Why We Come to Student Ministries

What do we come to student ministries for? What’s the purpose? Why are you guys here? Fun is good, but ultimately you are here to hear God’s word, right? That’s why your parents want you to be here. I hope that’s why you want to be here. That’s why I want you here. I want you to be exposed to God’s word when I teach it, when you’re in discussion groups, even when you’re together. You don’t only need to hear God’s word from adults. As God draws you to himself, I want you to increasingly be sharing God’s word with each other. That’s how God saves us, is to be in community with one another. And God’s word should dominate our relationships.

So when we open up God’s word, remember: engage your mind as I talk. When we come to student ministries, every time that we’re together, somebody’s going to be up here teaching, and I want you to have your Bible open on your lap. And then when you go to discussion group, we’re going to be talking about God’s word. Today’s lesson is all about how will you hear?

Open up your Bible to Matthew chapter 13. If you have a Bible, pull it out and open it so you can look at God’s word on your lap. And if you don’t have a Bible, let today be the last time ever that you come to student ministries without your Bible. You can share with your neighbor if you don’t have your own, but this is a good reminder to bring your Bible.

Read Your Bible

And actually, before we jump in, I want to remind you the same thing I reminded you so many times last year, and what I want to remind you pretty much every week this year. I’m going to be a broken record. I don’t know if you guys know what broken records are. It’s a thing. It just makes the same sound over and over and over again. You’re going to hear me say, “Read your Bible. Read your Bible.”

And if you’re like me, sometimes if you don’t have a plan, you’re just going to open up the Bible and you don’t know where to go. So I’d encourage you to actually just get a plan, if you’re not already on a plan, that’s keepable, sustainable, and that you’re reading the Bible every day. Get on my Bible reading plan. We have bookmarks in the back. You have bookmarks from last year, but we have new ones in the back. If you are not on a Bible reading plan, just get one of these bookmarks, and tomorrow look at the date and read that. And then these bookmarks go through the end of August. We have new bookmarks. They’re going to be in September. Starting in September, get the new bookmarks, put those in your Bible, and just every day open up your Bible and read whatever’s on the bookmark so that you can get God’s word in front of you every day.

How Will You Hear?

But as you come to hear God’s word in a sermon, and when you open up God’s word, a very important lesson or question for yourself is: How are you going to hear? How will you hear? What will God’s word do when it comes into contact with your ears, when it comes into contact with your mind? And that’s where this parable that Jesus is going to tell us in Matthew 13, Jesus’s words, are going to make you consider that question: How are you going to hear God’s word?

Jesus gives us some really important help in knowing how we should respond whenever we hear or read God’s word. And he starts with a story. So that’s what we’re going to start with. And before we do that, I’m going to pray. So close your eyes. Pray with me. Don’t check out as we pray. Remember, God is hearing us. And God, he knows what’s going on in your heart and in your mind, not only my mouth. So it’s wonderful when we all pray the same words together. So I want you to get into a habit: when somebody prays from up front, you say those same words in your heart to God. Then we’re all praying. We’re all asking the same thing together. And then God gets the glory when he answers it. So let’s pray.

Opening Prayer

God, thank you for your word. Thank you that we are here. We need your help to respond to the preaching and the reading of your word rightly. So, God, help us. Help us to listen well, to understand what we hear, and make us believe and obey and trust your word. Holy Spirit, be active here as I teach and as these students listen. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Jesus Tells a Story

All right. So, Matthew 13. Jesus is sitting in a boat. It’s probably quiet. There’s a breeze coming from behind, and there are crowds. And in this crowd, there are people who are there for the miracles. There are people there who are there for the spectacle. There’s people there who’ve actually accused Jesus in his miracles of being from Satan. There’s some who are looking there to trap Jesus. There are some who are looking just for the excitement of, there’s a miracle worker among us. Is this man the Messiah? But they’re not going to persevere. And then there’s some there in the crowd who are truly Jesus’s disciples.

And Jesus, sitting in that boat, talking to this huge crowd just like you guys. There’s people of all kinds here. Jesus tells them a story. Matthew 13:1:

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And a great crowd gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach.

So imagine this scene. And they’re waiting to hear something incredible from the teacher. And he told them many things in parables. And so they’re sitting here ready to hear something amazing from Jesus. And here’s what he says:

A sower went out to sow.

A sower went out to sow. They didn’t expect this. Jesus starts just telling them a story of what was very commonplace in those days. People had to grow crops, and they would take seeds and they would walk down a field.

Jesus tells them a story of four soils, a field like this. You see a path between some fields, and a sower is walking down that field, and he has seed, and his job is to throw seed out where it’s going to grow. Why are you guys laughing? That does look like me. And there’s a reason why, and you’ll get to the reason.

But Jesus is telling them a story. And the story is, as this man sowed, he would throw the seeds. And he’s aiming for this, right? He’s aiming for the good soil where it’s going to grow.

Four Soils

And as he’s sowing, some seed fell along the path, right? The hard path that was between the fields. And then the birds came and devoured them. See, the seeds that are on that hard path, they’d never grow. They’d land on that hard footpath. And that footpath was really, really hard from just repeated people walking on it, the feet on it. The sun would bake it. It would be like a clay. Our yards out in Arizona: have you ever been out in the desert on that caliche? The hard, hard soil where if you get a shovel, it breaks the shovel instead of being able to dig in. The soil there may have been like that. Hard, hard packed. The seed falls on it. It’s not going anywhere. It just sits there until the birds get it. And that’s what Jesus said. The birds came and they devoured the seeds.

And other seeds fell on rocky ground where they didn’t have much soil. And when you hear rocky ground, you might have a different picture in mind than what I think Jesus was saying. Jesus isn’t saying the ground was covered with rocks, like gravel sitting on the top. It’s not like your yard with gravel. It was probably like this good soil, but not very far underneath there’s rock, right? There’s this limestone or a stone underneath. And the seeds that fell on that, it didn’t have much soil, but there was soil on the top. So immediately it sprang up. It looked like it was going to be a good crop right there. But since they had no depth, when the sun rose, they got scorched. There wasn’t enough water. It wasn’t moist underneath because there was the hard rock. And since they had no root, the plants withered away. Just a thin topsoil.

And then Jesus said in verse 7, other seeds fell among thorns, right? And the thorns grew up and choked them. So this thorns, it would be like weeds, right? Just weeds growing everywhere. And it was thorny weeds. This is the stuff that just grows. You don’t have to work too hard for this kind of thing to grow. Have any of you guys ever gardened? You have to work so hard to get the right plants to grow. And if you turn your back on the garden for like a week, a few days, you get other plants growing up. The weeds in that part of the world tended to have thorns in them. And so this is just the weeds. The seed fell among the thorns, and it had to compete for nutrients. So the seeds grew up, but the thorns also grew up and it choked it out. They had to compete for nutrients. You see all the roots underneath fighting for the same nutrients, and the thorns are a little bit bigger than the plant. That’s not going to be a good crop.

And then Jesus said about the good soil:

Other seed fell onto good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

A single seed grew up and produced a huge crop.

And the crowd must have been sitting there like, we came to hear the teacher. Just a few chapters earlier, Jesus did the Sermon on the Mount. You remember that? A few years ago, we were teaching through it. Soon, I think when we finish Fundamentals of the Faith, we’ll likely be back in the Sermon on the Mount again. The greatest preacher ever. The crowds are there, and he’s in the boat, and he tells them about seeds and soil. They’re like, “What in the world?”

He Who Has Ears, Let Him Hear

And then Jesus said—so some of you guys might already know what this is about, but the crowds had no idea. They’re sitting here ready to hear the teacher, and he tells them about farming. And then Jesus says:

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

There was more to the story than just seeds and soil. And then Jesus was done. He stopped.

Why Jesus Speaks in Parables

Jesus was actually using parables as a judgment to the people who just rejected Jesus. And it was also a gracious means of giving his word to those who had ears to hear. So the disciples then came to Jesus and they said to him, you see that in verse 10, “Why do you speak in parables, Jesus? Why don’t you just talk plainly to them?”

And Jesus’s answer was, to you it’s been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it hasn’t been given.

For the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. That’s why I speak in parables. So listen to this. He says:

Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

And then look at verse 16. So there’s some who see and they don’t see, hear they don’t hear. Then look at verse 16. Jesus said:

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly I say, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and they didn’t see it. They longed to hear what you hear, and they did not hear it.

The parables reveal kingdom truth to receptive disciples, but they also confirm and expose blindness and rebellion of resistant hearts.

Same Word, Different Hearts

All the people hear the same story, and all the people before this and after they hear the same word. Every one of you is hearing the same word, and there’s a lot of different responses. And that’s what Jesus was teaching. Did you see that, verse 13? There’s some who, seeing, they don’t see, and hearing they don’t hear, nor do they understand. And the disciples, they see and they hear and they believe, and they’re blessed.

Two students can sit in the same room, hear the same Bible passage, and leave completely differently from each other. The difference is not the sound that reached their ear. I pray for you every time I stand up to speak. I pray that God’s word would go into your hearts, into a receptive place, and you would respond. And I look out, and there’s so many of you who are having different responses than that. And by God’s grace, there’s some of you who are responding with that soft, receptive heart. The difference is not the words, though. The difference is the kind of heart, the kind of ears that received that word.

Four Hearts, Not Four Soils

So then look at verse 18. Some of you already know what this parable is about. Jesus explained to the disciples:

Hear then the parable of the sower.

He’s going to explain it. This isn’t actually about soils. This is really a story not of four soils, but a story of four hearts. All of the hearts had the same word. They all had the same word, just like all of you hear the same word.

And that’s why I put me in there. It’s when I’m standing up here, when you’re in the service and you’re hearing from Smedly or one of the other pastors, or when you’re at home and your parents are opening God’s word up, or when you’re in discussion group and your leaders are talking to you, or even when you’re sharing God’s word with each other, or when you have God’s word open on your lap: seed is being sown.

Necessary, But Not Sufficient

And that seed sown is necessary, right? There’d be no hope for growth. There’d be no hope for plants, for a fruitful yield, if the seed hadn’t been sown. It’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Have you ever heard that phrase? Necessary, but not sufficient. Without God’s word, you’ll never produce fruit. But God’s word in and of itself, if your heart responds wrongly, it’s not sufficient. It is sufficient, but not if your heart is hard.

And that’s the next line. That’s what Jesus says. He goes, “Hear then the parable of the sower.” When anybody hears the words of the kingdom—or Luke said, when he teaches this, he just said the seed is the word of God. So the seed is God’s word.

The Hard Heart

But then verse 19:

When anybody hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path.

God’s word is sufficient. It is all that you need in this life. You don’t need anything else. God’s word is not deficient. But God’s word going into your ears doesn’t change you in and of itself without a response. You can hear God’s word and not be changed. You can’t be changed apart from God’s word. But just because you’re sitting here doesn’t mean that you are any better than those who don’t hear God’s word. You might actually be worse off, right? You might have a really hard heart.

I want you to think about it. That might be you. Some of you hearing right now, God’s word hits and it bounces off. You’ve made a practice for years, time after time after time: “Yep, I do this every Sunday. I go and I listen.” Or maybe I check out, and God’s word bounces off of me. Jesus called that not understanding.

Jesus doesn’t mean that the person here isn’t smart enough, right? Some of you might say, “God’s word is hard to understand.” That’s not what this is. This isn’t like, “Oh man, there’s something in God’s word that I really want to know, and I’m studying it hard to try to understand it, and I just don’t get it.” That’s okay. That’s okay. With this, understand: Jesus is saying this is somebody who hears God’s word and they don’t welcome it. They don’t believe it. They don’t submit to it because their heart is hard. The truth never sinks in. It never takes root, and Satan snatches it away.

Have you ever heard God’s word and gone away like it didn’t even change? Like nothing changed. You ever go to church on Sunday? Some of you, this is your experience. You come to church on Sunday, or you open up God’s word, and you go away and it made zero difference in your life. You’re not understanding it. That is not the way you’ve been meant to read God’s word. Instead, you’re to hear it and say, “God, I need you. Open my eyes. Open my ears so that your word will penetrate down into the soil of my heart and yield fruit.”

And some of you are content to sit here right now, and my words are bouncing off of you, and you don’t care. Being here tonight will not make any difference at all. God’s word is not deficient. The problem is not God’s word. The problem is your heart. Don’t stay there. Don’t be this one.

We had skipped this part in Matthew 13:14. Jesus, quoting Isaiah, describes the hard-hearted people, the people of Israel, some of them fulfilling this prophecy even there as the Son of God was standing and teaching. The one whose words, Jesus was there. His words, when he said, “Let light be,” it was at the beginning. His words are the words of truth, power. And there’s people who know who he is, that he’s the Messiah, and the words are bouncing off of them. That might be some of you. And listen to what the prophet said. He said:

You will indeed hear, but you’ll never understand. You’ll indeed see, but you’ll never perceive. This people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed.

They closed their ears. They closed their eyes. What’s the alternative? What would happen if they would just open their ears and open their eyes? What could happen to you if you would just say, “God, soften my heart. I’m tired of having this hard heart”? Even right now, if every other time you’ve ever listened to God’s word you’ve been hard, just pray right now in your heart, “God, I don’t want to be that anymore.” And look what the alternative is from Isaiah, and Jesus is quoting it. If they would only open their ears and their eyes:

Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.

Confess your sins, and he is faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. If you would just say, “God, open the eyes of my heart.” Pray the prayer that we teach you to pray. LUBOT. God, let me listen right now. Let me understand so I could believe, obey, and trust your words. This is what he would love to do: heal you, change you, forgive you, make you fruitful. This describes some of you.

The Shallow Heart

There’s another kind of heart that Jesus describes. This is the one in verses 20 and 21. Jesus said:

As for what is sown on the rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself. He endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arise on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

So some of you here, you say, “Hey, when I read God’s word I get excited. I have an outward joy.” That’s good. But is it a superficial one?

We learned at camp. Do you remember what we described in Psalm 1? At Psalm 1 at winter camp, it was one of our memory verses. The one who delights, the one who’s truly blessed, is the one who is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season. That one’s leaf doesn’t wither. In all he does, he prospers. Why is that the description of that righteous man? Do you remember what it said? It’s because he has deep roots. He delights in God’s word. He meditates on it day and night, and he trusts God’s word.

It’s not hard to just open up God’s word when things are going well, feel good about yourself, close it, and go on. But what about when struggles hit your life? When your friends make fun of you because you’re a Christian? Jesus says when tribulation or persecution arise on account of the word, that would be like a dust storm comes in, a haboob comes, and if this is all the topsoil you have, after that storm comes through, this will be just like the rocky ground. There will be no more soil left. He’ll be like the one that Psalm 1 says:

The wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away.

That soil might not look like a wicked person. This is somebody who reads God’s word, who hears it, and apparently has fruit, but they don’t have deep roots. Guys, this is why you have to actually delight in God’s word. Open up God’s word and say, “God, what would please you? Show me what would please you here. Make me the kind of person who loves you, who lives for you, who delights in your word, meditates on it both day and night, so that when it gets hard, when there’s trials, when there’s tribulations—and every one of you will face a hard point in your life—you persevere in faith.”

Right? It’s not hard to get excited, a camp high, when you’re coming off summer camp, right? Think about it. Summer camp. So many of you were thinking, “I’m going to live for Jesus. I’m going to be salt and light.” What happened? Did hard things hit your life and that blew away?

The Crowded Heart

Or maybe you’re like this next soil, where it was sown among thorns.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, choke out the word, and it proves unfruitful.

Mark, talking about Jesus’s parable here, said he added desire for other things. And Luke said the pleasures of life. Not bad things, right? Things in your life that might be like sports, friends, grades, work, entertainment, comfort, money, making plans for the future, things that maybe you even have to do, good things, in wrong proportion or not viewed rightly along God’s word. What do they do? They choke it out.

Is this what happened to you in God’s word over the summer? Think of maybe you’ve said, “Hey, I want to love God. I want to serve God.” And then life gets in the way.

The problem isn’t these things. It’s not the cares of this world. We have to live in the world. You’re going to have to grow up and get a job. Especially you guys, you’re going to have to be responsible. Think about how to be responsible. But that responsibility, that career, getting good grades, maybe finding a spouse, romantic attention, right? These are the kinds of things that can distract you and choke out the word. And this isn’t just that you’re not fruitful enough, but it actually over life will overtake the word and choke it out completely.

Jesus, or God, says in 1 John, he warns:

Do not love the world and the things in this world. Because if you love the world, the love of your Father isn’t in them.

If you were paying attention during communion this morning, Ben James, he read from Philippians 3:19. He described people whose god is their belly. Do you remember what it said? They set their mind on earthly things. It’s not that you can’t think about the things in this earth, but their mind is set on those things, not on the things above. And what’s the end of those people? Paul said in Philippians, their end is destruction.

The world will choke out the fruit. And with the dust, if you have the shallow, the tribulations of this world will blow it away like chaff. The seed falls on the hard soil. Satan plucks it away before it’s even done anything. All of these types of soil will perish.

All those who God saves, all those who are true disciples, will be fruitful. This isn’t a choice. This isn’t, “Well, maybe if I’m a super Christian, I’ll bear fruit.” No. If you are a Christian, you will bear fruit. The great thing is you don’t bear it. It’s God’s word planted into your heart, grown up through the power of the Holy Spirit, that will bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. And you’ll look back and you’ll say, “I didn’t do that. That was God in me.”

So let me ask you: if there’s anything in your life that occupies too much attention, uproot it. If your life is just a little bit of soil, you’re just living for God superficially, but there’s no depth, take a jackhammer to that and break up those rocks. All that much more if you are hard-hearted.

The Fruitful Heart

Jesus says, as for what was sown on good soil, this is the fruitful heart. Verse 23:

As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it and bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, another sixty, and another thirty.

• The hard heart never receives the word.
• The shallow heart doesn’t endure in the word.
• The crowded heart never bears fruit from the word.
• The fruitful heart receives, endures, and bears fruit.

How Are You Going to Hear?

So, how are you going to hear? How are you going to hear? Let me ask you: What happens in your heart when God speaks? What happens in your heart when God speaks?

Don’t sit back and say, “Well, I guess I’m just a hard soil. That’s my lot in life.” That’s not what Jesus taught this. He’s not saying, “Hey, look at your life and just discern what kind of soil you are, because that’s how your life’s going to go.” This is how your life’s going to go: if God’s word gets choked out, life will not go well for you. You can’t love God and this world. If you’re superficial, you won’t endure to the end. If your faith doesn’t go deep, you won’t endure. And if you’re hard-hearted, your end is destruction.

But Jesus didn’t tell this parable so you just sit back and say, “Well, I guess that’s who I am.” But because if you are hearing my words, if you’re hearing Jesus’s words, it’s not too late to repent, to turn.

And you know what? Every day, even if you look at your life and you say, “God, by your grace, I see fruit. I see a depth of roots going down deep. I delight in your word,” be diligent to cultivate good soil.

Cultivate Good Soil

You’ve probably seen that if you’ve gardened for any amount of time. If you don’t keep watch on that garden, weeds are going to come in. A haboob’s going to come through and blow that out. You say every single day—this is what God means when he says, “Guard your heart.” Every day when you open up God’s word, we pray. This is, we’re going to go over this next week, but that LUBOT that we pray all the time. You say, “God, I can’t keep my heart right on my own. I need you.” So we open up God’s word and we say, “God, make me listen to it. Make me one who listens attentively so that I can understand your word.”

And the reason why we make this acronym so easy for you to remember: I need it. You need it. It’s so that you can just, every time you open up God’s word, you’re like, “God, I need you to keep my heart right. I’m going to hear your word right now. So God, make me listen. Make me understand it. And then please let me believe it. Don’t let this be a superficial fake faith. Let me obey it and persevere. God, let me trust you and delight in you so that the cares of this world don’t choke it out.”

Discussion Groups

So let’s go to discussion groups. I want you to talk together for a few minutes about what kind of soil you are and what you can do to cultivate a fruitful soil.