May it please God to bless us
together this morning as we meditate in his holy word. And this morning
I want to speak to you about the parable that we read, the
parable of the sower. And as we read together, it really
commences at verse 3 and it runs right down to verse 20. And the
Lord Jesus speaks very clearly to all of us with regards to
the necessity really of being a true believer. We have in this parable really
three negative positions and then one positive position. And the danger is to assume that
we are in the positive position when in reality we are not. It's very easy to have read this
parable, perhaps on many occasions, and have read these words, another
fell on good ground and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased
and brought forth some 30, some 60, and some 100, and make the
assumption that we are amongst those people. And it's very,
very easy to come to a wrong decision and to find in actual
fact that our religion is not what it should be. And it would
be a terrible thing if you and I spend all our life assuming
that we are a good ground hearer, and when we come to the day of
our death we find, to our great consternation, that in fact we
were not. We were amongst those that the
scripture here in this Parable of the Sower enumerates so clearly
and yet we didn't realise we were amongst them. And so we
should be grateful to God that he has given us such a parable
and such a gracious and glorious explanation so that we can come
to some right appreciation and some right understanding of where
we stand regard to the truth of God, with regard to the work
of God in our souls. And it really comes down to this.
What we need is a positive religion. And you may say, well what do
you mean by that? What I mean by that is this,
a Christ-centred religion. And what I mean by that is that
the Lord Jesus Christ is not just a figment of history, a
figment of our imagination, but is a very real person, a very
real saviour to our eternal souls. And the effect of that knowledge
is very clearly set before us here in this parable, that it
will be something which is observable, and as the Lord tells us, and
these are they which are sown on good ground, such as hear
the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold,
some sixty, and some a hundred. So the very clear position here
is, for all of us today, is to realise that if you and I, amongst
those who receive the Word of God, and the Lord tells us, he
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. If we receive the Word
of God into our heart, there will be a wonderful effect of
it. And the effect will be fruitfulness. There will be the evidence of
fruit. We only have to think of that
in a natural view, don't we? You think of corn when it grows. We see the corn, don't we? There
it is in the air. It's a very clear illustration,
some 30 and some 60, and some 100-fold from one little grain
of corn. And it's visible, isn't it? And
it's seen. And you see fruit. You see fruit
on trees. tree grows and there's fruit
on it. And it's evident. And it's visible. It's not something which is hidden.
It's not something which doesn't exist. And therefore we should
be very conscious that the reality of the true work of God, the
true spirit of grace in the souls of the believer is evident. And it's evident in this way.
And therefore, as it's evident, what does it do? It sets forth
God's grace. It sets forth His amazing love. It sets forth His wonderful mercy. And it brings forth, therefore,
honour and glory to the name of Almighty God. So this morning,
I want to really concentrate more especially on the effect
of the grace of God, the effect of the work of God in our souls,
and the evidence of the fruitfulness of the things of God. Now, before
we just come to that, I want to just go through the other
three positions and situations that the Lord directs us to.
And naturally, the Lord gives us a very good position. And just to backtrack perhaps
a moment, he says, behold, there went out a sower to sow. And who is the sower? Well, the sower is the preacher. What is the seed? The seed is
the word of God. So let's have that in the back
of our mind as we go through this parable. And the Lord sets
it before us, first of all, in very simple terms that all of
us can understand in a natural way. And so the first illustration
is that some of the seed fell by the wayside. And there it
was on the ground, and what happened? Well, the fowls, birds came and
they devoured it. So that seed was wasted and it
was quickly disappeared. And then the second illustration
is that some fell upon stony ground. Well, I'm sure we can
understand if ground which has a lot of stone in it, there's
really not much goodness in the ground. And so the Lord says,
some fell on stony ground where it had not much earth, and immediately
it sprang up, but because it had no depth of earth when the
sun was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it
yielded no fruit. See here we have coming back
to this essential element of fruit. So there may be perhaps
some springing up, But then when the sun comes, it dies down and
it's gone. No evidence of any lasting benefit. And then the Lord tells us, and
some fell among thorns. Again, we know what thorns are
like and brambles and perhaps wild roses and things like that
are very thorny. And what happened? Those weeds,
as it were, I know perhaps a rose is not a weed, but what happens
is it chokes the seed which was sown. It struggles to grow. and they can't find enough goodness
in the ground, and therefore it dies. And what happens? It yields no fruit, and they
fell on good ground. Well now, the Lord then illustrates
what this parable means. You see, you and I might read
a parable like this, and we might really struggle to understand
what it means. Perhaps we might not understand
it at all. But the Lord illustrates what it meant, and he tells us,
the sower soweth the word. And these are they by the wayside,
where the word is sown, but when they have heard, Satan cometh
immediately and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. Now, just think about what the
Lord says here. We've all sat under many sermons,
I'm sure. We've all sat under many sermons. And we've heard many sermons,
many words of life. And as we've listened to that,
and it's entered perhaps into our minds, and what's happened? We've almost immediately forgotten
what was said. So when we come to the end of
the service, and we go on our way home and we've forgotten
what was said, and if anybody said what was preached on this
morning, we'd all have to say, well, I've forgotten already.
Well, there's no virtue in that, is there? And there's no benefit
in that, is there? And if we are like that, and
I'm sure, without any doubt, we have all been like it, without
any exception. but we don't want to be like
it now. So that's the one condition the Lord sets before us. And
then he tells us, and these are they likewise, same condition,
likewise, which are sown on stony ground, which when they have
heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness, and have no
root in themselves, And so endure but for a time, and afterward,
when affliction or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately
they are offended." This I see as a very searching word, really. Because there are those occasions
when people may come and say, oh, that was a good sermon this
morning, and that was a good word. that was preached this
morning. You may not only just say it
to the preacher, you may say it to one another. But does it
just stop there? Has it just been a little meditation
perhaps, and then we've forgotten all about it? And then it hasn't
really benefited our souls? When opposition has come and
when perhaps things have crammed into our life and we weren't
allowed things to come into our life. And the effect has been
the things which we've heard have vanished away. There has
been no profit. And so we cannot rest on thinking
that perhaps we were a true believer, thinking that we'd received the
word, thinking we'd remembered something and we could comment
on it. Sometimes people We'll comment on things. I often think
it's a sad position that when many illustrations or illustrations
are made, which tickle the fancy of the mind, that people remember
those, but it doesn't really have any effect upon them. We
have to be very careful on illustrations. We have to be careful to concentrate
upon the truth of God's Word. God's Word gives many illustrations.
Many illustrations. We have many illustrations that
God gives, that Lord Jesus has given himself. From one perspective,
we don't need any more illustrations. They're all there. And yet, you
see, sometimes we may think, well, I don't quite understand
them. Well, the reason is, of course, that we haven't prayed.
We haven't desired earnestly that the Word of God might speak
to our souls. And then the Lord comes in the
third case, and he says, and then there are those which are
sown among thorns, such as hear the word, hear the word, and
the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches,
and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word,
and it becometh unfruitful. You see, the bottom line is this. Has what we've heard produced
fruit in our lives? That's the bottom line, isn't
it? We need to be very conscious of the need for that. And we
need to be very prayerful in our lives. It may be so. And we may not be numbered amongst
those three illustrations, which are very clear there, and they're
for us to take heed to, and to be very, very concerned that
we are amongst these last characters that the Lord illustrates. And
he comes and says, and these are they which are sown on good
ground. How needful it is that we are
a good ground hearer. Now if we are a good ground hearer,
what would have happened is this. The Lord will have prepared the
ground. It won't just have been left
in a stony condition. The weeds won't have been allowed
to stay there to choke the Word. The Spirit of God will have moved
in our hearts to prepare us to receive the Word of God. And it will be a wonderful mercy
if you and I are able to observe the good hand of God upon us,
preparing us to receive the Word of God into an honest heart. And I believe when this occurs,
we come up to the services expectantly, expecting God to hear our prayers,
expecting God to bless us and we won't be content or satisfied
with just coming and going and perhaps being able to make some
comment and we might pat ourselves on the back because we've made
some what we think is an adequate comment to commend us. Oh friends,
we stand before God, don't stand before men, we're
not here to impress men, we're here to honour and glorify God
and let us be concerned that our words, our actions do honour
and glorify God and to be taken up with the things of God, be
taken up with the desire for true fruitfulness, and to therefore
be found bearing fruit, which shall be for the honour and glory
of God." And what does that mean? It doesn't mean that we therefore
don't say anything. It means that we do say things,
but we say things from an honest heart, and we say things which
will bring honour and glory to God, so that we may have the
evidence that we are truly fruitful and that the Lord has truly prepared
our hearts to receive his word. What a good condition it would
be if every time we come together to worship that we are concerned
that our heart is prepared to worship God. Well, we've all
come here this morning, haven't we? We're all sat in the pew
and we prayed earnestly Have we travailed? That means truly
earnest prayer. Travailing is a very good illustration
because we have it as it speaks of a woman travailing when she
brings forth a child. And that's not an easy position,
is it? There's much labour, there's
much travail. What it says is, with the true believer, there's
a travailing in prayer for the blessing of God. And therefore
you won't get up on a Sunday morning and say, well it's time
for church today and off I'm going. Be a blessing if you've
travailed in prayer for the blessing of God to attend your souls so
that there is a benefit, a benefit from coming and hearing the truth
of God's word. And the effect of that benefit
is to produce fruit in our spiritual life. And so the Lord comes and
he says, and these are they which are sown on good ground. And then he tells us such as
hear the word, when all these previous people have heard the
word, but now there's a difference. They hear the word and receive
it. If you and I are blessed with
a tender fear of God, our concern will be to receive the word. And you may say, well, why is
that? I'll tell you why it is. It's because our soul will be
hungry and thirsty for the things of God. so that we will be longing after
the blessing. We won't be content with just
coming and going. We'll be concerned to hear for
eternal good, for the profit of our eternal soul, so we have
something to take home, just like Ruth did in her life when
she gleaned among the sheaves, and she took that which she gleaned
home and beat it out. Yes, it was something which was
of benefit, of profit to her, and yet there was that beating
out, there was that meditating upon the things heard. Not just
forgetting them, not just rushing on with all the things of time,
but beating out the Word of God, beating out the heavenly grain,
that it may indeed be for our souls eternal good. And so, may
we be amongst those who hear the Word. Important that is,
isn't it? And some of us look back in our
lives when we've never even heard the Word. We've sat in chapel,
we've never heard what the preacher said. We've never heard a word. Gone home, absolute destitute. And the solemn thing is, it's
a very solemn condition, the reality is that we've mocked
God, haven't we? You say, what is that? Well,
you pretended, I pretended to worship God and we never have.
We've mocked God. We've never received a word.
We've never been a good ground hearer. how important it is then
for us today to be amongst those who are under this category,
who hear the word and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some
30-fold, some 60, and some 100-fold. It must be very significant that
Lord uses such a multiplication He doesn't say, well, let it
be twofold. Let it be threefold. He starts
with thirtyfold. That's a tremendous multiplication,
isn't it? Of the word that you and I have
heard. That it blossoms and it becomes
fruitful. It's in our lives. It's a wonderful
evidence of the work of the Spirit. bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold,
some sixty, and some an hundredfold. Well, we may ask ourselves, what
really is this benefit? What really is the favour? Well, the Word of God helps us
very wonderfully in the Word of God, and how thankful we are
that we have the Word of God to give us a good illustration
of these things in the In the Romans, chapter 15, we read these
words. He says this, Now the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may
abound in hope for the power of the Holy Ghost. It's a very full verse that,
isn't it? But it's needful that you and
I pray that we may be like this and be able to come and say,
yes, I can, truly joy. And the word here is, the God
of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. It brings
to mind the life of David, And what David said when he penned
the 23rd Psalm, he said, my cup runneth over. Surely that means he was full
of the goodness of the Lord. Surely that was a wonderful time
for him. And surely that should be our
concern. You know, we have a great God. We have a God who is able to
do for us far more exceedingly abundantly than we can ask or
even think. Sometimes we become very negative
in our approach and we say, well, of course it's a day of small
things. We settle down, content with just a very minimal experience
of God's favour toward us. But what a blessing it is if
we're on the stretch after a greater knowledge and to be found like
this, filled with a joy and peace in
believing. It is a wonderful time when the
Holy Spirit brings us to that position when we believe the
Word of God, when we believe His truth, and we realise it
has a personal application to our lives and we do believe in
the Word of God. We do believe that the Lord Jesus
Christ came into this world to save sinners of whom I am chief. It's the work of the Spirit of
God to bring us to that position so that we do believe. And we are amongst those. All
of us here today, without any exception, need the grace of
God to come upon us in divine power to enable us to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. And when the Holy Spirit gives
us faith, living faith to believe. It is then, you see, the blessed
light of God descends upon us through his Spirit and it reveals
to us the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ and we are filled
with joy and peace in believing. Let us not depart from a constant
desire to walk in such a path as this. filled with joy and
peace in believing, and that ye may abound in hope for the
power of the Holy Ghost. It will be through the power
of the Holy Ghost, it will be the work of the Holy Spirit,
but it will be that which therefore brings forth that fruitfulness
that evidence of God's goodness and of God's mercy and of God's
favour toward us. And then just turning to the
epistle of Paul to the Galatians where the God's servant speaks
there about the fruit of the Spirit. Previously you've spoken
about the works of the flesh. Very different, you see, two
different elements. One, the works. The works, no
true benefit if they're worldly works. But here we have here
the fruit of the Spirit. And when the Lord God applies
his word into the good ground of our heart, there is an effect. there must be an effect because
it's the work of God. And the work of God doesn't lie
just dormant with no evidence of his work. His work is to be
revealed. His work is to bring forth honour
and glory to his great and holy name. And therefore the apostle
tells us very clearly the fruit of the Spirit. And he gives us
a comprehensive list. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against
such there is no law, and they that are Christ's have crucified
the flesh. with the affections and lusts. He goes on to say, if we live
in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Well, it's a good
thing, therefore, if we desire the evidence of fruit like this. And the wonder of it is the Holy
Spirit directs us, first of all, to this word of love. Love is a very key factor. in the life of God in our souls. Firstly, it will be the love
of God toward you and me. And it will be amazing when the
Spirit shows us that Almighty God has loved us with an everlasting
love and it's because of that that he's given us grace to believe
in his word It's because of his love he's given us faith to believe
the truth of God and to realize that the love of God was so great. The love of the father was so
great that he sent his only beloved son into this world that whosoever
believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And
the love of the son was so great that he should come into this
sinful world. to suffer and to bleed and to die, that we might
receive the gift of eternal life and also the love of the Holy
Spirit to convey the great truths of the Gospel to our soul. So we have this wonderful evidence
of God's love toward us. An evidence it is, and the effect
of God's love will produce a return of love in our hearts unto our
God. And it's like this, not that
we loved God, but that he loved us. And that will then produce
a love in our heart to our God. Now this is an evidence of God's
goodness and mercy to us. And it's a very clear evidence
of the life of God in our soul, when we have that love toward
God. And if you and I are blessed
with love towards God, what would be the effect? What would the
fruitfulness be? We would desire to please God,
surely, won't we? Won't we desire to please God? Won't we desire to do His bidding? Won't we desire to follow His
path? Won't we desire to keep His commandments? Oh, I'm sure when you and I are
blessed with this love, it's a very sure evidence of His mercy
toward us, and the effect will be, it will be to follow Him,
to do His will. We won't desire, will we, to
just stay unconcerned and just carry on because we will desire
that His name will be honoured and glorified. If His love and
mercy toward us has shown His grace, our desire will be to
honour Him. Oh, it won't be a hardship. It
won't be a hardship. We read in the Song of Solomon
those glorious words, draw me. And when the Holy Spirit draws
us with love to Christ, what's the effect? What does the Lord
say? Through his servant Solomon,
we will run after thee. You won't stay sitting still,
will you? You won't stay asleep. Your desire to run after this
kind and Gracious God, your desire to take up your cross and to
follow him, love, oh, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit love
and joy. There will be the evidence of
joy because this work of the Spirit will bubble up inside. You'll have joy. true joy, spiritual
joy, the Lord has looked upon you, the Lord's had mercy upon
you, the Lord's loved you with everlasting love. There'll be joy, great joy, won't
there? Love, joy, it's an evidence,
and it's that which brings forth fruit, you see. People will observe
this joy, Oh, you're a changed person. Yes, I am. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Oh, what a mercy it is to know
the joy of the Lord. Again, it's not anything which
is of the earth. It's that which is spiritual.
Joy, and then peace. What does that mean? peace with
God. Oh my friends, what a glorious
truth that is, to have peace with God. An unworthy, hell-deserving
sinner, how is it? Peace by his cross has Jesus
made. That's how you and I enter into
the peace, true peace, the peace through the cross of Christ.
What a blessing it is when the light shines into our heart as
we view, by faith, the suffering Saviour. Peace by His cross as
Jesus made well. Again, that's evident you see
in our lives, isn't it? It's evident. God's peace dwelling
within us. There we were, like a restless
ocean. when the work of the Spirit comes.
The power of God. It is the power of God. Nothing
of the flesh. It brings peace. And then the
apostle goes on and says, well we haven't got time but it says,
long-suffering, again what a clear evidence, fruitfulness in our
lives, long-suffering to others. Yes, we don't speak nastily,
we don't speak harshly, and we're long-suffering to one another.
What do we do? We see Christ in each other.
Oh, what a blessing that is. Gentleness. We're gentle one
to another. We're not spiteful. We're gentle. Goodness. Yes, we desire the
goodness of God to dwell in our heart and in the hearts of others,
and the blessing of faith. Oh, what a mercy that is if God
has given us faith to believe. Oh, friends, pray for it. These are positive evidences.
These are the things that get you to glory. Just and outward
form will not. Then he goes on, meekness, temperance
against such, there is no law. And then they that are Christ's
have crucified the flesh. That means mortified, that means
put to death, the flesh. All those lustful desires which
come up and rise up, my friends, for grace to put them down. And you know, the apostle uses
these words, crucified, because it means it's not easy. It's
a painful thing to do. It's hard for the flesh, but
it's God honouring. Crucify the flesh with the affections
and lusts. And then, if we live in the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit. Oh, you see, there's not a standing
stillness. I mentioned running. There's
also walking. Yes, we walk before the Lord
in the light of His countenance. So no more blessed path. than
to walk in the light of the countenance of our God. Because if God before
us, who can be against us? If God is with us, then we have
fear, we need fear, no evil, because God is with us. And so
this morning, to just briefly really gone through this wonderful
parable of the sower, let us just remember there were three
types of ground where the seed was sown, which may in each case
have appeared to have some life, but in fact there was no real
eternal life. and the great dividing element
was, there was no fruit. They all perished with no fruit. But may we have the evidence
in our hearts of true fruit, that which brings honour and
glory to God, and to therefore go home rejoicing in the great
truth of the Gospel, and bless God There is such an account
as this, and may we all be concerned that we are fruitful, some 30,
some 40, and some 100 fold. Well, may God have all the honor
and all the glory, and may our concern be to honor and glorify
his great and holy name. Amen.