Dr. Ed Young - The Sower the Seed and the Soil
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Neuroscientists, those who study the brain have found a switch that you and I can turn on our brain and will be healthier, wiser, and happier. Did that sink in? Now everybody asks, what in the world is that switch? It's your mind. It's my mind. You see, for a long time, if you studied in the scientific world, everybody believed that the brain was constant. It was a machine that was hard wired and you could not adapt it or change it any way, shape, form, or fashion. Therefore, when anything happened to the brain, a stroke, a cardiovascular event, if it were built in some learning disability, if we were having trouble recalling all the things that happened to the brain for generations all the way through the 1980s, everybody believed that was virtually unchangeable. Unchangeable.
The brain was wired and programmed by genes and DNA, that whatever happened, you had to compensate. You had no way in which you could transform and remake and redefine your brain. That thesis has been scientifically disproven by neuroscientists. Yes, we can think that is the trigger, the trigger that begins to change many aspects of the brain. We are not determinist. In other words, a lot of people say, well, you know, I, I couldn't help it. I have a a lazy gene, or I have an alcoholic gene, or I have an anger gene. Or I'm just like my daddy, my mother, they were depressed and they had these health problems. Therefore, it's built into me and I really have no choice about it. That is the whole school of determinism, which has been totally disproven and now it's been disproven scientifically.
Well, you know, I always lie or just explain things because I've got that lying genes back there in my family. Oh yeah. You see, this is totally erroneous folks, and we know as erroneous because the Bible has told us this. But now the neuroscientists, those who study the brain and how it is mapped and how it works, have proven that the switch that can change the brain, your brain and my brain is the mind is how we think. The most powerful thing in the universe is God. Anybody want to debate that? Nobody can debate that, but you'll never guess the second most powerful thing in the universe. What's the second most powerful thing? It's a human being's ability to think and to choose. Yep. Most powerful things. God, the second most powerful thing is the human ability. The human beings have the ability, all of us here to think and to choose. It's the second most powerful thing. And all the universe, nothing else in the universe can think and choose somebody.
Well, human nature can't be changed. Dumb. It's the only thing that can be changed in all the creative order because we are made in the image of God. In that sacred gift, we're able to think and to choose. As a man thinks, as a woman thinks so, are they? That's who they are. Our thinking rewires our brain. In fact, every morning, fresh, every morning we have new cells that are created in our brains. Th limitations. Three, his mercies are fresh every day. So we are able to think and we wear our brain. Even if we look deeper, even our DNA, oh, I never heard of that. Even, even how we're put together, some of those genes that are there, some people have that. Well, I've got this gene, I just can't have it. Nonsense.
Now the Bible has taught us this and most of us are familiar with this verse and this passage, Paul is writing in Romans chapter number 12, and he says, talking to Christians in the church at Rome, I beseech you, wake up, you therefore brethren my brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul says, by the mercies of God, (the grace, the benevolence), that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship. Now, how in the world can anybody here, any one of us present our bodies as a holy sacrifice to God in worship?
Anybody here think you're holy? Does anybody able to go before God unless they are holy and we're to present our bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy perfect, which is the way we worship how in the planet with any degree of logic or even a centimeter of biblical and theological understanding? Can anybody do that? How can we do that? Do you think that a sinful person like me and a sinful person like you, we can just barge into God and say, God, I wanna worship. I want you to help me. I want to forgive me. May I come before you? I wanna resent myself as a living, holy sacrifice. No. But then Paul tells us how we can do it. Verse two of Romans 12, and do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
Oh, remember the mind? Have you already forgotten the mind? Is that what you can change the brain and how it's wired renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God? So the only way we can worship as a living sacrifice of our body before God and be holy is we have to be not conformed to the world's agenda, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Now, we know that first, most of us, you've been around church for a while, but we never thought about how in the world do you renew your mind? Can't anybody I wanna renew my mind. I want a new mind. We know the mind, the choices we make rewire the brain, but how do we renew our mind? And then it says, if we're able to do that, we do perfectly the will of God.
Now hang with that. The will of God, the will of God. If we do the will of God, where will the will of God be perfectly carried out so we can worship and have our mind renewed one place in the kingdom of God, in the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven, thy will be done. We pray that all the time with the Lord's prayer. How does that operate? Is that anything but just sort of church biblical Babel? Does it have any relevance and practicality in your life and my life? We've already seen that the scientists have proven that we can indeed rewire our brains even when there's been damage, even when our brains have become toxic by our godless living. That switch can be turned on of our brain by our minds, and suddenly those grooves in there that we automatically respond to have been changed and flattened out.
The flaps are moved and the synapse are working in different ways. We already have discovered neuroscience has told us that we can think and turn on our brain and we rewire our whole personality. Folks, science has told us this. The Bible has echoed, but then we got a problem. Do we just become new because we now think properly? Paul said in Philippians four, he said, this is how you think. He tells us exactly how to think. He said, first of all, we think on the basis of what of truth, where there's truth. Then we think in noble thoughts. He tells us, he said, our own truth and no. And we think about do right, do right. We know how to do right and and then we move on and talk about doing right and then we are To be pure. Pure means you gotta no shabby motivations by the way that gets in deep water. It's hard. You'd be hard pressed to tell me any wonderful thing you and I have ever done with pure motivations.
Oh yeah, hang in there. You'll get in deep water before you know it. But we're to be pure. We're to think pure thoughts and we're to think about lovely things. If there's anything worthy of praise, anything worthy of applause, this is what we think about. But so therefore, we are we wiring our brain with our thoughts, with our thinking. We're turning on our brain. But then what else has to happen? Our hearts, right? Oh yeah, we've got the thinking satisfied. We know how we should think and then we know we gotta have the motivation in our heart. And the first really introduction to all the parables is found here with deals with the heart. It deals with the soil. If you have your bibles, open them if you would, to chapter 13 of Matthew first book in the New Testament. Every man here can find it. You can look into pure act and find a Bible. You'll turn to Matthew.
And we see Matthew is all about the kingdom of God. Remember, we already have established the kingdom of God is where God's will is being done. The kingdom of God is where God, the Father is the king and God, the Son is Lord and Savior in that domain. So the kingdom of God is yesterday. The kingdom of God is right now, and the kingdom of God is tomorrow. And we'll go over this as we look at parables that deal with the kingdom, Jesus is saying, this is how you live the kingdom. The book of Matthew is written by Matthew, and the primary purpose of Matthew is this, to convince the Jews who knew the prophecies of the Old Testament, that Jesus was indeed the king, the Messiah who had come. That's the thrust of Matthew. And therefore in Matthew you see the phrase kingdom of heaven more than you see in other books, kingdom of God.
What? Why do they say kingdom of heaven? Matthew said, kingdom of heaven because the Jews were reticent or did not speak the name of God because it was such a holy name. So Matthew said, kingdom of heaven, he was really saying Kingdom of God. So in the Bible, when you read Kingdom of God, kingdom of Heaven, usually not always, it is the same thing. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven. And here you go through Matthew a proof that Jesus is Messiah. What does he start off with? The genealogies. Here's the genealogy of him. Who would be the Messiah? He spells out all the background, all the family through his surrogate Father Joseph. That would be in the Jewish tradition. This is how you decide whether or not he is in the lineage of David, which was the ultimate king. And then he moves on, he talks about John the Baptist, preparing the wave for Jesus to come.
And then he calls forth, he is baptized by John. Then he's tempted kingdom temptation in the wilderness, all about the kingdom in Matthew. It's the whole book of the kingdom. And then he moves, he calls his apostles, and then he goes, we have the sermon of the Mount, Matthew five, six and seven. What's the sermon of the mount? It's the ethics of the kingdom. How do you live in the kingdom? The sermon of the Mount, there's the ethics. And then Father in that Jesus performs miracles. And then you get to the 13th chapter of Matthew and one third of Matthew has already been written. You get to the 13th chapter, what happens? Let's go back and look at it.
That's where we started. Matthew 13, on the same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea and great multitudes were gathered together to him so that he got into a boat and sat and whole multitudes stood on the shore. And then he spoke many things to them. And there is our word parables. What is a parable? It's a truth of God and a truth of the kingdom that has been thrown, that has been thrown down beside something. And here we see that parable is thrown out. And then he talks about the setup of the kingdom, the setup of the kingdom. It's based on hearts. I will not read all of it, but generally Jesus is saying here there are four kind of hearts. First of all, he looked at someone sowing seed on the side of the hill, a living illustration. He said, all of you out there, the multitude of people come here to hear me teach. And I'm out here in this boat and I'm seated, by the way of prophet is always seated when he speaks.
He was seated in the boat and he looked out and he said, see that guy out there sowing seed? He said, I wanna tell you what's going on. That's like life. And he talks about the seed would be the word of God. What is the word of God? What is the Bible? Also, the word for God is Jesus himself, isn't it? The word became flesh John one and dwelt among us. So here he say he's sowing seed. And he said as he's scattering, that seed is falling on different kinds of ground. And he said, then some ground, there's a harvest, but on four kinds of ground, nothing comes up. And here he is throwing Jesus in one sense and that Jesus is the seed. And by the way, a seed is something I spent a lot of time trying to look in the scientific world, the seed.
Do you believe that botanists know almost nothing about life in a seed that well it germinates Well, Dick Tracy, that's its result. Tell me how life can be in a seed. They can't explain it. Nobody can. It's been tried a thousand different ways. They come up saying, well it, so here we have Jesus saying this seed, which he said is the word of God is sowed in ground. And what kind of soil do we have? We have four kinds of soil. It represents the heart. It's explained extensively. This is one of the few instances in the Bible where Jesus says, I tell you this. And then he explains it a little interlude. Then he on and says, I'm gonna tell you what I'm talking about. He said, I'm talking about the human heart. He said, hum. Some hearts are hard. And when bam, the seed, the word of God, Jesus is thrown at this heart. The heart does not receive it.
How does our heart get hardened? I run my own life. I'm in charge. And it gets hardened when we live a secular humanistic life and our hearts get harder and harder. Have you ever been in a situation say, you know, I've got a friend and they heard how they could be forgiven and have eternal life and have a life that's, and they won't pay any attention to it. They just say that's nonsense. Hearts can be so hard that even when in this story Jesus is throwing Jesus, he's throwing himself as a seed at us and we don't even respond. It doesn't even get through. Our hearts are so hard. That's one kind of heart. That person does not get in the kingdom. They may help their thinking in a secular way and help their brain be reprogrammed, but they never really get totally in the kingdom hard, hard. Others says there's another kind.
By the way, the heart was hard here in the path. They, they would plant little gardens in Israel and they'd have a little path they'd walk around on. And as the soar was sowing the seed, it'd fall on that hard ground. The seed could not break through hard heart. Another kinda heart was a shallow heart. There's sandstone all over Israel and there's dirt on top of that. The seed may fall on that dirt, which would really be soil, not dirt. It would come up, it would begin to grow, but it couldn't go down. There was a stone there. There was rock there. That's a shallow heart. I know a lot of people come to Christ, man, have a new life, forgiveness, cleansing, hold this, rewire your mind and have a brand new hearted. And they say, oh yes, I want that. And they respond, but doesn't last. Those are CEO Christians.
You know about CEO, Christians, Christmas and Easter only. You know, they come and, oh, I'm a Christian. But there's nothing in their life that would convince anybody that it's just shallow, a shallow heart. And then the next kind of heart talks about is a heart that's full of all kind of briars and thos. It is a crowded heart. What is that? See, we've got so much many things going on folks. We've got emails, we've got family, we've got friends, we can travel, we can go, we can. And all of a sudden we got all these things, these agendas I like. We don't have time or take the time to have our thinking, rewire our minds and our time to know that Jesus is to be the Lord of my life, and therefore is so crowded out. God in Christ is on the peripheral part. It's a part of our biographical sketch. I went to school here. I was born there. I married there. I have children here. I did this.
And then, by the way, I'm a Christian. It's over there somewhere because all the other stuff is crowded out. You see, if we in God's family, the center of your life in my life is the Lord Jesus Christ. We run everything by the Lord Jesus Christ. But a heart that's crowded, there's no room, but there's a fourth kind of heart. And that's the good soil. That's the good heart. And here, P Jesus being thrown at this kind of heart and in that soil, oh, that soil that flourishes. You say only one out of four, but it flourishes such. Sometimes there's that little seed is reproduced how many times, how many times? 160, 30 times a little bitty seed just explodes into other life. That's good soil at a good life.
I don't have time to go through all of this, but you see this right here. These are flowers and they're Hydrea. Hydrea is a fabulous flower. Lemme tell you how it works. A hydrea can be many colors according to the soil. You can have alkaline soil, you can have acidic soil, and that determines the color of the flower. The Hydrea, for example, this could be a soil here that could be a hard soil. But you take this soil and you would put eggshells in it, eggs that are broken and put it in that soil. They would know that you would get Hydrea that would not be yellow or red or white, but they would be blue. That is controlled. That is controlled and and you have other kind of soil.
You say, well, I want to have a green Hydrea here. I wanna grow green. Therefore, you would take and put coffee grounds. By the way, this is botany. This is true. And put coffee grounds in and you would hydrangeas of a certain color of certain, and then you could put aluminum in other kind of soil. You'd have hydrangeas of another color, and sometimes you'd have hydrangeas that were white and we'll refer to different kinds of soil. And the soil is your heart and my heart. And so let's kind of bring it all together if we can. This is an introduction to the parables.
Remember, the parables are not just mild stuff. They're violent things that God throws at us. And God throws seed. He throws himself into hearts and lives and how we respond with our hearts to get a brand new heart. And then all of a sudden we become a brand new person. How? By our thinking and by our hearts, our new heart, a new heart, a new brain, a new mind, a new life. How do we nail this down? Follow me carefully. Second Timothy, chapter number one, verse number seven, it says, God does not give us a spirit of fear, but he gives us what? Power, love, and a sound mind.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are only two emotions in this world. Love and fear. Every other emotion can be put under love. Every other emotion can be put under fear. There are only two emotions, and this verse puts it all together. God has not given us a spirit of fear, because by our thinking, we're rewiring our brain, our response, not conformed, we're transformed. Follow me. And then all of a sudden, by our heart, as Jesus has thrown himself as a word of God in our heart, he's given us a brand new heart. And now he has given us what power and love and a sound mind. How do we maintain this kind of thinking? We have the power that Christ gives us. When you and I are given a brand new heart.