2-20-22 Sexagesima

Bible Text: Luke 8:4-15 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Gesima 2022 | The most precious thing you have is not your house or your car or your investments or your job or even your family. It is the Word of God. And if you guard it and keep it, it will bring you outrageously generous blessings. Jesus says it will produce fruit a hundredfold, that there is no one who follows Jesus who won’t receive a hundredfold back on this earth and in eternity. And so Jesus tells this parable about the great dangers of neglecting this word, ignoring it, or imagining that you have something greater, something more precious to hang onto, or allowing first your eyes and then your heart to turn away from the God who bled for you and to the pleasures of this world and all the anxious cares they bring.

He tells his disciples that the parables are for them. They’re not for the unbelievers. The unbelievers hear them and yawn – children’s stories about a lousy farmer. And they can’t see how this Word of God is so precious a thing, so necessary to hold on to – it can’t buy you stuff, and it comes with crosses and pains and commandments. Why would you value it so much? So the parables are for us. They’re to make us dwell on what a treasure we have and why we need to guard this Word as more precious even than our earthly life. And when we dwell on it we see the fruits burst through, beautiful fruits, undeniable fruits, a hundredfold here on earth and without number in the resurrection.

This hundredfold fruit is not the conversion of another hundred people to Christianity. It is not about the quantity of people we reach with the Word of Jesus. This parable is not a call to convert the world. Of course we want to see numbers, we want to see this church filled, we want to have to tear it down and build a bigger church because we just can’t keep people from coming to hear God’s Word, or better yet, we want to have to start another church here in Casper because Trinity and Mount Hope are filled to the brim. And we have to want this, because our God wants it, not wanting any to perish but for all to come to repentance. So God grant the numbers according to His will.

But that’s not the growth, not the fruit Jesus speaks of here. He’s talking about the growth the Word causes in you, in your soul, in your life. It has unbounded power to give you God’s own happiness. It will bring you peace every day of your life if you let it, the peace of knowing that your God cares even for the sparrows of the air and so much more for you whom He formed in your mother’s womb, whose hairs he has counted, whose days he’s ordered, whose human nature He now shares, for whom He died and for whom He lives forever. It will give you unbridled joy that no care of this life can take away, the joy of knowing your sins which have brought you so much sorrow and would separate you from God forever, they are gone, washed away in your Lord’s blood, that you have an eternal inheritance in heaven and your God has sealed it to you by your Baptism, by a new birth as His child.

It will give you a love for the things that are truly lovely, of God, of the body and blood that unite Him to you and you to Him forever, and for everyone else, even your enemies, that they would know this love and joy and peace. It will give you patience to suffer anything for the Lord, contentment even through pain and sorrow, it will make you stare death itself in the face and tell that impostor that it has no claim on you, because Christ lives and his life is your life. It will give you the courage and the self-control to fight every temptation, to say no to the gossiping words, no to the lustful thoughts, no to the envying and the greed and the thirst for revenge. It will make you gentle and kind even to those who sin against you. It will make you faithful to your God, faithful to your spouse, faithful to who you are as God’s child. It will make you prize keeping God’s commandments more than gold. It will raise you far above the cares of this world and fill you with joyful expectation of seeing your Savior’s glorious face in paradise with joys that it is not lawful for human lips to utter. It will give you an eternal family, friends who are willing to lay down their life for you. It will make you see God’s goodness in everything he made, his beauty in everything you see, his justice and his mercy in all circumstances. It will give you what angels desire to look into.

And so Jesus warns you against losing it. Don’t be the road, don’t be the rocky soil, don’t surround yourself with thorns.

The road is apathy. That means not caring. It’s the life lived that simply doesn’t care about God’s word. It’s boring. Sportsball and video games and political talk shows are more exciting. And so life on the road is a useless life where the Word has no chance even to penetrate the hardened heart.

The rocky soil is different. It once loved the Word, but it didn’t cling to it, didn’t pray fervently, didn’t read it with attention, didn’t make church a priority, and so never got to see and experience just how precious this word was, never let it take deep root. And so when cross comes, when trial happens, when being a Christian becomes unpopular, when God’s word is mocked by the elite, when the government bans church, the rocky soil would rather have the approval of the world and the security of a job or riches and the enjoyment of bodily health than keep hold of the Word and suffer for it. So it gains what moth eats and rust destroys, but gives up its soul.

The thorny soil loves the word of God, but it doesn’t take its warnings seriously enough. It thinks it can be at home in the world. Have its cake and eat it too. Because it’s proud and hasn’t learned through suffering to be humble. It thinks it can surround itself with temptation and give into it and still remain a Christian. So it dreams about money and obsesses about sex and nurses its grudges and panders its self-pity and is finally choked and the word of God and the Christian life are lost.

These are warnings from Jesus and Jesus knows what he’s talking about. He loves you very much. He is your Brother. He suffered for you and spilt his blood to win you back to life with Him. There is no one in all the world, no one, who loves you and cares for you as much as He does. Whatever other love you receive in this life is either a reflection of His love or a counterfeit of His love. So listen to Him.

He doesn’t say these words just to make you feel guilty so you can say, Yes, that’s me, I definitely like sports more than God’s word, but good thing God forgives me anyway. Or, yes that’s me, I love to watch filth on the internet, but good thing God still loves me anyway. Or, yes I do find it boring to sing God’s word, I don’t pray much, but I still believe. No. That’s what we call a Lutheranism. It’s something Lutherans dream up because they know the law is supposed to show us our sin and the gospel to forgive it. And so we end up making the gospel an excuse not to do what Jesus commands. That’s not the Christian way. Not the Lutheran way.

Jesus is telling you to change your life. He’s telling you to live and act like a Christian, like this Word is as precious as your lips confess. He’s telling you to cut off whatever leads you astray. He uses the most vivid imagery, If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Care more about God’s Word and living according to it, than anything else. If you’re drinking too much, stop it. Read the Bible more and it will give you a contentment that the last glass could never give. Don’t ever look at porn again, ever. Pray to your Lord Jesus every time the thought enters into your head and He will give you real satisfaction, real pleasure, that won’t leave you feeling dirty but will show you the cleanness and innocence of your Savior. Stop dreaming about money. Dream about heaven and you will have nothing to fear losing or gaining, because it’s already won and its yours forever. Don’t gossip. It’s not ok. It’s not what Christians do. You are a new creation. Don’t talk bad about your fellow Christians behind their back. Encourage them and lift them up and remind yourself of the beautiful things Jesus says about you before His Father in heaven.

I’m not saying this to make you feel bad so you can feel better once you hear me tell you that Jesus died for you. I’m saying this because if you surround yourself with thorns or don’t water your faith or don’t even think of it, you’ll lose it and with it you’ll lose everything, God and life itself. And I’m also saying it because fighting your sin and driving yourself to prayer and reading God’s Word and being kind to others and thinking about Jesus and heaven, this is fruit, it’s delicious, beautiful fruit, that God loves to see and that will make your life so rich and so full that you will cry with joy at all God has given you and see that he was understating it when he said a hundredfold.

And when you treasure God’s Word and read it and wrestle with it and live it out, it will not only grow in you, it will grow in the world. It will grow in our children and in our schools and in our marriages and in our community. There is nothing wrong with this word. It is perfect. It has no faults. It is powerful like nothing else on this earth. It sets you before God clothed in the righteousness of His Son. It rescues you from a life of meaninglessness and gives you status as God’s own children with a life of good to do and an eternity to enjoy. And the more you read it, the more you treasure it, the more you pray it, the more it will give you and those around you, a hundredfold and more. Don’t neglect this treasure. The almighty God has promised to give you untold blessings through it. It is worth suffering for. It will even turn suffering into blessing, death into life, persecution into glory, mourning into joy and laughter. It will never stop giving you joy and peace and love and patience and goodness and kindness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. It will give and give and give and you will grow and grow and grow into a beautiful tree that bears good fruit forever. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Nothing could be better, nothing greater. Dear God make us faithful Christians for Jesus’ sake, grow your Word in us, and then grow it in the world, that we may be the light shining on a hill and may reflect the love and joy and peace of our Savior, who is the light of the world! Amen.

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