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INJ
St Luke 8:4-15
'What a Waste of Seed'
Morning Service
Sexagesima | February 11, 2007
Dear Saints,
“A sower went out to sow His seed.” [St Luke 8:5] With this parable Jesus is teaching us about His Word. We hear about the Lord's Word also in the Old Testament lesson: “So shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void [, empty,] but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” God's Word is our great heritage, our life and light, the promises of God's love for us. David prays, “Thy Word is a lamp unto My feet and a light unto my path.” [Psalm 119:105] It is fitting for us, then, to consider the great gift of the Lord's Word, what it is, what it does, and how we are to regard it.
The first thing to note when speaking of the Lord's Word is that the Word is the Lord's. The voice of the Holy Trinity speaking to us. This is not a normal human word, but more, the same voice that spoke into nothing in the beginning, and there was, the word that caused the world to leap into being, this is the same voice that speaks to us. When we talk the best we can do is describe something, the Lord's Word creates, but more on this in a bit.
What it means when the Lord speaks is that it is sure and true. The Lord does not lie. The Holy Scriptures are trustworthy. The theological words are inerrant and infallible. Inerrant means without error, perfectly true in every detail and in every way. Jesus says, “The Scriptures cannot be broken.” [St John 10:35] They are without error, inerrant.
The Scriptures are also infallible. Infallible means more, while inerrant means that the Scriptures do not err, infallible means that the Scriptures cannot err. Your tax report, for example, can be inerrant, without any errors, but it cannot be infallible; it is always possible for us, on this side of the resurrection, to err and make mistakes. But not only does the Lord not lie, He cannot lie. “It is impossible for God to lie.” [Hebrews 6:18] The Scriptures are and must be perfect in every way, they are inerrant and infallible because they are inspired.
Inspired means “breathed out” by God (spiro is Latin for breath) as Paul teaches, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” [1 Timothy 3:16] We heard this same thing in the Epistle lesson from Transfiguration Sunday, two weeks ago, “for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” [1 Peter 1:21] The Word is the Lord's, not man's, not an invention of man but a gift of God.
So the Lord's word is inerrant (it does not err), infallible (it is unable to err), and inspired (breathed by God), but there is still more, the Scriptures are also efficacious, that is, they are powerful to accomplish what the Lord desires of them. This, really, is what the texts that we have before us. In Isaiah the Lord's Word is pictured as rain that comes down from heaven that brings life to the earth. “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” [Isaiah 55:10-11]
The Lord's Word does something, it brings forth life. It is powerful, active, full of life and salvation. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” says St Paul, “For it is the power of God unto salvation.” [Romans 1:16] This is the same thing that Jesus is teaching us in the parable of the sower. The sower goes out to sow seed, and Jesus explains to His disciples what this means, “the seed is the Word of God.” [St Luke 8:11] This seed is thrown out into the field, into the dirt. That's our part in the parable, we're the dirt. That fits, doesn't it? Our father, Adam, was created from the mud before God spiro-ed, breathed life into him. And more, dirt has no life, it's dead. That's why when we die we return to the dust.
So when Jesus calls us dirt we know that we're in a desperate situation, “dead in trespasses and sins” is how St Paul says it, and so we know that we need something has to come in from the outside, life must be breathed in. Without the seed the dirt is simply dead dirt, the life, the fruit, all things good are in the seed. This is how it is with the Lord's word, it comes from outside of us, and it brings life. It is planted into our ears and hearts when we read it, study it and hear it preached.
And this brings us life, it bears fruit, Jesus says, some thirty-fold, some sixty, some one hundred. All the credit belongs to the seed, not the dirt. The dirt only gets blamed if things go wrong. Please note this, for it is the same for our salvation. When we, by the mercies of God, believe His promises and are saved and given eternal life, all the glory and credit goes to God alone, His grace alone. But if a person dies in unbelief and is therefore damned, all the culpability goes to the person.
This is why Jesus outlines the faults of the soil in the parable before us: “12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” [St Luke 8:13-15]
This is Second Commandment stuff. What is the Second Commandment? Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His word, but consider it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
The three soils did not consider the Lord's Word sacred, holy, their greatest and highest treasure. The first, the path, is so rock hard that the seed is nothing but bird seed, and the devil comes along and eats it up. Such are the unbelievers who have no ears to hear the Lord's gracious promises.
The second soil is the rocky ground, the heart that hears God's Word, believes, but because there is no root, times of temptation wither the person's faith and it dies away. When times of trouble come it doesn't mean it's time to quit the church, to stop your prayers, to set the Lord's Word aside. Lord forbid. No, we cling even tighter to the Scriptures and the promises of Jesus, trusting in Him and walking by faith, not by sight, hoping for the Lord's appointed day of rescue.
The third soil is the heart that believes the word, but is surrounded by temptations, weeds and thorns that grow up and choke out the word, the weeds, Jesus says, of “cares, riches, and pleasures of this life.” This is the person who puts everything else before God's Word, work, money, entertainment, and the day to day troubles are more important, more consuming than the Lord's word. More and more, bigger and bigger, this third soil is busy, and that's okay, but it's too busy for the Lord's Word, and in the end His Word is choked out.
I suspect that this last heart is what most of us are tempted towards, we would like to study the Bible more, but we're so busy, there's just so much to do. “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but consider it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.” Jesus would have us consider His Word sacred, the most holy and precious thing that we have. Indeed it is our greatest treasure, our highest gift.
Compared to the Lord's Word all the other things the Lord has given us, well, we sang it in the hymn, “And take they my life, goods fame child and wife, let these all be gone, they yet have nothing won, the kingdom ours remaineth.” If we have the Lord's Word we have everything. If our life is taken, then we have eternal life. If our goods are taken we have treasures stored up in heaven, even God's righteousness. If our fame, our reputation is taken, we have the smiling face of God our Father, and the forgiveness of all of our sins. If our family is taken, we have the glorious hope of the reunion of all the saints in heaven, and the sure hope of the resurrection from the dead. If all is taken from us, everything but the Lord's Word with its promise of forgiveness, we still have everything.
But if the Lord's Word is taken from us, then all is lost, eternally lost. This is the worst thing that could happen to us, to our families, and to our church. So we constantly pray that the Lord would keep us steadfast in His Word and that He would bring to nothing all the plots of the devil to snatch the Lord's Word away from us and cause it to wither and die.
But in this life of labor and trials and temptations, where our hearts are often hard as rock, or filled with the rocks of tribulation, or surrounded with the weeds of cares and temptations, what's the solution for us? Do we need to be better heart gardeners? Is it up to us to plow our hearts and make them ready for the Lord's Word? The command from Jesus is simply to listen, to hear. “Those who have ears, let him hear.” And in our hearing the Lord does the word.
He plows the heart, He clears out the weeds with the scythe of His law, the preaching of repentance. He lifts out the stones by the word of forgiveness and the promise of eternal life. His seed is what brings forth the fruit. Jesus always comes to us with forgiveness and life, He waters the seed with His blood and this brings life out of our death, holiness out of our sin. “But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.” This is the good work which our Lord Jesus works in us.
We, therefore, rejoice. The Lord has given us His Word, He has planted it home, and through His grace it will bear the fruit of eternal life. “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever." And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” [1 Peter 1:23-25]
May we continue, with hearts made good by the forgiveness of all our sins, continue to hear and treasure the Lord's living, abiding and eternal Word, and in that Word find our life and salvation. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO