An Appointment with Christ: The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1) Part 3

In these last messages we are sharing the parable of the sower found in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapter 13 and we have been talking about the different hearts of man, the different ways in which different people receive the word of the Gospel and how we have to be very careful to compare ourselves with these different types of people that the Lord Jesus Christ exposes in this parable and make sure that we do not fall into the category of those types of infertile, arid, barren land that when they receive the word of the Gospel do not receive it in the proper way but waste it, and the seed instead of bearing fruit remains sterile.

The Lord wants us to be good soil, fertile soil, fruitful soil, receptive soil that embraces the seed and allows that seed to enter deeply into its fruit. Unfortunately, every day, thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people listen to the word of the Gospel, listen to the precious message of salvation and for one reason or another reject it, for one reason or another neglect it, underestimate it and then their lives lose hope. opportunity to be blessed and fertilized by the precious seed of the Gospel. How sad! What a pity! Because the Lord wants, says the Bible, that no one be lost, he does not want anyone to be lost, but rather that all proceed to salvation. Sadly, however, so many people are like unsuitable soil for the precious and good and solid and life-filled seed of the Gospel falls upon them but finds no propitious reception.

And so the Lord was speaking to this crowd about these different types of people who receive the seed that the sower throws away and yet, unfortunately, the seed does not bear fruit. I believe that the Lord left this parable because He wanted the people who heard this parable to say to themselves: What kind of land am I? Am I joyfully receiving the seed of the Gospel or am I rejecting it and making it unfruitful?

In our last message we talked about the first type of land that is like the road that the seed falls on the road, in a tight road where the land is not open, it is not worked and where so many people pass and the seed is at the drift. As the seed is on the surface, the birds come and quickly eat it and the Lord compares the birds to Satan who is always ready to tear the seeds from the heart.

How many people go to church, listen to the word of God, listen to the preaching of the Gospel but do not allow that precious seed to fall into the depths of their hearts and immediately the devil is prepared, because the devil wants us to we lose, that we don't accept Christ, he comes right away and pulls the seed out of the mind, And many people sometimes leave church or a conversation with someone who has preached the Gospel to them and they kind of immediately forgot what they heard because They didn't care, they didn't treasure that seed, they didn't listen carefully. They were so involved in other thoughts and other priorities that it was as if the seed had fallen by the side of the road and a bird or animal had come and uprooted it before it could do its work of going into the ground. I hope that you are not like that land next to the road that when the seed falls it remains without bearing fruit.

The Lord speaks of a second type of land. It says here that part of the seed also fell on stony places where there was not much soil and that seed sprouted soon because it did not have depth of soil, but when the sun came up that seed was burned and because it did not have roots it withered up. And further on the Lord gives his own explanation about this type of land on which the seed falls and says that the one that was sown on stony ground, this is the one who hears the Word and immediately receives it with joy, but has no root. itself, but it is short-lived because when affliction or persecution comes because of the Word, then he stumbles.

How appropriate these words of the Lord Jesus Christ, I think they describe in a very quick but tremendously precise and dramatic way, a type of person that as a pastor I have learned to know so well and that many times I lament and hurt in the soul to see this type of individual. I believe that every pastor, every evangelist knows this type of person very well. These people are individuals who hear the word and receive it with tremendous enthusiasm, they are people who promise a lot.

I have known people like this who come to church on a Sunday, I preach the word and at the end of the sermon I make an appeal and these people come forward with a look of joy in their hearts, sometimes crying, lowering their heads They kneel down, give their lives to the Lord with tremendous enthusiasm, and one sees them being spiritual giants, and one is glad as a pastor that an enthusiastic soul has entered the ways of the Lord.

And these people sometimes go home and we may never see them again. They went home and they began to meditate on what they did and they thought to themselves, this was a burst of excessive enthusiasm and after all, why do I have to get so excited about religious things, after all, you don't have to be so fanatical, you don't have to be so intense in religious things and little by little they convince themselves that what they did there in front of the altar was excessive, it was a burst of unnecessary enthusiasm and that after all it's better to be sober and prudent in the things of religion as they call it. And little by little, that enthusiasm that they felt there is lost and we never see them in church again because what happened was a sudden moment, a burst of enthusiasm, but that was all. And unfortunately these people are impulsive individuals who don't have depth, they don't have duration, they're like those records from years ago, of short duration, with 45 revolutions per minute, they only play one song, and they were over immediately and that's where it all ended. .

There are so many people who desire the things of God, they have enthusiasm for the things of God but they don't have roots, they don't have depth, they don't have persistence and their enthusiasm quickly cools. Any situation comes along, any temptation, any obstacle in their lives and they immediately begin to doubt the reality of what they experienced at a given moment. How sad! Because to have triumph in the Gospel you have to stand firm, you have to make a commitment to Christ that lasts a lifetime.

There are many people who start the path of the Gospel but do not understand that they have to stand firm, that they have to persist until the end. The Bible says very clearly that whoever believes to the end will be saved. It is not enough to just start, you have to finish the race.

And there are people who many times will continue to come to church after going to the front, receiving the Lord, but what happens when trials come and difficulties come, because difficulties come because when the devil sees that a person is growing in God's ways he will attack that person to make him get out of the Gospel and if you let the tests or the betrayals or the ugly things that are sometimes seen in the church, or the preachers who fall because of the scandals that happen in church, or things you don't like take you away from the path of the Gospel, you will have lost the battle. The devil will have had his way.

Christ wants us to be long lasting, to persist, to confront the trials, the disappointments, the disagreements and to remain firm until the end, otherwise you will be like that seed that fell among stony places, which easily as not has root, loses its life. Don't be like that but give your life to the Lord for life. Persist in the ways of the Lord and do not let anything or anyone, or any circumstance in this world, separate you from that profession of faith that you originally made.

May the Lord bless you and we will continue our study at our next session.