“THE SECRETS OF THE KINGDOM”

Religion

This sermon is from the series THINGS JESUS TAUGHT US and was preached at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cherry Log, Georgia on August 11, 2013 by Pastor Paul Mims.

Matthew 13: 1-23Can you keep a secret?

At a dinner party, several of the guests were arguing whether men or women were more trustworthy. No woman, said one man, scornfully, can keep a secret. I don’t know about that, answered a lady guest. I have kept my age a secret since I was twenty-one. You’ll let it out some day, the man insisted. I hardly think so responded the lady. When a woman has kept a secret for twenty-seven years, she can keep it forever.

The kind of secrets that we are addressing this morning are not the kind that are designed to keep others from knowing, but by their very nature are such that only those on the inside can know. The word in verse 11 that is translated “mysteries” in the King James and “secrets” in modern translations reveals what Jesus meant in this parable. Our modern understanding of “mystery” means something that is difficult to impossible to understand. The New Testament use of “mystery” means something that is unintelligible to the outsider and crystal clear to one on the inside. The goal of preaching and witnessing is to help the outsiders to become insiders.

This parable has two great secrets for us.

I. HOW GOD REVEALS HIMSELF TO US. (vv. 3-9)

The crowds were now gathering around Jesus to hear what this carpenter from Nazareth would have to say. Anyone that could work miracles like he had done deserved a hearing. They were beside the Sea of Galilee. Jesus got into a boat and pushed out a few feet from the shore and to address the crowd that had gathered. He spoke to them with his first parable. His desire was to make known the truth that the Father wanted to reveal himself to them. Jesus uses a common scene of a sower that they had seen every spring.

The “sower” in the parable is Jesus himself. In essence he is saying to them, “I have come to bring you the good news of the kingdom. I want you to know my Father in heaven. He is the One who has sent me. He wants you to know him and to be his redeemed people. He wants to dwell in you so that you can become sowers of his truths in service to him.”

The “seed” in the parable is the revelation of divine truths that God want us to know about him. There are the seeds of love, forgiveness, hope, and transformation.

The “soils” are the various conditions of human hearts as the “seed” falls upon them. Some are ready to receive the seed, but most are not.

The “crop” is what the “seed” produced in the ready and receptive hearts.

Having come to a knowledge of the truth, every Christian ought to be a sower. You will likely get the same response that Jesus got. If you have a twenty-five percent response you are doing well. It is not because the seed you sow is not good. It is because the human heart has been the same all through the ages. Jesus indicated that about one heart in four is ready.

The second secret of the parable is:

II. HOW WE RESPOND TO GOD (vv.19-23)

There is the person with the HARD HEART. This is the seed that was sown on the path through the field and the ground was so hard that the seed never got into the soil. Jesus said that when a person like this hears and does not understand the evil one like a bird comes and takes the seed away.

Often a person is not really hostile to the truth but sees no relevance of it to his life. How many things have you passed up simply because you did not understand and did not think that it had any meaning to you.

But a person’s heart can grow very hard toward the Lord when he has rejected the wooing of the Holy Spirit year after year.

Erwin McManus, a pastor in Los Angeles, tells an experience with his son about recognizing God’s voice.
“My son, Aaron, was five or six when he began asking me, “What does God’s voice sound like?” I didn’t know how to answer. A few years later, Aaron went off to his first junior high camp. In the middle of the week, I went up with another pastor to see our kids. Aaron, I learned, had started to assault another kid but had been held back by his friends. He was unrepentant, wanted to leave camp, pulled together his stuff, and shoved it into the car. I asked him for a last talk with me before we drove away. We sat on two large rocks in the middle of the woods. “Aaron,” I asked, “is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?” “Yes,” he nodded. “What’s the voice telling you?” “That I should stay and work it out.” “Can you identify that voice?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “It’s God.” It was the moment I’d waited for. “Aaron,” I said, “do you realize what just happened? You heard God’s voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that’s happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize Him.” I will never forget Aaron’s response: “Well, I’m still not doing what God said.” I explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey His guidance, his heart would become hardened, and his ears would become dull. If he continued on this path, there would be a day when he would never again hear the voice of God. There would come a day when he would deny that God even speaks or has ever spoken to him. But if he treasured in his heart the voice of God he would hear it all of his life.”

How do we reach a person with a hard heart? The hard ground has to be broken up and sometimes it takes years. Some of you had a hard heart toward God and his church.

There is the person with a SHALLOW HEART. “This is the seed that fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.” (vv.5-6). “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since it has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.” (vv.20-21)

This is the person who is attracted to Christ but who has failed to think salvation and discipleship through. One cannot be a half-Christian. Following Christ is an all or nothing proposition.

In the mid 1800’s Francis Thompson was in the throes of battle with truth. Ravished by alcohol and drug abuse, He had begun to sense the relentless pursuit of the Holy Spirit, and the harder he ran, the more he felt the hot breath of what he called “The Hound of Heaven” on his heels. He found there was no speed fast enough to outrun God; no place to hide from God; no safe haven, no place of rest, no armor or weapon that would serve to help him against the One he was striving so desperately to avoid.

Here are just a couple of short excerpts from his poem, “The Hound of Heaven”, “So my pursuer persisted; never rushed or agitated, always steady, constantly in control. And, continually I heard the accompanying Voice that spoke above the sound of the footfalls, now saying, ‘There is nothing which will hide you…you who will not hide Me in your heart’.”

Then, later: “The chase continues, the Pursuer coming closer to the one pursued; never rushed or agitated, constantly in control. And, always the Voice – if anything, faster than the Feet – ‘Listen! Nothing
will ever bring contentment to you; you who resist contenting Me’.”

Finally, at the end of his poem, having given up and surrendered to the One who would not let him get away, he says:

“Now the One who was always pursuing from behind is alongside.

The chase is ended. I sense a darkness. Is it danger?

No, it is rather the shadow of His hand of affection reaching out to me. And, this One who has chased so relentlessly after me says, ‘You who were so foolish, so blind to the truth, so utterly weak; I am the One whom you have always sought in all of your furious searches for security, well-being, and wholeness. You find all you want and need when you walk with Me’.”

There is the person of the CROWDED HEART. “Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.” (v.7) “The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.” (v.22)

Jesus is describing a life that is packed so full of many things that there is no ability to give priority to God. There is no time to deeply think about what he has heard and to meditate on God’s invitation to him.
Ross Cochrane explains: “George and Bill (not their real names), are talking at the door after the Church celebration. I hear Bill say, “I’ll get baptized today if you will.” So that day a millionaire and a politician are baptized in the river after the service by full immersion.

I guess George’s life seems complete. He has a million dollar mansion, money, a wife, kids, a luxury yacht parked at his jetty on the river. He is named among the rich and famous. He speaks at various functions and lives a celebrity lifestyle, available to an exclusive few, travelling extensively around the world staying in places of luxury. He is a millionaire after all. He even has religion now that he is baptized. His life looks like the fertile soil Jesus speaks of in Matthew 13. He says the right things and does the right things.
The real trouble I have with the thorns in my garden is an underlying root system that is almost impossible to trace, and if I let them grow, they will take over and choke the life out of other plants. If you look closely, very closely, what appears to be genuine growth in George is being choked by the trappings of his lifestyle of wealth and fame. The roots of this thorny ground are growing alongside the seeds of Jesus’ message and it is clear which lifestyle is taking precedent. Jesus isn’t so much Lord of his life but an optional extra. Is George’s heart THORNY GROUND, choked by a whole range of distractions in the world? His affair and divorce are the fruit of something deeply disturbing in his life. The deceptive tentacles continue to strangle his life. Don’t misunderstand me. Having money is not the issue. It’s what I treasure. Jesus says in Matthew 6:21 (NLT) “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

There is the person with the LISTENING HEART. “Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.” (vv.8-9) “But the one who received the see that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (v.23)

This is the one who truly listens and understands. This is good, rich, cultivated soil. All of the four hearts heard, but look at the difference. The HARD HEART heard – but Satan took it from him. The SHALLOW HEART heard also – but became disillusioned with the struggles of life. The CROWDED HEART listened but never gave God priority. The only one that got into the Kingdom was the one that truly listened and acted to become a disciple under the Lordship of Christ.

Robert Robinson was just a small boy when his dad died, and this meant that he had to go to work while still very young. Without a father to guide him, he fell in with bad crowd of friends. One day, his gang harassed a drunken gypsy. Pouring more whiskey into her, they demanded she tell their fortunes for free. Another time, he and his rebellious friends started harassing pastors. Another time they decided to go hear the great evangelist George Whitefield and heckle him. As Whitefield preached, a deep sense of sin came over Robert. It started a three-year journey searching out the claims of Christ – finally, at the age of 20, he made peace with God and immediately set out to become a preacher. Two years later, in 1757, he wrote a great hymn…

Come, Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above…

He preached for many years, until he came to a hard place in his life, and then left his church because of unfair accusations. It deeply hurt him, and he walked away from his faith and became very lonely, deeply angry and extremely critical in his old age.

One day as a miserable man, he was riding in a stagecoach and a lady sitting across from him – apologized to him for singing, “Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace…” And then Robert said, “Lady, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

Robinson is an example of all four kinds of hearts as are some of you today. But the secret of the kingdom is – where sin abounds – grace abounds even more!

RAISE BE TO HIS NAME!

Back to Top