan snatches the Word of God. Satan is always in the room to harden sinners so that they do not have that word of life that would fall upon their souls and put them back together again. So this is the first kind of soil. This is the hard soil in which nothing can grow.

And then there's the stony soil in verses 20 and 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. So there was an immediate reception of the word in this person. And so, you know, it's possible to immediately receive the word, but not have really received it.

In other words, it's possible to believe for a little while. You've known people who've believed for a little while. Well, their initial believing wasn't saving belief. It was a different category. It was this kind of believing.

You know, James says that even the demons believe and they shudder. So it's not believing that really matters ultimately, but it's a complete and genuine receiving and bearing fruit, which we'll get to later, that really makes the difference. But there's also kind of a dead faith. There's faith without works that James spoke of. That there's a kind of believing that's not really believing in the way that Jesus is speaking of here.

You know, later on we'll read about those people who are crying out, Hosanna, Hosanna, here comes the son of David, and then it's not very long after that they're crying out, crucify him. Well, they believed for a while, but not a very long while. And that's why Jesus says that they just believed a little while. But they receive it with joy. That's the confusing thing because there's so much happiness in it.

They felt differently. Their demeanor changed. And it was so obvious that something had changed in their life. And they could tell you about it. They've never felt so much at peace in all their life.

They've never felt so much happiness in all their life. They received it with joy. And that was the whole character of their reception of it. And it's always a blessing to see people receive the Word of God with joy. But it was a counterfeit joy.

Now, later on in the parable of the treasure in the field, there's true joy, there's saving joy, there's ineffectual joy, and there is effectual saving joy. Here in the parable of the man who found treasure in the field, he finds the treasure, he doesn't tell anyone, he is joyful inside, he sells everything he has for the joy that is set before him, and he has that feel. That's saving joy. There should be joy. But joy is not the only way that you should use to evaluate whether you've been truly converted.

There ought to be, but there is a counterfeit kind of joy that a person can experience when they hear the Word of God. And This kind of person talks about, they make a profession of faith, and after they find that there's no fruit in their life, they may have someone quote to them, you know, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you'll be saved. They say, well, I confess with my mouth. But they didn't really believe in their heart. They felt that confession was just something that came out of their mouth like lip service.

But this person is giving lip service, and there was demonstrable joy. And for a period of time, they seemed to be fruitful. And, you know, pastors love to see these kinds of conversions take place. They're so wonderful. There are all these initial changes that take place.

But they're short-lived because of rootedness. Verse 21, yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. Now, it means, I believe, that there was just no rootedness in the kingdom of God. There was no root there. And so They were sort of nothing to genuinely draw upon the nourishment of God.

And so the roots didn't go anywhere, but they failed. But there are two things that happen to these kinds of people. Two disturbances that expose the fraudulent nature of their conversion that shows their true spiritual bankruptcy. There are two things that happen to people like this that expose their true bankruptcy. And the first is tribulation.

For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. So the first is tribulation. When calamity falls upon them, they respond in a non-Christian manner. Their faith was not really in God. Their faith was perhaps more in their feelings.

And the term that Jesus uses here for tribulation means to squeeze, to press in. When you are squeezed, you know, what happens to you when you are squeezed through tribulation? And that reveals to you what kind of hearer you are. And it often happens when trouble comes into people's lives that they lose their faith. Rather than like David, who said, in the day of trouble I cried out to you, They say, in the day of trouble, you destroyed me, God.

Where is your good? That's what they say. But it reveals a flaw in their hearing and in their profession of faith. And then also, persecution comes. At the first sight of rejection because of the Word of God, they fail.

They become ashamed of the Gospel. And when the Word of God causes them to lose something that was significant to them, like a friend, or like a job, or anything that you can possibly name, the favor of a group of people that you once enjoyed. You will lose that by the preaching of the Word of God. And these two forces at work, tribulation and persecution, are the forces that reveal the bankruptcy of the soul and the kind of soil that is really there. And it says, Jesus says, immediately he stumbles.

He falls away. I think this hearer is a little bit like the hearers in the days of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel chapter 33 verse 32, There were people there in Israel who were very much like people in our own day, where they enjoy all the good things about the church. There are feelings, there are things that are happening, there are attractive things that are part of the Church of Jesus Christ. But they're like the people in Ezekiel, of whom it was said, Indeed, you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, for they hear your words, but they do not do them." This is the person who's just engaged in sort of the beauty of the community of the king, because there are so many beautiful things about it.

But there is no root in them. And then there is the thorny soil in verse 22. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word. And the cares of this world, number one, and the deceitfulness of riches, number two, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. So this is the picture of the double-minded man.

And in his garden, and he has quite a garden, there are many interests, there are many devotions, there are all kinds of fascinating things in his garden. But it is overgrown with weeds, and it is full of weeds. All gardens have weeds, and they need to be uprooted. This man's garden, in this man's garden, the act of uprooting the weeds is not happening. He's letting the weeds just grow there.

And they are, These weeds are taking all of the nourishment out of what is trying to grow, the good seed. This is what weeds do. They deprive the nourishment that the worthy plants need. And in this man's garden, there are so many worldly cares and interests that the seed doesn't ever grow. He has a lot going in his garden, but not much of the kingdom of God.

He has lots of other things going. And these forces that are at work are defined by Jesus, the cares of this world, the cares of the world. His garden is just full of the cares of the world. Now, notice that the things that cause the Word of God to be choked, that are actually listed here, they're not all bad things in and of themselves. They are the cares of the world.

Notice our Lord is not identifying drunkenness or blasphemy or sexual immorality. He's naming other things that are far, far more appealing. And actually, many of them are good. And he doesn't mention the radical sins in the garden. He mentions the respectable sins in the garden.

And so He's saying that the cares of the world are so filling this garden that the good seed cannot grow. Now, the Lord has already talked to us in the Sermon on the Mount about the cares of this world. And he said, your father knows that you need all these things. He's already said, therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?" He said, look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them." So the Lord Jesus has already spoken about the worries of the world. The Apostle Paul said the same thing in Philippians 4. He said, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus." So the worries of the world are the characteristic of this man, at least one of the great characteristics.

He's worried about so many things, a little bit like Martha was. And then there's the deceitfulness of riches. These weeds, these cares of the world, growing, being nourished, worrying about this, worrying about that, building this, building that. All of these things just becoming dynamic replacements of the good seed of the Word of God. Edging out the Word of God so that it has no opportunity to grow.

The cares of this world. And then the deceitfulness of riches. The lure, the enticement of spending all of your time in the accumulation of riches. And the whole matter of the love of money, and that becomes your driving force in your life. And it's what you worry about, it's what you care about the most, But it's like a weed in your garden and it's depriving the word, its nourishment.

And you know, this just, it just shows us, you know, Christianity is not, It's not just simply believing in a doctrine. It's loving His person. It's obedience to His word. It's devotion to His work. It's cleaving to His person.

And that means that you're weeding out your garden. This man, he thinks that the weeds can just stay there. That obedience doesn't matter. That the growing of The knowledge of God doesn't really matter that much. He can just go on in a steady state and not continue to be filled up with the knowledge of His will.

He's the person who thinks He can be a Christian without losing anything that he has, without uprooting anything that he does, without losing any ground with anybody in the world. That he can just continue on in a steady state. And Jesus says, that's impossible. This is Easy Believisms' gospel without repentance, who thinks that you can make a profession of faith and a verbal confession, yet without weeding that garden. And this is the kind of person who comes to church, they hear sermons, sometimes they get convicted, sometimes they make resolutions, Sometimes they become better husbands and fathers and they shape their lives up.

But they're no different than the man that we read about in the last section, who has swept his house and it's clean, But Jesus Christ is not there. And the last state of that man will be worse than the first. It would be better off if he had never heard at all. But he does not hate his sin. And he doesn't have genuine affection for the worship of God, or hunger for the Word of God, or love for the people of God.

But it says here that he's choked. It's actually choking. Now, it doesn't mean to restrain. It's not restraining his growth. It actually chokes him.

Jesus uses the same word in the story of the Gadarene demoniac, you know, where the demons went into the pigs and they rushed over the embankment into the sea and they were choked. The pigs, if you can imagine just choking pigs in the water. That's the picture here. The word is choked and it finally kills them. And so this is a, this is the end of a distracted soul.

So it's not enough to have a garden. You have to hate the weeds. If you don't hate the weeds, then this is who you are. Oh, that God would give us, all of us, ears to hear the Word and understand it, and to bear fruit, and to produce some a hundredfold, and some sixty, and some thirty, and not just be people with gardens with lots of plants in them, but that we weed the garden and therefore verify that we did have ears to hear and that we did become children of God, rather than children of the devil with a big garden, with lots of interests, lots of fascinating things going on. There's enormous danger in this kind of soil.

And then, finally, the good soil in verse 23, "'But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty." You know, Moses prophesied of the hearing of the Word of God. He said, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst among your brethren. Him you shall hear. Him you shall hear. So this is about the hearing and the understanding of the Word of God.

He loves the words. I don't know if you've caught yourself in reading the Scriptures just relishing, being nourished on every word as your eyes pass by those words. It happens when you sing a hymn and the words are up there on the screen, and you just want to savor each word, come, thou, fount of every blessing. You just, you love the words of the kingdom of heaven And they nourish you, they satisfy you, you want them, you can't get enough of them, you desire, you're hungry. You say, oh Lord, my mouth is open, fill it.

That's the kind of soil of the heart that Jesus is speaking about. Now, Matthew says that he understands, Mark says he receives, and Luke says he keeps. So if you read the synoptic gospels, you can get the whole range of the meaning there. So this understanding includes embracing it and includes holding on to it. That's the kind of soil that holds on and it becomes such a rich soil for the growth of good plants.

And then there is the effect of the hearing. Indeed, it bears fruit and produces some 100-fold, some 60, some 30. So it's continuously bearing fruit. Now, this is the key to the whole parable right here. We're here.

Now, we are at The key difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is something happens to them. They bear fruit. That's the difference. That's how you can tell. Fruit bearing is the issue that one can tell.

It's not tears, it's not feelings of love, it's not happiness, it's not church attendance. It's fruit bearing. Some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. Because God has it that different people will bear different amounts of fruit. This is the body of Christ.

This is the place where the hand cannot say to the head, I don't need you, the eye cannot say to the lesser member, I don't need you. There's fruit bearing across the whole body of people because there's genuine faith that was received and kept and believed and embraced and loved, cherished and put in action. That's the big difference. Now, you have to be astonished here. I think about what Jesus is really saying.

A hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. Now, it's not a hundred percent. It's ten thousand percent. Okay? It's a hundred times a hundred.

It's not sixty percent. It's sixty thousand percent. It's 10, 000 percent. Okay? It's 100 times 100.

It's not 60 percent. It's 6, 000 percent. So there's An enormous fruitfulness that's spoken of here. The prosperity gospel crowd says that God wants to give you the miracle of a hundredfold financial increase. And all you just need to do is acknowledge that God's declaring His desire to manifest to you a hundredfold increase in your finances.

This is absolutely a lie of the devil. These are spiritual matters that are being spoken of here. He's using a physical thing to speak of a spiritual fruitfulness. So this fruitfulness comes from that genuine connection with the Lord Jesus Christ who said, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered. And they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." So here you have these four kinds of soil which speak to the four kinds of hearts, the four kinds of people who respond one way or another to the Word of Jesus Christ. So there you have it. So here's some applications. I've got a whole bunch of them.

Okay? Number one, self-assessment. What kind of soil are you? That's really important. What kind of soil are you?

Number two. Consider carefully what kind of hearer you are. I mean, you might think of how you think of this time when we're gathered together. I know this is not the only time that you hear the Word of God. It shouldn't be.

You should be hearing the Word of God all the time. But when you're here, What kind of a hearer are you? I mean, do you come here, when you walk in this door, does your heart begin to turn mightily to the Lord, and you're saying, oh Lord, feed me? Or are you shucking and jiving with your buddies and stuff like that? I mean, there's a big difference what you're preparing yourself for.

What are we doing here? We've been commanded to read and preach the Word of God. That's what we have to do here. So That's what we're doing here. That's why we come.

So what kind of hearer are you? Are you the kind of person that is self-consciously aware of the holiness of the moment when the Word of God is opened? This is the holiest thing there is in the world. The Spirit working through the Word is the most powerful force in the world today. There is nothing of greater significance or power than this Word.

And so when we come together, how do we hear the Word of God? Number three, after you hear, what do you do? After you hear. You can fill yourself up with seeds. Just gorge yourself on the seeds and do nothing with them.

Number four, yearning for fruit. Is there a yearning in us as a church to be a hundred-fold or a sixty-fold or a thirty-fold kind of Christian? To really be fruitful. When we are hearing, are we saying, oh God, make me fruitful, make me fruitful. Help me to put these things into practice.

Oh Lord, I see this area. Oh Lord, I remember this person that I need to become a sower of the seed to. I neglected this. I need to get back to that. Are you a person who hears the Word, who sees his natural face in the mirror and then goes and does something about it?

James says you can be a hearer of the Word, but not a doer of the Word. He's speaking of believers. He may be speaking of unbelievers as well, because both of these things can exist in a certain degree in both. Number five. Understand what's going on.

You know, whenever you share the Gospel, this is going on right here. You didn't create this soil, God did. This should just set you free to understand that God has this soil there. It will be received in a particular way. On the one hand, you know, when the message is rejected, you need to understand that God is in charge there.

You need to understand if someone seems to repent, you should wait to see if there's fruit. Not that you shouldn't rejoice with someone who's rejoicing. You should rejoice with someone who's rejoicing. But you also have to be wise. Don't be a foolish Christian.

Often we are so immature in our understanding of the way the world really is. Here Jesus is telling us what it's really like. That you're going to find people who are going to just emotionally respond to the message. But there really is nothing there. You just have to be mature in your understanding of the world.

People are built differently. Some people respond in a way that seems so real, and it's not real at all. You just have to know that about the world that you live in. It's the way that God wired the world. He places different kinds of soil.

Number six. What do you do if you are identifying these tendencies in yourself? What do you do? Do you say, I'm not a Christian? You might need to say that.

But you might not need to say that. Because many of these things are the challenges of the flesh, they're part of progressive sanctification. So you have to also be wise about that. If you have had joy but no fruit, You should ask yourself two questions. Am I Christian?

Or, oh God, if I am, help me to quit disobeying you and to begin to cast off, to weed this garden, to start pulling that weed and that weed and that weed and quit playing games with God. It may mean that you're not a believer, but it may mean you're just a disobedient believer. Number seven, this explains the basic kinds of shears you will encounter. And this should make us more bold in our evangelism, that we understand that there will be different kinds of responses. But our job is to sow the seed.

Keep sowing the seed. Number eight, the sower went out. Do you need to go out? Are you hiding in your house? Do You live this insulated life where you're not sowing any seed at all?

Here's what Spurgeon said about that. He said, you'll be going home soon, and your master says to you, did you do any sowing for me? And you will reply, No, Lord, I did plenty of eating. I went to the tabernacle and enjoyed the services. But did you do any sowing?

No, Lord, I did a lot of hoarding. I laid up a large quantity of the good seed. But did you do any sowing? He will still ask, and that will be a terrible question for those who never went forth to sow. So we should all of us in this church be asking, are we going out to sow?

The sower goes out to sow. The sower doesn't just hang around for someone to show up. He goes out to sow. So are you going out to sow? Are we going out to sow?

The only way to test the soil is by throwing out the seed, because you can't tell necessarily on the surface. If there's no one in your life right now to sow seeds, then go find somebody. You know, I have a friend, my dear friend of mine I went to seminary with, He got it in his heart at some point that he should go to Salt Lake City and evangelize the Mormons. So that's what he did. He packed up his family, moved to Salt Lake City.

That was it. He just moved to Salt Lake City, and every day he woke up in the morning and he said, oh God, give me someone to talk to. And he would walk out of his house, he would get in his car, he'd go to the store and he'd walk down the aisle, oh God, give me someone to talk to." And he would walk out of his house, he would get in his car, he'd go to the store and he'd walk down the aisle, oh God, give me someone to talk to. He would go to a coffee shop, he'd say, oh God, give me someone to sow seeds. I think there were like 3, 000 people in Salt Lake City who had been unconverted since then, 15 years.

He was a missionary. He went into his community like a missionary. He went out to sow. You have to go out to sow. And That's how you test the soil.

So I pray, oh God, that you would make us people who understand it and bear fruit and produce some hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. And in that whole picture is a picture of the whole people who are sowing the seeds. So let's go sow the seeds. Would you pray with me? Oh, Lord.

We praise you for your wisdom in how you have caused your rain to fall, the word to descend upon your people that they might hear and that they might obey. And Lord, oh I pray for us together as a church that we would be like unto the wise man who heard these sayings of yours and went out and did them. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on our house, and it did not fall, for it was founded upon the rock of obedience. Amen.