Good morning, everybody. It is
so good to be here, so good to see you. I was thinking as we were all
coming in, I believe the Lord's people can say I was glad when
they said let's all go to the house of the Lord. Let's worship
God this morning. I pray he will enable us to do
that. Let's have a word of prayer together. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we
come before you this morning so grateful. So grateful to be
together. So grateful to have a heart that
you have done an operation on. A heart that wants to gather
together with God's saints and adore and magnify the name and
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, we beg of you
that you might enable us to do that. Without you, we can do
nothing. And if you do not come into this
place this morning and send your spirit to each heart, we won't
be able to do that. So we beg, Lord, we are beggars,
and we beg and plead for countenance to be honest. We
beg and plead to hear your voice. Lord, we beg to feel your touch
on our hearts this morning. Lord, would you let us forget
about ourselves and concentrate on you and worship you. Lord, please forgive us for all
of our sins. They're so great. And forgive
the sins of our loved ones. Lord, would you forgive the sins
of our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our children. Lord,
would you show great mercy to this town, the town of Spring
Lake. Lord, would you allow your glorious gospel to go forth for
years to come until you return or your purpose is finished.
Lord, thank you for this congregation. Thank you for the pastor you
raised up here. Thank you for giving him the message for all
these years. Thank you for your faithfulness.
And Lord, we just pray that your hand would be on each of us,
every assembly, every man who stands, and every brother and
sister who hears. Lord, help us, please. Meet with
us this morning, we beg for Christ's sake. Amen. Turn with me, if you would, to
Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4. We're going to look at a portion
of scripture here which is the parable of the sower. We all
know this parable. Our Lord preached this parable
to a multitude of people. A huge multitude of people. And
after he finished the parable, he said to them in verse 9, Mark
4, verse 9, he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear. Well, they all had ears. I'm sure most every person there
had two ears. But that's not what he's talking
about. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the
ear of the heart. The Lord does an operation on
the heart and He puts an ear in the heart to truly hear and
understand and believe. And that has to be given by God,
doesn't it? That ear has to be given by God.
Verse 10 says, And when He was alone, they that were about Him,
with the twelve, asked of Him the parable. They said, You gave
this parable, Lord, what does it mean? And over in Matthew's
account of this parable, they said to him, Why speakest thou
unto them in parables? Why are you preaching to them
in parables? He stood up to preach and he
told them a story. And the disciples are looking
at him and saying, Why are you doing this? Why are you preaching
to them in parables? Verse 11 says, And he said unto
them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom
of God." That ear to hear, that mind to understand, that heart
to believe, that is the gift of God to you. Verse 11, but
unto them that are without, without Christ, standing without,
Unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables. That seeing they may see and
not perceive. They open the Word and they just
don't see it. They just don't see it. They
read the Word and they don't see the mystery of the kingdom
of God in it. Verse 12 says, and hearing they may hear and
not understand. They sit in the pew, they show
up, and I can go to this place, or I can go to that place, and
it all kind of sounds the same. It's just the Bible, they're
talking about Jesus. I don't hear what the problem
is. Why can't we all just come together? No idea what salvation truly
is. No idea what it's all about.
Verse 12 says, seeing they may see and not perceive, hearing
they may hear and not understand, lest at any time they should
be converted and their sins should be forgiven them. And then he
said something here in verse 13 that really ought to get our
attention. Verse 13, he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? And how then will you know all
parables? What he's saying is this parable
is the key that unlocks every parable. Every single parable. And he told us what it is here
in verse 14. He said, the sower soweth the
word. All right, the sower sows the
word. The word here, the scripture. The sower sows the preaching
of the gospel, the word preached, but what is the word truly? What is the scripture and what
is the gospel? John said, in the beginning was
the word. And the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. This parable is all about Jesus
Christ. It's all about Jesus Christ. If we don't see Christ in the
parable, then we won't see the mystery of the Kingdom of God.
We won't see it. It's still hidden to us. This
is all about Christ. It's always all about Jesus Christ. Now, look with me at verse 1.
Verse 1 says, "...and he began again to teach by the seaside. And there was gathered unto him
a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship and sat in
the sea, and the whole multitude was by the sea on land." It struck
me that our Lord went to the people, didn't He? Everywhere
He went, He went to the people. Our Lord didn't go into the synagogue
and stay there and hide out and then show up every now and then
out of a window and wave at people and then resort back into his
synagogue He went out to the people they were all gathered
by the seaside. You can envision this beach full
of people He went out to the people that that's grace went
to him where they were Brought the gospel to him directly where
they were Verse 2 he taught them many things by parables and said
unto them in his doctrine." The word doctrine means words. That's what the word means. Words. It means teaching. It means speaking. It doesn't mean deep philosophy. People talk about doctrine. Let's
go talk about doctrine. It does not mean hard to understand
methods. Let's go talk about this huge
jigsaw puzzle of How it must be, it means words. This is what He said. This is
what He told them in His words. Verse 3, He said, And that's what I want to do
this morning. Now here I stand, and you know what I want to do?
You know what my goal is this morning? I want to listen. That's what
I want to do. I want to hear from Him. I want to hear from His Word.
I want to encourage all of us to hearken to Him. Don't listen
to me. I love that story of a man came into a town one time and
a visiting preacher, you know, and he preached a message and
the Lord blessed that message and the congregation was just
so blessed and it was so... And the next night he was going
back to his home place, you know, hours away, and this woman traveled
hours back in these old days. Difficult travel to hear this
man again. And she showed up to the service
and it was awful. And she told him, I traveled
all this way and I didn't get anything out of that. And he
asked her, he said, well last night when you came to the service,
why'd you come? She said, to worship God. He said, well why'd
you travel all the way over here? She said, to hear you. He said,
there you go. Don't listen to me. I don't want
to listen to me. I want to hear Him. Lord, speak
to me. Speak to me. Hearken, he said.
Verse 3, Behold, there went out a sower to sow. And he already
told us that the sower soweth the Word, the Word of God. He's
talking about a preacher in the Gospel. He's using a physical
illustration of a man reaching into a bag of seed and slinging
it. That's all he's doing, he's just
slinging it. It represents a preacher and his message of Christ. Verse
3, Harken, behold, there went out a sower to sow, and it came
to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside. The part that
people don't pay much attention to, just the wayside. Some fell by the wayside, and
the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell
on stony ground where it had not much earth, there was not
much dirt there, it had nowhere to go down, just rocks. And immediately it sprang up
because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was
scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away. And
some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it,
and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground,
and it did yield fruit that sprang up and increased and brought
forth some thirty and some sixty and some hundred. And He said
unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Now in
our Lord's parable, this seed is the gospel of Christ, the
preached word. And these four types of ground
represent the hearers of the gospel. We know that, don't we?
Every soul on this earth is one of these four types of ground. Every hearer in this room represents
one of these four types of ground. Now what I want to do is show
you which one I am. I want to show you which one
I am. And then you can, in your heart, as the Scripture says,
examine yourself and you can see which one you are. Okay?
Our Lord said in verse 14, 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."
That ground right there. That wayside ground where as
soon as it's sown, the adversary comes and steals it away. That
ground right there is me. That one. That one's me. The gospel goes out. This word,
you open up this word, you read these words. Where am I? You ever experience
that? Where's my mind? Where is my
heart? Where is the effect? Those two
on the road to Emmaus cried, didn't our heart burn within
us? Where's the burn? Where's the cry? Wayside. Wayside. Prone to wander, Lord,
I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. I feel it in this flesh. I can't
pray most times without wandering off to the wayside. Just being
honest. Wish it wasn't so. My heart wanders. My mind wanders. I don't see
anything in my flesh that is truly fervent for Christ and
His gospel. I don't see anything in my flesh
that is truly fervent for Christ and His gospel. When it comes
to this flesh, it's almost like whatever faith He gives me, whatever
faith He gives to me, it keeps getting taken away. He asked
His disciples, are you yet without faith? You still don't have faith? Comfort, rest, I get every bit
of that through this Word. I come in here and we open up
this Word and if He's pleased to descend on us, I get comfort,
I get rest, I get peace. I believe my faith is increased
for a minute and then I walk out of those doors and it's all
taken away. And I'm worried. And I have no,
I'm doubting, I have fear, I'm troubled. Again, I'm troubled.
Verse 16 says, And these are they likewise which are sown
on stony ground, who, when they have heard the word, immediately
receive it with gladness, and have no root in themselves, and
so endure but for a time. Afterward, when affliction or
persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended."
That stony ground right there, that was me. That one is me. This flesh is so hard. This flesh
is so easily offended. You take God's grace out of the
equation. Remove God's grace from the equation
and let's see how we respond to affliction, persecution, and
offense. Let's see how this flesh responds
to affliction, persecution, and offense. Hard, hard, hard. Don't tell, I don't want to hear
that. Don't tell me that. Verse 18 says, And these are
they which are sown among thorns, such as hear the word, and the
cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and
the lust of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh
unfruitful. That ground right there, that
one is me. That one right there is me. All this flesh has ever done
is hurt, prick, stab, wound, hurt myself, hurt everybody around
me. Don't you hate that? Don't you hate that? And it's
because of my sin. It's because of my sin. The cares
of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the lust of other
things, it's all sin. Every bit of it. As ground, we're
supposed to bear fruit, aren't we? As ground, we're supposed
to bear fruit. But when the fruit is covered
in thorns... Have you ever reached in trying
to pick some fruit that's covered in thorns? You going to lay hold on it? Something's ruined about it.
Something's tainted about it. It hurts. Every supposedly good
thing, you know, we talk about, we even say, well, he's a good
man, you know. Earthly speaking, he's a good
man. Every good thing I've ever done has been tainted by my sin. Every bit of it. That old writer
wrote, I cannot preach, but I sin. I cannot read, but I sin. It's all tainted by sin. Somebody
will say, well now come on, I've known you for years. You've done a lot of good things
for people. You're a good person. You're
too hard on yourself. Well, Everything that I've ever
done, everything I've ever tried to do has been tainted by sin.
I hate that. Oh, I hate that. I am this thorny ground right
here. Verse 20 says, 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 an hundred. Thank
God Almighty, I believe with all my heart, that ground right
there is me. because Christ did something
for me. Christ did something to me. Two years ago, Hannah wanted
a garden in our backyard. We have a sprawling half acre
lot. And so we both went into the
backyard and we were trying to figure out where to put this
garden. We have a lot of trees, there's
not a ton of sun. And we were looking around at
this side of the yard, that side of the yard, it was all exactly
the same. It was all wayside. There was
not a good spot anywhere. And just so you know, it hasn't
borne fruit. But nonetheless, we did it. And none of it was ready. None of
it. None of it was ready. Hannah
had already bought some seeds. We already had seeds. But none
of it was ready. Every bit of it was just wayside. It was all wayside. There wasn't
one good spot ready to receive seed. So what we did is, after
looking at all of the land, we chose a spot. One spot that wasn't ready. As we looked
at that spot, it was not ready. It was not good. It wasn't good. And I got a shovel out and I
had it in my mind I was going to dig and see what was there
and it just went hard. It was hard. And it had a bunch of rocks in
it. So I finally did dig around.
I got a mattock and I dug around in a few spots and I realized
it's all the same. It's all hard. It's all wayside. It's all stony. Some people have
those nice lush lawns, that beautiful grass, that golf course grass. Not me. We have crabgrass. And that stuff chokes everything
out. It just takes over. It runs, covers up your beds,
covers up everything. Choke out whatever fruit I had,
it would choke it out, you know, take over. Bad ground. But here's what we did. We chose
a spot and we purposed, we looked at that spot and we purposed
for that to no longer be wayside ground. You are not going to
be wayside ground anymore. This ground right here, of all
the ground, this ground is going to bear seed and produce fruit. So, I rented a tiller. That's what it took. It took a drastic effort. It
took a violent effort. I rented a tiller and I started
busting that ground up. And I busted up and I busted
up. And it had a bunch of rocks in it. I gathered all the rocks
out and I threw them away. Threw them out into the woods.
All that crabgrass, I tore every bit of it out. And then I made some boxes. We
decided to go raised bed. I made four boxes and what I
did is I hedged my spot about. I set it apart from the rest. I sanctified it for holy use. And I went down to the nursery
in town and I bought new dirt. There was dirt there. I didn't
want to use that dirt. I bought brand spanking new dirt.
Paid for it in full. They wouldn't have let me take
it had I not paid for it in full. I brought in good ground, ground
that was not there before. It was living, composted ground. It had been tried and turned. It was perfect. It had a bunch
of worms in it. I put it in the bed of a truck
and I put my shovel in that ground. And as I pulled it up, worms
started falling out. I thought, what an illustration.
Good ground full of a bunch of worms. I pulled that thing up
and they were falling out and I said, fear not thou worm, you're
going into my good ground. This composted ground had nutrients
in it. I gave to this spot everything
it needed to bear fruit. I did not ask the spot to do
anything it was incapable of doing. I did something to the
spot and I gave to the spot everything it needed to produce my fruit
from my seed. I made it to be what it is. I broke it, I tilled it, I gave
to it, and then my beloved planted a seed in it. Bless God. That is exactly what
He did to me. That's exactly what He did to
you. That's what He did to every sinner that He chose to make
His child. Over in Ezekiel 16, just listen
to this, I'm going to wrap this up, but in Ezekiel 16, Verse 4 says, "'As for thy nativity
in the day thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither wast
thou washed in water to supple thee. Thou wast not salted at
all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee to do any
of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee, but thou wast cast
out into the open field to the loathing of thy person in the
day that thou wast born. And then it goes on to say, now
when I passed by thee, I looked upon thee, and behold, thy time
was the time of love. And then he tells everything
he did. I made you beautiful through my comeliness. I made
you to be what you are. I love the song. It says, as
poor, wretched sinners, no God and no hope, it seemed there
was no one to help. But God, in His mercy, salvation
supplied, emptied heaven, and came down Himself, and a ransom
was found." He took care of everything that had to be done, supplied
everything. He said, I'm going to take out
that heart of stone, and I'm going to put in a heart of flesh.
The heart of Christ is going in you. I'm going to provide
everything you need. What about my sin, though? What
about that sin? Now, my garden is my garden. Let's talk about me for just
a second. What about my sin? What about my thorns? He chose
me to be no longer wayside. He chose me to remove that hard
heart. But what about the things that
stained my record? What about my sin? Those thorns.
Turn with me over to John 19. John 19 verse 1 says, Then Pilate therefore took Jesus
and scourged Him, and the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and
put it on His head. He bore them all. All of those
thorns were pressed into Him, weren't they? He chose me. He took out that heart of stone,
put in the heart of flesh. He took every one of my thorns
and pressed it into Himself. Every single one of them. In
Christ, we're not wayside. In Christ, we're not stony. In
Christ, we're not thorny anymore. God made us to be good ground. Is that not amazing? Amazing. He made us to be good ground
and then His seed in us, Christ in us, is going to bear fruit. It's going to bear fruit. He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. All of us, that's all we
are. He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear. We're just good ground made ready. That's all we are, good ground
made ready. Thank God He broke us. He tilled
us. He gave to us. He planted a seed
in us. He waters us. He shines the light
of His countenance on us. And He will make us bear His
fruit. He's going to make us. Some 30-fold,
some 60, some 100, but God's going to give the increase, isn't
He? God will give the increase. Okay,
you're dismissed.