Bible Text: St Luke 8:4–15 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
At first glance it looks like Jesus gives parables so that people can’t understand Him. And that seems strange, why wouldn’t Jesus want people to understand His word, doesn’t he want people to be saved, doesn’t He want them to know the truth? Of course He does. Then why does Jesus say, “But to the rest in parables, ‘so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand’”? Is this what He wants, that people DON’T understand?
No, and that’s not the first thing Jesus says about parables. He says to those who believe in Him, “But to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” To whom? To whom does He give this amazing thing, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God? To those who ask, “What does this mean?” That’s what the disciples ask! The basic question of the catechism, right? But really the foundational impulse of faith – what does this mean, Jesus? And this isn’t simply an intellectual question, it’s a question of the heart, of pure practicality, what does this seed and its being sown in four different types of soil, what does it mean for me, for my life, for my problems, my cares, my present, my future? And that is what those disciples are doing. That’s the beauty of it. They’re asking, What does this mean? And to them Jesus says, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” To everyone who asks of Jesus, who is interested in His word, who wants to hear it.
That’s why He gives His word to you in parables, to spur you on to ask, to care enough, that you want Him to teach you and keep teaching you because you know that without His word you’re lost and you can’t understand, you can’t understand yourself or life or God or your sufferings or what you’re doing on this earth. So Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened unto you,” because this is your nature as a Christian, to ask more and more and more of Jesus, so that He gives and gives and gives. And that’s not simply for physical stuff, asking for a job or for a spouse or for health, it’s asking for understanding, to know Christ and the power of His resurrection in your life. Ask, and you will receive. Care, and to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.
This is what the parable of the sower and the seed teaches. It’s your nature as a Christian to ask more of Jesus. What does that mean? That you have a nature as a Christian, a Christian nature? Jesus answers that question by picturing His Word as a seed. When a seed is planted, the only thing that can come from that seed is the plant from which the seed came. You plant a mustard seed and every single time, a trillion times out of a trillion, every time, you will get a mustard plant and not a pumpkin or maple or birch. An acorn has always made an oak tree. (This, by the way, shows that God is right in Genesis when He makes different plants and animals and says, “each according to its kind,” and evolution is just wrong. Chickens hatch from chicken eggs, finches produce finches, oaks produce more oaks, and all scientific and mathematical discoveries since Darwin have only served to further prove this unalterable fact.)
The nature of the seed is in the seed. And that means that the seed of the Word of God when it comes to fruition will always produce the same thing. It will always produce a Christian, a little Christ, because the Seed contains not our sinful nature, but the nature of the Word, and that is Jesus. The seed contains His death and His resurrection. It contains His blood shed for sinners, it contains His righteousness, His divine nature, His identity as Son of God, His eternal life. When it is planted in us and grows in good soil, Jesus says, it produces fruit a hundredfold, because when it grows it grows into what it is by nature, it came from Christ and it makes a Christian, a child of God, an heir of eternity, righteous and pure before God. Jesus once said of Himself, of His death and resurrection, “Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it remains but a single seed; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” He is the seed, and He did die, and He rose and He produces much fruit. “I am the vine, you are the branches, If you remain in Me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”
So that is the nature of a Christian.
Why is it the nature of a Christian to ask for more? Because we have another nature, the nature we were born with. And again, that nature was produced by the Word of God when He created us in the beginning. This is consistent in the Bible. The Word creates. Always. God originally planted the seed of His own image in us. He spoke the Word and it happened. Adam and Eve were happy. They were content. They were righteous. They knew God and they loved Him and so they expected every good thing from Him. They had His image, they partook of His nature.
And then the devil planted a different seed in our first parents, which was, once again, a word, but this time a lie. “You will be like God,” and that seed, that word, of pride and rebellion and discontent and lust after what doesn’t belong to us, that seed brought with it everything evil, it brought a new nature of corruption and sin and death and judgment, and every lack.
So we lack by our nature now, we have huge holes in our lives, we have sin and we have to face death and we want to be in control instead of God, and we’re discontent, and we fear the unknown, and we don’t know God or trust Him to care for us, and lusts and angers and jealousies rise up in us without us even asking. That’s the nature the devil planted in us. It’s his nature. And his children are like him.
But when Jesus plants His Word in us, we ask from the Lord and He gives us everything we lack. We fear death and we ask Him for life and He plants it in us, and we see our sin and hate it and want to be rid of it, and He speaks the Word and clothes us with the righteousness He died to win. We see God far off and distant and not caring, and He plants the seed and He Himself is with us, we are His body, God gives us His name, we become His children. He takes our pride and drowns it. He takes our thirst for control and turns it into the trust that He will work all to our good. He takes our discontent with our lives and our thirsting after the illusion of greater things and replaces it with the contentment and satisfaction of knowing His love and care. He gives us Himself, and He becomes your treasure, because He defeated your enemy the devil, and suffered your judgment and your death and your hell, to win you back to Himself and to His Father.
That’s why the nature of a Christian is always to ask more from Jesus, because He fills our every lack.
The seed, the Word, makes us what we are. It’s our everything, our salvation, our guide for living, our hope in death. But that seed only grows in good soil. And good soil comes about only by plowing and ripping into the ground, and tearing out rocks and thorns and weeds. And that’s why the life of a Christian is so often hard and painful. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus is teaching not there are for different kinds of soil and these directly correlate with four different kinds of people. That might be true enough in the end. But the point is that without plowing and digging the rocks out and ripping out the weeds, we’re all bad soil, hard with unbelief, shallow, with our priorities all messed up, and choked by the pleasures and cares of this world. That’s the seed the devil planted. Thorns. And to be good soil, we need our unbelief plowed into, we need Jesus shooting his arrows into the demon birds that are snatching at His Word and making us doubt, we need him to be our gardener, who shows us the temptations that lead us away from Him, makes us learn, sometimes very hard lessons by tasting and seeing the vanity of this earth’s pleasures, and how empty sin makes you. We need him tearing out the weeds in our lives and that is painful. Jesus sends us trials and crosses and makes us weak, so that we despair of our powers, and we find our strength in Him, in His grace, and we cling to the word of Christ crucified for me, where there is no condemnation, only the love of the God who wore thorns on his head and was assaulted by the devil for us, and was crushed for our iniquities, and then rose from the dead to claim us as His brothers and sisters. Because He loves you.
And that’s why Jesus says, seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Because who can receive this Word? Who can submit to this gardener who is tearing up your life and ripping out rocks and tearing out weeds? Only you to whom it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Who ask and receive what you could not ever have had except in Jesus – purity and righteousness and life with God and knowledge of salvation and contentment and joy and peace. Who know that after the pain of repentance and trial comes the divine and eternal relief of knowing the God who created us and loves us and fights for us and became one of us and lived for us and died for us, so that we now live with Him forever. And for Him and from Him we will always ask and receive. Amen.