One day Jesus was telling a story and he was talking to a group of people and he said there's a farmer who went out to his field to begin sewing his seeds. This was a typical agricultural practice in the first century and as he went he scattered the seed everywhere. And some of the seeds they fell along the path. You know if any of you all grew up with a garden or a barn or farm, you know there's places that you walk so you don't mess anything else up.
Some of the seed that he threw ended up on the path and some of the seed that he threw ended up on top of the soil but the soil is shallow. Part like the geological features of Palestine is that there's a layer of limestone bedrock. Some of the seeds fell in that soil. Some of the seed fell in soil that had already been inundated with other seeds of different plants.
And then some of the seed fell on really good soil. Now the seed that fell on the path that was already there in the fields, the birds ended up getting that eating that so it wasn't able to flourish. The seed that fell on the shallow soil that was over the limestone, it took root really really quickly because the soil was so warm. But because the roots could never catch, they kind of burned out and those plants never really flourished either.
The seeds that fell on the soil that had been already inundated with other seeds like weeds and things like that, they grew together pretty well until the weeds began to overtake them and it choked those plants out. But some of the seeds fell on good soil and that seed returned a yield that was 30 times or 60 times or even 100 times what was originally planted. At the end of this story, this verse Matthew 13-9 is what Jesus said. This is when we talk about this one but this is what it ended up saying.
He who has ears let him hear. Now this was a parable. In fact this was the first parable in the Gospel of Matthew and parables were this typical way that Jesus chose to teach parables. We're about causing people to think parables.
They really were stories of comparison asking us to kind of see and to think and to look and to examine our world in a different way. Parables were the preferred way that Jesus chose to talk about God's values and who God is and what God's kingdom is like. But we're not talking about parables today. A few summers ago we did a whole series on the parables.
You can go back and found your cast and you can find those if you're curious. But what we're talking about today is this. What happens when we feel like we're not hearing from God or we're not seeing from God? That verse that Jesus said that's a statement that really goes across scripture in many ways in Old Testament, the New Testament, the Revelation that he who has ears to hear let him hear.
So then what does that mean when we're not hearing or seeing from God? The question that Jesus is really asking this morning is this one. What are you doing with what you know? What are you doing with what you know?
So Matthew 13 9 which we just read 9 through 17 is really we're going to kind of find ourselves this morning. But listen to these words that Matthew tells us. He who has ears let him hear. And then disciples came and said to him, why do you speak to them and parables?
And he answered them to you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. But to them is not 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. And this is why I speak to them in parables because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear nor do they understand.
Indeed in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. It says you will indeed hear but never understand and you will indeed see but not perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull and with their eyes they can barely hear and their ears they have closed. Unless they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.
But blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. For truly I say to you many prophets and righteous people along to see what you see and did not see it. And to hear what you hear and did not hear it. So what are you doing with what you know?
Kind of this is the key verse that we really see Jesus just imploring upon the disciples. These last few weeks we've been talking about stories we find in the gospel of Matthew. And what's unique about all these stories is these are not the things that Jesus told the masses or the crowd. These are the ways that Jesus was teaching his inner circle.
The people that he knew understood it that were following him and that were trying to make an impact alongside of him. He says this to his disciples in verse 11 to you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. That we have been given this. This is a gift.
This is a treasure gift that is ours. This is about the generosity of God. This is something that's been given to us that is special. That we are given something that's been transferred to us.
This is the language of inheritance. The circuit pliers that the kids were messing around with. Those were my grandfathers in Texas. He was a diesel mechanic and I always made a joke about what's this weird tool going on right now until I broke off a spark plug in a motorcycle one time.
I had no idea what this tool was supposed to be used for, but I realized when I squeezed the handles it opened up and it created tension. And this is not what those tools were supposed to be for, but I managed to back out that spark plug. Later on years ago, these are circuit pliers. I'm glad I have a circle.
They've been given to you. They're yours. And sometimes it seems that you don't know what it is. You don't know what it does.
You don't know how it matters. But you're really glad you have it when you need it. You have been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, the secrets. This is a mystery.
Mysteries transcend our normal understanding. We might get frustrated if we don't hear or see from God because we might not be understanding what's going on. There's a question. What are you doing with what you know?
This is not something that's going to be easy for us to understand or be for us to understand fully. Probably not. To you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. We're talking about this in a few weeks.
We're going to take a few Sundays just to talk about what is this kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven that Jesus talks about. But a short and simple way is that God has come to our earth and turned everything upside down. To you has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. So when we ask ourselves that question, what are we doing with what we know?
It begins to formulate some different thoughts in our mind as we might be frustrated. We're not hearing. We're not seeing things in the way that we want to. We begin to realize there's a little bit of responsibility to ourselves inside of that because our ability to experience the kingdom of God is both the gift of our salvation.
But it's also an experience of the Holy Spirit. It's something that's engaged and involved and takes both God and us to do this. God is willfully focused on us experiencing him. And he's given us the ability to do that through Jesus Christ.
So you can see that question. So what if this is not happening? What's going on? If this is not happening?
We might have anger, we might have frustration. What's going on? I'm hearing or seeing from God. In verse 15 Jesus talks to us and he's showing a prophecy from Isaiah.
Words that disciples have been familiar with. But in verse 15 he says this, These people's hearts have grown dull and with their eyes they can barely hear and their eyes they have closed. Older translations say their hearts have hardened. If you're familiar with the story of Moses and Pharaoh and Exodus and Moses is back and forth multiple times with Pharaoh.
We read in scripture that Pharaoh's heart had been hardened. And our hearts hardened as gradual. And our hearts hardened because of ourselves. It's our own neglect.
And we see this in Old Testament that our insensitivity to the Word of God, I mean God has said in the beginning of John said the Word became flesh made his home among us. God's word. That's speech. That God's voice is a powerful thing all across scripture.
When our hearts begin to grow dull. And I like that more because it really illustrates how we're involved in this process. That we sometimes develop a gradual insensitivity to the Word of God. And what we can say is that we've become callous.
Our heart has become callous to the activity of God. And it's become callous in such a way that his spirit can't penetrate our heart. A lot of times what this means is we've taken the gifts of Jesus that he has given us, that mystery. And we've taken it for granted.
We've not realized this is a push and pull. This is about us and God working together inside of this. We get frustrated because we feel like he's not doing enough. And if we self reflect on it though, what we find out is that we've not been doing enough to even be aware of this or grow what's going on.
The people of Israel, Isaiah's prophecy and what Jesus is coming into right now. The people of Israel have gotten to the point to where God had to tell them, listen, you can't handle who I am. And you can't handle what I say. You've not built up in an environment to be experiencing.
Your heart has grown callous. So I'm not going to reveal things to you any longer. Because you've not listened, you've not with your life and with your witness, you have shown that this doesn't matter too much. And if you think that you can live life without me, well, you get a taste of what life is like without me.
It's just running thread and the Old Testament of the way that Israel falls from God. This is also part of some of the running thread of the New Testament of the way that Paul writes in his letters and that Peter writes. It's this loss of spiritual recognition that we can sometimes about. When we lose that spiritual recognition, we begin to not have eyes to see and we begin to not have ears to hear.
So what are we doing with what we know? And we responded to what God has shown to us already in such a way that will cause him to do more for us. Or we were responding in such a way where God's like, you know, you really don't like the first part I've given you. So I'm not going to give you the second part of it.
It's kind of tough when we read that in Scripture. It makes us think about ourselves a little bit. Like nobody likes self-reflection. Like who here enjoys like realizing what they've done wrong.
That's not the fun bus that we like to be riding on. In verse 17, when Jesus says, we've been given the mystery. It's the complete ministry, the Kingdom of God. Jesus says this in verse 17.
For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people long to see what you see and did not see it. And to hear what you hear and did not hear it. This is where I think we begin to find out what the softening of our heart means. Whereas what's important to us.
We jump ahead and the first Peter, a letter that was written by one of Jesus' disciples decades after this. But this is what Peter says in 10, 12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be your searched and inquired carefully. Inquiring what person or time the Spirit in Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
And it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. And the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things into which the angels long to look. So both what Jesus is showing to us and Matthew and what Peter says decades later, they're talking about these holy people of renown.
The prophets of the Old Testament, they were familiar with their names, Isaiah, we read from earlier Ezekiel, Jeremiah, all these names we can't pronounce. That we have more knowledge of this mystery and more knowledge of who God is than they did. They didn't experience the graciousness of Jesus Christ. That what we have because of Jesus, what he has given us, that we know him better than the people in this book that we carry around.
Because we experienced graciousness, we experienced salvation. Think about this. You know Jesus better than the angels do. Because we've experienced graciousness.
We've experienced this mystery. In fact, we're living this mystery of God's kingdom here on this earth. And I love this verse and what it says in 1 Peter when it talks about the fact that they were not doing this for themselves, they were doing this for you. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you think about this.
They're having these amazing monumental huge experiences with God or following him or speaking his words or speaking his truth and they realize it was not for their own benefit. It was for the benefit of the people who would live after them. That we are the recipients of the faithfulness of the past. That their faithfulness has created the best possible environment for us to thrive.
This parable of the farmer sowing his seed that the prophets, the people in the Old Testament, people who have gone before us, those father figures and those mother figures, those spiritual leaders that have impacted us. Somebody, every single person in this room, remember the first person who told them about Jesus. All of those people created that fertile ground for us. And God enables that yield to grow 30 times, 60 times, 100 times the original amount.
The average, that parable that Jesus told quickly, the average yield in the Middle East in the first century with that method of agriculture. I'm going to be a people who farm and hear and they understand what yield counts are like. The average yield at that point in time was a five time return. You would yield five times the seed that you were given.
So this parable saying that the minimum yield you're going to have is 30 times is an unbelievable amount of just benefit and of change that's happening in their lives. It's people who've gone before us. Their faithfulness created the environment for our faithfulness to respond to who God is. So we ask that question, what am I doing with what I know that we're not doing that in isolation?
We're doing that with the people who we are here with, not serving themselves but serving us who live now that our hearts. The only thing that God asked for us is for us to give him our heart and the degree that we are willing to give our heart to him will show us the degree of what he's able to do for us. It's responsible for that environment. If we're asking, we need to see you and we need to hear you.
There's a big deal of, okay, what can you handle right now? What can you be responsible with? What can you be faithful with? What have you been responsible with in the past?
And what have you been faithful with in the past? How am I calling you to grow right now? We have access to every single thing we need to fully experience the presence of God in our lives. We are the seeds that fell under the good soil and that took.
And what we might not see sufficient in our lives is simply because we are not listening and asking to that degree in those places. All we're responsible for is giving God our hearts and honoring him with our hearts and our holiness. So what are we doing with what we know? Or maybe what the question is at this point in time now is for us to say, what makes us open our eyes to God and open our ears to God?
And what are the things that make us close our eyes to God and close our ears to God? We should never underestimate the power of intention in our lives. Our life with Jesus assumes our engagement with the Holy Spirit in his presence. So what do we do?
And this is where things are actually going to get a little bit simpler today. Because I'm just going to share with you a couple of things I have learned about this. What does it mean? What have I learned in these last few months that are helpful to maintaining ears to hear what God is doing?
The first thing I've learned is whenever we begin to doubt, whenever we begin to struggle, whenever we begin to ask that question, well, really where have you been? How many of y'all have gotten in those cruddy angry moments with God and you begin questioning a lot of things? I'm going to raise both hands right now. I know what that feels like.
So let me tell you something I started doing. I started doing this a few months ago. A couple of weeks ago I shared a story of the things I learned already this spring. If you weren't here for that or we don't know each other well, I had a pretty gnarly health concern a few months ago and almost died one night.
It's been a month to home resting and creating after that. But the first Sunday I was home. I remember waking up and it was really weird because I don't have to go to church this Sunday morning and I'm nervous. And Ben Nicholson was speaking that morning.
I remember I woke up with the words sufficient on my mind. And so I text Meredith, my wife, I text Brooke, our executive director, and I text Ben. And I said thank you so much for taking care of everything. I'm not worried because you are there.
Because I felt God was telling me I'm completely sufficient for whatever is needed. This day and every day. So I started keeping this. This sounds really simple, but it's been huge in my life.
I just kind of went off for this to you as well. I keep a note card now in my main Bible where I just list all the ways God's been faithful to me in the past. And I add to that and I kind of think about it and reflect on it. Every morning I kind of go through that note card.
And it's just whenever you feel like things are not happening for you, whenever you begin to remember all the things that have happened right, it puts things in perspective. I mean just making a note of the ways God has been faithful to you in the past. Because I've had multiple things happen in my life where I realize I cannot deny the power and the existence and the presence of God around me. And I've just started writing those down to remember them.
And not for the when times are good, but for when times are bad. So in ways that we can begin hearing and seeing more from God, it's just remembering where he has been for us in the past. The second thing is this, it's been time in scripture. And this is what I'll tell you earlier this year, a lot of you took it.
I asked a couple of simple questions. It took a survey about what stops people from reading the Bible and outside of time. That was the biggest one. The second thing that stops people from reading scripture is they say, I don't know what to do.
I don't know where to start. Here's the thing, there's no magic. There's not a magic plan. There's not a magic book.
There's not this limited edition version of Jesus calling that you're going to find a book, some million one day. That's going to solve all of your problems. That God honors us just placing ourselves in scripture. God honors us just saying, you know what, I'm going to come to you regularly.
And I don't, no matter what, I know I can hear from you and see from you. I might be reading the most boring or the most confusing thing, but I know that you're going to honor my heart and where my heart is with you. Just begin, just slowly placing yourself in scripture every morning. Now, a couple of things I've learned that it can stop us.
If we look at the heartening of our hearts really, I like that when your hearts have grown dull, what makes things get dull, a couple of things just to be aware of. The first one is neglecting scripture in prayer. Like if someone says, I don't really feel like I'm hearing from him. The first question I'm going to ask is, well, what have you done to hear from him?
You all remember, this is going to date some of us before cell phones. You remember when you got that first boyfriend or girlfriend in middle school, and you want to call it, you want them to call you on the phone. And you kind of sat there, and there's like one phone in the house to get to make sure that you were like, wherever that phone was. You're like, hey, I'm going to hear from this person and when this person calls me, I'm going to be ready to grab this phone so my dad doesn't get it first because he's going to embarrass me.
When we neglect scripture and prayer, our heart will begin to grow dull because we're not positioning ourselves saying, God, I'm expecting to hear from you right now. And I realize this might be confusing, this might be boring. I might not know what on earth to do, but I know that you're going to honor my heart and me being here. The second thing that can dull us is not being around other people seeking God.
This life was never designed to be done alone. And if we try to do this by ourselves in a silo, we're going to grow dull. You know, to sharpen something that has to go and get something else, scripture says iron sharpens iron. We have to be in relationship with other people to do this.
Earlier this year, some of you all were at this and others you all knew about it, but we had a town hall meeting here at the church, we had a couple of them in two weeks. We had our student ministry and our design and vision for that. And the next week we had one for our adult discipleship and we've kind of gone through the first stage of that this year at Foundry. But we're at the point now where we can jump into the second stage of that and we realize that life is busy.
The thing that keeps us so often from doing this is time and that when we place constrictions around things, it becomes difficult. And so it went live yesterday, but if you go to we're foundry.com slash groups, there will be links and emails and online and social this week for this. We have the first step of this second phase is something called so you want to start a group that you might be saying, God, you know what I feel called to gather some folks around me right now. And to begin just seeking God together and we got the stuff to resource you with everything that you need for those first few phases and stuff in line and able to resource you as a leader.
You can go to we're foundry.com slash groups and you can sign up to be a group leader or you might be saying, you know what Chad, I desperately need this right now, but I in no way shape or possible feel like I should be a group leader. If God's impressing that upon your heart. Well, ask me for it. Why don't you step off and say, I'll be a group leader because it's not about teaching.
This is about being. This is about relationships. This is about growing together. And if that's you there's two different kinds of people in the room right now.
The ones who know they want to do it. They want to say, I absolutely don't want to do it, but I need it. I'm going to tell both of you the exact same thing to go there. We are foundry.com slash groups and sign up for that.
Because you know you need it and others know that they need it as well. But that that second thing that can dull us is just us not being around other people seeking God. We weren't designed to do this by ourselves. Let's pray together.
Let's pray together against dullness. But we realize that inadvertently that we will come and contact with things that have the ability for us to not hear you as well. Or we know that in spite of that, that in your graciousness and your generosity and your love and your care for us, God that something that once was dull can be made sharp. And Father, we realize that we've been planted in specific places to do your work.
Or that our faithfulness is the result of previous generations faithfulness. God, that our faithfulness is the result of an unending line that goes back thousands of years of people who are being faithful to you. God, we also realize that our current present faithfulness is the faithfulness that will impact the people who are after us. And God, we realize that you're entirely sufficient for us.