A Heart Ready for God

Audio Transcript

Grab your Bibles and turn to Mark chapter 4. We finished up chapter 3 last week, and we continue on our series called “Unravel,” going through the entire Bible. We’re now studying the four Gospels together. And we come today to Mark chapter 4, and we’ll begin in verse 1 in just a moment.

It strikes me as interesting that one of the most important parables Jesus ever told, perhaps the most important because He would later say, “If you don’t understand this parable, how will you understand any of My parables?” So this seems to be the gateway into the parables that He told. One of the most important parables that He ever told wasn’t about kingdoms or armies or angels or heaven. It was about dirt. It was about dirt.

So ordinary, so simple is this lesson, and yet so profound that it still strikes at the core of our heart 2,000 years later. This is a parable that has stood the test of time. And there are so many lessons that we can gain from this this morning. I pray that God will open our ears and our hearts and let us receive this.

Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 1. May I ask you if you’re able to stand just one more time as we read God’s Word.

Jesus has just finished what we saw last week, the encounter with the scribes, who rejected His truth, called the Holy Spirit Satan. This has just happened. Once again, Jesus began to teach beside the sea. And such a large crowd gathered around Him that He got into a boat and sat in it while all the people crowded along the shore.

And He taught them many things in parables. And in His teaching, He said, “Listen! Behold, a sower, or a farmer, went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.” Verse 8. “Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, one bearing thirtyfold, another sixtyfold, and another a hundredfold.” And then He adds this comment at the end that we should pay attention to: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Amen. You may be seated.

In the verses following these, Jesus goes on to explain this parable, what it means, because His disciples said to Him, “Can you tell us what this means?” And Jesus did that, and we’ll look at that in just a moment. But at the beginning of that explanation, He gives us the key to understand this entire parable. Peek down at verse 14, would you? He said this, “The sower, or the farmer, sows…” Now, He’s just said seed. But now He’s giving the interpretation of what that means. “The sower sows the Word.”

So in this parable, the seed is the Word of God or the gospel that’s being delivered. And the soil, as we’ll see in just a moment, and Matthew points out in his account, the soil represents the different types of hearts that either receive the Word or don’t receive it. Here’s a quick caution as we begin this morning. I found that when people in church hear this parable, they usually think about somebody else. They usually think, “Boy, those lost people out there really need to hear this.”

But Jesus is speaking this parable. He’s aiming this story and this truth primarily at people who know God’s Word. The scribes were there. He’s speaking to people who knew the Old Testament Scriptures. To people who hear God’s Word regularly. People like us.

Because I want to tell you, even church hearts can grow hard and shallow and crowded with other things. This is a constant danger for us, and we need to regularly ask, as followers of Christ, we need to regularly ask, “Am I keeping my heart open, ready to receive God’s Word?” Just because you’re sitting in here doesn’t mean your heart is open to receive the Word.

Jesus was a master at taking everyday elements around Him as He taught and turning them into life lessons. These people in this part of the country would have been very familiar with seeing farmers out in their fields with a large bag of grain or seed over their shoulder and reaching in and scattering that seed all across their fields. And besides landing on good soil, some of the seeds would inevitably land on the hard paths. Some would land on rocky ground. Some would land on places overgrown with thorns or weeds. So Jesus takes this familiar scene, and He turns it into a mirror for the soul.

Because every one of us will find ourselves in one of these four soils this morning. Some Bibles put a heading over this section. They call it the parable of the sower. That is absolutely incorrect. This parable is not about the sower. It’s about the soil.

First, Jesus describes a hardened path, verses 3 and 4. “A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.” And then Jesus explains what that section means down in verse 15. He said, “Some, or these people, some people, are like the 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.”

All around these fields were paths that people walked on to avoid walking through the areas where crops were growing. And after years of constant foot traffic on these paths, they became packed down, and they were as hard as stone. So when seed fell there, it couldn’t penetrate into the soil. It just lay there right on top of the ground, and the birds would swoop down, and they would eat it. This is the person who repeatedly resists the truth. And every refusal makes their heart a little bit harder. So whenever the Word does land there, the enemy snatches it before it can take root.

It’s like buying a pair of shoes that you really like, but maybe one is a little too small, and you go, “I’ll break it in.” And as you walk, it starts rubbing on your heel, and it rubs and rubs, and at first it hurts, and you’re real sensitive to it. You’re aware of it, but you just keep going, and over time it builds up a callus on your heel, and you don’t even feel it anymore. This is what happens to people as they hear the Word of God and continually resist it. Their heart becomes hardened over time.

Now, as I said in Matthew’s account of this event, he says Jesus told this parable on the same day that the scribes had rejected His truth that we looked at last week. So this is the same day. The scribes heard the truth, they called it a lie. They saw Jesus ministering by the power of the Holy Spirit, and they called it the power of the devil.

And on that same day, Jesus, these crowds are packing in. And Jesus gets in this little boat and pushes back from the shore. Creates a natural amphitheater, I guess, where His voice would reverberate off the water, and everyone could hear Him. And in that crowd are these men who have hardened their hearts against the truth. They saw the miracles, they heard the teaching. They had every opportunity to accept the truth. But they had hardened their hearts and refused to let it in.

We talked just last week about people who sit in church for 30 years. They hear a thousand sermons. They have opportunity after opportunity, and yet they leave every week and feel absolutely nothing. God speaks, and they say, “No.” God speaks again and again, they say, “No.” Until their heart becomes like this beaten path, so hard that nothing gets through.

Often these very people know how to look the part. They know the Christian lingo. They know how to go through the motions, but there’s been no inner transformation. These very scribes were the most religious people in the nation, and yet their hearts were hard to the truth. And all the seed in the world can be sown onto them, but Satan will immediately come and snatch it away, because they’ve already decided they’re not going to let it take root.

What’s the prescription for a hard heart? Well, Hosea chapter 10 verse 12 gives it to us. It says, “Break up your unplowed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and sends righteousness upon you like rain.” What a beautiful verse that is. There’s our part. Seek the Lord. It’s time. Time’s running out, gang. It’s time to seek the Lord. And what’s He going to do? Come and rain His love and righteousness and mercy and goodness on you. What a gorgeous picture that is.

And then couple that with James 1:21, which tells us to receive “with meekness the Word implanted in you, which is able to save your souls.” Meekness. There it is. Meekness. It requires humility. It requires brokenness. It requires softening.

And so I issue the same call today that I did last week. “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.” If there’s a hardness in you today, if you closed off your heart to God at some point, He’s still sowing the seed. He’s still trying to reach you, for now, through this very message in this very moment.

Maybe you say, “No, that’s not me. I don’t have a hard heart. I don’t believe.” Well, Jesus gives us a second group to consider, the rocky soil, verses 5 and 6. “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow, but when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.” And again, He explains that further in verses 16 and 17. He said, “These are the ones sown on rocky ground. They hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy.” Well, that sounds like a great day, doesn’t it? “But since they have no root, they endure only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, they immediately fall away.”

Now, this can, I believe, include what we might be picturing, rocky soil of big rocks jutting out of the ground. But in this part of the country, I believe the explanation that is being given here is of something that was very common and still is in that part of the world. It actually refers to a thin layer of dirt sitting on top of a limestone shelf. This can be seen all over that part of the world still. A thin veneer of dirt over an underlying shelf of rock. Seeds that landed there, they could possibly grow. They might even appear to be thriving. But when the heat comes, their shallow roots cause the plant to wither and die.

This might be called emotional Christianity. You made a decision at some point because everybody else around you did. This is very common in teenage years. Or you made a decision because the music swelled at just the right time. Emotional response.

Now look, I’m not discounting emotions when we hear from God. I get emotional up here talking about the things of God. Our emotions aren’t bad. They were given to us by God. They’re not evil, but they can be deceptive. Don’t ever be led by your emotions. If you make a decision based on emotions, I can promise you, it will not last.

Maybe you recall the time when you made a decision for God based on the emotion of the moment. It looked genuine. It felt real. You even had goosebumps. But later, in the scorching heat of real life, you know—the cost of standing up for Christ at work or school, or a difficult season that required waiting by faith with no answers, or a temptation that came along that just looked more appealing than following God. And the plant that looked so alive suddenly wilts and dies because it has no roots.

And Jesus is precise here, I don’t know if you noticed it, about what causes this problem. He said, “When trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, that person quickly falls away.” It’s specifically when following Christ becomes difficult or costly.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer watched during World War II many German Christians who, he said, quote, “had wept at Easter services,” suddenly giving in to Nazi ideology to save themselves because their roots were never deep enough to hold when the pressure came.

It’s easy to get stirred up in our emotions in a moment. And again, church, I don’t know where that line is. I couldn’t define it if I had to. But I think I know when it’s crossed. I’ve been in services where I just sense we’re crossing. I don’t mean here. I’m so thankful for Jaron and Rachel and Dale who lead us, who are so attentive to this. Not trying to sway people by emotions. Don’t ever try to draw someone to Christ through emotions. Ever. Give them the truth and let the Holy Spirit do the work. But it’s so easy to get caught up in these moments and to think that that is a sign of God moving. It isn’t always.

This pattern continues today. This problem Jesus was addressing back then, it’s still around today. You see people come, and you see people go. They’re faithful for a while, and then they fall away.

This is why the older I’ve gotten, I’ve gained so much respect and so much honor for people in their 80s or 90s who are still standing firm in their faith, despite the hardships that that stage of life brings. I’m going to tell you, I salute those people. I have such enormous respect for the people in their 80s and 90s who are struggling with life, who are still standing firm in their faith. I want to tell you, that requires deep roots. Deep roots, deep roots.

And may I remind you, roots grow in the dark where no one is watching. They grow in the, what would you say, in the daily unglamorous discipline of your personal walk with God. And the quiet faithfulness that gets no attention and no applause, that’s where roots grow. So the question is not whether the heat will come. The question is how deep are your roots?

Thirdly, Jesus says in verse 7, “Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.” And He gives the interpretation of that down in verses 18 and 19. He said, “These are the seeds sown among the thorns. They hear the Word, but the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things come in and choke the Word until it becomes unfruitful.”

Surely this one hits close to home for all of us to some degree. This seed in this soil actually grows strong. There’s real spiritual life. There’s a genuine desire to follow Christ, but something else is growing too, thorns. Jesus names them: worry, wealth, and wanting more.

I did it, folks. I have three points starting with the same letter. I never do that, but it’s right there, right? Worry, wealth, and wanting more.

And I’ll tell you, here in America, look, I’ve lived all over the world, so I’ve seen life from different perspectives, but here in America, this is a constant danger. Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded with the reminder of how discontent we should be compared to what everyone else has and everyone else is doing. Everywhere you turn. If you only had this thing, then you’d be in the in-crowd. If you only vacationed here, if you only owned this. And it puts us in a constant state of discontent, always wanting more.

Notice, though, the thorny heart isn’t a rebellious heart. It’s a crowded heart. Crowded with a million things. Deadlines and notifications and bills and kids’ schedules. They’re not bad things. These people haven’t rejected God outright. They’ve just let everything else take over until God eventually got pushed out.

I’ve seen this on a societal scale. When I was a kid and we came back to America at one point from the mission field, I was a young boy, but I remember this entire country shut down on Sunday. Anybody old enough to remember that? Now look, you can argue right or wrong, whatever. I’m just saying, there was a… There was just kind of a built-in understanding and a reverence for the Lord’s Day: “This day is different. We’re shutting everything down.” And if you needed something, tough luck. You just waited till Monday.

And what I saw happening was, slowly, people started pushing. Pushing, “We want this open, we want that open, we want to do this.” And then schools started getting involved. They started scheduling kids’ soccer games on Sunday mornings. There was a time when parents would rise up against that and say, “Not on our watch.” But you see, over time, things crowded in. And it happens slowly. This isn’t an event. This is a process. Over time, we allow things to crowd in until we wake up and realize God’s been pushed out the back.

The word cares or worries here means distracted or divided. It’s not necessarily pursuing wrong things. It’s pursuing things wrong. Now, that’s not proper grammar, but forget about it. It’s the only way I know to say that. It’s not necessarily pursuing wrong things. It’s pursuing things wrong. It’s getting our priorities out of whack.

Notice, please, Jesus didn’t say this problem is caused by bad things. Look at it carefully. He said this problem is caused by other things. Things that constantly get prioritized above Him.

The frightening thing about thorny soil, I think, for me, is that from the outside it can look like success. People go, “Wow, look at that family. Look at all they’ve got, look at how busy they are, look at all they’re involved in.” It can look like success, but inwardly there’s a slow suffocation taking place. The fruit has stopped growing, and they’ve been too busy to even notice.

This is a danger, church. We live in a busy culture. There’s nothing wrong with that. And time goes by very quickly. I would encourage you this morning, now in this moment, don’t plan for this five years from now. Take some time this week to sit down with God and examine your life and say, “Lord, am I out of balance in any area that is displeasing to You? Do I need to adjust some priorities so that we can put You first in our life again?”

Finally, number four, Jesus talks about good soil, verse 8. He said, “Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, one bearing thirtyfold, or 30 times, another sixtyfold, and another 100.” And then down in verse 20 He explains it. “But those that were sown on good soil are the ones who hear the Word, accept it, and produce fruit, some thirtyfold, some 60, some 100.”

People in this category are not engaged in passive listening to God’s Word. It’s not giving a courteous nod to Christianity or to the things of truth. It’s a person who hears the Word and intentionally says, “Lord, come in and do whatever You need to do in me.” And when He shows you things that need to be dealt with, you take action. You take action to break up the hard areas, to clear out the rocks, to pull up the thorns, so that the seed will be free to grow.

It’s important to say, I think: Your job is not to generate the harvest. Your job is to prepare the soil. The seed already has life in it. It just needs the right conditions to flourish.

There’s so many passages in Scripture that talk about the power in God’s Word, in the gospel. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the Word of God, that is the seed we’re talking about, is living and active.” 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says, “The Word of God, the seed, is at work in you who believe.” That Greek phrase “at work” is the word “energeo.” It’s where we get our word “energy” from. There’s a living energy and power in the Word of God. The seed contains life. It will grow. The question is, are we regularly tending the soil of our heart so that it can grow?

Notice also, the good soil isn’t perfect soil. It’s just prepared soil. So often, I think, people look around at others and go, “Oh man, look at her. She’s got her Christian life together. I will never be at that point, so I guess there’s no point me even trying to pursue God any further.” No one that I know of in this church has it all together. If you do, please see me afterwards. I’d love to take some notes.

The good soil isn’t perfect soil. It’s whoever you are, but it’s being prepared. It’s intentional. It’s plowing the fields. It’s getting rid of the junk. It’s opening yourself up to the Word of God and inviting Him to come in and do His work in you. It’s prepared soil. How does a farmer prepare his soil? By running a plow through the ground, completely disrupting that soil, turning it upside down, and exposing what was hidden underneath.

And if you want a life fruitful for God, it will require willing brokenness and humility. It’ll require asking what David asked in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” And it’s from that place of surrender, God can produce a harvest.

You know how scary that prayer is? If you pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, see if there’s any wicked way in me,” you’re going to get some answers, and you probably won’t like them.

Every once in a while I will go to the mentors in my life and say, “Do you see anything in me that needs to be corrected?” Like, I don’t wake up in the morning longing to do that. I don’t like getting a beat down any more than you do. But there are times we must. We must be willing to humble ourselves, to be broken, to be open to hearing the truth about what God or others see in our life, and to take that correction and go, “Man, that was hard to hear. I think I’m going to have to go lay down for about an hour after that. But thank you. Thank you. Because this is what I want from my life.”

You cannot live this Christian life successfully on your own. You can’t do it. Do you have anyone in your life who you’ve given permission to speak the truth to you? You better. You better. If not, start looking. Find someone that you trust, that you respect, a godly man or godly woman, and go to them and say, “I am asking you to keep a watch over my life. If you ever see me do anything or hear me say anything that raises a red flag, I’m commanding you to come and tell me.” I have those men in my life.

Maybe you’d say, “You know, Phil, I don’t have good soil right now.” Well, here’s some encouragement for you. Hardened soil can be plowed up and made good. Shallow soil can be cultivated and enriched. Thorns and rocks can be removed. The soil of your heart can be changed.

In Luke’s account of this parable, this is such a beautiful thing. Luke tells us in this moment we’ve just studied this morning, there was a woman in the crowd named Mary Magdalene. It says Jesus had cast seven demons out of this woman. Imagine her past. Luke says she was there, listening to this. And she was living proof that bad soil can be made good. Some would have looked at her and said, “Don’t waste the seed on her.” But Jesus sowed the seed into her heart anyway, and it took root. And now she’s standing there, listening to the One who transformed her life, giving proof that barren ground can become fruitful. You want to know who the first person was at the tomb before the sun even came up that Sunday morning? Mary Magdalene.

This morning, in this place, in this moment right now, the seed is falling, and it’s landing on you. The question is not whether the seed can do its job. It can, and it will. The question is what kind of soil has your heart become.

As we close, I want you to take just these last couple minutes and truly discipline yourself to push every other distraction aside, including my shirt. Really focus in on this between you and the Lord.

Is there hardness in your heart that’s been there so long you’ve stopped noticing it? You keep hearing the truth, and you keep saying, “No.” How long are you going to turn away from God’s invitation? How long?

Is there shallowness in your heart? Oh, your faith shines when life is comfortable, but it quickly wilts when the heat is turned up. And if you’re honest, you’d have to say, “You know, Phil, if I had to chart my spiritual life, it would look like a roller coaster. I’m up and I’m down. I’m on the mountaintop and I’m in the valley.” Now look, that’s part of life, but it ought not define us.

Are you constantly running from one spiritual high to the next, looking to get that buzz? “Oh, I went to the Christian concert, man, was the coolest thing,” and you’re on a high for about two days, and then it wilts. Is that the kind of Christian life you’re living? I’m telling you, it is exhausting. It’s exhausting trying to chase that next high. Look, I say this respectfully, it’s like a Christian form of drug addiction.

You know, I get up here one Sunday and just preach a total flop, and you’re like, “Well, I think I’m going to go somewhere else. I’m going to find something better.” It’s so easy for us to become shallow Christians. We praise the Lord when things are good. But as soon as hardship or trouble or temptation comes, we’re looking for a way out.

Maybe there’s crowdedness in your heart. Your heart is divided among so many things that the seed of God’s Word has been choked out. Remember when you used to spend time with God? I don’t mean here. This doesn’t count. I mean, you used to spend time with God. Remember that? Remember those mornings or evenings or lunch breaks or whatever it looked like for you, you open God’s Word, and it just fills you. You stop doing that? You just living off what I give you on Sunday morning?

You become so busy pursuing good things, fine things, that your time with God is just in the rearview mirror somewhere. Oh, my word. Take time this week to reprioritize your life. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these other things will be added to you as well.”

Or is there openness in your heart today? A willingness to say, “Lord, whatever You find when You search me, the bitterness, the doubt, the distraction, the wound, I’m not going to protect it anymore. Do whatever You need to do in me, God.” Boy, that’s an open heart.

You need to know, God will not force His way in. Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with me.” You must listen to that very carefully. He’s outside knocking. The lock and handle are on the inside. You must open it. He’s there right now. He’s knocking, and He’s waiting. And the greatest tragedy of this parable is not the hardened path or the shallow soil or the thorny ground. It’s hearing this Word and walking out exactly the same. That’s the tragedy.

Would you be willing to pray today as we sing a couple closing songs: “Lord, I don’t want to hear Your Word and ignore it again. Come in and do Your work in my life today.”

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Amen.