SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/29/2022 9:40 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Intro to Matthew 13:18-23
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matt. 13:18-23
Message of the verses: “18 “Hear then the
parable of the sower. 19 “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does
not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been
sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road. 20 "And
the one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the
word, and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet he has no firm root
in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution
arises because of the word, immediately he falls away. 22 “And the one on whom
seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the
worry of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it
becomes unfruitful. 23 “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil,
this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit,
and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.’”
First we want to look at two other passages to show
who the Lord is speaking to: 10 And the disciples
came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" (Matt.
13:10). “As soon as He was alone, His
followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the
parables” (Mark 4:10). We can see from
these two verses that Jesus is speaking to His disciples and some of His
followers. For them to hear was to
understand, because, as the Lord had just told them, their faith allowed their
eyes to see and their ears to hear, the things that the unbelievers could not
as seen in Matt. 13:1-12, 16-17.
Now
in the parable of the wheat and the tares we see from verse 37 that He will
indentify the Sower, but He does not identify Him here. “37 And He answered and said, "The one
who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.”
I suppose we can say that in this present passage that the Lord takes it
for granted that the disciples understand the identity of the seed, which is
made explicit in Luke’s account as seen in Luke 8:11 “"Now the parable is
this: the seed is the word of God.” MacArthur
writes “In particular, the sower sows the word of the kingdom, the good news of
entrance into the kingdom by grace through faith.
“In
a broader sense, of course, any believer who preachers or testifies to the
gospel is a sower who sows Christ’s word in his Lord’s behalf. The parable therefore applies to any true
presentation of the gospel.”
MacArthur
goes on to quote the nineteenth-century commentator William Arnot who wrote of
sowers: “As every leaf of the forest and every ripple of the lake, which itself
receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam off again, and so
spread the light around; in like manner, everyone, old or young, who receives
Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed
name.”
I
often listen to Rush Limbaugh while in my car and one day he was talking about
water and referenced a scientist whose name I don’t remember talking about the
fact that there is only so much water on our earth and you can’t add any water
to the earth other than what is there.
In the same way not even a dedicated Christian can create “the word of
the kingdom.” It is God only, who
creates “the word” of the gospel that brings the life of His Son to a
believer. The work of Christ’s witnesses
is to manufacture a message to create a synthetic seed, or even to modify the
seed given to them, however it is to sow God’s revelation by proclaiming it
exactly as He has given it. At the end
of the Word of God in the book of Revelation we read “I testify to everyone who
hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will
add to him the plagues which are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes
away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part
from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book
(Rev. 22:18-19).” I think that there are times when people don’t
always give the whole truth about the gospel message and tend to water it down,
to show things like if you accept this message that nothing wrong will happen
to you, and your life will be all a bed or roses. Not true as there have been countless
millions of people who have died for the cause of Christ.
MacArthur
writes “The Bible is the written word, but Jesus Christ is the living word who
gives it life. The Bible, as it were, is
the husk and Jesus is the kernel. ‘You search the Scriptures, because you think
that in them you have eternal life,’ Jesus told a group of unbelieving Jewish leaders
in Jerusalem, ‘and it is these that bear witness of Me’ (John 5:39).”
Now
as we look at the parable of the sower we see that it revolves around
proclaiming the saving gospel, heralding the word about the King and His
kingdom. But the main teaching has to do
with the heart soils on which the truth the truth of the word falls in the way
that it is truthfully preached. As we
look more closely at this parable we will see that Jesus mentions four
different soils onto which the seed falls as it is sown, and these represent
four kinds of hearts that will hear the gospel.
We have mentioned that these parables are prophetic to the church age,
which is a part of God’s kingdom.
The
truth is that the soils themselves are the same dirt that given the right conditions
could support the growth of crops. We
know that because of the fall that every human heart is naturally sinful and
hostile toward God. This can be seen in
Romans 8:7; and Ephesians 2:15-16. Also
every human heart is capable of being redeemed, but the truth is not all will
be. MacArthur writes “There is no such
thing as a naturally unredeemable heart.
If a person is not saved, it is because he does not want to be saved. ‘The one who comes to Me,’ Jesus says
categorically, ‘I will certainly not cast out’ (John 6:37). Every person could receive the seed of the
gospel and participate in its life if he believed. The differences in the soils, and in the
hearts to which they correspond, are not in their composition but their
condition.
“Jesus
was preparing the apostles, and every other proclaimer of the gospel, to
understand the four basic kinds of hearts they could expect to encounter the
unresponsive, the superficial, the worldly and the receptive.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: As a believer in Jesus Christ it is my
wonderful duty to give out the truth of the gospel, as I cannot save anyone,
only Jesus can, but I know there will be times of disappointment when I tell
someone the truth of the gospel and they turn it down. I give it out, and it is the job of the Holy
Spirit to convict and to convert.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To be ready to tell the wonderful truth of
the gospel to the ones that the Holy Spirit brings onto my path.
3/29/2022 10:38 AM
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