A, Post Pentecost 7 Proper 10 - Matthew 13:3–9, 18-23 Good Dirt Gospel

Matthew 13:3–9, 18-23 (ESV) 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.” …“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.”

When farmers go out to plant a crop these days they plant broad acreages of land.  It’s ironic that they plant broad acreages but the way in which they cast the seed into the ground is done in the narrowest of ways.   The implements may be still large, pulled behind large tractors, but each seed is sent from a bin of seed down a relatively small pipe into the earth that has been opened and then closed by combine or air-seeder feet and press wheels.

Jesus’ parable of the sower speaks of sowing seed by broadcasting seed widely over a smaller area.  It seems contradictory that we plant on a large scale with large implements via such a precise narrow casting system, where once the opposite occurred with seeming reckless abandon.  They planted a smaller number of seed over a relatively small area with a less accurate broadcasting of the seed, a handful at a time, with a wide cast of the arm.

But that’s how it was done once!  It wasn’t mechanical but rather it was more hands-on and personal.  Thankfully how Jesus acts with humanity is not impersonal and mechanical, but organic and hands-on with each person!  And the parable of the sower, is a parable where the Word of God is not piped into perfectly prepared places but is cast far and wide into the hearts of all types of people.

Jesus paints a picture of the sower casting seed, and it falls into four places.  A path, a rocky patch, thorn and weed infested ground, and good soil.  One might be quick to criticise the sower for his seemingly careless casting of seed.  But anyone who has cast seed or fertiliser by hand, knows that to cover every part of what you have to cover, there will be over castings that don’t end up where they’re meant to land.  Nevertheless, we will come to see why it’s good that the Word of God is cast in less than perfect places, for the benefit of you and me.

Jesus sits to teach the crowd telling them the parable. Afterwards the disciples ask Jesus why He spoke in parables, He says, “I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” (Matthew 13:13 ESV) The irony continues in that Jesus explains the parable to His disciples.  It almost suggests that Jesus knew the real reason why the disciples asked Him why He speaks to people in parables.  Although they were blessed in hearing what they heard did they really understand what Jesus was saying?

We know the Apostles only saw, heard, and understood what Jesus was saying in parables or plainly about His forthcoming crucifixion only after the Holy Spirit chose to reveal it to them after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

We know one of the twelve apostles chosen from the wider group of disciples was Judas Iscariot.  He received Jesus’ teaching of this parable, yet he went on to charter a path not unlike the seed scattered on the path, of which we hear, “the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.” (Matthew 13:19b ESV) Why would Jesus give of Himself and His time knowing that Judas would betray Him?

Peter “the Rock” on which Jesus says the church would be built along with all the other apostles and disciples hear and receive Jesus with joy. But when Jesus speaks of His crucifixion their understanding of Jesus’ Word is tested. Jesus rebuffs Peter’s refusal to hear the truth, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:23 ESV) Later on Peter scatters after the rooster crows, along with all others, leaving Jesus alone to bear the burden of sin and death on the cross. 

So again, why would Jesus give of Himself to anyone like them knowing they were so shallowly rooted in themselves and their own understanding? They didn’t even endure for a minute without Him and fell away like seed cast on rocky ground the moment He walked the narrow rocky way of the cross?

And thirdly, after Jesus was crucified where were the eleven apostles found?  On account of hearing God’s purpose and plan for Jesus’ crucifixion through parables and prophecy they didn’t continue the proclamation of Jesus’ promise made through parables and His prophetic Word!  No! They were hiding in fear of the Jews, choked by fear and the loss of riches in themselves that they too would be crucified like Jesus.

It appears Jesus’ three years of ministry was for nothing since even His disciples didn’t understand as they hid in the upper room on the evening of His resurrection. Nor did the two disciples recognise Him walking with them on the road to Emmaus because they were so worried and distracted like seeds choked by thorns—thorns that crowned Jesus’ head on the cross!  

Why would Jesus die for His disciples knowing that the riches of their understanding would fail in misunderstanding and be what saw them stricken with poverty over the death of their leader on a cross for criminals?

The reason is because Jesus Christ was sent by God the Father as the Word made Flesh, and being the very Son of God, He was sent by God whose Holy Word is powerful and is given for a purpose.   We hear from Isaiah, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10–11 ESV)

Jesus is the Word of the kingdom sent to accomplish and succeed for God’s purpose, in the face of our loss of understanding of God. Yet mysteriously He is not just the Word, but the Word made Flesh.  What is that flesh?   

His flesh is the flesh of humanity, the same flesh as you and me, the same flesh of the disciples and apostles, yet His flesh understood who the Father is and He lived in that flesh without the dirtiness that was man after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Ironically when they ate the fruit of the tree the knowledge what resulted was not knowledge of good and evil but a loss of knowledge of themselves and God, so that they neither feared God as the Creator, nor trusted Him.

Before the fall, Adam was created from the earth. God gathered the dust of the ground and breathed His breath, or spirit of life, into him. We hear in Genesis two, “…the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7 ESV) Literally He moulded man from the dust of the dirt.  In Hebrew Adam is moulded from the dust of the Adamah!  Adam was created by God moulding and breathing life into powdered dirt—Adam from the Adamah—dirt became a living creature in the image of God!

This dirt was not dirty but was the holy pinnacle of God’s creation.  The dirt of Adam and Eve’s flesh became dirty, after the fall into sin. 

Jesus did not fall into sin but was sent down into the dirt that humanity’s flesh had become.  Jesus experienced the paths and ways of humanity but was never led down the garden path into sin as was Adam, you, me, or His disciples.  He understood what it is to have perfect hearing and understanding.  He was never plucked from His path by Satan!

Jesus was not rocked by what God sent Him to do, nor did He turn stones into bread when He was tempted by the devil to do so!  Rather, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2 ESV)

Jesus was never deceived by riches or tempted by the cares or worries of this world. But He continually looked to the Father despite being sent by Him to die for those who could not understand or misunderstood what He was sent to do!

That is why Jesus became our flesh, the cleanest of dirt, to cleanse us of our dirtiness.  Jesus is the Good Soil­—Good Dirt.  The seed of God’s Word is sown in the good flesh of Jesus.  The mystery is this: Jesus is both the Seed and the Soil, broadcast by God the Father into all the nooks and crannies of humanity to save us from ourselves.  To save us from our hardened ways!  To save us from our rocky hearts with no depth of soil! To save us from the deceptions of this world that cause us to look away from Him to our desires and cares caused by our deadly knowledge of good and evil. 

Better than any farmer, Jesus Christ seeks to till us with His Word, to make us good soil like Him, producing yields of a hundredfold, or sixty, or thirty, by the Holy horsepower of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

***

Sermon Summary and Reflection

Sermon Summary

This sermon reflects on Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13, showing that the Word of God is not distributed narrowly or mechanically, but cast widely and personally into the hearts of all people. The four soils describe the different conditions of the human heart: hardened by unbelief, shallow through lack of root, choked by worldly cares, or made fruitful by hearing and understanding the Word.

The sermon then turns from the soils to Christ Himself. The disciples, including Judas and Peter, reveal how easily human hearts can resemble the path, rocky ground, or thorny soil. Yet Jesus still gives Himself for such people. He is the Word made flesh, sent by the Father to accomplish God’s saving purpose. Unlike fallen humanity, Jesus remains faithful, undefiled, and fully obedient, even through temptation, suffering, and the cross.

The central gospel comfort is that Jesus is both the Seed and the Good Soil. He enters the dirt of human flesh to cleanse what sin has made dirty. By His Word and Spirit, He tills hardened, shallow, and distracted hearts, making them fruitful in Him. The sermon ends with the promise that Christ continues to work in His people, producing fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Reflection

This sermon invites hearers to examine the condition of their own hearts before God’s Word. At different times, each person may recognise hardness, shallowness, fear, distraction, or attachment to worldly cares. The parable is not merely a warning about others; it is a mirror that reveals our need for Christ to break, deepen, clear, and renew us.

The sermon’s strongest comfort is that fruitfulness does not begin with our own spiritual strength. It begins with Jesus, who is faithful where we are faithless, rooted where we are shallow, and fruitful where we are barren. He does not abandon imperfect soil but comes into it with His Word, His cross, and His Spirit.

A faithful response is therefore not self-reliance, but repentance and trust. We pray that Christ would keep sowing His Word into us, protect it from being snatched away, root it deeply in faith, free it from the choking power of worry and desire, and make our lives bear the fruit He promises.

Questions for Personal or Group Reflection

• Where do I see hardened, shallow, or thorny places in my own heart?
• What cares or desires most often compete with God’s Word in my life?
• How does it comfort me that Jesus is both the Seed and the Good Soil?
• What fruit might Christ be seeking to grow in me through His Word and Spirit?
• How can I make space this week to hear, receive, and dwell in God’s Word?

A, Post-Pentecost 16 Proper 19 - Matthew 18:21-22 Romans 14:7-12 "Living and Dying to Forgive"

Matthew 18:21–22 (ESV)  Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?  As many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Peter questions Jesus, “How often should I forgive?”  This question doesn’t occur out of the blue, in a vacuum! 

Over the past four weeks we’ve heard Jesus teach the disciples about his purpose on earth!  He was leading and teaching them about life and death, forgiveness, binding sin and loosing sinners.  His life was the perfection of God’s vertical and horizontal will; to be your forgiveness so you can forgive!

We heard some weeks back, Peter confessing Jesus as, “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16)  Jesus goes on to tell Peter his confession, although coming from his lips, came from God.  God was working through Peter, in his confession!  Similarly, Jesus, the Son of God, was going to build his church on Peter, which means rock, and give him the keys to bind and loose.

Yet it doesn’t go well for Peter, as Jesus begins telling the disciples about his death and resurrection.  Peter takes Jesus aside to give him a talking to, since he is now the newly confessed rock on which Jesus’ church will be built.  But it is Peter who is given a verbal dressing down, as Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a hindrance to me.  For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”  (Matthew 16:23 ESV)

It's here Jesus completely puzzled the disciples.  With what seems like a riddle, he says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  (Matthew 16:24 ESV) 

How can one choose or prefer to reject oneself, take up one’s death and follow Jesus?

In Matthew’s Gospel account, the transfiguration happens next.  Coming down the mountain Jesus speaks again about this strange phenomenon of “being woken from death”, commanding them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” (Matthew 17:9 ESV)

After this, there’s an incident where a son who suffers from seizures could not be healed by the disciples.   Jesus coins a name for them, calling them, “you little-faiths” and tells them nothing will be impossible for them, even with faith like a grain of mustard seed!  (Matthew 17:20)

They gather together in Galilee.  Again, Jesus says to them, “‘The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men,  and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.’ And they were greatly distressed.”  (Matthew 17:22–23 ESV)  They were listening to Jesus as God commanded them on the mountain.   But they had no idea and little faith on how or why Jesus needed to die!

The tension builds for Jesus and the disciples!  As they move towards this deathly event, they did not understand this new kingdom of the church, was to be built on Jesus’ death and resurrection.   They had little faith in forgiveness!  Little faith in how humanity would be set free!  Little faith in how Jesus could be the sacrifice for sin! That it would come down to sin being bound to Jesus when he was nailed to the cross to die.  And they had completely no idea that the life of the church would require their daily death, which would propel most of them onto martyrdom!

Furthermore, they had no concept of the resurrection from the dead!  And why should they have?  Death was the great leveller, no one could get past it, and no one could be raised again to life.  Atonement for sin came through the sacrifice of animals under Levitical Law, and life after death was not an earthly resurrection.  

Peter again takes centre stage as Jesus asked, “‘What do you think, Simon?  From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax?  From their sons or from others?’  And when he said, ‘From others,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free’”.  (Matthew 17:25–26 ESV)

Here Jesus speaks about freedom of a king’s sons, they pay no tax, they are not bound, but are loosed from paying tax.   But the disciples with “little faith” ask Jesus, “The Greatest” in the kingdom of heaven,  “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  (Matthew 18:1 ESV)  To which Jesus puts a little one in the midst of the “little faith” disciples and tells a number of stories about receiving little ones, temptations, and not despising the little ones, but rather seeking them out like lost sheep.

Last week we heard more about binding and loosing for forgiveness.  Jesus put a little child in front of the disciples with little faith, to make his point about binding and loosing through receiving and  not hindering the little ones from perishing. 

However, what Jesus was showing the disciples, and what he seeks to teach in his word, is forgiveness is what he and his church is about!  Without forgiveness won through the cross, and new life through the resurrection, Jesus’ church does not exist, Peter cannot be the rock of Jesus’ church.  And there is no calling humanity to repentance and forgiveness at Pentecost, today, or until Jesus returns.

So, what does all this mean for us today, as we look forward to the return of Jesus, when he physically and visually returns again, or as we meet him in our death and resurrection from the grave, just as many who have gone before us lie in the grave in hope?

Peter asks Jesus how many times to forgive?

Jesus gives a parable about the King who forgives a servant a large debt who in his wickedness does not do the same for his fellow servant’s small debt.  This is a reminder of the vertical and horizontal will of God, to forgive as you have been forgiven.

What does this require of us?  We find the answer in Romans chapter fourteen…

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.  For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.  So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.  Why do you pass judgment on your brother?  Or you, why do you despise your brother?  For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God;  for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”  So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”  (Romans 14:7–12 ESV) 

If one is a child of God, it requires a death within.  It required the death of the Greatest in the Kingdom of heaven on the cross.  Now Jesus requires that, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  (Matthew 16:24 ESV) 

How can one choose or prefer to reject oneself, take up one’s death and follow Jesus?

How does one not live for themselves?  How does one not die to themselves? How do we live to the Lord?  And how do we die to the Lord?  What is this death?

These are important questions since all will stand before the judgment seat of God.  As Paul tells the Romans, he tells us, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”  (Romans 14:4 ESV) 

When one sits down and reads these pages from Matthew’s Gospel as a whole, one will begin to see Jesus preparing the disciples, little by little, for his death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins.

When you daily allow the drowning of the old sinful nature in your baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection and allow the Holy Spirit to open your heart to his word, you too are being prepared!

This is the centre of God’s will for humanity, for you!  Beginning at the cross, forgiveness was carried from it, by Peter and the apostles, to Jesus’ church of Jews and gentiles!  You and me!

Jesus makes it clear what happens to those who don’t forgive like the forgiven wicked servant, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”  (Matthew 18:35 ESV)

Paul also warns those who pass judgment, putting stumbling blocks in the way of others, rather than making judgments in love that seeks forgiveness, peace and the mutual upbuilding that serves Jesus Christ.  Just as he has served us.

The Romans judged and bound others over what one ate or drank.  But Paul corrects them, saying, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”  (Romans 14:17 ESV)

For us to forgive as we have been forgiven, the Holy Spirit is given to work remembrance.  He returns us to the foot of the cross with our sin to receive the great forgiveness of Jesus the Greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.  He became the least and allow the Holy Spirit to lead him to the cross, of death and forgiveness.  In the same way the Holy Spirit is leading us all to a daily death of self, and a resurrection to take up one’s cross to follow Jesus to eternal life!

We are the little one’s of God.  Like Peter and the disciples, we struggle with little faith, and need the Holy Spirit to continually deliver us from ourselves, into the death of Jesus Christ, for the righteousness and peace, that forgiveness brings and gives. 

In God the Holy Spirit doing this, we can live as one church under the headship of Christ, with joy in the Holy Spirit.  Amen.