Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Theme: Soiled by Sin But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. (16)

This evening the people of God in the Church Militant begin the Lenten Season with the observation of Ash Wednesday. Both this day and this season are intended to prepare the hearts and minds of God’s faithful for the passion of our Lord Jesus, climaxed by his death to sin on the cross. Preparation for the God’s atonement for our sins fittingly begins each year on this day when we are invited to survey of the problem of sin and why it is that we need a savior and not just someone to help or encourage us to take care of the problem ourselves. To assist in that survey in your life, you are invited this Lenten season to survey your problem of sin from several different vantage points as reflected in some of the parables of Jesus. There are three yes’s that we must acknowledge right at the onset. First, yes, it is true that the parables of Jesus that we will be covering are familiar ones, mostly covered in our standard lection throughout the Church Year Calendar, mostly during the Trinity Season; and yes, these parables we have selected for our mid-week Lenten series primarily present the character of God’s outrageous grace, received or rejected; and thirdly, yes - we just heard a sermon on the Sower and the Seed a few weeks ago on Sexagesima Sunday.

But, in response to all these yes’s, you are being invited to consider these parables again, but now from a contrasting perspective. The lovely outrageous character of grace has a corresponding presupposition of the multi-faceted character of our sinful condition and need for that grace. Grace is outrageous because it mocks our sense of fairness - proclaiming that everyone gets what they don’t deserve. But, it is not outrageous when surveyed from an honest awareness and appreciation of the extent of our sinful state. From this perspective, God’s grace can be seen as crucially necessary, oh so sweet, and very, very precious. So our task this Lenten Season is to rekindle a very strong sense of our sinfulness, and thus a very healthy appetite and desire to revisit and celebrate the passion of our Lord, to get as much grace as we can from the saving Word that issues from the Savior who will pay the price for our sins. So we will examine some parables to see what we can see, not simply about the contours of outrageous grace, but what they can teach us about our sinful condition and why we have a desperate need for that grace.

So here we go again with the parable of the Sower and the Seed. At the onset, we must note the central truth that we have already heard about ourselves with the imposition of ashes. The dust of which we are made and that to which we shall return, is tainted. It’s not what it used to be. From Adam’s fall into sin, God cursed the ground. All ground has been soiled by sin and so also all that has come forth from it. In this sense, there is now no good ground here on earth and that means also that are no good hearts of men either that have come from that ground. All has been soiled by sin.

What this means is that the different kinds of soil presented have nothing to do with degrees to which the curse is present, and therefore nothing to do with the need that we have for the life giving seed of the grace of Christ. The soil ready for the seed is hno less in need of release from the curse than the hardpan, the rocky soil and the soil filled with weeds and thistles. All types of the hearts of men are dead in their trespasses, under the curse of death, and unable to do anything to lift the curse or remove the soiled sinful condition. All are lifeless and unable to bring forth any kind of life. Nevertheless, hardpan, rocks, weeds, and thistles are natural states. Soft soiled by sin soil is made, it is not found. This, of course is soil - this of course, is sinful hearts of men and women which are able to have the Word of Grace effectively planted where faith and life in Christ sprouts forth in all its growth and fruitfulness. If this be our soiled by sin hearts, God must come and do some plowing continually in our lives. The issue is not that He is trying to create a sinless heart, rather He is working to produce a hungry for grace heart. Farmers do not plow to make the soil productive as much as to make the seed planted productive. And that is just what God does with us and what He wants to do anew this Lenten Season. He wants to soften us up for an effective impact with his dying Son and His life-giving grace. It is his righteousness that He would nurture in us, not our virtue. He comes to take us to his cross where out of his death, the curse of the ground might be overcome in His glorious resurrection. He comes to give us a good honest heart that sees its own soiled condition and longs to be fruitful and cleansed by the splash of grace that waters of baptism bring again and again by the dying Christ in His Saving Word.

But only one condition of human heart is able to receive and hold fast to the Word. It is described as a good and honest heart...and it bears fruit with patience. (vs. 25), but before all this can occur by the power of the Word, the heart must be made repentantly hungry for the Word of Grace that Christ would plant from his saving work on the cross. What the parable calls a good and honest heart is simply a repentant heart that understands truthfully who we are and what we have become. . . .ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . in need of life that cannot come from our soiled sinful condition but must be planted from the outside.

How is the condition of your heart? Might you be one to say to the Lord this Lenten Season, I need you to come and do some plowing with me, to make my hearts, soiled by sin as it is, soft and ready to receive your saving Word anew - to live, and grow, and be fruitful. If so, this can be a special Lenten Season for you . . . for the Lord will come during these next mid-week services to tell you some stories that intend to do just that - make your soiled heart soft, so He might take you to his passion and cross and again, for the first time, die for your sins, atone for your iniquities, suffer your transgressions and as He is raised up conquering the curse of the ground . . . you might be raised up as well - full of life, washed clean in his blood, and ready to be of some earthly good where he has planted you to live, to love and to walk the road of the cross that is his and your together.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.