Dr. Ed Young - The Sower the Seed and the Soil

Neuroscientists, those who study the brain, have found a switch that you and I can turn on in our brains to 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 hardwired, and you could not adapt it or change it in any way, shape, form, or fashion. Therefore, when anything happened to the brain — a stroke, a cardiovascular event, or any learning disability — if we were having trouble recalling 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, 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 determinists. In other words, a lot of people say, «Well, you know, I couldn’t help it. I have a lazy gene, or I have an alcoholic gene, or I have an anger gene. Or I’m just like my daddy or 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 those lying genes back there in my family.» Oh yeah.

You see, this is totally erroneous, folks, and we know it is 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. Does 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. The most powerful things are God, and the second most powerful thing is the human ability. Human beings have the ability, all of us here, to think and to choose. It’s the second most powerful thing in all the universe. Nothing else in the universe can think and choose.

Somebody may ask, «Well, human nature can’t be changed.» Dumb. It’s the only thing that can be changed in all the created 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 brains. In fact, every morning, fresh — every morning-we have new cells that are created in our brains. The limitations -three, His mercies are fresh every day. So we are able to think, and we can rewire our brains. Even if we look deeper, even our DNA — oh, I’ve never heard of that — how we’re put together; some of those genes that are there. Some people say, «Well, I’ve got this gene; I just can’t help 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 and 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? Does anybody here think you’re holy? Is anybody able to go before God unless they are holy? And we’re to present our bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and perfect, which is the way we worship.

How in the world, 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 want to worship. I want You to help me. I want You to forgive me. May I come before You? I want to present myself as a living, holy sacrifice.» No. But then Paul tells us how we can do it. Verse 2 of Romans 12 says, «And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.»

Oh, remember the mind? Have you already forgotten the mind? Is that what can change the brain and how it’s wired? The 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 bodies before God and be holy is we have to not be conformed to the world’s agenda but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Now, we know that first — most of us have been around church for a while — but we never thought about how in the world do you renew your mind? Can’t anybody say, «I want to 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? Then it says, if we’re able to do that, we do perfectly the will of God.

Now hang on to 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 minds renewed in one place: in the kingdom of God, 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 babble? Does it have any relevance and practicality in your life and my life? We’ve already seen that 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 in our brains by our minds, and suddenly those grooves in there that we automatically respond to can be changed and flattened out. The flaps are moved and the synapses are working in different ways. We have already discovered that neuroscience has told us that we can think and turn on our brains, and we can rewire our whole personalities. Folks, science has told us this. The Bible has echoed this. But then we have a problem. Do we just become new because we now think properly? Paul said in Philippians 4, 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 noble thoughts. He tells us, «think of what is right, do right.»

We know how to do right. Then we move on and talk about doing right, and then we are to be pure. Pure means you have no shabby motivations. By the way, that gets into deep water. 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 into 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. Therefore, we are rewiring our brains with our thoughts, with our thinking. We’re turning on our brains. But then what else has to happen? Our hearts, right?

Oh yeah, we’ve got the thinking satisfied; we know how we should think. Then we know we’ve got to have the motivation in our hearts. The first real introduction to all the parables is found here, and it deals with the heart. If you have your Bibles, open them, if you would, to chapter 13 of Matthew, the 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. We see that Matthew is all about the kingdom of God. Remember, we have already established that 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. 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 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. 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,» but he was really saying «kingdom of God.» In the Bible, when you read «kingdom of God „or „kingdom of heaven,“ usually-not always — it is the same thing. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven.

Here you go through Matthew; it’s proof that Jesus is the 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. Then he talks about John the Baptist, preparing the way for Jesus to come. Then he calls forth; he is baptized by John. Then he is tempted, kingdom temptation in the wilderness — all about the kingdom in Matthew. It’s the whole book about the kingdom.

Then he calls his apostles; then we have the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. What’s the Sermon on the Mount? It’s the ethics of the kingdom. How do you live in the kingdom? The Sermon on the Mount is where the ethics are. Then, following that, Jesus performs miracles. 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. Great multitudes were gathered together to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat; while the whole multitude stood on the shore. 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 — thrown down beside something. Here we see that parable is thrown out, and then He talks about the setup of the kingdom. The setup of the kingdom is based on hearts. I will not read all of it, but generally Jesus is saying here there are four kinds 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. I’m out here in this boat, and I’m seated — by the way, a prophet is always seated when he speaks.“ He was seated in the boat, and he looked out and said, „See that guy out there sowing seed? I want to tell you what’s going on. That’s like life.“

He talks about how the seed would be the Word of God. What is the Word of God? What is the Bible? Also, the Word of God is Jesus Himself, isn’t it? The Word became flesh (John 1) and dwelt among us. Here He says He’s sowing seed, and as He’s scattering that seed, it’s falling on different kinds of ground. He says that in some ground, there’s a harvest, but on four kinds of ground, nothing comes up. Here He is throwing-Jesus, in one sense, is throwing Jesus as the seed. By the way, a seed is something I spent a lot of time trying to look into in the scientific world. Do you believe that botanists know almost nothing about life in a seed? How 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…“ So here we have Jesus saying this seed, which He said is the Word of God, is sown in the 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 goes on and says, „I’m going to tell you what I’m talking about.“ He says, „I’m talking about the human heart.“ He says, „Some hearts are hard.“ When bam, the seed — the Word of God, Jesus-is thrown at this heart, it does not receive it.

How does our heart get hardened? „I run my own life. I’m in charge.“ It gets hardened when we live a secular humanistic life, and our hearts get harder and harder. Have you ever been in a situation and said, „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 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 into the kingdom. They may help their thinking in a secular way and help their brain be reprogrammed, but they never really get totally into the kingdom-hard, hard. Then there’s another kind.

By the way, the hard heart is found here on the path. They would plant little gardens in Israel, and they’d have a little path they’d walk around on. As the sower was sowing the seed, it’d fall on that hard ground. The seed could not break through-a hard heart. Another kind of 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 heart.“ They say, „Oh yes, I want that!“ and they respond, but it doesn’t last. Those are CEO Christians. You know about CEO Christians — Christmas and Easter only. They come and say, „Oh, I’m a Christian,“ but there’s nothing in their life that would convince anybody that it’s just shallow — a shallow heart. The next kind of heart talks about is a heart that’s full of all kinds of briars and thorns. It is a crowded heart. What is that?

See, we’ve got so many things going on, folks. We’ve got emails, we’ve got family, we’ve got friends, we can travel, we can go. And all of a sudden we’ve got all these things, these agendas. We don’t have time or take the time to have our thinking, to rewire our minds and to know that Jesus is to be the Lord of my life, and therefore it’s 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’re in God’s family, the center of your life and my life is the Lord Jesus Christ. We run everything by the Lord Jesus Christ. But a heart that’s crowded has no room. But there’s a fourth kind of heart, and that’s the good soil. That’s the good heart. Here, Jesus is being thrown at this kind of heart, and in that soil, oh, that soil flourishes. You say only one out of four, but it flourishes such that sometimes that little seed reproduces how many times? How many times? 160, 30 times-a little bitty seed just explodes into other life. That’s good soil and 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 hydrangeas. Hydrangeas are fabulous flowers.

Let me tell you how they work. A hydrangea 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. For example, this could be a soil here that could be hard soil. But you take this soil and you would put eggshells in it — eggs that are broken and put in that soil -and you’d know that you would get hydrangeas that would not be yellow, red, or white but would be blue. That is controlled, and you have other kinds of soil.

You’d say, „Well, I want to have a green hydrangea here. I want to grow green.“ Therefore, you would take and put coffee grounds. By the way, this is botany; this is true. You’d put coffee grounds in and you would get hydrangeas of a certain color, and then you could put aluminum in another kind of soil. You’d have hydrangeas of another color, and sometimes you’d have hydrangeas that were white, and we will refer to different kinds of soil. The soil is your heart and my heart. 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. God throws seed — He throws Himself into hearts and lives, and how we respond with our hearts to get a brand new heart. Then, all of a sudden, we become a brand new person. How? By our thinking and by our hearts — our 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 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 brains. Our response, not conformed, we’re transformed. Follow me. And then all of a sudden, by our hearts, as Jesus has thrown Himself as the Word of God into our hearts, 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.