The Good Ground Hearer, Part 2

Introduction: The Church Calendar and the Parable's Final Caution

0:02 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, December 23, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Many of you sitting before me in this place this morning have been with us long enough to know that in our congregational life and public worship, we do not regard ourselves as being bound by the so-called religious calendar, or even by calendar, the calendar of national holidays. And since the special religious remembrance of such days as Easter, Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving are not mandated by Scripture, we who publicly teach, and preach the Word of God, always feel ourselves at liberty either to recognize or ignore these days in the interest of a higher concern which is non-negotiable, that concern being the salvation of souls and the edification of the saints of God. When we've been convinced that the divinely mandated goals of salvation and edification,

1:27 could be better served by using these special days as a launching pad into a given passage of Scripture or biblical theme, we have felt at liberty to use them. Hence, this pulpit has had its share of Christmas, New Year's, and Easter sermons. However, a fair share of these special days have gone unnoticed and unmentioned, when it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

1:57 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

1:57 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

3:00 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

4:00 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

5:00 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

6:00 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

7:01 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

8:04 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

8:08 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

8:12 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit.

8:16 When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. When it was the time of the Holy Spirit. The last caution contained in the parable of the sower is to beware of being content with any religion which does not bear fruit in our lives.

The Nature of Saving Fruit

8:32 Our Lord tells us that the hearts of those who hear the word aright are like good ground. The seed of the gospel sinks down deeply into their wills and produces practical results in their faith and practice. They not only hear with pleasure, but they act with decision. They repent, they believe, they obey.

8:59 Forever let us bear in mind that this is the only religion that saves souls. Outward profession of Christianity and the formal use of church ordinances and sacraments never yet gave a man a good hope in life or peace in death or rest in the world beyond the grave. There must be fruits of the Spirit in our hearts and lives or else the gospel is preached to us in vain. Those only who bear such fruits shall be found at Christ's right hand in the day of his appearing.

9:42 And in our study we describe the fruit as that production of inward character and patterns of outward conduct mandated by the scriptures. That's what fruit is. It is not being able to say, I've won so many souls to Christ. I have given so much money to the work of Christ.

10:05 I have done this for Christ. It is an overall pattern, both of inward character and outward conduct, which, the word mandates. It is having the characteristics of the beatitudes produced in us by divine power. It is having in the language of Galatians 5, 22 and 23 the fruit of the Spirit produced in us and manifested in the concreteness of external behavior.

10:39 The fruit is never inward character separated from outward conduct, nor, nor is it outward conduct without its roots in inward character. The two are always joined. And that fruit, which is the product of a saving response of the word, is the inward character and patterns of outward conduct mandated by the word. And this alone constitutes the solid evidence that indeed the word has been received in a saving manner.

Varying Degrees of Fruitfulness: A Principle from the Parable

11:14 Now, what I propose to do this morning is to concentrate upon a second vital principle that is contained both in the parable and in our Lord's interpretation of the parable. In fact, it is the part that he leaves uninterpreted. It's so self-evident that he does not even comment upon it. You will notice in verse 8 of Mark 4,

11:43 Others fell in the good ground and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing and brought forth thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Now, when our Lord interprets that in verse 20 of Mark 4, he says, Those are they that were sown upon the good ground. Now, he interprets what the growing up and increasing is, such as hear the word and accept it and bear fruit. But now he leaves this part uninterpreted.

12:16 Thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. He simply repeats the very language from the parable itself without any explanation. Why? Because the principle is self-evident and it is this.

12:33 Not only does this part of the parable teach us that the solid evidence of a saving reception of the word is continuance in fruit bearing, but it also teaches with equal, clarity, this principle. There is a varying degree of fruit bearing among those who savingly receive the word of God. There are varying degrees of fruit bearing among those who savingly receive the word of God. Both in the parable and in its interpretation by our Lord, the description of the fate of the seed, upon good ground, is identical until we come to the very last part. And there we see the disparity. They bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. So what our Lord is teaching us is that there will be found the full range from minimum to maximum fruit bearing in a saving response to the word of God.

13:47 But now notice carefully what is being taught. It is a matter of degrees and not of kind.

13:58 Now let me illustrate it from the parable itself. In the time of harvest, when the sower went forth, not with his seed bag to sow his seed, but with his scythe or with his sickle to reap his harvest, and he went out to the field where there was good soil, and some of the stalks had yielded thirty, and some of the stalks had yielded thirty, and some of the stalks had yielded some sixty, some a hundred, some of the areas, thirty, sixty, a hundred. When he used his scythe and gathered the sheaves into his arm, and came back to the place where he would store his grain until it was thrashed, that which had borne thirtyfold, whether our Lord is thinking of the individual stalk of grain and how many grains were actually in the head of it, or whether he is thinking in terms of areas where there was greater general production, this much is true. Once the farmer had gathered the thirty, sixty, and a hundred in his arm, he had a sheaf of grain, whether it was barley, wheat, or oats, whatever it was, and when that was put on the threshing floor, and either the oxen trampled upon it or men trampled upon it, and then it was thrown up so the chaff could be blown away, what was left was identical in kind. It was all wheat, or it was all oats, or it was all barley. Now granted, from some stalks,

15:26 sixty grain had been gathered, from others only thirty, from some a hundred, but it was all grain.

15:35 No thorns were there. No mere hay was there. You had real fruit. Now that's the point our Lord is making.

15:45 And that's why we concentrated last week upon that first great principle, that fruit bearing, and fruit bearing alone, are the solid, infallible evidence that indeed we have received the Word in a saving manner. However, our Lord is also very clearly teaching that there are varying degrees of fruit bearing among those who savingly receive the Word of God. Now if the fruit is what we have asserted it is, and demonstrated, from Scripture that it is, namely, the inward character and the outward patterns of conduct mandated by the Word, what we should expect, according to this parable, is that among true believers, among good soil hearers, there will be thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold fruit. All Christians will be truly penitent and truly believing. But some will have a deeper spirit of repentance than others, and some will have a stronger faith than others. Penitence and faith there will be wherever the Word has done its saving work.

17:08 But the depth, the extent, the breadth of these graces will differ in one believer and another. Some will have, a more sensitive conscience, more intense longings for holiness, and all of those inward traits of character that are the mark of a saving reception of the Word. Wheat there will be, fruit there will be, but some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred. All will be obedient and holy in the outward patterns of their life.

17:47 The Word of God is clear on this. Without holiness, no man, shall see the Lord. Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. But, in the outward patterns of conduct, some will immediately demonstrate more universal obedience, quicker and more joyful obedience than others.

18:12 Some will not be as bullheaded and need the whip and the scourge of affliction and discipline as much as others. All will be obedient as the basic pattern of their life. All will be holy as the basic pattern of their lives, but some will make greater strides in holiness, will manifest a greater extent of universal conformity to Christ. Now, in the light of that great principle, it should not surprise us when we turn to the rest of the Word of God and we find in Scripture that God describes true believers as babes, young men, and full-grown men.

Biblical and Observational Consistency of Varying Fruitfulness

18:58 Now the common denominator is they're all human beings and they have life. They're not robots, merely fabricated in the shop of religious concoctions and somehow wound up with a couple of batteries of religious forms stuck in them to go about and to look. No, they're real, live human beings. Babies, young men, and grown men.

19:24 This they have in common, they have life, but varying degrees in the development of that life. Furthermore, the Word of God describes in the Old and the New Testaments those who follow the Lord more fully than others, whose love for Christ is more intense than others. Jesus, Joshua, and Caleb are marked out as those who wholly followed the Lord. And you see John Bunyan as one who knew his Bible well and observed people well.

19:58 He captured all of that in his Pilgrim's Progress, didn't he? He has in that immortal work such characters as faithful, valiant for truth, Mr. Great Heart, on their way to the celestial city. But they're not.

20:14 They're in company with Mr. Fearing, Mr. Feeble Mind, and Mr. Ready to Halt.

20:21 They're all on the road that leads to the celestial city. But not everyone was a Mr. Great Heart. Not everyone was a valiant for truth.

20:33 Not everyone was a Mr. Faithful. He understood that principle. And so what is taught in this parable by our Lord without any comment, it is so.

20:45 It is so self-evident. It's consistent with the rest of the teaching of the Word of God and is also consistent with our own observation of the people of God, not only in the history of the church in the past, but to this present hour right here in Trinity Church. And so the great principle then is clearly established that there are varying degrees of fruit-bearing among those who say, savingly receive the Word. However, however, this teaching is light years away from the horrible, wretched, soul-destroying lie that there are differences among real Christians that are differences of kind and not of degree.

Exposing the Soul-Destroying Lie of Differences in Kind

21:42 Do you see the distinction?

21:44 They bore fruit. It was all wheat. All barley. All oats.

21:50 Some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. But it was real fruit. It was a matter of degree, not of kind. But what has happened?

21:59 In our day as in days past, people have taken that element of biblical truth and have twisted it and manipulated it and come up with that which I call deliberately a horrible, wretched, soul-destroying lie. That the differences among real Christians are differences of kind, not merely of degrees. For example, there is abroad in our day a teaching embraced literally by millions that some Christians bear fruit while others are totally barren and the issue is merely one of rewards at the return of Christ. So you have fruit-bearing Christians, and you have barren Christians, but they are both Christians.

22:54 You have the teaching that some Christians are spiritually minded and they become increasingly like Christ in their inward character and in their outward conduct. But there are other Christians who alas, forever remain carnal in their inward attitudes and outward conduct. They are nothing but fleshy ones. And so their inwardness, their outward disposition is full of envy and lust and pride and unforgiveness and rancor and bitterness.

23:25 And their outward patterns of life are marked by carelessness and self-indulgence and indulgence of the flesh and attachment to the world, conformity to the world. They've trusted Jesus and they're on their way to heaven. They're simply carnal Christians and it's just a matter of lack of usefulness and lack of love. Loss of rewards.

23:51 There is the teaching, alas, embraced by multitudes, that there is a vast group of people out there called Christians who are merely saved. And there's a last but a little group of those who are surrendered. And the difference between those who are merely saved and those who are surrendered is the ones who are really surrendered, they show in their character and in their conduct that they take Christ and holiness and God and the law seriously. But those who are merely saved, the only thing they take seriously is the fact that they're going to go to heaven when they die because they trusted Jesus.

24:31 There is the teaching that there are many, alas, who are just merely converted. And there's a blessed little few who are consecrated. They've gone beyond merely being converted and they've gone the other step and they are consecrated. There is a vast majority, we are told, who simply have the Spirit.

24:51 And then a little handful whom the Spirit has. These people are merely indwelt by the Spirit. And here is this little elite core of those who are full of the Spirit. And you see the common denominator of all that teaching?

25:04 It is a difference not of degree, but of what? Of kind. Do you see it? Dear people, I'm not laboring to fill the air with words.

25:12 This is vital. Vital! Vital! Do you see the distinction?

25:18 All who savingly receive the Word, bring forth the positive fruits of inward character and outward conduct. And they do it with continuance. They bring forth fruit with patience. It's not just the absence of thorns and weeds that proves them to be the true people of God.

25:41 It's the presence of fruit.

25:45 Yes, degrees of fruit. Thirty, sixty, and a hundred. But it is a difference of kind, and not of degree. A difference of degree, I'm sorry, and not of kind.

25:59 Whereas the teaching that is so popular in our day is expounded in books and from conference platforms, and alas, over W.

26:12 And that's why I warn some of you who simply turn on that radio and listen to anything that comes in. There are people that are teaching this doctrine on God.

26:25 And your remaining corruption is all to win. I'm willing to believe it.

26:32 It is a wretched, soul-destroying lie that the differences in Christians are one of kind and not of degree. We saw last week it's fruit or the fire. Matthew 3, Matthew 7, John 15. The unprofitable servant who had nothing to show to his master.

26:54 What did the master say to him? Well, unprofitable servant, just take a little old anteroom somewhere in the city, in the streets of glory. No, he said, depart from me, unprofitable servant, into outer darkness where there's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The unprofitable servant went to hell.

27:15 He didn't go into some anteroom with a fewer number of rewards.

27:23 He said, Pastor, you're excited and upset about this. Yes, dear people, this is a matter of your soul's salvation. If you're convinced you can be a Christian without fruit, you've believed a lie. It will destroy your soul unless you turn away from your lie and embrace the truth that in all true Christians there is fruit, albeit the fruit will be in varying degrees.

Why Varying Degrees of Fruitfulness Exist: Divine Sovereignty

27:51 Now, having demonstrated from the parable that there are varying degrees of fruitfulness in a saving response to the word, having demonstrated how this teaching is consistent with the rest of scripture, having exposed the story, the soul-destructive nature of the perversion of this teaching, we must now address the question that I trust is in the minds of at least many of you, and it's this. Why do these varying degrees of fruitfulness exist?

28:27 Why is it that the good seed of the word falling upon the good soil of a heart prepared by the Spirit of God should bring forth varying degrees of fruitfulness? Is not God's power the same? Is not the gospel the same? Is not His purpose that we be conformed to the image of Christ the same in every case?

28:53 Why then 30, 60, and 100-fold? Well, any attempt to answer that question brings us down into that mysterious land where the streams of divine purpose and sovereign design coalesce, confluence, coalesce, mingle, flow together with the streams of human responsibility and human effort. Now, if you want to have some fun, try to go to a place where two streams meet and sort out which one is which. With a cup of water, a cup in one hand and a cup in the other, say, oh, that's the stream coming in.

29:31 They mingle. They confluence. And so I am not hoping today to stand here with a cup and sort them out. I just want to point you to that place where they come together in the stream.

29:44 All right? Why is it there's 30, 60, and 100? Well, from one perspective, it is because of God's own divine purpose and sovereign design. How do I know this?

30:00 From such text as Ephesians 2.10.

30:04 We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God, before, ordained that we should walk in them.

30:17 The works that form the pattern of my life, God before ordained that I should walk in them and in none others.

30:30 Philippians 2.13. It is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure. When Paul had to descend to what would appear on the surface as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a good pleasure, as a form of boasting in order to vindicate his ministry.

30:49 He said certain things about his character and about his usefulness, but then he said this, but I am what I am by the grace of God. What I am as a man, the degree of my fruitfulness, what I am as a minister, the degree of my usefulness, is all to be attributed to grace. So from one perspective, the thirty, sixty, and a hundred, the hundred-fold fruit has its answer in the inscrutable mystery of the divine will and purpose. God purposes for His glory to make some more fruitful than others.

31:34 And if we try to resolve it anywhere else, we'll find ourselves enmeshed in a hopeless maze of confusion. We must rest in the great truth even so, Father. It seemed good in Thy sight. From a pastoral standpoint, this alone is the consolation of a true shepherd many times.

31:59 Lord, why, when seeking to give equal time to pray and labor over the souls of one's people, why do some seem to bear such measures of fruit and others relatively so little? Oh, yes, there is fruit. You have no reason to question that there is a saving, responding response to the Word. But they seem to be locked into the thirty-fold pattern and never rise to the sixty or the hundred.

Why Varying Degrees of Fruitfulness Exist: Human Responsibility

32:28 Even so, Father, it seemed good in Thy sight. There is an element of divine sovereignty. However, however, the Bible also clearly teaches there is an element of spiritual cultivation that enters in human responsibility, endeavor, and activity. For example, Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 1, writing to the believers, telling them, that they have something to do in this matter of fruitfulness.

32:57 Verse 5, And for this very part, or this very cause, adding on your part all diligence in your faith, supply virtue, in your virtue knowledge, in your knowledge self-control, and in your self-control patience or steadfastness, in your patience godliness, in your godliness brotherly kindness, in your brotherly kindness love, if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. For he that lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. Wherefore, brethren, give them more diligence. You see the emphasis here? Is you must cultivate, and you must water, and you must pull the weeds, and you must nurture these plants. Of the implanted graces of Christian character.

33:56 You must give all diligence to nurture them. And so from the human standpoint, the difference between a thirty and a sixty and a hundredfold bearer of fruit is often the degree to which someone has his priorities straight and the spiritual disciplines in hand and is continually cultivating the graces which God has implanted by the Holy Spirit. Whereas others allow themselves to get busy that weeding time is passed over for a week, and then another week cultivating time is passed over, and another week fertilizing time is passed over, so in harvest there's only thirty when there could have been sixty or a hundredfold.

34:42 That's why Paul prayed for the believers at Philippi in Philippians chapter 1, verses 9 through 11. This I pray, that your love may abound, yet more and more, in knowledge and discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and void of offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are through Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. He doesn't sit back and say, well, whatever God has decreed of your fruitfulness thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, it's fixed, it's settled, nothing can be done, so I simply sit back, and wait for the divine decree to be manifested. No, he was pleading with God, Lord, may they grow until they are filled with the fruits of righteousness. I don't think I'd be doing injustice to the sentiment of the passage when I say Paul was praying, Lord, make all the Philippian Christians be hundredfold bearers of fruit, filled with the fruits of righteousness. Lord, make them all bring forth a hundredfold.

The Rule of Duty: Striving for Maximum Fruitfulness

35:54 So, in answer to the question, why do these varying degrees of fruit exist? From one standpoint, the answer is locked up in the divine purpose and sovereign design, but from another standpoint, from human responsibility and endeavor. Now then, what do we do in the light of that? You remember the great principle?

36:15 The rule of your duty is never the divine purpose which is secret. It is the divine precepts which are open to you. The rule of your duty is never the divine purposes which are secret.

36:32 It is the divine precepts which are revealed. Now, what do the precepts say? Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit. Be filled with the Spirit.

36:49 Abound more and more. And you go through the New Testament and find one exhortation after another prodding us on, never to be content with our present level of fruitfulness, either in terms of inward character or of outward conduct. If Jesus said, My Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and your heart has been turned from self-glory to seeking the glory of the Father, can you be content with thirtyfold fruit when the possibility of sixty and a hundredfold is open to you? I would be so bold as to say, he who thinks he has thirtyfold and is therefore content most likely has no fruit at all. For you see, one of the fruits of a saving response to the Word is a hunger and a thirst for what? Righteous.

37:56 Not only a hunger and thirst for that righteousness which is imputed to us on the bedside, on the basis of the perfect life of Christ and his obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, but that righteousness which is wrought in us by the power of the Holy Spirit as we live in conformity to the Word. He who has any true grace longs for more grace. And he who is content with what he calls his present level of grace probably has no grace. So, child of God, don't sit around on a rock somewhere looking up into the vault of heaven and saying, Oh God, have you decreed that I should be forever a thirty, a sixty, or a hundredfold bearer of fruit? Get your nose in this book and see that God wants you to bear more fruit. Have you made some progress in subduing that stubborn area of remaining sin, envy, pride, jealousy, lust, whatever it is, have you made some progress? Well, the same grace that has brought you this far can enable you to make more progress.

39:14 Wage warfare against that sin with all of your spiritual weapons. Cry to God that he would wither it from the root by the power of the cross and his Son. Pray for greater infillings and empowerings of the Spirit. If you're bringing forth thirty in one area, why not sixty and a hundred?

39:34 For herein is the Father, the Father glorified, that we bear much fruit. And since the rule of our duty is not the divine purpose which is hidden from us, but the divine precept which is open to us, child of God, I challenge you to produce from Scripture anything that would encourage you to be content with anything less than the maximum measure of inward character and outward conduct reflective of the power of the gospel. Can you go beyond the word blameless and harmless? That's God's will for you.

40:15 Do everything without murmuring and disputing that you may be blameless sons of God without rebuke, shining as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. What a standard.

40:33 That's the standard God has set for you. The standard God has set for me. We can never be content and say, oh well, there's enough fruit to give me assurance that I'm not a thorny ground hearer. I am not a stony ground hearer.

40:46 I've saliently received the Word. Now I'll coast. No, no, my friend. If real grace is in you, real grace is an active principle always reaching out for further dimensions of inward conformity to Christ and outward conformity to Christ.

The Balance of Grace and Effort: No Passivity

41:05 But then you see, if we're unable to make progress, the fact, that we know any progress has been decreed and purposed and is all of God, we don't stand around looking at the head of grain and admiring the hand that pulled some weeds and maybe held the watering can and worked in a little fertilizer. We fall down and we say, oh God, I am what I am by your grace and your grace alone. Left to myself, Lord, I would have been forever the most fruitless of all of your saints. And if you have caused anything of inward character reflective of the norms of your Word to be produced in me, Lord, it's because you purposed that it should be so. And you've put forth divine, efficient energy. Spiritual dynamics have been operative within me, enabling me to love what I once hated, to hate what I once loved, to persevere, to persevere, to persevere, to persevere, to pursue what at one time was of no interest to me. And with all of my being to long for things that left to myself would never be anything other than a source of total indifference.

42:24 You see, child of God, this teaching in the parable, that there are degrees of fruitfulness among true believers, it does not lead on the one hand to a spirit of passivity. Oh well, God has decreed there's nothing I can do, just the opposite is true. I am to give myself to being as fruitful as God can make me in this life. Something of the prayer of McShane.

42:50 You've heard it. It bears repetition. Oh God, McShane prayed, make me as holy as it is possible for a redeemed sinner to be this side of heaven. Is that your desire?

43:07 Not, Lord, make me as holy as will make me feel comfortable with my brothers and sisters at Trinity and make them feel comfortable with me. Make me as holy as is necessary to give me some peace under searching preaching.

43:23 Lord, make me as holy as it's possible for a redeemed sinner this side of heaven to be made holy. Inwardly, in my attitudes, my disposition, my reactions, my thoughts, my motives, my intentions, the inward character. And then, Lord, in my outward life, in all my relationships, in the home, in the shop, in the neighborhood, on the street, in the streetcar, in all of my interaction with my fellow men, may they know if they've never passed a true Christian before, this man, this woman, this boy, this girl is the real thing.

44:04 Oh, dear people of God, there is nothing in this parable to lead us, I say, to passivity and to quietism and to fatalism. But everything, everything to stir us up to cry to God that if the word has found saving root in our hearts that by the grace of God we should bring forth not thirty, not sixty, but a hundredfold. If you are presently what could be described as a thirtyfold producer of fruit, where, where in the Bibles it say you must be forever locked into the thirtyfold reproductive pattern. Why not sixtyfold?

44:43 Sixteen, if sixty, why not a hundred? Isn't this what the Bible means when it says, let us provoke one another unto love and to good works. Let us exhort one another. Let us seek to be a prod to one another by our lives and by our exhortation that we may by the grace of God glorify the Father by bringing forth much fruit.

Exhortation to Unbelievers: Receive the Savior

45:09 And then I close with this word of exhortation. Some of you, who are sitting here this morning, your heart is not good soil. You don't know what it is to receive the message of Jesus Christ coming from heaven by way of a virgin's womb to live the life we should have lived but did not, to die the death we should have died but could not.

45:34 That great message has never found rootage in your heart bringing you to mourn over the wretched sinfulness of your own heart and your own life. It's never found it's never brought you to turn from all hope that you can fix yourself up and make yourself acceptable before God. It's never brought you to where you've abandoned all hope of saving yourself and thrown yourself in an act of faith upon Christ as he's offered in the gospel. My friend, this whole parable is about what you do with that message.

46:07 What you do with the message that was announced by those first angels unto you is born this day in the city of Israel. In the city of David, what? A figure who will be the occasion of drunken office parties? That's all Christmas is to some of you.

46:25 Another chance to booze it up and pinch behinds. A time when you can give vent to your most base appetites and still be respectable. That's the curse of our polite office parties. When things done in any other time would be considered boorish and uncouth, but now they're respectable because it's two days before Christmas.

46:50 God have mercy. God have mercy on our sex-soaked, flesh-preoccupied society. The angels did not say there is born someone who would be a figurehead to give license to rival talk and activity and drunkenness and materialism. The angels said there is born a Savior, a Deliverer, who is Christ the Lord.

47:15 A Savior from what? Matthew, Matthew 1, 21. Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. He was born to save us from our sins.

47:28 That life of self-centeredness, that life of cursed independence of God, that life of indifference to the law of God, that life of indifference to the claims of God, that's what sin is. Christ came to release us and deliver us from the tyranny of that sin that we might, in the language of one of the other Christmas passages, serve Him without the dread of judgment, serve Him without fear in holiness all the days of our life. Oh, my unconverted friend, this is what Christ and the coming of the Son of God is all about. This is what the parable of the sower and the soils is all about.

48:11 What do you do when you hear that message? Do you sit there now and say, I never heard this before, but surely, surely in that message there is something that answers to my deepest need. I can't think of death without fear. I can't think of judgment without dread.

48:27 I don't know what I'm here for. Are you telling me, preacher, that in Christ and in the gospel there is the divine answer to those gnawing issues? I'm telling you, yes. And in the gospel alone is there such an answer, an answer that comes to us not floated in the flowery terms, of human philosophy or rhetoric, but an answer that comes to us sealed in blood, the blood of the incarnate God.

48:57 May God grant that your heart will open to receive that message as well-plowed soil from which the root system of the weeds has been removed. Deep soil receives the seed, envelops it, and springs forth unto fruitage. Oh, that you may receive him who is the heart of that message, and bring forth fruit unto righteousness. Let us pray.

49:34 Our Father,

49:37 we thank you for the words of our Lord Jesus. We thank you for this simple story of the sower who went forth to sow, and the fate that met the seed as it came to the various kinds of soil. And we praise you for the great encouragement that some of this seed fell upon good soil. And sprang up and increased and brought forth fruit with patience.

50:07 And we have reason to believe that in this very building you, by grace, have made many hearts to become good soil. And that even now the word of the gospel has sprung forth in fruit of inward character and outward conduct. But, oh Lord, how we long, how we long that that fruit would be increased. We tremble to think what you could do with a congregation of those who are bringing forth a hundredfold.

50:37 Who in every relationship of life, in the home and in the shop, and in the personal relationships that we sustain to those around us are ever conscious of your presence, of your eye upon us, of the demands and guidelines of your word, and of your ability to help us to stand and to manage and to manifest our commitment to you against all pressure. Oh, Father, we long that individually and corporately we shall indeed be the light of the world, a city set upon a hill that cannot be hid. Oh, our God, we plead that there will be abounding fruitfulness, that we will even now determine that we shall not skip weeding days and cultivating days and fertilizing days in our own hearts. Oh, Lord, may we be able to may we not neglect that nurture of the soil by which alone there can be a great harvest of fruit unto you. We cry to you, our Holy Father, that you will indeed be glorified in us as we bear much fruit unto your praise. And then we plead with you for those in whom there is no fruit of inward character formed by the gospel, no repentance, no faith, no mourning, for sin, no hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

52:05 Oh, God, have mercy upon them. Give them no rest until their hearts become a fruitful field, bringing forth those fruits unto everlasting life, which are your own mighty work in conjunction with the gospel. Hear then our prayer, and may the great day of unveiling when we stand before him who came on that day first Christmas. Oh, may that day reveal that the word preached during this past hour was not preached in vain.

52:40 Hear our prayer, and may the blessings of your grace and presence rest upon us and abide with us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.