Amending the Soil
"The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7).
God reached down, shaped Adam out of the earth, and he didn't come alive until God breathed into him. Before Adam ever worked in a garden, he was a garden worked by the very hands of God. He was a patch of ground that God's own breath produced life.
"The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15).
Adam was the first gardener, and the work was good and fruitful. Then sin came in, and gardening became hard.
"Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you... by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:18-19).
What used to be easy got hard. Adam now had to pull thorns and weeds, dig out rocks, and sweat to produce fruit in the garden.
The sweat of Adam’s brow would become for him a teacher, showing him that hard labor would be required to produce fruit from the garden of both the land and himself. In other words, working in the garden was how Adam learned the need to work on the garden of his heart as well. The weeds he pulled outside showed him the weeds growing in his own life. The rocks he dug out of the field were a picture of the hard places in him that had to come out too. Tending the garden taught him how to tend his own soul and how much sweat it would take.
This helps frame the scene for when Jesus sat down by the sea and told the crowd about a farmer scattering seed (Matthew 13:1-3). The seed is God's word. The same word that breathed life into Adam is the seed God is scattering in the hearts of all people, and it falls on every kind of heart. So what kind of ground is your heart made of when that seed comes down? That is what Jesus addresses in his parable of the sower: there is only one kind of ground/heart in which the seed will grow. Jesus teaches that…
Some hearts are like the hard roads (Matthew 13:4, 19). The seed can't get in. It just lies there on top till the birds come and carry it off. That's the person who never absorbs the word/seed and seeks to understand it. Who never lets the word sink in far enough to establish roots. The road is impenetrable, and the devil snatches the seed right up before it can root. Eve was an example of this. She hadn't taken God's word to heart, so when the serpent came along with his cunning talk, he deceived her easily (2 Corinthians 11:3). In this type of heart, the seed of the word never gets absorbed, and therefore is never understood or applied. This leaves the heart vulnerable to deception and is easily deceived. They become a boat that is easily tossed to and fro by the waves of the enemy and the world. Jesus continues to teach that…
Some hearts are like rocky ground (Matthew 13:5-6, 20-21). The seed sprouts quickly but only on the surface, leaving little to no room for the roots to sink deep. The minute trouble or persecution shows up, the plant's got nothing to hold it, and it is easily uprooted. It's the weed that pops up overnight in the gravel, and it's the easiest thing in the world to pull up and remove whole. One good tug of hardship, and up it comes. In this type of heart, the Word is sown on Sunday but easily uprooted on Monday. Jesus says his word will fall on…
Some hearts that are like ground full of thorns (Matthew 13:7, 22). The seed roots and the plant starts to grow, but there's worldly seed down in that same soil, and the world's weeds grow up faster and taller, taking over the whole heart. Jesus himself names those weeds: "the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word." You can't raise a crop for God and a crop for the world in the same ground and expect both to make it. "No one can serve two masters" (Matthew 6:24). This ground didn't turn the seed away. It just let too much "worldly seed" be sown along with it, and the world's thorns choked out the seed God had sown. This is a heart that absorbs not only the seed of the word but also the seeds from the world. This person wants to grow both and be a citizen of two kingdoms. But Jesus says no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is unfit to live in His Kingdom. Jesus lands his parable with seed that falls on…
some hearts that have good soil (Matthew 13:8, 23). It hears, it understands, it absorbs, and it keeps the garden weeded so his seed can flourish. But notice, even the good ground doesn't all yield the same. He says, “Some will yield a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." The size of the harvest depends on how the ground is worked or cultivated.
It is here that we come to an honest and sobering question. Which kind of soil does your heart have? When you look at your life through Jesus’ parable of the sower, what kind of soil has the seed fallen upon? If we were being honest with ourselves, the soil we need for the word to take root may not be the soil we currently have.
But take heart. If the soil of your heart is not the kind in which God’s word can take root and grow, know that the mercy and grace of God can amend it and make it the kind of heart required to produce fruit.
An early Church Father once said, "A field can't decide to quit being a field, but a soul can decide to change.” The hard path can be broken up and planted. The rocks can be dug out. The thorns can be burned off. You don’t have to be stuck with a heart or life that is unfarmable; if you seek God and ask him, he will give you a new heart for his seed to take root in. He promised this:
"I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).
Any heart that bears the kind of soil that Jesus teaches isn’t good for his seed to grow can be made right and good by His grace and mercy. When you ask for his grace and mercy to give you a new heart and when you cooperate with Him and commit, by the sweat of your brow, to use his grace and mercy to tend to your own garden to help nurture his seed in your life, you will possess the kind of soil that produces fruit. And when you continue to sweat with the new heart you are given by grace, you will produce thirty, sixty, and eventually a hundredfold!
God gives us a new heart and scatters his seed in it, and then he hands the growing over to us, just as he handed Adam a garden to keep. By the sweat of our brow, we pull the weeds by turning from sin. We let the hard things in us get broken up so the rocks can come out. We feed the soil with the spiritual disciplines, the good habits Peter talks about when he says to add to your faith goodness, and knowledge, and self-control, and patience, so you'll be "neither ineffective nor unfruitful" (2 Peter 1:5-8). We put up a fence and run off the little foxes that ruin the vineyard (Song of Solomon 2:15). When we cooperate with God’s grace and work by the sweat of our brow, we become the kind of ground where his growing can happen. God gives the growth to the garden he has entrusted us to work with (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).
So, what kind of ground are you? Not what you wish you were, but what you really are this morning, right now, as the seed comes down. Is the word landing on a road you've never bothered to break up? Is it springing up on Sunday and dead by Monday? Is it rooted, but so crowded with everything else you are chasing that it never gets any sun? Or is it going down deep and taking hold?
And once you've been honest about the type of soil you currently are, we can begin to ask God to help us become the kind of soil we are meant to be. So that, having received his grace, we can begin to cultivate the soil of our hearts, so the seed can finally take root, or so the little fruit you've got can grow into more? The harvest grows with the gardener. The longer you put in the work, the more fruit you will yield, and a thirtyfold life turns into a sixtyfold one, and sixty finally into a hundred. Nobody is born a master gardener. You get there by cooperating with God’s grace on your knees, one season at a time, by the sweat of your brow.
You came from the ground. You're still a garden. As the Lord breathes on you and brings your garden to life, take up the work needed to let the Sower have his harvest.
Peace be with you,
Pastor Bruce
