John: Hey, friends. This is John Gunter with the Eagle Community Church of Christ. Thanks for listening to our podcast. This week, we're talking about chapter 24 of the story, really getting into Jesus' ministry and a lot of things he does there. It's a it just packs so much in this chapter.
This week we focus on a couple of things as we talk about the parable of the sower and, building our lives on the right foundation. And so I think these things go go well right together. So thanks again for listening. Come see us sometime. Where we quit griping, because we just had a summer that was about two and a half years long, I think.
So it has been something, but so, just so grateful for the changing of seasons and the, the blessing that is the cooler weather. This week, we have a longer section of the story. I really like the way, the book is put together, except for this part because it is so, so much of Jesus' teaching is just kind of combined into a few weeks. And so it's it's I told Terry in class that I don't even watch the video we share in class at EBD because there's so much. I just wanna see kinda where I land and what I see as, like, my favorite or important or something like that and and what they show up with, and it just so happened that we, out of all the teachings of Jesus, we ended up on on the same one.
But isn't it interesting to to listen to the way Jesus taught and the things Jesus taught as important? Some of the things we might focus on, Jesus didn't say a whole lot about. Some of the things that if if I don't mention them very often or show enough importance, people will get mad and I'll have a comment. But then you go to the teachings of Jesus, and he doesn't really say anything about it. So I guess you guys would be the Pharisees chasing Jesus around.
Maybe that's it now. But I I always think it's interesting what Jesus focus on focuses on and and kind of how he, tries to get the people to understand what he's doing and why he's doing it. Why it's important to follow him, to put this priority on God versus the way we can live our lives, really, just chasing our own desires. So where do we start today? We're gonna start with the parable of the sower or the soil.
We're in Mark 4, and I'm going to read verses 1-twenty. Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around Him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said, Listen, a farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. I experienced that this year. Some of the things I planted late, my my grandmother, we called her nanny, she died in 92.
And my dad has had seeds from nanny's pepper plants in the freezer since then. And so I didn't even know that until, like, last year. And I thought it was the coolest thing that part of my grandmother is still with us. Like, people from my hometown knew, those as the Gunter Peppers because she would sell them and and everybody liked them. But this year, I planted them late because Arkansas kind of warms up later and everything.
And, my first batch withered and died. And you talk about feeling bad. Luckily, we had plenty, and they're still growing in my garden right now. So it's amazing. But we see what Jesus is talking about, right?
He is using language that they understand. Now, we may be getting more away from it as we become more urbanized, not really controlling our food. I try to talk to my kids about, you know, what it was like back then. I mean, again, Evan calls the 19 nineties the olden days. I told her, you know, even further back, your job, part of your job is just to live, to have food.
Right? Part of your job is is farming and and doing this and so when Jesus uses this language, he's talking to people that should understand exactly what he's talking about. Some things come up, and they don't have a lot of soil, and because the sun is hot, they're scorched. They are withered because they have no root. Other seed fell among the thorns, which grew up and choked the plant, so that they did not bear grain.
Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, some multiplying 30, some 60, some a 100 times. And I love this part of gardening. If, we had not left Arkansas, I was about to get heavy into homesteading. Anybody been there before?
Oh, yeah. Okay. All of a sudden, you're watching a YouTube video, and then 4 hours later, you wake up. Oh, my goodness. I've been watching this for a long time.
I want chickens. I want cows. I want little miniature Herefords that just look like you should hug them all the time, But I love even teaching my kids, about planting things and to watch putting that seed in the soil and watering it and fertilizing it and watching it come up. And off of from one seed, you get one pepper or tomato or whatever, and how many seeds come out of that one fruit once you get it? It's amazing to me to watch this in action and to watch how god provides and multiplies and that's what you see in this good soil.
It produces a crop. Some 30, some 60, some a 100 times. Then Jesus said, whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. He was alone, the 12, and the others around him, asked him about the parables. He told them, the secret of the kingdom of god has been given to you but to those on the outside, everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving and ever hearing but never understanding.
Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven. Now, Terry did exactly what I thought Terry might do this morning. He said, that's something y'all to chew on. I said, I know he's going to this verse right here. Because that's a hard verse.
Right? If your idea about Jesus is that Jesus walked around and what he did was try to make it as easy on everybody as he could, this verse is gonna hit you right in the nose. So what do we think is going on here? What I think Jesus is doing here you remember last week as we talked about Jesus going around teaching, there were always other people there with him trying to catch him, right? On the Sabbath, boy, they wanna see, oh, is he gonna heal that guy?
You know, he's gonna say something that's out of character that, it didn't fit in with what we think of as the law. And so Jesus is teaching, that's who he has following him. And so Jesus says, so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. And so if you weren't there to understand, to try and understand what Jesus was actually teaching, you were not going to get it. And all through scripture, what god is trying to do is to have that relationship with us where we desire him.
What is people doing that are following Jesus around trying to trap him? Are they firing god? They're out on motives. They've already decided Jesus is not who he says he is. Look who he's hanging around with.
You know what that woman's done? Look at what he's hanging who he's hanging around with. And so I believe that's what exactly what Jesus is doing. Your desire is not in the right place, and so you're not going to understand. Now I've heard preachers that I respect so much, and they will come to this.
By the way, if you go to a lot of, like, minister listings, preacher listings, we want the guy to preach so many weeks a year. I don't know how you ever come up with that. Like, if we don't have you that many, we, you know, might as well not have you at all. I don't know. But they come to this and and it's like, we want to, we want someone who can give practical practical talk all the time, where you can make that instant connection to my life.
And I that way because I wanna make it practical. I wanna make it, hey. I want you walk away understanding, but sometimes I think we need this right here. But there are people here that don't need the basics. They don't need the milk.
They need some meat. And if all we do is come to church and think, hand it to me, maybe feed me as well, we're not gonna have people that are digging and desiring that deeper understanding. Notice the people closest to Jesus are the ones that ask, what do you mean by that? We've talked about that in here before. If you really care about someone, you've got you've got questions, you go to them.
Right? You ask, what what do you mean by that? That that's how you build that relationship. That's how you come to an understanding instead of, I heard him say that, I'm out of here. I heard that, man.
I can't believe he's not the Messiah, you know. And that's Jesus had. Some people that desired him, some people that just wanted to trap him. I think that's exactly what he's doing right here. But Jesus said to them, he said, don't you understand this parable?
How then will you understand any parable? A little harsh for Jesus, you think? How many of you that kinda shock you that Jesus says something like that? Like, your mind's eye, Jesus, every time you've got a question, he comes and hugs you and says, oh, let me explain. Jesus said, how are you gonna understand anything?
You need to kind of your mind on what's going on, to to think deeper, more deeply. He said, the farmer sows the word. So, the farmer sows this word. Some people are like seeds along the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.
Now, I think when we first read this and everything that Jesus explains here, we can almost read this one as something that we have no control of, that seed is sown, and all of a sudden, it is snatched away. Again, how many of you gardened in here or have gardened before? Let me let me see who I'm talking to. Okay. So if you go out to today is the the start of the growing season.
You're gonna put seeds in the ground today. You don't go out with a bag and just right? Do you? No. You don't do that.
Why? Where's that seed gonna end up? Birds are gonna get it? On the road, on the path. It's not gonna even get into the soil, some of it.
Right? We we cover seed up. We take precautions to protect it. Right? A quarter inch down.
But, anybody so legalistic and and literalist, you know, that as soon as they say quarter inch, you're going, oh, I got figure out exactly as if the plants in the in the wild have not, you know, done well without us. Let me get a quarter inch down. But but that's what happens, and and and again, you're talking to people and we're talking to people in here that that understand this. Right? So, sometimes, seed may fall to a place that's not ready, on a place that shouldn't have seed in the 1st place or it's just not prepared for seed.
But when he says Satan comes and takes that that word away, that is not something where Satan is in control and you just had nothing to do about it. All this that Jesus is talking about is about preparation. Are you prepared to be the good soil? Is that you? Because we understand that that that people in general, right?
People are all over the place even right in here. Right? Some of you are are deep in your walk with god. Some of you just started. Some of you haven't even started that yet.
You're wondering, well, what's this all about? But all of this is about preparation. Am I preparing my heart, preparing my soil for the word of god? That's why we talked about when Blake and Kayla were baptized the other day. What you wanna do is really just kind of warn the new Christian.
Right? Like, the minute you say, I'm following god. I've decided to follow god. That's when it seems like something happens. Right?
Something comes up. I use the analogy of the diet. Right? Like, as soon as I say, you know what? Today, I'm gonna focus on good health and my diet, and immediately, your mouth starts watering.
You start thinking about all the places you can get to as soon as this guy shuts up and sits down. Right? That's how it goes. Are you prepared? And that's how this goes as he, continues on.
Others like seeds sown in rocky places hear the word at once and receive it with joy, but since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Do we have a friend who is whom soon as you, suggests something, hey, we ought to do this, is overly enthusiastic about doing that thing. Yes. I was thinking the same thing.
We ought to do it. Anybody got a friend like that? I've got a couple that you know every time they say that, that it's a big if. Oh, yeah. We ought to do that.
I I I've been thinking the same thing. I yes. We ought to do it. But that day comes and you get a hold of them, the flakiest individual you ever found. But but that's what he's talking about here.
That this seed has been sown into a soil that is is not ready. It's rocky. Okay? And it says, look at this in 16. It says, they hear the word and once receive it with joy, they're happy, they're excited, and ready to go, but they only last a short time.
When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. So as soon as something goes wrong this is a person who thinks, now that I have done this, everything's gonna be rosy. How many of you have lived long enough to know that's not the case? Life is on coming. Murphy keeps on showing up.
Right? It just happens over and over. Are you prepared for this? Have you surrounded yourself, as we talked last week, with friends who will be with you through those times? Because we all have those times where our faith is tested, where things aren't going well, and we've got to navigate that.
Do you have the people? Have you prepared your life in a way that your friends, those people close to you can pick you up in those times, help lead you back to Jesus instead of running away because something has gone wrong in your life. Do you see God is just not worth it just because something goes a little off? Maybe you ought to prepare for that. Still others, like a seed sown among the thorns, hear the word.
But the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, love that that phrase there, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. It was prepared. It it grew well. But what we didn't do was take care of all the things around us. We allowed all the other things, maybe all the other people, all the other influences, the deceitfulness of wealth, what does that mean?
It looks like that will take care of my problems, and so I'm gonna pursue it. If I only had more money, if I only made more money, then these problems would be fixed. I mean, every time you get a raise, something breaks and you gotta pay more money for something. Yeah. So you've been through that lately.
But as this wealth, we we chase it, and all of a sudden, as soon as we get a a raise where maybe we could focus on more things, we could pay off debt, and we could focus on giving and helping others, and we give ourselves ourselves a a lifestyle inflation. Where we live in paycheck to paycheck. Now we just live by a bigger paycheck to paycheck. The cares of life come in and choke us out all the things that we're we're we're pursuing. Are they leading us to Jesus?
Are they leading us away? Are they helping us on the road, on the, the way to god, or are they kind of choking us out and taking up the sunlight? I've got things in my raised bed right now that I don't know where they came from. I had to cough when it was a 140, this summer. And I prepared the soil and paid a lot of money to do it.
I carried 5 yards of soil from the front to the back, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. Katie is going to help me, but she got sick. My buddy's gonna help me with 2 strong boys, and they went out of town. It's coincidences, I'm sure. I know it is.
But I prepared the soil and everything's going well, but I didn't maintain. I maintain. Again, maybe I need to quit talking about food and diets and stuff. Have you ever been doing well on a diet? Like, I'm getting my lifestyle active again.
I've lost weight. I feel great, and you hit that milestone. I finally lost £20, and you celebrate, and then 6 months later, you're still celebrating, and you gained 35 back. Because you didn't maintain. You didn't continue working on it, looking around, and saying, is this still going the way it needs to go?
You know, I started well. I celebrated all the progress that I didn't maintain. So, Jesus is saying, He said, coax the word, making it unfruitful. Others like seed sown on good soil. Hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop, some 30, some 60, some a 100 times.
What was sown? I didn't some of my okra. I have some Star of David okra. It's a real wide thing, but it looks like the Star of David. You cut it open, looks like Star of David.
And I didn't plant enough. I I planted just a variety of okra, but I didn't plant enough for it to really, I don't know, get enough to eat every week before it gets hard and chunk it over the fence type of thing. And so some of it has dried out, and I've been able to save those seed And to see, again, God's bounty and what God can do when things are allowed to mature. That that things don't just stay the way they are. They mature and they grow and they produce even more than what was sown.
And that's for each one of us. Now, we I I think when we read this parable, we all desire to be the good soil, right? Anybody think, you know what? That rocky soil sounds pretty young. That's me.
But I think we do understand that at different parts of our lives, we can kind of be in any of these. Right? There are some days that I am so hard headed, hard hearted that it doesn't matter what happens, it's not getting in. There are times where the soil is very shallow, and, maybe a little bit, but then it goes away. Sometimes we're excited.
Things are happening, and, choked out. Hope we desire and we try and we pursue being this good soil because of what god can do through the growing and maturing of Christian people. And through us, through his work and through his spirit, what is produced is far more than what started. So let's talk about when we sit back and we think, man, I can't do anything. Well, get out of the way and let god do it.
See what we can do for you as you prepare and maintain and try to make sure I have laid the right foundation. That's what Jesus talks about in this other spot in Matthew 7. So, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine does not put them into practice, is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. Anybody put your, feet in the sand as the waves come in lately? What happens? Yeah. Immediately, you're going, what is happening here?
Things are moving under me. Things are shifting around. And we understand because of where we live the importance of having the right foundation, having things drain. Right? He didn't understand the retention ponds.
And we got a beautiful we live in a circle here in in Lake of Champions, and our our retention pond is in the middle of all the houses, and so we get to look at the pond. But Evan, as he looked at that, he didn't understand what was going on, and so, he was kinda dreaming. Like, one day, the city will come in, Francisco, and fill that in, and we'll just have a beautiful park out here, which is a beautiful dream and a beautiful thought, and I would love it. But it's not gonna happen because we understand the importance of having the foundation, having everything correct. And that's what Jesus is teaching people, that you need to make sure and prepare.
You need to look around at your life and make sure that I am planting my feet on solid ground because these other things that we pursue feel good, look good, and maybe your neighbor looks great in their pursuit of it, and you'd really like to have what they have. But often what they are pursuing is, again, this shaky ground, this foundation on sand instead of stone. And so what are you doing to prepare for that? What are you doing to maintain your life that we don't sit around and just complain that nothing's going well for me? Or what are you doing to help that?
Are you pursuing god? Are you in his word? I just don't feel like I'm close to god. Are you reading his word? Are are coming together as a church?
Are you part of a small group? All these things we've put in place to help each and every one of us. So, again, build that foundation. But it doesn't matter how many programs we set up, how many things we schedule if we decide not to go, if we decide other things are the things I wanna pursue. I'd like to really follow that.
I don't have enough time. How many of you in certain areas of your life have are so disciplined and I can fit it in. Whatever that is. We're going through soccer right now. I'm coaching Logan.
Evan is in competitive. And so each week, Tuesdays, practice. Wednesdays, we have small group. Thursdays, practice, both boys. Early, 5:30 and then 7:30.
Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays, Logan's game. Saturday, Evan's game. Not one of them are at home. And then today, right after I get done here, we're going back to Houston for another game.
That's But we things done, we wanna get done, don't we? Let's be honest. If I care about something and I wanna get it done and I wanna participate, I will get it done. I will move things around. I will focus.
But how many of us are focusing and shifting and doing all of those things for other things, but god gets the left of them. God gets the well if I can work that out. Jesus said, build your house on the on the foundation of rock. It is. So we encourage you this morning to do exactly that.
If there is any need for prayers, we'd love to pray with you. Love to just encourage you and let you know that you're not alone, that we walk this walk together. None of us are gonna be perfect, but we can come together and we can build, build one another up. You haven't begun that walk with him, we just wanna encourage you to do so, as we stand and sing this morning.