Matt Hagee - I Dare You To Grow
And if you brought your Bibles, turn them to Matthew the 13th chapter beginning at the 3rd verse. As this morning, we begin to consider this series, "The storyteller," discussing the parables of Jesus and their purpose both then and now. Matthew 13:3, if you're there, say, "Amen". It says, "Then he spoke many things to them in parables, saying: 'behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by wayside: and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth: and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear'"!
In that one verse, that's Christ extending the challenge to you. "He who has ears to hear". He's saying, "I dare you to take this seed into your life and grow". Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, what a joy and a privilege is ours to be in your presence. And what we're about to hear and what we're about to receive because it comes from the living Word of God, it shall not return void. So, prepare our hearts to be good ground. In his name, we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. So many truths lie within the teachings of Jesus Christ that you don't have time to explore them all, but I want to begin by telling you, based on the Word of God in this chapter, you and I are blessed. Here's where the blessing is given in this chapter, Matthew 13:16-17. "Blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear: for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and didn't see it, and to hear what you hear, and didn't hear it". Jesus was telling his disciples before he explained what this parable meant that they were blessed simply because they got to hear the Word of God.
When's the last time you came to church filled with expectation of being blessed simply because you got to hear the Word of God? We live in a world that is so fast paced and so filled with distractions that oftentimes when we come into God's house and into his presence, we do not come, as the Bible says, entering in with thanksgiving and entering in with praise. We often enter in confused and conflicted and having a struggle to focus on why we're here and what our purpose is. Sometimes we come in and we're frustrated because of the things that happened last week. Sometimes we come in and we're anxious about the things that might happen next week.
Let me tell you what you can do about last week and next week on Sunday, nothing. Jesus shared these parables in the context of the day that he was living in, and at this point in the history of the world and even up until modern times, the majority of humanity was in an agrarian society, agriculture was how you lived. If you didn't plant it, you couldn't eat it, if you didn't eat it, you starved to death. How many of you know groceries don't grow on shelves? So, when he starts to share this principle that the sower went out to sow, he's talking about someone who has seed. Don't worry, I got this seed at a discount 'cause it's from last deer season. He said the sower went out to sow, and that's what Jesus was, and that's what Jesus is, and that's what Jesus does. He's the sower.
And when you read the Bible in the gospel of Luke, it says, "And the word is the seed". And the word is the seed. Say that with me, "And the word is the seed". Oftentimes, people want to argue, "Well Jesus didn't come to sow, Jesus came to condemn". But he didn't say he came to condemn, he came to sow. When the Bible says, "He went about doing good," what was he doing? Sowing. Teaching the word, touching the sick, delivering the captives. When the Bible says that he was there to destroy the works of the devil, what was he doing? Sowing. He wasn't the Lord of the harvest, he was the Lord who was sowing. When will he be Lord of the harvest? When he returns.
And the reason he'll be the Lord of the harvest when he returns is because this gospel, once it's preached to the ends of the earth, then the end shall come. Jesus, who was sowing when he left, what did he tell his disciples to do? Sow. Go into all the world and take this gospel, making disciples of every nation. So many times, we get so worried about the seed that we forget to sow it. "Well, if I don't put this in the right kind of ground", Jesus didn't worry about the ground, he just sowed. "Well, I don't know if I'm gonna have anything if I give what I have". Whatever you give, to that measure it will be given back to you pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
So, these are not yes or no questions, these are amen or silent questions, okay? If you agree with it, you say amen, if you don't, just stay silent and then everybody's gonna look at you. Does the word work? Does God keep his promises? Does the word meet the need? So, if the word works and God keeps his promises and the word meets the need, if the word ain't working in your life, is the problem the word? That was right where you stay silent. That was the silent moment. The problem is not the seed, the problem is the soil. I didn't say the problem was you, I said the problem is the soil. And we're gonna talk about how this soil works and what we have to do to prepare the ground to receive the seed. Yes, we're saved by grace but grace through faith, and faith without works is what?
So, when you get saved by grace, you better go to work preparing the ground of your life to receive the seed of the word. In this parable, Jesus the sower goes out to sow, and when he starts sowing, some of the seed falls on the wayside. The wayside would be equivalent to asphalt. But when he says the seed fell by the wayside, it's saying that the seed fell in a place where it's not possible for it to grow because it's absolutely unreceptive to the power of the Word of God. There are places then and there are places now where people are unreceptive to the Word of God. Jesus didn't worry about the wayside, he just kept sowing seed. And it said, "And then some fell in a stony place where there was a little bit of soil and there was a little bit of rock". And then he said, "It fell in a thorny place where there was a little bit of soil and a whole lot of thorns".
And then the last place that he describes is good ground. I wanna be good ground. But what you have to see right off of the bat is that four types of soil, three don't receive, one does. 75% had a zero growth rate, one is productive. You say, "Pastor, are you saying that only 25% of those who hear the word are gonna receive the word"? What I'm saying to you is this, the majority of people who hear it don't do it. People don't receive the word because they don't wanna give up what they have for the life that Christ can give. Jesus said, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light". But still even now, men want to prove that they can live in their own terms, in their own way, and they walk around carrying frustrations that God never intended for them to carry.
There's another group that disqualifies the power of his word because they have more faith in religious tradition and denomination than they do in a relationship with Jesus Christ. They can spend more time quoting to you the rules and the regulations of the tenets of faith written by men, rather than they can quoting the Word of God that is to be hidden in your heart. Christ says that there are those who disqualify him and then he said there are those who have, kind of, a mixed up, messed up, and misunderstood life. And this is a lot of folks. They've got two things that don't go together. They've got stone and they've got soil. I'll show you what I mean. It's like trying to grow a garden in Boerne, Texas.
How many of you know that's not what farmland sounds like? But in this situation, there's Jesus on Sunday and the world Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And on Sunday, what happens is a little bit of the word gets thrown in and you go, "Man, that was good. That was for me". And the seed starts going down into the soil, but whenever it starts to take root, it runs into one of these rocks. And the root can't grow through or around the rocks, so there's no structure there that whenever the trial and tribulations of life come and the winds of turmoil blow against you, you don't have anything that'll hold you up and you fall over. And then you come back into church on Sunday and go, "I don't know why I'm having so many struggles".
You see, the thing that you have to do when you realize that there's hard places in your life, you've got to do the hard work of digging up the rocks. God will plant the seed, but you've got to prepare the ground. So, when that seed comes into your life and you receive it with joy, don't be afraid to get down here and dig up those old habits. Some of y'all have some challenges, you know. Minding your own business. Some of y'all gotta dig up some old offenses. You can't remember what happened five minutes ago, but you can remember with detail what happened 15 years ago. Why? Because you're holding on to something that's keeping God's word from growing. And then the longer you think about that offense, it leads you to another rock. How many of you know that rocks get stacked up on each other? Anger.
Now, not you, but anybody know somebody that deals with anger? Yeah. You mad about having to raise your hand. "I don't know why he's going there". Then you go home, and you start scrolling through stuff and all of a sudden, they send you a picture that you didn't wanna see but you saw it anyway and oops. You see, Jesus said this, "If you look at a woman with lust in your heart," Moses said you actually have to touch her, Jesus said "Just look". And only when you've done the work of digging up the hard places in your life and saying, "God, there's nothing in me that I want more than I want you. God, search me and know me. Try me and see if there's anything that separates me from you. Don't let me separate myself from what you want to do in my life".
Only when your life has been prepared like that, then the sower comes by to sow and suddenly you can start to grow pressed down, shaken together, running over, 100, 60, 30-fold. Why? Because you dug up the rocks and the ground is ready. Jesus talks about a third kind of ground. He talks about the thorny soil. Later in this chapter, he's explaining that the thorny soil represents those who receive the word, but have you ever noticed how fast thorns can grow? I mean, you can't grow grass in half of this state, but you can grow thorns in a parking lot. And what he said about thorns is that thorns represented people who crave the things of this world more than they crave God. And the word is used, "Riches of this world".
You need to understand, God's currency is not our currency. We hear, "Riches" we think gold, he hears "Gold," he thinks asphalt. What he considers to be a currency is your love and your trust. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, with all of your mind, lean not to your own understanding. His currency is love and his currency is trust. So, when he says, "Riches of this world," he's saying the things that you love more than him and the things that you trust more than him. This is where the thorns come up and choke the seed.
The reason that I bring this up is because people will take a text like that out of context, and they'll say, "God does not like prosperity". That's not true. If God didn't like prosperity, why would he tell his disciples, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and then all of these things will be added to you". What would be added? Where you eat, what you wear. What are those? Possessions. Why would God promise you possessions if he was against possessions? Proverbs 3, it says, "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all of your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path". You get to verse 10, it says, "If you live a life like this, your barns will be bursting". How many of you see prosperity in that? "And your vats will overflow".
Wine was valuable. Why would he give you something valuable if he was against valuable? That's not the God of the Bible. But when you love something more than him, whatever that is, it's a thorn in your flesh and you've gotta dig it up. It's not a matter of amount, it's a matter of trust. And trust me, God knows the threshold and the limitation of what you can have before you stop trusting him. There are some people that God can't trust with a hundred bucks, and there's other people that he can trust with a hundred million. Why? Because it's not an amount, it's a matter of trust. But then Jesus said that there was one kind of soil, and it was good ground.
How many of you wanna be good ground? One of the challenges that people face when it comes to being good ground is that they plant a seed on Sunday, and they're upset 'cause nothing's growing by Tuesday. I mean, they were gonna give God Monday but come on. I need to break through right now. In another parable in the gospel of Mark, Jesus shared a principle about seed. He said the kingdom is like a farmer who sowed and then went to sleep. And when he woke up, he saw the seed that it had sprouted, and he knew not where it came from. He said, "The seed should sprout and grow, but he himself does not know how". Why? Because your job is to sow, God's job is to grow. He knows when you're going to need it, he knows when that harvest that you sowed should show up.
So, let me ask you this, how long have you been sowing? How long have you been spreading the seed? The word works even when you don't see it. The longer you sow, the more you grow. What do I mean? The longer you plant, the more you can expect a harvest. A lot of people obsess about seed, "I'm gonna give a little and I'm gonna expect a lot". But what you need to know is if what you want is a lot, then you better sow and keep sowing, and keep sowing. You say, "I don't feel anything growing". Keep sowing, and keep sowing, and keep sowing. You say, "I don't see what I want". Keep sowing, and keep sowing, and keep sowing.
You say, "But the business hasn't turned around". Keep sowing, and keep sowing, and keep sowing. "But my kids still won't come to church". Then keep sowing, and keep sowing, and keep sowing. "But my husband, he don't like the Word of God". But keep sowing, and keep sowing, and keep sowing. Why? Because the more you sow, the more you grow. What do I mean? I'm the sixth generation of a harvest. I'm receiving a harvest in my life from seeds that were sown by people I won't ever get to meet until I get to heaven. Six generations of faithfulness in my family. And you say, "Well, that's not my story". But you could be the first of seven. It has to start somewhere.
Why not with you? Why not here? Why not now? Stop worrying about the seed, stop worrying about the soil and just sow something. Six generations of my family have been sowing the seeds of the gospel. They came here to declare the good news of Jesus Christ. They didn't have any idea that when they started sowing seeds hundreds of years ago that somehow the root of that plant was going to dig down deep in the soil and find its way into the heart of a young lady in east Texas who loved God with all of her heart, with all of her soul, and with all of her strength, and whenever he gifted her with the ability to share the Word of God, when he was 12 years old, his mother stood up and gave a prophetic declaration. She said, "I am going to sit down, and God is going to give to one of my sons the ministry that he intended for me".
She had no idea that when she planted her life into the lives of her sons, that God was going to use that seed, and one January night in 1958, this one was gonna surrender his life and start sowing seeds. And he went out and started sowing seeds. He didn't know what was gonna grow, he just started sowing seeds, and then somebody said, "Let's build a church," and he kept sowing seeds. And somebody said, "Let's reach the nation," and he kept sowing seeds. And somebody said, "Let's stand with Israel," and he kept sowing seeds. And somebody said, "Let's build a school," and he kept sowing seeds. And somebody said, "Let's go on television all over the world," and he kept sowing seeds. And then they said, "Build a sanctuary of hope," and he kept sowing seeds. Church, the sower goes out to sow. He goes out to sow.
Keep standing. And the reason he sows is because that's all you can do with seed. You sow it, God grows it. You hold it, that's all you got. People say, "How do I get a 30-fold harvest"? Sow. "Okay, well how do I get 60-fold harvest"? Sow. "Well, what's the secret to the 100-fold harvest"? Sow. He didn't sow saying, "I'm coming back looking for a harvest". He just said, "God, it's your word, it's your seed. Wherever you do, and whatever it happens, it's in your hands". He doesn't know what seed he planted that produced the harvest right now. God does, but he doesn't. He can't say, "Well, it was that one Sunday in 1964 that made everything happen".
No, that's not how it works. Just keep sowing, just keep sowing. How about you? Are you sowing? Or are you clenching your fist around what you got? Are you digging up the rocks and getting rid of the hard places so that when something in God's word hits you, it can take root? Or are there places in your life that you trust the world more than you trust the word? Whatever it is, make your life good ground today so that when you leave this service, you say, "I received the seed and in the seed is what I need". If you believe that, give the Lord a hand clap of praise.