The Seeds Sown among the Thorns


Sermon by David Strain on May 16, 2021 Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Well if you would take your Bibles in hand and turn with me please to Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13; Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13. If you’re using one of our church Bibles, you’ll find it on page 818.

We are continuing our series this morning studying the teaching of the parable of the sower. You can find the parable itself in the first eight verses of chapter 13, and then Christ’s exposition of the parable in verses 18 through 23. So far, we have looked at the seed sown along the path – the seed of the word that fell on a hard heart, an unreceptive heart. Then we looked last time at the seed sown on the rocky ground. There was a shallow layer of topsoil covering an impenetrable stratum of rock with the result that the seed sown sprouted quickly enough but they could sink down no roots and so they quickly withered and died. This is a picture of a superficial heart. A heart that makes only a shallow response to the preaching of the Word and so it does not last, it does not endure. It makes every appearance of growth and vitality in response to the Gospel, but it simply doesn’t last.

And now this week we are considering the seeds that fell among thorns. Here we get to see what happens in a crowded heart; a heart whose response to the message of the good news about Jesus has many competitors, all of them clamoring for our attention. And as we think through our Lord’s teaching at this point, I want to focus your attention on two things in particular. First of all, this part of the parable highlights the vital importance of bearing fruit. The vital importance of bearing fruit. And then secondly, this part of the parable highlights the choking danger of perennial weeds. So the vital importance of bearing fruit and the choking danger of perennial weeds. That’s where we’re going this morning. Before we consider those two themes, let’s bow our heads together as we pray once again and then we will read the Scriptures. Let us pray.

O Lord our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. We pray that You would open our ears to hear, that You would take the scales from our eyes that we might see, that You would indeed make the soil of our hearts fertile ground for the seed of Your Word now sown amongst us that we may bear much fruit for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Matthew 13 at the first verse. This is the Word of Almighty God:

“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.’”

Then verse 18:

“Hear then the parable of the sower: 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 what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken to us in His holy, inerrant Word.

The Vital Importance of Bearing Fruit

Let’s think about the vital importance of bearing fruit, first of all. The vital importance, the absolute necessity we might say, of bearing fruit. Imagine with me for a moment that you are the farmer in Jesus’ story – sleeved rolled up, scythe in hand, going out into your field for the harvest, ready to reap the rewards of all your diligent labor in sowing the seed. You scattered the seed indiscriminately, remember, making sure that every patch of dirt had some seed sown upon it. You wanted to maximize the potential for a harvest and now you see the results. Your field is covered in golden stocks of grain, wheat or barley, swaying gently in the breeze. Of course over there, on the bald, hard-packed, dirt pathway that bisects your field, there is no hope of harvest and so you move quickly on. When you reach the southern corner of your field, you notice the withered remains of a few shriveled old stocks of wheat bearing eloquent testimony to the fact that in this spot in your field the soil is shallow and there is no hope of harvest here either. And now you move on to another side of your field and where, from a distance, as you approach at least, there seems to be lots of healthy growth and you have every expectation as you draw near of plenty of grain. But when you arrive you are sorely disappointed. To be sure, there are promising clumps of mature wheat or barley that that have grown up along with the rest, but a closer look reveals they’ve had to grow up amidst thick briars and thorn bushes competing with them for sunlight and nutrients with these aggressive weeds with the result that the grain in this part of the field has become entirely fruitless. There is no harvest.

Now as a farmer, what will you think about that particular patch of grain growing in your field? Will you say to yourself, “Well, you know you shouldn’t be too disappointed. At least the seed has taken root and grown into nice, tall, impressive looking plants.” Well of course you wouldn’t. Your concern, the sole criterion upon which any farmer makes his assessment about the stalks of barley growing in his field is whether or not they have borne any fruit. A field of barley without a single ear of grain would be utterly useless to the farmer. He’s looking for a harvest. He wants his crop to yield good fruit. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

And let’s be clear, that is what Jesus is looking for when it comes to our response to the seed of the Word, to the seed of the Gospel sown into our hearts. He’s looking for fruit. Nothing else matters. Look again at verse 22. “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the Word but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word and it proves unfruitful.” You see what we’re being told. This person has heard the Word of God just like the others. The seed of the Gospel has been sown into their hearts too. But unlike the unreceptive heart, symbolized by the seed sown along the path, this person has welcomed the Word and responded to the Word. He’s even put forth some growth and developed along with the other maturing stalks of grain in the field. The one thing, the only thing that distinguishes this person from the rest of the fruitful harvest is his lack of grain. There is no harvest in his life.

Listen, in the final judgment when you stand before the exalted Christ to give an account, that’s what He’ll be looking for. He will be looking for fruit in your life. Good fruit is the only evidence that the seed of the Word has not been wasted when it was sown into the soil of our hearts. A harvest of Christ-likeness, a yield of godliness, of head, heart, hand transformation. The fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are the marks that the Word of Christ is doing its work within us and nothing short of that will do.

It’s a principle actually you see the Lord Jesus teaching throughout the gospels. Let me give you a few examples. Matthew 7:15-20. Jesus is warning about false prophets, although the principles He is teaching can be applied equally to counterfeit believers of every kind. Matthew 7 at verse 15, “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them” – how? “You will recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes? Are figs from thistles? So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.  A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.” And listen to this now – “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” That’s the sobering teaching actually of our parable here at this point also. Bearing good fruit is an absolute necessity. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Or listen to Jesus again in John’s gospel, chapter 15, beginning at verse 1. Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away. Every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

Do you see the point? It’s really very simple, isn’t it? Jesus insists on the vital importance of bearing fruit; on the absolute necessity of fruitfulness in the Christian life. Do not think you can stand before Him on the last day without holiness, without repentance, without a love for His people and His praise, without humility, without devotion to the Word. Don’t think you can come before Him having spent your days without any real spiritual concern and point to your baptism or to the fat check that you have written to a good cause or to the pedigree and fine reputation of your family name, or even to your years of church membership. These are poor substitutes for the good fruit of heart holiness and there is – listen – there is no one welcomed into the glory that is to come who has failed to bear this fruit here and now. Hebrews 12:14, “Without holiness, no one shall see the Lord.” The great disappointment for the farmer concerning the seed that was sown among the thorns is its fruitlessness. What will the Lord of the harvest say about the seed of the Word and what it has done in the soil of your heart? When the great day dawns at least, will there be fruit? Will there be fruit? Christ-likeness? Growing holiness? Hatred for sin? A desire to serve Him? A love for His praise and His people? The vital importance, the absolute necessity of bearing fruit.

The Choking Danger of Perennial Weeds

Then secondly, notice the choking danger of perennial weeds. If we must bear fruit, we need to see the challenge that confronts us and take care of it, address it, in order that we may bear fruit. The danger of the weeds. In the parable, notice Jesus says the thorns “grew up and choked the seed.” Now what are these thorns? What is the metaphor referring to? In verse 22, Jesus said, “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches.” To that list, Mark’s gospel, Mark 4:19, also adds, “the desires for other things.” And Luke 8:14 also adds, “the pleasures of life.” Alright, so these are the four species of heart weeds that can grow up and choke the Word in our lives. Do you see them? The cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, desires for other things, and the pleasure of life. Let’s think about each of them in turn for a moment.

The Cares of the World

The cares of the world, first of all. Nothing can crush Gospel life quite like the choking power of worldly care. And the way you know the difference between wise and appropriate concern for daily necessities and truly ungodly care is when you find you cannot trust Jesus with what you cannot control. Ungodly, worldly care is when you cannot trust Jesus with what you cannot control. You find you can’t rest in His wise ordering of your today or your tomorrow. You have to wrestle with it constantly in your mind; you can’t put it down, you can’t quieten your heart in the knowledge of His promises. What is happening? The cares of the world are trying to choke and to crush the seed of the Word. Beware the heart weed of the cares of this world.

The Deceitfulness of Riches

Then there is, secondly, the deceitfulness of riches. The deceitfulness of riches. Now notice what He says carefully. He is not highlighting merely the possession of riches but the deceitfulness of them. Money is a liar. Money is a liar. And that’s the problem here, isn’t it? It wants you to believe it can save you. All your wants and your needs and your fears will be addressed if you just had a little bit more. It wants you to believe you’ve got to have more no matter how much you’ve got. Money is a liar and if you let them, those lies will choke the seed of the Word. But listen to the Lord Jesus who said, “You cannot serve both God and money.” Why? Because if you let it, the heart weed of the deceitfulness of riches will choke out the call of Christ to a life of sacrifice and service, to a life of piety and purity. It will choke the Word. “It’s easier,” Jesus said, “for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Because money is constantly lying to us and saying, “Trust me! I’m the thing you need the most! I’ll rescue you!”

The Desire for Other Things

The cares of the world. The second heart weed is the deceitfulness of riches. The third heart weed is the desire for other things. From Mark’s gospel, the word Mark uses, the Greek word is “epithumia.” You could translate it, “lust.” It means an inordinate longing for what you do not have. It is covetousness. It is greed. It is an acquisitive spirit. It is the enemy of that “godliness with contentment which is great gain,” to which every Christian is called. Remember that the Lord Jesus said that “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things.” Inordinate desire, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, can crush the seed of the Word.

The Pleasure of Life

The heart weeds of the cares of the world. The deceitfulness of riches. The desire for other things. And the final heart weed that Jesus speaks of Luke calls “the pleasure of life.” These are not necessarily sinful things in themselves. Pleasure, let’s not forget, is a gift of God who gives us all things richly to enjoy. But when worldly or the pleasures of this life become an end in themselves, when pleasure becomes the reason for life, the chief agenda of your heart, it will choke the Word. No one ever denied herself and took up her cross, no one ever put to death his sinful nature with its passions and desires, while at the same time making the pleasures of life the great priority for each day’s agenda. The heart weed of the pleasures of life.

And did you notice what Matthew says these heart weeds do? Look at verse 22 again in Matthew 13. The verb he uses there translated in our version, “to choke the word,” actually includes the nuance in verse 22 of “crowding and choking the word.” And I think that’s important because it tells us what Jesus is not saying. He isn’t saying, “If you ever feel any of these things in your heart, well then the seed of the Word is being choked and you are doomed to a fruitless life.” That’s not the message. In fact, truth be told, all of us feel the pull and the enticement of these things from time to time. Don’t we? The cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desire for other things, and the pleasures of life – we all have these weeds growing in the soil of our hearts to some extent. Genesis 3 reminds us, doesn’t it, since Adam ate the forbidden fruit there has never been a plot of ground that was not doomed to produce thorns and thistles. That is true metaphorically for the ground of the human heart as much as it is for the literal ground in your backyard.

And what’s more, in the parable that Jesus tells us here, the thorns and the thistles, they are endemic in the soil. Do you see that? No one put the weeds into our hearts. We were born with them already planted there. Isn’t that right? Jeremiah 17:9 – “Our hearts are desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. Who can understand them?” Genesis 6:5 – “The thoughts and intentions of the heart are only evil continually.” Psalm 51:5 – “We were brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The weeds are already growing in the fertile soil of our hearts from the get-go. We’re sinners by nature, after all. No one ever needed to teach us about the cares of the world or the deceitfulness of riches or the desire for other things or for the pleasures of life. Did they? Our hearts have been hardwired to pursue these things. And so the issue is not simply the mere presence of the weeds. The issue is a heart that is crowded with them, so crowded that the seed of the Word simply cannot compete.

Well what can be done to keep the weeds at bay? That needs to be our pressing question. What can be done to keep the weeds at bay? If they’re endemic in the soil of our hearts, if we are hardwired by nature to run after our sin, how do we prevent the heart weeds from choking out the Word? Two very simple, very obvious things, and then we’re done.

Pull Up the Weeds

Number one – pull up the weeds. Pull up the weeds! There’s no other way to ensure that the good Word sown into your heart has all the room that it needs to grow and flourish and bear a ripe, abundant harvest of righteousness and holiness to the glory of Jesus Christ. We must tear up every thorn growing in our lives. There’s no place for even a single one. On my desk in my study here at the church is a paper weight given to me by a beloved church member. Encased within it is a beautiful purple flower from the top of a Scottish thistle. It reminds me of home. It also reminds me that thorns and thistles can be lovely things, attractive things. And isn’t that their power and their allure? “My sin looks delightful in my eyes. So lovely are my sins in fact that I regularly argue with myself that my sins aren’t really sins at all and they ought to be given their place in the garden of my heart.” But we must never forget that thorns and thistles are the emblem of the curse – Genesis 3. Thorns and thistles. They’re the emblem of the curse of God upon sin and they choke the Word wherever they’re allowed to grow. There can be no corner of the field where you let the weeds flourish. You must pull them up, no matter how lovely they can appear.

And we have to be ruthless about that. If there are weeds growing in your lawn, in your front lawn at home, simply setting the mower to the lowest setting, you know, and chopping the heads off those dandelions, it might give you the appearance of a nice, uniform, green front yard for a while, but if the root is allowed to remain, they’re going to spring right back up just as vigorously as ever. If you want rid of your sin you must take serious, consistent, radical action. A superficial treatment just won’t do. So yes, by all means, in fact first and most, you must run to Jesus and confess your sin and seek mercy from Him. But I wonder, are you hiding it from everyone else in your life? Maybe you need to come clean and tell a trusted pastor or elder what’s really going on and ask for accountability and support. Dealing with the weeds that fester in our hearts is a community project. We need each other to get it done, to pull them out.

And honestly, no matter how strongly you insist you’ve confessed your sin to the Lord, if you have not sought out the accountability that you need, I have to wonder how sincere your repentance and your seeking the mercy of God really is. Never forget that the weeds of sin grow best in the shadows. The weeds of sin grow best in the shadows. So shine the light of an honest confession upon them. Get help! Stop kidding yourself that you can take care of it. Get help and you will find that they soon begin to wither and die. Pull up the weeds. Root them out.

Keep Sowing the Seed

Secondly and finally, keep sowing the seed. Pull up the weeds and keep sowing the seed. No farmer, after sowing his seed and getting a poor yield from his crop, just gives up on the field. Sowing seed is not a one and done kind of deal. Keep sowing the Gospel word into the soil of your heart. Yes, prepare the soil. Yes, pull up the weeds. But preach Christ to your heart. After all, a well plowed field wonderfully free of weeds with nothing planted in it, is just as useless as a field full of barley stalks without any grain. A negative approach only is not enough. Just trying not to sin will not do. You must plant the seed of the Word into the field of your heart. Friends, Jesus Christ has obeyed and bled and died for our weedy, thorn-infested hearts. We don’t need to have fruitless hearts when the Word is preached to us. Repent and believe the Gospel if you want to produce a ripe harvest of holiness. Whatever half-hearted you may have made to the Word of God in the past, today, turn to Jesus Christ and go to His cross, ask Him for mercy and for pardon, confess your sin and abandon yourself to Jesus alone for rescue. Sow the good seed of the Word into the soil of your heart. There is good news for you, heart of mine. Jesus is the perfect Savior you most desperately need. Preach the good news to yourself.

So do you see the vital importance, the absolute necessity of bearing fruit? Is yours a fruitful life? Has the seed of the Word borne fruit in you? Given the necessity of it, do you see the danger and the problem we face? There is in every heart the choking danger of perennial weeds. What should we do? Pull up the weeds with radical, consistent, unflinching action. The thorns of sin grow best in the shadows. Shine the light of honest repentance and confession and accountability upon them and sow the seed of the Word. Keep sowing. Sing the truth to your heart about the Lord Jesus Christ and say, “No more let sins and sorrows grow, no thorns infest the ground. He came to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found, even in my rebel heart. Even here, the seed can bear good fruit.” That’s why He came. He came to make your life fruitful, so go to Him.

Let’s pray together.

Lord Jesus, as we bow before You, we pray for grace as the seed of the Word is sown into the soil of our hearts, grace to pull up every competitor that would crowd it out and choke its message. Help us to bring our sin into the light where these weeds and thorns and briars can no longer thrive. Forgive us for lying to ourselves, kidding ourselves, that we can handle it, or we can leave our sins to grow in some forgotten corner of our lives so long as there’s a harvest everywhere else, not realizing that those weeds will multiply and grow until they choke the seed of the Word in every quarter of our lives. Help us to take radical, consistent action to root them out, and help us to sow daily the seed of the Gospel into our hearts that we may indeed bear real fruit for Your honor and glory. For we ask it in Your name. Amen.

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