You're listening to audio from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now, here's the teaching. So, parables were the primary way that Jesus used to sort of disrupt the default thinking of people in his culture. And, over this season of Lent, we're going to explore these disruptive stories of Jesus that encourage us to reflect, that spark our imaginations, and invite us to see God and what he's doing in the world, through different eyes.

In preparing for this message, I asked my wife, Amelia, if she could think of any examples of either one of us, not paying attention to what the other was saying because we were distracted. We were failing to listen well. My son, Daniel, is raising his hand. My wife, Amelia, looked at me with a smile, and laughed a little and, said, you're kidding. Right?

And, that did not seem like a good start. So, apparently, I can get focused on what I'm doing and, not pay attention to what, is going on around me or what my wife is saying. A little while ago, I was working on something on my laptop. And according to Amelia, she came up and asked, what sounds good for dinner? And, getting kind of a noncommittal response, she asked if I would take her out to dinner to eat.

And, apparently, I said, yeah. Fine. That sounds great, and went back to work. So five minutes later, Amelia shows up with her coat and her purse, and she says, Okay. Let's go.

To which I said, Go where? What do you mean? Two things to note. One, this story has not been verified by an independent auditor. And two, we did go out to dinner.

Can anyone relate? Hopefully. Author Maggie Johnson in her book Distracted argues that our contemporary problem with paying attention runs deep. She says we have access to 50,000,000 web pages and two and a half million books in print and live news from around the world and reports on every scientific gain and research discovery. But she says, we are nurturing a culture of fragmentation and detachment.

And in this new world, something is amiss, and that something is attention. We all struggle to to pause, to slow down, to reflect, to consider carefully, to think critically. And while technology has made those problems harder, according to the Bible, according to the teaching of Jesus, those struggles are not new. When it comes to listening and following God, we've always had a short or a nonexistent attention span. And that's why this year in this season of Lent leading up to Easter, we're going to be looking at the parables of Jesus, these stories that are meant to grab our attention, slow us down, and make us think.

Parables have been defined as a fictitious story picturing truth. One author calls them imaginary gardens with real toads in them. Parables create a believable world that reflects reality. The word itself, parable, comes from two Greek words put together that means to place or throw alongside. A parable is putting two things next to each other to help us understand through comparison and contrast.

And in this parable about the sower and the soils, Jesus, I think, is pushing us towards one key thought, one key idea, and that is this, listen. Listen. Matthew begins with these words in the beginning of Matthew chapter 13. That day, Jesus went out. And and that's taking us back to the events of the previous chapter 12 in a a controversy.

Jesus has healed a man on the Sabbath, and the witnesses wonder out loud. Could this be the Son of David? Could this be the promised Redeemer, the one who will bring about God's rule of rightness and goodness and wholeness? But the religious leaders see the same thing and reject him. How can two groups of people see the exact same thing and come to such radically different conclusions.

Now in Matthew 13, Jesus will tell us more than a dozen times to listen, to hear. And although it doesn't show up in our ESV translation in in the beginning of verse three, he begins the parable with the word behold or listen. And in verse nine, he concludes the story by saying, everyone who has ears, let him hear. Listen. If you haven't already, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13.

It's page nine seventy two, those black Bibles in the seats underneath in front of you. And with all that in mind, let's look at this story and what Jesus is saying, what he wants us to get from it. Now, to our modern ears, this story about the farmer may seem a little odd. It may seem like he's not being very careful, but it would have been perfectly understandable and seemed typical to the hearers of his day. Farmers scattered seed first and often tilled the soil afterwards.

The sower tosses his seed, Jesus says, onto four different kinds of earth. First, he says in verse, four, on the road or the path, a footpath that travelers have worn in the field, but birds come and quickly devour it. And second, the seeds fall on a thin layer of soil atop some stony ground, and they sprout up quickly, but they don't have any roots, so they don't last. And third, seed falls among thorns, but this good seed faced competition. It's choked out.

None of this would seem unusual to Jesus's audience. The one thing that would seem strange would be what happened in the good soil. Because, in the Roman world, a yield of 10 seeds for every seed sown was considered a good crop. To get a return of 30 or 60 or a hundred times what was sown was spectacular spectacular, almost unbelievable. Jesus finishes the story in verse nine by asking his listeners to pause, to think, to pay attention, to listen.

Do you have ears to hear, Jesus says. And then in verse 18, he goes down to explain what this parable means. The four soils represent four different kinds of people, four types of response to the word of God. Satan snatches the word away from some so they never really hear it. Others take a superficial interest.

There there's an immediate kind of response of joy and an emotional connection, but when trouble comes, it fades. For others, the word comes to them, but then the cares of this world or the temptations of wealth, the desire for success interest them more and it stunts their response. Some truly listen and the word bears amazing, amazing, unbelievable fruit in their lives. Four types of people, non listeners, superficial listeners, distracted listeners, and fruitful listeners. And through this, four kinds of tests we could say to help us reflect on what kind of a listener am I.

So first, the non listeners, we could say. In verses eighteen and nineteen, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and doesn't understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what's been sown. This is the seed that was sown by the path. Sometimes the the word of God, the good news about Jesus and his kingdom falls on hearts, on ears that are like soil that's been packed down from a thousand feet, trampling it until it's hard as asphalt or concrete. They hardly hear what Jesus is saying.

They they see what he's doing. Maybe there's some interest at an intellectual level or a theoretical theoretical level, but they don't understand it. They they don't make sense of this message that God has come in person in his one and only son to to earth, and he's performing mighty deeds that show that he is the chosen one of God. This is the message that some people were hearing but just not understanding or not accepting. Some of these people lacked understanding, And maybe that's true of us at times too.

Some people are just content to not understand. They were careless listeners picking up bits and pieces of knowledge about Jesus, information about who he is, what the Bible says about him, but it but it never got below that. It never went to their heart. It never made any difference in their lives at all. They they like to maybe watch Jesus.

They were interested in him. Maybe they thought he had a good message, but their watching and listening and even understanding amounted to nothing. Everything slipped from their hands. You may have heard of a book called Eat Shoots and Leaves. It's a book about punctuation for a nerdy people like me.

It comes from a sign at a panda enclosure at a zoo that had bad punctuation on it. It should have said, eat, shoots, and leaves, meaning that's the diet that pandas enjoy. But it had an extra couple of commas in there, so it said, eats, shoots, and leaves, like a picture of a panda going into a restaurant and getting into an argument with the server and then pulling out pistols and firing off a couple of rounds and running out. Well, the book became a bestseller. The author was on a tour signing, books at a bookstore.

And, a woman came up to her and said, oh, I'd love to learn about punctuation. And the author said, oh, this is the book for you then. The woman, acting as though she misunderstood the author author or was disagreeing with her, said, no. No. I mean it.

I really would love to know how to do it. I I learned punctuation and grammar at school, but I've forgotten it, and now I put everything in the wrong place. And the author said, well, shall I inscribe the book to anyone in particular? And the woman moaned, oh, I'm a teacher. I I'm a bit ashamed.

I'd love to know about punctuation, but there's just nowhere you can turn. And the author recounted, like, she wanted to take her book and almost, like, thump her over the head with it. Are you a person who simply will not listen, who just doesn't have ears to hear? Sometimes, people call out for the truth, maybe even a word for God. Oh, I wish God would speak to me.

I wish he'd reveal himself to me. God, if you're there, let me know. God has exceeded that request. He actually entered this world. He spoke.

He lived. He acted in perfect justice and love. He died for our sins. He rose from the dead. He moved his servants to write all of that down in a book.

That book has been translated into your language. It is freely available, and you can refer to it anytime you want. You tell that to a friend, and they say, I just wish God would say something to me. I wish God would help me know that he's there. He has, Jesus is saying, but you have to listen.

You have to be willing to listen. Are you willing to listen? The second type of people are superficial listeners. In verses twenty and twenty one, Jesus says, the seed that was sown on rocky places is the one who hears the word and receives it with joy, but he has no root, and it's only temporary. And when trouble or difficulty comes because of the word, immediately, they fall away.

Occasionally, I'll I'll greet someone, a visitor, after worship on Sunday, and they'll say, oh, pastor, that is just the the best sermon that I've heard this year. And I've learned that for some people who say that, it's because it's the only sermon that they've heard this year. They're happy, they're enthusiastic, but the enthusiasm is sometimes temporary and shallow. People may get excited about Jesus. They may have a positive experience.

They may like seeing it do good things in their kids' lives, for example. But as soon as difficulty or sorrow or trial comes, they fall away. The Greek word there, skandalizo, means to stumble, to fall back, to take offense. The minute that a life of faith becomes difficult, some people are offended, some people are hurt, and they turn away. It's not what I expected.

It's not what I signed up for. Jesus knows that. And in fact, he tells us and warns us over and over, in this world, you will have trouble. Everyone who wants to enter the kingdom of god will go through many hardships and difficulties. This is not what people want because some apparently think that having faith in Jesus means everything is going to go well.

And then when hardship or difficulty or rejection comes, they they want nothing to do with it. They turn their back on God and say, oh, what's the use of faith? What good is following Jesus if if life isn't working for me? I think we could say these people thought that they were entering Jesus' kingdom, but really they were trying to get Jesus to come into their kingdom. They wanted to get Jesus to fulfill their agenda.

They saw Jesus as not a lord, but almost like a service provider. And as long as he's providing the services that I want, I'll keep signing up with him. But when he's not helping me meet my goals, when it's not working for me, I'm done. And what's revealed is the things that we were really worshiping instead of Jesus. Those are the things that get lost in the heat of trouble or difficulty or trials.

These people never transferred control of their lives from themselves to Jesus to trust him. And then there are distracted listeners. Verse 22, the the one whom the seed was sown among the thorns is one who hears the word, and the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. These people take interest in the word as long as nothing more desirable or interesting or attractive comes along or more important. If hardship and persecution and difficulty thwarts the that second group, this group is stumbling over success and wealth and all the concerns that go with it.

They they hear the word, but they end up also loving all the things of this world, money and opportunities for advancement and threats to our success and what my rivals are doing. And is my job gonna be okay? Can I protect my assets? Will I have enough money to retire? And what's going on with my health?

And why is this country coming to the place that it is? There is a lot to worry about in this life if you want to. These people may even have some commitment to Christ, but it seems like Christ is sharing control of their hearts with these other things. There's a division. And as a result, these thorns are growing up and their and their fruitfulness is choked out.

They don't see themselves healing, growing, changing, moving. No no power of God coursing through their lives. No peace of God ruling in their hearts. I I haven't really seen that the only way to be happy, to be holy in Jesus is to give him control of our lives. To say, Jesus, it's it's you.

You love Jesus? Yeah. But I kinda also love money and all that it can do because man, it can do a lot. And I just know I could be happier if I had more. It's a divided heart.

There are things that are that are crowding Jesus out. And maybe maybe for you, it's not money exactly. Maybe it's not success or prosperity, but it's it's something. You look at your life and you can't see a lot of fruit. You don't see yourself growing.

You don't see other people's lives being changed in good ways through you. You're trapped. You're unhappy, and and you're trapped and unhappy because you're divided in loyalty. But some do listen. There there are fruitful listeners too.

The seed, the word comes into people's lives and it and it bears fruit thirty, sixty, a hundred times. And that the specific numbers are not the point. It's just that Jesus is saying, you can't even imagine what God will do through you when you really listen and let him take charge of your life. When the Word of God takes root in us, that's the image that Jesus is picturing, an unimaginable super abundant outpouring of His work and impact through us. And it's amazing because Jesus is pointing out, you know, in verse two, large crowds gathered to him.

So many that he had to get in a boat and and teach them while they're standing on the beach, while at the same time there are other people who are rejecting him and calling him a demon and saying, We've got to get rid of this guy. But some people listen and they begin to bear fruit. And it it may happen immediately. It may happen spectacularly. It may happen over a a long time.

A pastor went to visit, an older church member in the hospital, a man who is known for his kindness and gentleness. And and he said his wife and I had some time together to visit, and I asked her, has has he always been so sweet and gentle? And and she practically jumped up and said, oh my goodness. No. Our kids would say he was a tyrant when they were little.

Well, how did he change? Well, he became a believer about the time he was 40, and he started to change, but not all that much. Well, what made a difference then? Well, when he was 46, he started to memorize scripture. He memorized first Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and and he he started to live it out.

He made that a priority. And everyone saw and everyone loved the change that lasted forty years in that man. The the parable is ultimately not so much about us. It's it's meant to reveal us and help us think about what's going on in our hearts, but it's ultimately about Jesus. It's it's the parable of the sower because Jesus is the sower.

He goes on later, in a later parable to say, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man. That's not just what he was doing back then, but what he continues to do today through his word and through his people. The the parable, though, raises questions for the disciples. And I and I intended to have us go, all the way through verses, 10 through 17 and, realize there's just way too much to cover. So, we'll we'll dig into that a little more in our cut for time podcast this week.

But it does raise a question for these disciples. Why are you teaching in parables in verse 10? Jesus said, to you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to others it has not been given. For whoever has, more will be given and even in abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away. A difficult thing to wrestle with, and and, hopefully, again, we'll have some time to unpack that in in our podcast.

But the the big idea is there's both a message of mercy and judgment in speaking in parables like Jesus is doing. The the original word for secrets, the mysteries of the kingdom means something that we cannot understand on our own. In other words, it has to be revealed to us by God. That means in a journey of faith and walking with Jesus, we can only say we didn't deserve it, we didn't earn it, we didn't produce it ourselves. It's all because of God's kindness, his mercy that that he's softened our hearts and helped us have ears to hear.

But for other people, they will look at Jesus and not make any sense of him at all. Some people look at the beauty of God's kingdom, the glory, and the goodness of Jesus, and and they can't see any pattern. It it makes no sense. And and there's almost a message of judgment here, sort of like God hardening Pharaoh's heart because Pharaoh hardened his heart. And Jesus is saying, for those who don't want to hear, I'll take away even the plain understanding of what I've been telling you openly.

But even in that, there's a message of mercy. I'll speak a story that maybe will stick in your head and give you an opportunity to reflect on it and think about what I'm saying. The point is not either you have faith or you don't. There's nothing you can do about it. Jesus is expecting us to respond.

He's inviting us to respond. If you have ears, listen, pay attention, hear what I'm saying. Jesus is saying that the offer is free to all who want to hear, but it's not cheap or easy. It requires involvement, participation, intentionality, thoughtfulness. In a sense, this is a parable about the parables and why Jesus is speaking in parables.

And the idea is that we read parables, but they're reading us. They're showing. They're revealing what's in our hearts and how we respond to them. The parable asks, do you hear? Are you listening to Jesus?

What kind of soil is your heart? Are you happy with the kind of listener that you are as as you hear this story? If you're not listening, do you want to hear what Jesus has to say? He will do that. Pray.

Ask him to open your ears and help you understand. If you realize you've been a superficial listener, would you like to be serious and and know endurance and perseverance through difficulty? Ask the Lord to strengthen you. If you're distracted, ask Jesus for perspective and clarity and focus to to see rightly the the worries of life and the burdens that wealth and the pursuit of it actually brings, not freedom, but slavery. And ask Jesus to help you be free and to trust him.

And if you're fruitful, give thanks to God and praise him and ask him to help you grow in fruitfulness and find more places to serve. In other words, listen. This this isn't a a story that is pointing us towards specific things to do, but asking us to look inside. Am I listening? And Jesus doesn't mean, you know, listen and enjoy it and then walk out and forget what you've heard.

He's saying listen and obey. Listen and build your life on what I'm saying. Listen like your life depends on it. Because for disciples, listening to Jesus is life. Following Jesus is one lifelong growing act of listening to our Lord again and again and again.

We listen as an act of obedience. Yes. We we listen because our heavenly father is good. We we listen because Jesus has all authority. We listen because Jesus is the the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge.

We listen to words of warning and comfort. We listen when he's pointing us on a road that looks like it's gonna be successful and full of blessing. We listen on roads of difficulty and danger and suffering. We we listen to Jesus in good times and in bad. We we listen to him more than we listen to the distractions and the temptations around us.

But more than anything, we listen because Jesus has captured our hearts with his truth and his beauty and his goodness. Author JRR Tolkien understood the way that treasure captures our hearts with wonder and and love and attention. He even coined a word for it. There's a scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins finds an incredible treasure trove lying under this great dragon. There were no words left to express his staggerment.

His heart was filled and pierced with the enchantment and the desire. He gazed motionless, almost forgetting the guardian, seeing the gold beyond price and count. No one had to tell Bilbo to act excited about finding a treasure of gold. He didn't need five steps for paying attention to to the beauty and the wonder in front of him. In the presence of his heart's desire, he couldn't help gaze in wonder and focus his attention on what his heart was longing for, almost to the point of even forgetting the ugly, dangerous dragon in front of him.

And in the same way, Jesus has told us and he will tell us again that we pay attention to what our hearts treasure. We listen to what our hearts long for. In the presence of Jesus glory and authority and beauty, our hearts fill with staggerment for him. The true and great treasure that you were made for, that our hearts long for. Captivated by his beauty and power and glory and wisdom, our hearts are filled with longing and we want to hear him.

We want to know him more. We listen because we love the one who loves us. We listen because this God of grace and glory and mercy invites us into his love and calls us his beloved daughters and sons. We listen because he chose to bless us beyond our wildest imagination even when our hearts were hard and our ears were dull and our necks were stiff. He broke through and he reached us.

And finally, we listen to God's love because it compels us to love others. If we have known the love and the beauty, if we have heard and seen and experienced the goodness of Jesus, we want others to know it. Seeing God's mercy wants leads us to want others to know his mercy. As we listen to Jesus, we long for others to hear his voice, to find life and hope and joy and respond to his love. So offer your ears, offer your heart to Jesus.

Listen. Listen to him. Let his word go deep in your heart so that you bear fruit that leads to life. Let's pray. Lord, we hear and tremble in some ways to think that three parts of the good seed of your word fell upon bad ground.

Father, let our hearts not be like the beaten down footpath that through hardness and lack of understanding, we would not receive the seed. Let our hearts not be like stony ground that only bears joy when things are easy and comfortable. Let our hearts not be like thorny ground choked out by the desires and temptations of this world. Oh, father, may our hearts be fertile soil. Help us to hear your word with good and willing hearts and to listen.

Help us to hear and understand and keep your word to produce fruit by the work of your spirit. Father, we pray that as the gardener that you would pull out rocks and thorns and soften our hearts so that we will hear, we will love, we will trust and obey. We give ourselves to you and ask all this in Jesus' precious name. Amen.