A Parable About Parables, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. It's true, once saved, always saved. It's true that once Jesus grabs hold of your heart, He's never going to let you go. But it's also true that once saved, forever following.

It means that once Jesus has really transformed you and once He's saved you, yes, you'll fall into sin from time to time, but He will always bring you back because the proof of saving faith is not intensity at the beginning, it is enduring to the end. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist JD Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Yesterday on the program, we began a new teaching series about the parables of Jesus titled Listen. In these stories, Jesus reveals the beauty of the gospel, but only for those whose heart is in a posture to perceive and understand it.

Only for those who truly listen. And if you recall, we started by hearing a parable that's actually about parables. Seems like a good way to start this series, right?

Now, if you missed yesterday's program, be sure to catch up right away at jdgreer.com. But for now, grab your Bible and a pen and let's rejoin Pastor JD as he teaches from Matthew chapter 13. I thought of the high school student that I sometimes see who goes off to college and stops believing in God. Right? But here's what I know about them.

When they were in high school and they did believe in God. Other people's opinions mattered a whole lot more to them than the God that they believed in.

So it's no wonder that when they went to college, they lost the knowledge of God because God said, the reason you lost the knowledge of me is because when you did believe in me, other people's opinions mattered more to you. That word weight, I've told you in Hebrew, what Jesus would have been using probably to speak there, chabod, means the word glory means weight. It means a weightiness. How much weight do you give other people's opinions or God's opinions? When somebody does this, it usually means that their unbelief is not a matter of their head.

It's a matter of their heart. It was their heart that was wrong that made their head go wrong. An idolatrous heart almost always will lead to an unbelieving head. Tim Keller, one of my favorite pastors, he says that when somebody that's young comes to him and says they don't believe in God anymore, he said, if they grew up in church, he says, my first question is, who did you start sleeping with? He said it almost always knocks him off guard.

He says, but 99 times out of 100, there's an answer to that question. And it was ultimately this heart away from God that led to the doubt that perplagued their mind. Maybe that's been happening to you. Insight into truth is as much a matter of the heart as it is of the head.

So Jesus sometimes spoke in parables so that those with a heart to know God could see the truth, and everybody else with the wrong kind of heart would be confused. Paul would say the exact same thing another way in 2 Corinthians 2. We are, he says, the pleasing aroma of Christ to those who are being saved. And to those who are perishing, we are the stench of death. Talk about a distinction, one smell.

To some, it's a pleasing aroma of life. To others, it's a stench of death. The condition of your heart determines which one of those reactions that the gospel will produce in you: the same sun that hardens the clay, softens the wax. The difference is not in the sun that shines on it. The difference is in the material upon which it shines upon.

That's the whole point Jesus is making with this parable. The condition of your heart is more important than the intelligence of your head, which, by the way, is good news for some of you. Amen? Because maybe you're not that smart, but you can submit your heart to God and God will show you the truth.

So listen to Jesus explain, listen to him unpack the specifics of the parable. He's going to interpret this one for us, which he doesn't always do.

So this is a special treat. Verse 18.

So listen to the parable of the sower. You see, when anyone hears the word about the kingdom and doesn't understand it, The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed that is sown along the path. We're going to look at four different types of soil really quickly that just illustrate the big truth that we just unpacked. Here's the first kind of soil: we're going to call it the hard heart.

The hard heart. This is the person who is interested in what the Word of God says, just not that much. And so they leave here and almost immediately after they leave, Satan, like a bird, like a bird, snatches away the word, snatches away the ideas that they were having, snatches away their thoughts by planting doubts in their minds. Or maybe he just distracts them with something else. By the way, not necessarily a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing he uses to distract you, just something that takes your mind off of what God says.

Some of you, that's going to be your experience today. You're sitting here right now in our church thinking. Oh, this is really interesting. I've never really thought about this before. This is speaking to me.

And you're sincere in that thought. But as soon as we dismiss, you're going to start thinking about where you're going to go eat and that's going to be the end of it. Others, you are going to sit here and think, man. I so wish so-and-so were here to hear this. And that concern for them is good, but the problem is that thought is from your enemy, and he is using that distraction to get you to stop thinking about what the Word of God is saying to you.

Put on your own oxygen mask before you try to help somebody else. Distraction sends more people to hell than doubt ever has. Because Satan will do anything to get your mind off of what the Word of God is saying to you.

So, when Moses gave the Word of God to the children of Israel, he says, This is not a curiosity, this is your life. It is your life. It is a matter of life and death. Don't be distracted by. your enemy.

Here is verse 20, the second thing. I'm the one sown on rocky ground. This is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. But he has no root and is short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, Well, then immediately he falls away.

Let's call number two the shallow heart. The shallow heart. This is the person who hears the message. is initially moved by it. But whatever decision they make, a lot of times it's an emotional decision, a lot of times it's a sincere decision.

It just doesn't last that long. And that's because the root doesn't go very deep. And the slightest difficulty, the slightest challenge in obedience, the slightest persecution is going to make that wither away. I used to see this all the time, graphically illustrated when I used to speak at a lot of student camps in the summer. I still do one or two weeks a summer, but I used to do it a lot more.

And I would always see it. There's a certain logic, by the way, you know, to how you do youth camp, a little formula. Basically, you keep the kids up all night, every night. Until you get to Thursday, then they're emotionally spent, they're worn out, they're just kind of hanging on by a thread, then you play an extra long music set, then I get up and tell some emotional story and give an invitation, and the whole camp gets saved. That's how it works.

And I would watch it from up here, and I would see like a row of teenagers, and I would watch one in the end would kind of start crying. And then you get, it's just like a disease. It goes all the way down. Then they're all crying. Then they all come up together.

They huddle up. They cry. They weep. They blow snotsicles on each other. They vow to be missionaries.

They're not going to date till they're 35, just a whole bit. And that really sincere commitment to Jesus, which felt sincere in the moment, it lasts for about an hour and a half until the emotion wears off. Because they were never really into Jesus. They were just into this emotion. And the slightest challenge in difficulty, the slightest challenge and difficulty showed that the root didn't go that deep.

You see, a lot of people, a lot of you respond to an emotional moment. And that's great. You should respond. It calls for emotion. But the point is, is your trust in Jesus so deep in your heart that you'll go through whatever it takes to be able to possess him?

What's often confusing about these people is that they look so convincing when they make the decision. Because they look so sincere and the tears flow down their face. In a book I wrote a few years ago called Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart. I tell a story in there of a guy that I shared Christ with a few years ago that would go into this category, just sort in a slightly different way. It was at the gym that I was working out at.

At the time, the gym I was working out had a basketball court.

So just him and I out there. And so we started playing one-on-one together. He was about my age. He had hair down to his lower back back here. Tattooed every square of his body was tattooed that I could see.

Then there was, everything was pierced on him. Look like he'd fallen face first in a tackle box. And nothing wrong, by the way, with any of that.

Okay, I'm just painting you a picture. He cussed every other word, just threw in gratuitous curse words for, I don't know why, just like salt and pepper on his mail. They didn't even make any sense. The point is, I'm painting you a picture of a guy that. Is not the kind of guy that you would think is regular in a church.

So I start sharing my testimony with him, because that's what you're supposed to do. I get about three lines into my testimony. He grabs the ball, puts it on his hip, and he says, Dude, Are you trying to witness to me?

Now, I was shocked you do the word witness because that's insider language, right? I was like. Maybe. And he said, um He said, that's fantastic. He says, man, nobody has shared Christ with me in years.

And he said, he said, but man, let me tell you, you're wasting your breath. He said, because he said, I grew up in church. He said, I got saved at youth camp. I was like, was I the speaker? And he said, he said, I got saved in youth camp.

And he goes, man, I just didn't get saved. I got really saved. He goes, I came home from student camp and I was like Jesus champion. I started a Bible study at my school. I led other kids to Christ.

I went on mission trips. I memorized verses. I was a president in my youth group. He said, I got into high school. And he said, then it started to kind of fade away a little bit.

I started to lose interest. He said, then I went to college and I just quit believing in God altogether. He said, I'll be honest, I started to sleep with people, and I really liked, you know, the way he described it. I really liked sex. And so I just decided I'd put my belief in God on hold for a while.

And then I just came to the point that I didn't believe. He said, but here's what's awesome about this: He said, I was saved in a Baptist church. He says, now you're a Baptist, right? And I was like. Can you just look at me and tell?

Is that like something that I give off? I mean, I know shirt tucked in today makes me look like that, but my shirt wasn't tucked there. But you know, it's like, I was like, How do you know? He said, Well, I just know who you are. He said, In a Baptist church, he said, We believe once saved, always saved, right?

And I was like, no comment. He said, because what that means is, even if you're right, Even if Jesus really is the way, the truth, and the life, I got saved. He goes, so even the fact that I don't believe in God, he said, that doesn't matter because once saved, always saved. And so even if you're right, I'm secure in heaven.

Now, some at church, how do you respond to that person? I mean, like, I had lots of seminary classes. None of them ever prepared me for that moment there. What I ended up talking about with him was this parable of the seeds. Because what you've got is somebody whose faith springs up quickly.

And it looks so convincing at the beginning, but one of the signs of saving faith. Is not its intensity at the beginning. That can be misleading. The sign of saving faith is its endurance to the end. And there are some of you who started so well.

And it was so sincere and it was so explosive, but you're no longer walking with Jesus. And that means that whatever decision you made back three, four, 10, 20 years ago was the wrong one. Because one of the signs of saving faith is that it goes deep enough that it lasts your entire life.

Now, I know what some of you are asking right here. You're like, well, wait a minute, can't you backslide? Yes, you can. King David. King David committed adultery with his best friend's wife, had his best friend murdered, and lied about it for a year.

That's varsity level backsliding. King David was a Christian, but see, the point there is... God still brought David back. Eventually, you can't wander but so far before God brings you back. There are some of you that are revealing that you never really became Christians.

You were just a shallow soil because you sprang up quickly and then you faded away. The way I say it, and stop asking Jesus in your heart, is this: it's true, once saved, always saved. It's true that once Jesus grabs hold of your heart, He's never going to let you go. But it's also true that once saved, forever following. It means that once Jesus has really transformed you and once He's saved you, yes, you'll fall into sin from time to time, but He will always bring you back because the proof of saving faith is not intensity at the beginning, it is enduring to the end.

You are listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. To learn more about this ministry, including how to partner with us financially, visit jdgreer.com. We'll get back to our new teaching in just a moment, but dream with me for a second. Imagine a world where everyone has easy access to the life-changing truth of the gospel, where God's word is proclaimed without cost or proximity getting in the way. That's our huge vision here at Summit Life.

With your prayers and generous financial gifts, we are able to produce radio broadcasts, TV programs, podcasts, devotionals, and more to help spread the gospel both deeper into our lives and wider into a world with great need. But we can't do it alone. You're an integral part of the team helping to spread the good news of Jesus all across the globe. And trust me, you're making an eternal difference with your gift each month. Would you join us in advancing this God-given mission today?

Become a gospel partner right now by calling us at 866-335-5220 or by visiting jdgreer.com.

Now let's finish up today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor Jamie. Here's our third kind of soil, verse 22. Another one sown among the thorns. This is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this age and the deceitfulness of wealth choke out the word.

And the word becomes unfruitful.

So let's write down number three: the divided heart. This is the person Jesus says who hears the word. He hears the word. He responds to it sincerely. He wants to follow it.

But other things begin to choke it out. Specifically, he says, the worries of this age, the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of wealth. You say, what does that mean exactly?

Well, let's unpack that. Here's what it looks like. It means for some of you, you're genuinely interested in what I'm saying up here. You would love for God to be a part of your life. God would even, you would even say it's important to you.

But as soon as you get out of here, what's going to consume your mind are the bills that you have to pay. Which are important. But you're going to get consumed with the deceitfulness of riches, the pursuit of wealth and more, or what other people are thinking about you.

So the point is, you don't deny God's word, it just takes a back seat in your life. Or you like being here in church and hearing the word of God. You like your family hearing the word of God. But you know what? Your kids got travel soccer.

And your kids got dance. And so you just can't really afford to come that much. You come every once in a while and you wish you could come more, but the cares of the world, oh, those things are a little more important than the word of God. Or, how about this one? You got that new lake house or beach house, and man, you just love your weekends there.

And God wants you to enjoy nature, right?

So you'd rather devote yourself there than devote yourself to hearing the word of God. There's nothing wrong with any of these things I'm talking about, right?

So, don't hear me say that. What I'm saying is, for some of you, it just reveals a priority you place on the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, and not on the hearing of the word of God. And that's going to reveal itself and how the word dies in your life.

Some of you are not going to follow through on obedience because of the cares of the world. It's just too inconvenient for you to get involved in ministry or to go all the way or go on mission or tell people about Jesus. You won't obey God with your first fruits. You won't give him your first and your best and tithe because there's so much other stuff that you want to afford that you can't afford yet.

So you got to hold on to your money. And it's never, it's just not a conscious decision that you make to reject God. It's just that God's word gets crowded out in your life by other good things. Distraction sends more people to hell than doubt ever has. By the way, this is not just for those of you who are not Christian.

For me, I thought this week about how many times God will speak something to my heart. And I'm sincere. I'm like, yes, I need to. And then immediately almost, as soon as I get up out of my chair and stop reading the Bible, I'll just get consumed with what everybody's saying about me or what I want to afford or how much money that I need for this or that. When God speaks to you, you have to obey definitively and clearly, and it has to get not just a top place in your life, but the unchallenged first place.

Period. or it won't grow in you at all. Here's the last soil, number four here. Then there's the kind that's sown on the good ground. This is the one who hears and understands the word, who does produce fruit and yields.

Some 100, some 60, and some 30 times what was sown. Let's call this one number four the open heart. The thing that I want to focus on here with the open heart is how fruitful the seed is when it goes in. You see, agriculturalists, farmers, scholars tell us that in those days, at least. The average yield of a seed was about eight times.

So when Jesus says 1, 60, even 30, he is talking about something. That is nothing short of miraculous.

Something that people look, I mean, when the farmers that Jesus was talking to would have heard this, they would have been like, whoa. 30, 60, 100 times? That's divine. It's talking about a yield in your life of fruit that other people can notice and recognize there is something at work in you that is not of you, that it is something that God is doing in you. It starts to show up in how you treat people.

It shows up in your generosity of spirit. It shows up in how quickly you forgive. It reveals itself in your excitement for worship and how you tell other people about Jesus. It is miraculous. Other people see there is something that is happening in you.

And what Jesus is saying is: if there's not that miraculous evidence, it's probably because Jesus isn't really there. Y'all listen, God's word is powerful. It was one of God's words that created the entire universe as we know it. One word created all this. When God's word comes into your heart, it will make a change.

In fact, in a few verses, Jesus is going to tell another parable. And in this parable, he's going to compare it to an acorn. Little acorns you crush under your feet and destroy. But when that acorn gets planted, it grows up into an oak tree that. Is larger than you can imagine.

I mean, here you got a tree that's roots can split a sidewalk. That you could never do in your own strength. Yet, that started with a little tiny seed that you could crush under your foot. And Jesus said, That's what the Word of God is like. It looks insignificant.

You can even ignore it. You can get up and go to the bathroom, and it's being taught. You can just totally blow it off. But that word comes in your heart, and if it takes root, it will grow in your heart into something that will split addiction, it will split depression, it will break through your unbelief, and it will produce in you a harvest of righteousness. If Jesus' word is taking root in you.

See, if his word has taken root in you, we will be able to see it.

Now, hear me. I'm not trying to get you to compare yourself to the best Christian you know and say, well, you must not be saved because you're not like them. In fact, it's interesting, admit that Jesus says 160 and 30. Because here you got people who only had a 30-fold increase, and they're looking at people with 100, and they're like, Well, what's wrong with me? It doesn't mean that they're not really saved, it just means that God grows at a different rate in people's lives.

I don't want you comparing yourself to other people. What I do want you to do. Is I want you to be able to say, yes, God's word has a powerful effect on me, and it's showing up in how I treat people, it's showing up in every possible way in my life. Reading about the power of the word always gets me excited about sharing it with others. I can't go through this without just being like, I just want to preach all the time and I want to tell people about this work because I love watching the word go to work in people's lives.

I love watching that acorn split the cement and slabs of depression and addiction and pride and apathy. I know a story I told some of you this last week, one of the services. There was somebody who came the week before Easter here. A girl who came that was invited by somebody. She hadn't been in church in a long time and came in, and that was the week we were talking about the cross.

And she said it just. She goes, I don't know what it did to me, but it just overwhelmed me and opened my eyes. And so I came back to the Good Friday service by myself, just showed up there. Then I came back the next day for the first Easter service, 4 o'clock at Briar Creek. I showed up there.

Then I stuck around for the 5:30 service, just sat through that service too. Then I came back the next day and went to the services that day. Then I went home and watched the service three or four times online and then showed up at starting point, which is kind of the first step we have inviting people in, showed up and said, I think I'm ready to get saved.

Well, my mom and dad happened to be the table host of that table, and they're like, we think you already are saved. We'll just kind of commemorate that right here because obviously God has gotten a hold of you. That's the word of God in somebody's life. Or I think about the story I heard about one of our students who came to Christ here last year, only Christian in his family. Starts praying for his family, for his mom and dad to come to faith in Christ.

On Easter Sunday, he brings his dad. They walk the aisle together, and he baptizes his dad at one of our campuses. That is the multiplying power of the Word of God. And I don't see how you can't want that to be reproduced in the life of everybody you know. And I can't help but think about neighborhoods and nations all over the world where we want to see the Word of God go to work.

Don't we want to be moved to see this multiply in every highway and hedge? And don't we yearn to see it happening in the places all over the world where we send our people to go and see the word of God multiply?

So let me just ask you to consider. Which soil are you? Are you the kind that's just been easily distracted? You got good intentions? But there's just so many other things that crowd out your focus on the word, or maybe you're the kind that you would like to obey, but you'll be honest this weekend that.

The cares of the world and the cares of what other people say, it's choking it out in your life. And maybe you today need to draw a line in the sand.

So to speak, where you say today things change. And God and His Word are going to get the place in my life that they deserve. Let me raise the stakes for you just a little bit. The seed that we keep talking about, what is the seed? Jesus would call himself the seed.

He was the seed, he said, that went into the soil and died.

So that he could produce in us a harvest of righteousness. And what that means. Is that you are hearing a message about your Father God who died for you? Who was tortured and executed and died for you? You can't treat that with a passing glance, it demands a decision.

And for you just to get up out of here and go think about what you're going to eat after this, that is in itself a decision. It is an insult to God that says it's just not that important. It is time for some of you. To look Jesus Christ in the face and acknowledge what He did for you and respond in the way that He deserves for you to respond to Him. My question is, are you ready to respond like that?

Maybe you haven't rejected God's word, but you have neglected it. Take the incredibly bold and humble step of drawing the line in the sand and saying, Today, that changes. You are listening to Summit Life with author, pastor, and teacher J.D. Greer. Okay, so Pastor JD, we are talking about a few of Jesus' parables on the program this week.

Tell us, why did you take some of these thoughts and create our new resource called Parables in Peace?

Well, I mean, we live in a world that is, I mean, just unusually noisy. It just accentuates this feeling that some of us have of being hurried and harried and just overwhelmed. And so when Jesus says something, you know, to us, like, come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Yeah. There's something appealing and unbelievable about it.

And so what we're doing in Parables and Peace is showing that, yes, even in a world like ours, Jesus gives a way of thinking about the world, a way of sharing your burdens and problems with him that can actually produce peace in a very restless world. You know, I feel like there's some people listening just right now that you're like, I mean, I got all kinds of Bible content coming in. I love listening to Summit Life, but for you to have that peace and that rest, I mean, that's something I can't give to you, but it's something I think a study like this can help you find what you're doing. Jesus, and because that's why he told these parables, he said. That's right.

So, anyway, I think this will help you find it.

So, it's pretty different from anything we've done before, you know.

So, take a look at jdwear.com. Each session is a theologically grounded introduction to Jesus' parables as invitations to transformation while focusing on themes of rest, listening, grace, and action-based faith. When you give today, we'll send you a copy of Parables in Peace by email as our way of saying thanks for your generous support. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. That number again is 866-335-5220, or you can give online at jdgreer.com.

I'm Molly Vitovich, encouraging you to join us tomorrow as we continue our new teaching series titled Listen. Join us Wednesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.