Well, good morning, church. What a joy to get to be with you today and to see actually some new faces out there. It's so exciting that you have joined us and you're a part of what we're doing here at Ebenezer today. And we are going to continue this morning in our second message in a series that Pastor Jamie began last week called the Kingdom. And let me invite you to stand with me.

Take your Bible. Turn to our passage in Matthew, chapter 13. Our text for this morning is the first 23 verses, but we're actually going to just read the first nine to set the stage, and then we'll dig deeper into those verses as we come to them. So let's read Matthew 13:1. That day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea and large crowds gathered to him.

So he got into a boat and he sat down and the whole crowd was standing on the beach. And don't worry, I'm not going to make you stand for the whole service, okay? That's the way they did it. Then he sat, the preacher sat, people stood. But we'll do the opposite today.

Verse 3. And he spoke many things to them in parables, saying, behold, the sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away.

Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop some a hundredfold, some 60 and some 30. He that's you, that's me, that's young, that's old, that's everyone in this room. He who has ears, let him hear. Let's pray.

For we have heard your word read today. And this is an opportunity to let those words become the single most important words that we will listen to today. We will say words to one another. We'll hear others talk. All kind of words and songs and conversations will go on in our life today.

But your word. Your word is what we need to hear because we know the possibility is. And that's what you're going to teach us today is that we can hear it and never really hear it. And we can read it and see it with our eyes, but never really see what you are talking about. So, so help us to just settle our hearts in this moment and grab something of this seriousness of hearing you speak.

And then may our hearts be the heart that says, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. Show me your way, let me walk in it. And we pray this in Jesus name, Amen. You can be seated. So obviously our parable, this passage that we read is about farming.

And as I was reading that passage, my mind went back to 45, 55, 60 years ago in my life when I was growing up. And I don't know how many of you, how many of you actually have had the experience in your life growing up working a garden, planting a garden, harvesting a garden. Hold your hands up here. For the rest of you who never had the joy in the dead heat of summer, busting up the ground, busting up the clots in the ground, cutting a row and putting some seeds in and then spending your entire summer picking weeds. I'm sorry that you missed that.

But if you've ever planted, you know that that's something that really is a common thing in our world, in our life. And so I grew up and it was a big enough farm that we had tractors and you know, we worked that as my, at my grandparents property and our family did that. And I just was very, very familiar with the whole culture of planting and growing things. So when Pam and I married 43 years ago, we put in our first garden and I called my dad up in excitement. I said, dad, we have just put in our garden.

I'm so excited. He said, so how big is your garden? I said, it's about 50 by 50. He said, that's pretty good size. He said, what'd you plant?

I said, well, we put some tomatoes and we put some cucumbers and we planted some beans for sure. And I said, and I sowed a 50 foot row of squash.

And his response was, you what? I said, yeah, I sewed a 50 foot row of squash. Yellow squash. He said, son, I don't know how you missed this, but growing up we never sowed, we never sewed a row of squash, we always heeled squash. And you probably only need about two heels and that'd be enough for y' all.

But so I'm telling you, get ready because you're going to have a lot of squash. How many of you have any idea how many ways you can eat yellow squash? I mean, we had fried squash, baked squash, boiled squash, we had squash casseroles, we had squash muffins, we had squash little baked, we had squash flambe. I mean we did squash every way you could do it. And the reason I tell that story about farming and gardening is because something very similar happens in our lives if we are not careful as Christians when we read the Word.

You see, the Word is something that we can often hear. It's preached to us, you listen to it. But the possibility is that if you're not careful, you might think you know what you're doing or think you know what it's about, but discover pretty quickly. I really didn't get that. And that's particularly true when it comes to parables in the Bible.

You see, the parables in the Bible are unique things that God has given us. And it's very important for us to make sure before we really dig into those verses that, that we understand what a parable is. So if you want to take some notes, the first thing we're going to put on the screen here is what is a parable? What is a parable? And the reason we need to do that is because sometimes we don't really get what they are.

They were Jesus way of teaching. We know that, but sometimes we just miss what they really are about. We've read them, we've heard them, but like me in gardening and planting, I just missed a point along the way. So let's make sure that we understand that when Jesus used parables, he's not using a fable, you know, like Aesop's fables in which animals talk. Those are creatures representing people and things like that, and they're really made up.

So this is not a fable that Jesus is telling us about when he uses parables. But there's nothing fictitious about it. It's a real life story. And you might also note that when Jesus was teaching by parables, he not only was not using a fable, he wasn't even using allegories. You know, allegories are stories, yes, but they're stories where every piece and every part of the story has a significant meaning or it means something specifically its allegorical language.

And so for us as Christians, that probably one of the most common allegories you'd be familiar with would be like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. And John Bunyan takes a story about a guy named Christian who starts out with this big weight on his back. The allegory in the picture is something is weighing him down. And what you discover in that allegorical story is that that burden is a thing like sin. It just weighs on you.

It just. You just can't get free from it. It's always there. And so as Christian is trying to figure out, how do I get rid of my sin? How do I get rid of this weight on my back?

John Bunyan paints another allegorical picture of this thing called the wicket gate. Enter the straight and the narrow gate. This is how you come into the kingdom of God. This is where your life is going to experience the cross and the. That burden of your sin is going to roll off.

And in that story, that burden just rolls away. And he's like, I am free. I'm free. But then he begins to discover that in his journey, there's all these different strange experiences and creatures that are going to show up and they're going to be like kind of painting the Christian life as pilgrim or as Christian is on his way to what's called the celestial city, which is heaven. He's aiming for home.

And so when you read allegorical stories like that, they teach us a lot of wonderful spiritual truths, and each part has meaning. But that's not at all what parables are like. Maybe the best way to think of the parable. They are stories, but they are stories with heavenly meanings. In other words, Jesus would take a common everyday story, something that everybody, like you and me, gardening and planting and getting corn and beans and things out of the garden.

He would take an everyday story and he would take that and he would teach a heavenly truth or a spiritual truth. So they're earthly stories with heavenly meanings. And here's a very important rule for how you read a parable in the Bible. It only, always only has one meaning. So it's not like a fable, made up characters and stories.

It's real people in life. And it doesn't have every part of the story having some different or significant meaning. It really only has one meaning. I mean, like for example, when Jesus said he told a parable about two men who went up into the temple to pray, a Pharisee and, and a sinner. And it says right there in the parable, he told them this parable because they trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

So you don't have to guess. What does Jesus want you to get from the story? He tells you what it is all about. And so he uses this way of teaching over and over and over in his ministry because he's going to take earthly things, earthly stories, and give a spiritual or a heavenly meaning to them. So like in our story of the parable of the Sower, Jesus is sitting in the boat, the crowds are all standing around, and he probably said, hey, look over there.

You see that guy over There, sowing those seeds, it became an earthly story they were very familiar with. But he's going to take it and use it to teach a spiritual meaning. Now, here's the second thing you need to know. Just like I didn't remember that you healed squash rather than sew a row of that. The second thing you need to know when you come to parables is this.

Not only is this Jesus way of teaching, but there's a reason that Jesus taught this way. And it presents a paradox, a mystery to us. I mean, you have to ask the question, why in Matthew 13, which is the very first time that Jesus teaches in parables? He's never done it for 12 chapters. He's never done it in any of the Gospels at the very beginning.

It's not until now that he begins to teach in parables. Why would he do that? Well, look at your bible in chapter 13 and notice the very first two words in the passage. It says that day. You ever stop to think about the significance of just a day and what can happen in a day?

You remember back in the garden when Adam and Eve were in the garden, and God said to them in that day that you eat of the fruit, you will what? Surely die. That day is going to change everything if you do that. And so in Matthew, Matthew says, it was on that day that Jesus went out into the boat and he began to teach in parables. Why would he do that?

Well, if you look at verse 10 of the chapter, just scroll down a little bit with me, and let's get a context going on here. It says in verse 10, and the disciples came and said to him, why do you speak to them in parables? They were asking the same question we're asking, why do you teach that way? Jesus answered them to you. It has been granted to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.

For whoever has to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance. But whoever does not have even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because while seeing, they do not see. And while hearing, they do not hear, nor do they understand.

In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, you will keep on hearing, but you'll not understand. You'll keep on seeing, but will not perceive. For the heart of this people has become dull. With their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they they would see with their eyes. They would hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return And I would heal them.

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

This sounds strange, doesn't it? Jesus is saying, I'm teaching in parables for two reasons. One, to reveal something and to at the same time conceal something. Some of you are going to get it, some of you are going to understand it, and others of you are going to be clueless about what I am talking about. Why would he use that method?

Why on that day would he decide, today, starting today, this thing I'm gonna teach you is gonna be in a parabolic way. It's gonna be an earthly story you're all familiar about, but you're not gonna get the spiritual meaning. Why would he do that? Well, it's really simple if you just quickly remind yourself what's happened in the first 12 chapters. And believe me, it won't take me but a minute to get you to see the picture here.

You see, Matthew, in his design of his gospel account is to help us to see this one picture of who Jesus is, and that is a king. I mean, he's the king. The king of glory has come. The king has come into our world. Now, Mark is going to take a different story to tell us.

Same stories, but a different picture. Mark wants us to know that this Jesus who has come, he is a servant, a king who has come to serve us. And when you go to Luke, Luke says, oh, I'm going to tell you about Jesus as the man, his humanity. I want you to know what he's like as a man. Now think about this.

When you want to read about Jesus and him coming into our world at Christmas, where do you read that? In Luke. Because Luke wants you to know he's a man. And John in his Gospel steps back and says, oh, no, he is God. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

So you get this real rounded picture in those four accounts of the Gospel, that we have a king who came to serve. He's a man, but he's God. And when you come to Matthew, Matthew says, on that day, something's happening with this king. This king is going to teach his parables called kingdom parables, parables about his kingdom, what it means to be in his kingdom, how you get in his kingdom. And some of you are going to get it, and some of you are not going to get it.

And why did he start doing that? Well, just think about this. In chapter one, Matthew starts telling us about the genealogy of Jesus. And you look at that genealogy, every Jew should be able to say, well, that's the king, that's the Messiah king that was promised. He fits the qualifications.

In chapters two and three, Matthew moves on. And at his birth he tells us that these men called the wise men had come from afar. To do what? To find a newborn king. And Herod was so afraid that a king had come and he was going to lose his kingdom that he went and killed all the young babies in the land that to make sure no other king got his place.

Matthew goes on in chapter four and he shows us Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by the devil. And what is the devil tempting him to do? And that is telling him, I will give you all the kingdoms if you'll just fill in the blank. Do these things. He's trying to get him to take the kingdom in a way God had not designed for Jesus to take the kingdom.

In chapters five through seven, that Sermon on the Mount is a great story where we read all this teaching Jesus first preaching there, and he's actually telling us what the standards of being in the kingdom are like. This is what a kingdom citizen looks like. This is what kingdom citizens do. This is how kingdom citizens live. In chapters eight through 11, the king starts showing his miraculous power as a king.

He's healing diseases, he's opening blind eyes, he's casting out demons and he's raising the dead. This is the miracle power of a king. You've never seen a king like this. Matthew says. And so when you come to chapter 12, right before our chapter 13, Matthew is saying to them, you as a Jewish nation have every reason to believe the Messiah king is here and it's Jesus.

But in chapter 12, the religious leaders and the crowd following Jesus hanging out for meals and miracles, they are told by the leaders, this Jesus does all these miracle powerful things that he's doing through the power of the devil. He is from the prince of Beelzebub. They have assigned Jesus to the category of being satanic and demonic. So on that day, those who had rejected him, who had refused to hear the words of his kingdom with all the proof that he was the kingdom, he says, starting this day, many of you are never going to understand another word I'm saying. But to those of you who have and who long for the word that I have for you, you're going to hear more.

So let me give you the two principles that this surely shows us, and they're important for just understanding the very simple parable of the sower and the seed. I'll put the first one on the board for you if you are spiritually receptive. Jesus says, if you're receptive to the Word, you get more. The disciples are going to learn more because they're following him, while those who reject him slide further away. Those religious leaders will get further and further away from the truth and the knowledge of who this king is and the people who are hanging out for food and, and miracles are going to go further away from him.

The second truth Jesus is trying to get us to grasp up front on why that day he determined he would now teach in parables, is that if you lack understanding of God's word, it's due to the lack of your willingness to receive it. Now listen, that's very important. Jesus says, just like in Isaiah's day, when they decided not to listen and not to hear, they would not respond. They would not hear what he had to say. It's the same thing Jesus says in your day.

Now listen, I don't want you to assign that problem or that lack of understanding to the fact that God just said, I don't like you. I'm predestining you not to hear that. And I'm predestining you over here to hear that. That is not at all what the passage says. Don't read that into the passage because it's not there.

You can't find anybody anymore that wants to talk about a sovereign, glorious king to me. But I'm telling you, that's not the problem. The problem is he says, you are unwill. You would not listen. If you would but turn to me and hear me, you would understand.

See, the problem's on the people. The problem is on the heart of the people. And that brings us to this passage and the four soils that Jesus is going to teach us about. Regarding this seed that was planted and what it looks like when you hear the Word, you typically have one of these or all, possibly four of these responses. Now, I'll tell you up front, this parable is probably at this point, the most debated part of the parable.

Who are the four soils? Are the four souls? Unbelievers who are hearing the word of the kingdom, the word of being born again, the gospel? Are they hearing the message about what it means to be saved? And there are four ways people respond to it, and is it a salvation word that he's telling them?

They need to pay attention to and listen to. Is it about salvation or is it about people who are in the kingdom, who are believers, and how they hear the Word going forward and respond to it will determine whether they understand more and more or less and less. So the answer I love to give to it is yes and, and yes. See, I don't think the parable is trying to define what the message specifically is, salvation, gospel message, or a sanctification grow message. I think it's just wanting to get this one truth.

When the Word is preached, when you hear the Word, when you read the Word, when you see the Word, be careful how you hear it and respond to may be that you're not a believer. And there's four possible ways here. Someone could respond to initially hearing about the Gospel, or you may be a believer and you hear teachings and you hear truth from the Bible. Be careful how you hear it and what you do with it. It's all about the Word, the soul of your heart and the seed of the Word that's being planted there and what happens when you do it.

That's the one thing. So the passage is real simple. You've got a sower, you got a seed, and you got some soil. Now let's put it all together real quickly as we kind of make our way to the end of what Jesus wants us to get today. In verse, in this passage here, in verse three, he says here that a sower went out to sow.

Now, just so you know, sowing looks different than it did in our day growing up. Like we plant stuff in straight rows and now you have machinery that plants stuff in straight rows. That is not at all how that worked in their day. A farmer. And Jesus, probably pointing to one on the hill as he's teaching, said, see the guy over there, the farmer, he has a bag strapped around him and it's full of seeds.

And he would grab his seeds in a hand and just go like this and throw them out, just sow them. He would scatter them, as it were. Now, if you were a smart farmer in that day, they learned a technique that worked a little faster than throwing it out of a bag like this. They got a mule and they put two sacks on the mule with seeds in them, punched holes in them, and went and let the mule run around and just scattered seeds everywhere. That was their version of the mule before John Deere came along.

Okay, but that's how it worked. So the question is, who is this sower? Right? Who's the sower? That's at the natural level, sowing it with your bag, or a donkey dumping the seed out as he walks around.

Who is this? Well, if you just look down in verse 37 of chapter 13, it becomes very clear. Jesus tells us who this is. It's another parable. But he uses the same analogy of a sower.

And he says in verse 37, and he said, the one who sows the good seed is the Son of man. So who's this sower that he wants us to pay attention to and listen to? It's Jesus. All right. Second question here is, what's the seed?

Because in verse four, he talks about the sower went out and he sowed some seed. Well, if you use the other Gospels to look at the same parable, it's easy to figure out who the seed, what the seed is. In Mark 14, it says the sower sows the word. In Luke 8:11, it says that the seed is the word of God. So here's the king Jesus, who has come to sow his word, to give his word, to tell his word about his kingdom.

And when he does, there are four soils here that represent four ways people tend to respond to the word listen. Whether it's initially hearing about salvation and how to come to Christ, or you are a believer and you hear the Word again, you have one of these four options. And I might even go so far as to say this, it could even give us a picture of maybe one individual. And how at various times in life, when you hear the Word, one of these four responses is what you find in your heart. At one time, you may respond this way to a truth.

You hear another truth comes along and you go, no, I don't know about that. And you don't respond the same way as you did before. Either way. The point is, let's look at how you respond. And this is where you can fill in your blanks on your outline, if you would like.

So the very first soil that he talks about there in verse 4b, is the soil that's sown along the side of the road. If you look down in verse 19, he says, this is like seed that's sown on the side of the road, and birds come and pick that up before it ever takes any root at all. And that seed, which is the word of God is sown is defined as the devil comes and snatches away what you've heard. He does not want to leave that truth there for you or for anybody else to get ahold of it. He wants to take it away.

So What I call this one is the calloused heart. It's the hard heart. You see, because when it says the seed is on the road, the side of the road, you got to realize that we're not talking about a highway like Rose Lane here. He's talking about these little footpaths that run all between the, the different garden spots. So when they're throwing the seed out, some of that gets on those beaten down paths where it just becomes very hard and the seed is not going to penetrate.

So I call this a calloused response. It's just a hard response. It's being somewhat unresponsive to the heart. Now listen, just give me a moment here. What is it?

For someone who is not yet a believer or somebody who is a believer, what could potentially cause their heart to get hardened, to really not be responsive to, like, I'm not doing that. What could do that? Well, I can give you three possibilities. One would be the friends and the friends you hang out with. I mean, if you hang out with people who their world and their life centers around, party, party, party, have fun, have fun, live, be happy, eat, drink, you just live in this life, it's all going to be over.

And they're a very natural, worldly kind of person. Guess what? That's probably gonna work to cause your heart to not be as open to hearing what God has to say. And that may be true in the beginning at conversion for someone, or it can be true as life. Go on.

What they are is the wrong influence in your life. You could also have like worldly things that are around you. And I mean worldly things, the things of the world that we live in. We all have things in this world that we watch and we listen to, social media, tv, the music we listen to. And I'm not telling you to throw all that stu away, I'm just saying just realize what they tend to do is condition you to start thinking different than God.

It can make your heart not as receptive. And probably the biggest thing that hardens us and keeps us not open sometimes to the word is our own private thought life. Those things inside of us that divert us away. You know, it's so true. And it's not what we people think we are in public that we really are.

It's what we are in private when nobody can see that's who we really are. And if in private your heart and your mind runs after other things that you know are off limit for you as a, as a child of God or that God wants you to have that can play a part in helping that soul of your heart to become a little hard. So you're not ready to hear what Jesus says. That's the first soil. The second soil that we could look at is what I call the casual heart.

And the casual heart is that heart where it says, you know, the seed was sown, verses five and six. And man, there was such a quick springing up of that. And, man, it looked like this was going to be a great plant here this year, but then it kind of withered away. It didn't take any root. You see, the hardened heart needs plowing up, broken up, so that it's ready to get the seed.

But the stony soul needs to be deep, and it's just shallow. And I call that a very impulsive emotional response. You think about following God and you go, this is great. Yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to live for him.

And then somebody calls you a name as a Christian, or somebody mocks you or makes fun of you, or somebody treats you in a way that you realize, hey, living for this Jesus is really, really hard. And that's what in verses 20 and 21, he's talking about. They're really excited, they're really joyful. But persecution arises, hardships come, and it, just as it were, keeps them from producing any fruit. Life doesn't change.

Third category. Let's wrap it up. This could be the response of what we could call the crowded heart in verse seven, the one that has thorns in it. The thorns crowd the heart here. And what it means is other things are in your heart that you're preoccupied with.

That kind of just push the word away. If you look down in verse 22, where Jesus tells us what these thorns are like, he describes it as the worries of the world, the wealth of the world, and the desire for other things. Really what he's telling us is that if you're not careful, you'll start being overly concerned about what's going on in my world. And you might be today concerned a lot about Iran and what's going on in our world. And there's a place to think about that and to be cautious and careful and concerned about it.

But the key in the verse is that you're preoccupied with it. Oh, what's going to happen to my world? What am I going to do? What if this happens? That's called preoccupation.

It's the worry of the world. It's the wealth of the world. I just need some more. I need Some more stuff. I'm attracted to wealth and materialism and all that it'll do for me and all that it'll give me and all that I could experience.

If that's your heart, Jesus says, when you hear the word, whether it's as a person who's hearing how to be saved or you are a believer, what you're going to find if you are not careful is that your heart's got some stuff crowding out the word and you're not receptive to it. But here's what you want. Here's what you want. The last one. What the king is looking for.

What? The king who showed up in the beginning in his genealogies, the king who was born in Bethlehem and was worshiped as a king. This king who stood against the devil and won the victory in the wilderness. This king who taught us what his kingdom is like. This king who has miracle working power to show us that the kingdom of God has come among them.

That king is looking for a rooted response, that the Word has entered you and you have said, yes, bring fruit in my life. And this is what we call the changed heart. It's a responsive heart to the word. It fell on the good soul. It yielded a crop.

Something came as a result of hearing it. It wasn't just hearing it. It was something took place and changed. It says in the passage there, it grew up, it increased and it yielded fruit. Those are all present tense.

It's just like it keeps on happening. It. You hear the word and you receive it and you believe it and you want to live it. So you grow up more, it keeps increasing and then it starts yielding fruit and producing change. And if you want to know what the change looks like, he says it this way for some, some who hear it, some who listen to it, some who want to hear what God is saying to them through this king.

Some it's a hundredfold, some it's 60, and some it is 30. Now this, this, this is just to them, not to us necessarily, because we don't understand the culture, but to them, this is shocking to hear. You're saying as the king, that if we hear your word and you change us, It'll be like 100, like 60 and 30. And the point of that for them is that in their day, when they planted a seed, that the best they could hope for is a 8 to 1 ratio. One pound of seed gives you eight pound crop an Eightfold return.

If a guy would come along and say, hey, we had tenfold this year, they'd Go, wow, what'd you do? How'd you get that? For every pound you got 10. That's a 10 to 1 ratio. That's amazing.

And Jesus is saying 30, 30 fold. Who ever heard of that kind of bumper crop? And what Jesus is saying in that picture for us is that when you really receive the Word, even at the smallest change that takes place, it is amazingly significant. People will notice that Jesus is the king. People will notice that you're living according to his Word.

People will see something radically different in your life. That they'll look at your marriage and they'll go, I've never seen a man love a woman like that. Who is that? That's King Jesus, who loved his church and gave himself for it. I've never seen a woman.

I've never seen a woman so respect and honor and want to please her man like that. Who is that? Well, that's his church. It's going to be shocking to the culture when they see that. You see, coming to church, hearing the Word is not going to make that happen.

Receiving the Word, if you notice there, it says they heard it, they received it, and they grew in it. Just coming here, hearing it is not going to do it. So in this series as we wrap up, what we're trying to get you to hear is that this kingdom is about life change. It's about being receptive, receiving and hearing the Word, not just casually like, hey, I received an invitation to go somewhere. That kind of receiving, it's not even a kind of receiving.

Like, I received a ticket the other day. You won't believe it, I got a ticket. No, it's received, like welcoming, warmly. I'm so grateful. And we have a hard time getting that right because we talk about receiving Jesus in our lives, right?

We use that phrase. I love this real quick story. This lady trying to teach her daughter about what it means to have Christ as a savior. And she said, well, honey, you just have to receive him. And she said, what do you mean?

She said, well, you know, like, I received him in my heart. He came to live inside of me. And she said, you mean Jesus is inside of you? She said, yeah, he's just right in here. And the little girl put her ear to her mom's stomach and she said, is he talking to you?

She said, yes. She said, well, what's he saying? She said, it sounds like he's making a pot of coffee.

This is like, what does that mean, receive? No, receive means to welcome, to invite. So I want you to stand with me because we're going to ask you to do just that. You see, like in Jesus day, there's always two groups of people. There's those who are ready to hear, want to hear, and those who are like, I'm not going to hear.

You might be one of those believers here today who God has been speaking to you about something in your life. For example, forgiving someone. I had a lady one time, many years ago say to me, when I told her, I said, you need to forgive that person in your family. Jesus forgave you. This is what you need to do.

And she said, nah, I don't think so. I go, no, maybe I didn't make it clear. Maybe you don't understand it. She said, oh, no, you made it real clear. I know what I'm supposed to do.

I'm just not gonna do it. That's a hardened heart. That's a calloused heart. You could be there. Maybe God's speaking to you from his word, telling you something.

He's calling you to embrace and say, this is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going. Maybe it's calling to go serve him in Ensenada, in some missions trip. He's just saying, I want to use you. That's what I need.

Would you go for me? Would you do that? And you might have your heart crowded with stuff that's pushing that away. You might have a heart that's so excited about it, and then a challenge comes along and you're like, I'm going to quit. But what you want is a hard that says, change me, O Lord, here am I.

Change me, use me. I want to do that. And when we give this invitation, when we sing in a moment, you can come and you can pray and just ask the Lord to help you to be that receptive soil that hears and receives a heart that God will change. Maybe you're here, this is really possible because in Jesus day, there's always these people in the crowd. You don't even really know who Jesus is.

Oh, you know about him historically. You know about church, you know a lot of Bible things, but you've never heard his word. To repent, to turn, to trust him, to give your life to him. I'm going to call you to hear him today and listen to him. Don't let any of those other three be the reasons you push that word away.

Say, change me and come. Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for your word. It can't be any clearer. It's so, so clear to us.

And we want it to be clear to all of us in this place today. And we want to obey you and respond to the word that you're giving us. Because what we do with this first parable, being receptive to your word, determines whether we understand anything else going forward. It would break my heart, it would grieve my heart if in this place there were people who slid further and further away from you and didn't listen to your word. So even draw and work in that person.

I pray in Jesus name, Amen.