Pentecost 8

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 - Pentecost 8 - August 7, 2011 

 Christians Listen to the Word of God

Why do you go to church?  Perhaps you have been asked this question before.  Maybe you have even asked yourself this question.  It’s a good question to learn how to answer.  Do you go to church because you are a Christian?  Or do you go to church in order to be a Christian?  The answer is, of course, yes.  It is both.  

We go to church, first, in order to be Christians – in order to hear the word of God that teaches us both our need for God’s mercy as well as how God has had mercy on us through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ.  God’s gracious word of pardon and peace creates Christian faith in our hearts to trust in God and to rely upon everything that He tells us.  We go to church in order to become Christians, because the Gospel makes us Christians.  

We also go to church because we are Christians.  As adopted children of God through Holy Baptism, we love to hear every word that proceeds from the mouth of Him who saved us.  Upon His words our souls find nourishment and eternal life.  And we know that part from His word, our faith will starve and die.  We go to churches where we hear the word of God preached in its truth and purity and receive the Sacraments according to Christ’s institution; and we mark and avoid churches that do not.  We do this because we are Christians.  That’s what we do.  CHRISTIANS LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  

Notice that both reasons for why we go to church – in order to be Christians, and because we are Christians – consist of hearing the word of God.  The primary reason we gather together as believers is so that we may be on the receptive end of God who gives.  This is because the nature of Christian faith is to receive.  We come here to receive in our ears and into our mouths the certain pledge from God Almighty that all our sins are washed away and that in their place we possess by faith even now the righteous obedience of Jesus Christ.  We have this righteousness because God gives it to us.  Faith receives it.  In fact, faith’s primary activity is in its passivity.  Faith does not justify because of what it does, but because of what gets done to it.  

But true faith produces fruit.  We must not overlook or deny what Jesus makes so clear.  The same Holy Spirit that creates justifying faith also creates new desires.  He creates the will and the power to serve one another in love, as St. Paul tells us in Philippians, “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (2:13).  Just as He works in us love for our neighbor so that we may patiently bear each other’s burdens and serve one another in love – so the Holy Spirit also works in us love for our God.  It is a fruit of Christian faith to want to sing praise to Him who saved us by such inexpressible grace.  But a Christian expresses it – not only because he wants to, but also because he knows how.  And he keeps learning how, because the greatest new desire in the heart of a Christian is the desire to hear and delight in the word of God, and to confess his faith.  St. Paul tells us in Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (3:16).  And so that’s what we do.  And that’s what we teach our children to do, as they learn to sing and confess that which clearly articulates what their God wants them to know and believe.  

The kind of faith that does not produce fruit is the kind of faith that dies.  In the parable that we just heard about the sower and the seed, Jesus explains how four different ways of hearing the word of God result in four radically different outcomes.  All but one resulted in death.  Only one was fruitful.  Let us therefore consider Jesus’ parable.  

Those seeds that fell along the road, which the birds ate up, represent the preaching of the word that is ignored.  This is what happens to most seeds.  The word of God is never preached without the devil contradicting it.  Jesus calls him the father of lies.  All unbelief, from Adam and Eve up to this day, is the result of Satan’s attack on God’s word.  That’s where all sin begins.  When people hear the word of God and dismiss it as foolish, or mythical, or outdated, this is the devil snatching it out of their hearts. 

But just as there was nothing unique about the soil upon which these first seeds fell, so there is nothing unique about our hearts.  Birds don’t care about what kind of soil their food is lying on.  And the devil does not care what family you are from, or what Church you have ties to, whether or not you were confirmed as a teenager, or even how faithful a Christian you have been.  The devil attacks the word that you hear because the word is from God whom he hates.  That’s what he does.  He wants to snatch it out of your heart, no less than from those for whom God’s word seems to go in one ear and out the other.  That is why, to spite the devil, CHRISTIANS LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  

The second part of the parable about the seeds falling in the rocky soil represents the response to the word of God that results in very shallow faith.  It is faith that initially hears what God says with joy and might even find beauty in the message of the Gospel.  But it does not continue to listen to and rely on the word of God.  Such faith has roots not in what God actually says, but in the experience of faith itself.  What was once joy in the Gospel becomes a joy in some generic spiritual faith-life with some generic god.  It is faith in faith instead of faith in Christ.  

And that’s why so many people find churches that celebrate their own capacity to have a relationship with God rather than celebrate what God has done in Christ to establish a relationship with sinners.  Without roots in the word of God, which we hear read and preached and which we sing together in church, we could not withstand the testing of our faith when God permits persecutions, and hardships to come our way.  And He does.  God tests our faith so that we may see whether we are placing our confidence in Him or in some other experience.  He tests us because He loves us.  Because when the scorching sun of distress beats down upon rootless plants, they wither and die.  We need to be rooted in what God says so that through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, we might have hope (Rom. 15:4).  That is why CHRISTIANS LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  

So far in this parable, these first two responses to the word of God being sown into the hearts of men are examples of false and misplaced faith.   With neither one of these was there ever any real understanding and reliance on God’s word.  And this is because the cutting demands of the law never really punctured deep enough to reveal a true need for the Gospel.  But the last two cases in Jesus’ parable occur only after the ground has been plowed and made soft and receptive – prepared for seed to take root.  This plowing represents the preaching of the law.  It is painful to have the sin in our heart revealed.  But God’s purpose with this painful procedure is always to prepare us for the forgiveness of sins.  

With the third example of the seed being thrown among the thorns, true faith most definitely was engendered.  The law cut deep enough into the heart of the sinner for the word of grace to take root and sprout.  So it works with us.  But the cares of this world and the false promises of wealth also took root and sprouted.  And the two compete with each other.  So it is with us.  St. Paul tells us in Romans 7 that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are opposed to each other.  

Just as thorns and thistles are natural in a plowed field, so cares of this world and false promises of false glory are natural too.  They naturally sprout even in the Christian heart that has known what the law requires of him.  These are the things for which our flesh lusts.  But do not let such concerns and useless ambitions drive you away from the Gospel and choke the Holy Spirit out of your heart.  Hearing the word of God is not only a much greater need than anything else, but God’s word also speaks directly to all your other needs.  For the Holy Spirit lusts, as it were, that is, He earnestly desires to deliver you from all your trouble.  But those who let their troubles prevent them from coming to church, give the battle over to the flesh and ship-wreck their own faith.  Dear CHRISTIANS, LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  

The fourth example of the seeds cast upon the good soil likewise represents an occasion where the word of God takes root and grows.  These are they who hear with their ears, believe in their heart, and who confess with their mouth what they have learned from Scripture.  They hear the word of God and they guard and defend it from the devil who tries to take it from them.  They hear the word of God and continue to hear it, finding their nourishment not in the excitement of faith, but in the surety of that upon which faith relies: Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  They hear the word of God and find in the Gospel their comfort against the law’s accusations that first dug such deep furrows into their heart.  And with the same word of God, they find strength against all the temptations of the world that sprout in the hearts of all men.  In these who continue to hear the word of God and to learn from it, and who find their life in it, the Spirit wins this battle against the flesh, because the Spirit works through the word that is preached to them.  

Christians go to church because CHRISTIANS LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  That’s what we do.  We go to church because we are Christians; we go to church in order to become Christians.  Faith comes by hearing.  The righteousness of Jesus Christ is freely imputed only to sinners who have ears to hear. 

But notice what distinguishes this fourth response to the word of God from the other three responses: it is the fact that this faith bears fruit.  St. Paul tells us in Galatians that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (5:22-23).  

Such fruit indicates true faith.  But true faith does not rely on its fruit.  It relies on Christ.  People like to confuse the fruits of faith with the object of faith.  They will so focus on their own fruits with the notion that their own good works will somehow preserve them in the Christian faith.  But only the Gospel can do that.  Mismatching these priorities is not just some benign theological blunder.  It is the difference between faith in Jesus, and faith in something else – between faith that saves, and faith that disappoints.  

We cannot manufacture our own fruits of the Spirit.  Although the law instructs us as to what is good and God-pleasing, it cannot coerce and squeeze fruits out of us.  The fruits of the Spirit proceed not from a guilty conscience beaten down and torn apart by the law that exposes our sin.  No.  The fruits of the Spirit proceed from a conscience that is consoled by the Gospel.  

When the law shows you your failure to produce the fruits that you long to see in your life – your failure to love, to find joy in God’s word, to be kind and gentle, and to control your urges – do not search deeper in your quest for fruit.  You will only find sin.  Find instead, in the promise of the Gospel which you hear, the obedient and fruitful life of Jesus given to you by God in your Baptism as your own robe of righteousness.  That is why we sing those spiritual songs, which Christ has taught us, whose words dwell richly in our hearts.  And so we sing: 

My guilt, O Father, You have laid
On Christ, Your Son, my Savior. 
Lord Jesus, You my debt have paid
And gained for me God’s favor. 
O Holy Spirit, Fount of grace,
The good in me to You I trace;
In faith and hope preserve me ^{(If Thy Beloved Son, O God)}.

We do not come to church to celebrate our fruits, but in order to receive life from God.  We come here with empty hands, and with hearts grown wild with sinful lusts and ungodly priorities; we come here to see our sin, so that we may see where our God has taken it and laid it on His own Son to suffer the punishment in our place; we come here to receive and possess no other fruit than the fruit of Christ’s vicarious death and resurrection.  We come here because we are Christians in order to be Christians so that we may LISTEN TO THE WORD OF GOD.  

In Jesus’ name, Amen.