Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

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February 27, 2011 -- 2nd Sunday before Lent -- Service Guide

Text: Luke 8: 4-15

Theme: Receiving God’s Life-Giving Word by Grace And some fell in good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. (vs. 8)

We are still in our Pre-Lent season preparing to prepare for the saving work of Jesus on His cross. Continuing to survey the foundations of our life in Christ according to the great solas of the Reformation, we observe the second Gesima, Sexagesima Sunday and its focus on our life with the Word of God by faith alone. In the parable of the Sower and the Seed and its explanation, Jesus brings begins to use riddles rather than straight forward language to teach the crowds so that those who have been given the secrets of the Kingdom will understand and sharpen their awareness, but those who have not will hear but not understand. For them the proclamation of Jesus will be a clouded word of judgment. Our prayer this morning is two-fold: One, that we would be among those who have been given the right ears to both hear and understand, and secondly that we might take the blessing of that understanding for a greater more profitable preparation of the passion of our Lord this Lenten season. The ears that can hear are those enlightened by faith - a faith that comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ (Rom. 10:17)

There is both grace and judgment in the parable and the explanation that Jesus provides, yet only with ears fashioned by faith, can either be understood. Jesus told his disciples that they were given by God the ears to understand the meanings to his cryptic stories and we pray that we might be also and take what is here to heart. Let’s begin with the word of judgment. As Jesus explains that the different conditions of soil in the parable represent different spiritual conditions of the human heart, He teaches us that how you hear and receive the Word of Christ depends on how your heart is disposed.

The different kinds of soil in the parable represent different conditions of the human heart in relation its receptivity to the saving Word. And by the saving Word we mean both the incarnate Word and the Word of Christ as it is proclaimed and taught. God the Father has sent His Word into the World to raise up sons and daughters of his Kingdom who, in turn lead fruitful lives. The Father is the sower and the Word He has sent, His incarnate Son, is already in the World and we meet Him through His saving Word and the Spirit brings it to us in the Gospel and the Sacraments. This is the secret that needs ears fashioned by faith to understand: The Father has sent the Son into the world in the incarnate Christ. The secret of the Kingdom is to understand that this Word was made manifest in the flesh in Jesus of Nazareth as he carried out the Word and works of the Father, climaxed in His death and resurrection. And the plan is to receive this Word by faith – to receive Jesus, the incarnate Word of God - to receive God’s salvation and to become a citizen of His

Kingdom by faith alone. There is no other way. The secret of this parable is that the Father has sown his only begotten Son - offered to you that you might rightly prepare this Lenten season to receive him anew. He has come to sow and plant that which alone can bring forth a good harvest of faith. He comes to plant the Word, the Word made flesh that has dwelt among us. Jesus is the Word of God sent into the world to be sown in hearts of his fallen children and faith is what He would produce - faith that brings both life and fruitfulness.

Being confronted by this parable which compares soil conditions to that of the human heart concerning receptivity to the Word of Christ intends to raise the question to you: What is the condition of your heart? When soil in this fallen world is just left alone, when it just lays there . . . it turns to hardpan. And weeds begin grow in abundance. So also it is with us - we who are already the people of God. There is a dimension within all of us that remains spiritually hard and it just naturally resists receiving Christ and His saving gifts. It is the fleshly sinful self in all of us - the Old Adam which has a hard heart to all spiritual matters. When you have been left alone, when your Old Adam heart has not been broken up by the blade of God’s Law or the trials and tribulations of this fallen world - you become unreceptive to the Gospel Word made flesh. And the weeds begin to sprout and grow manifested by a boring indifference to the saving gifts of Christ. Your work and labors in life begin to focus on your own benefit rather than that of our neighbor. You become resistant to the Divine Service of our Lord and his gifts because of a loss of appetite. You can find it hard in your heart to become hungry and joyful about the saving treasures of the Gospel.

Because we all have this fleshly, spiritually hard-hearted Old Adam in all of us, we need to pray: Lord we need you to come and plow up our hearts. Come and make them soft and ready to receive the saving Word anew - to rekindle faith that we may live and grow and be fruitful. And in this regard, God is poised to bring you again to the season of Lent. He invites you especially to avail yourself to His work of producing a good and honest heart; a repentant heart hungry to receive that Word that suffers and dies on a cross to win for you citizenship in the Kingdom of God - to render you full of life and fruitful as you live it. He comes to plow that He might plant his Son and nurture faith anew into your heart and life. Can you hear this? It takes the ears of faith to both understand and appreciate that we need both words to come to us continually and the Father would bring His Word to us in season and out of season.

There is only one condition of human heart that 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) A good and honest heart is a spiritually virtuous heart that understands truthfully who we are and what we have become, but then also, who God is what He is about in the world. A good and honest heart is one that has been plowed by God’s Word of Law and the trials and tribulations of this life and is continually made soft and ready to receive the seed which brings new life and fruitfulness in the

Kingdom. The purpose of the Lenten Season is to prepare for the Sower who is coming to call on our ground to do some preparation. Lent is that penitential season when God comes to prepare our hearts and minds to receive the Word of God that He has sent into the World. But as Jesus says, Let he (or she) who has ears to hear, let him hear. (vs.8)

In the Word made flesh, the Kingdom of God is coming to you, and coming for you. Nowhere else! Not in your prayers, not in your spiritual gifts, not in your good works, not in your spiritually meaningful internal experiences - nowhere else. And this saving Word who is the Christ is proclaimed and taught in His and packaged in the mundane elements of his sacraments, Baptism and the Holy Supper. This is the Word of Christ that brings you the Savior and Lord of the Kingdom to nurture and rekindle in your hearts your faith and life in Him. Here, He is once again giving to you the ears of faith to hear and take to heart again the secrets of the Kingdom. You are saved by grace alone...by the Christ alone...through faith alone. You hear? You hear!

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