It's a Soil Problem

Amen. Amen. All right. You can have a seat.

You can turn in your Bibles to Matthew 13. Matthew 13. If this is your first time at every day, we're glad you're here. We, over the last couple of weeks, we have started a endeavor as a community to dive into the kingdom of God.

We have this desire in this prayer as a community that we would experience the kingdom, that the Lord would show us the kingdom, that we would be ones that get the kingdom, that know his kingdom, that we would understand his rule and his reign and what that looks like in our lives personally, but also in our city. And we feel a sobriety around this invitation that he's given to us as a community. Okay. So as we've, as we've been looking at this and preparing our hearts for what he has, it's honestly been a three weeks of preparation.

That's right how I describe it. And if you haven't been here for the last three weeks, I would encourage you to actually go back and catch up. If you're going to continue to be at every day, I would encourage you to catch up to where we're at and actually listen to the last three weeks of messages, because I really believe that God is preparing us as a people to receive what he wants for us to get and embrace in this season. And it is, I, we don't really care if you show up on Sundays or not.

I mean, we love you. And we, but we don't really care about like butts and seats is what we'd say. You know, it's like, we don't care if the, the church building is full or not, what we're actually passionate about as a whole community is us experiencing the kingdom of heaven. We don't want to just play church.

We don't want to just have church services that are, it's got some good worship and sometimes it's a good message. And you know, like we don't, that's not what we're going after. We're not going after church growth. We actually would prefer not to have, you know, like a mega church or something like that.

Like that would be great to not have something like that, because it makes things complicated. I don't want that, you know. So I want to be clear. We don't really have a horse in the race on you being here, but I believe that the Lord wants to lead us into encountering him in a really significant way in this next season.

And I don't want you to miss it. So it's like, we don't need you, but man, we love you. And we want you to have everything that you're supposed to experience in God. I want you to be here to experience it.

And so I want to encourage you, don't miss Sundays in this season. Don't miss awakening services in this season because I believe he's doing something. In our midst that Jesus is actually, he's working something out in us as a people, as a corporate people and as individuals. And so you don't want to miss it.

Okay. So don't be like the normal American Christian that shows up to church once a month. All right. Just the stats.

Yeah, that's just the stats. I think I don't know if there's any other context that I want to give on that, but we're going to go. Okay. Matthew 13 is all about the Kingdom of Heaven.

But before Jesus starts talking about the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, he begins to talk about how we receive his words. We've been talking about Shama, we've been talking about listening and obeying. We've been talking about really walking in the fear of the Lord in sobriety before God and actually taking his word and having like a wadiness on it to go, I don't want to just take your word as a suggestion. I actually want to be a responsive ride.

I want to be a responsive person to your leadership. And when I signed up to follow Jesus, I didn't sign up to follow a Savior. I signed up to follow a Lord. And so I love that he's a Savior, but he saved me into being a follower that submits to him as Lord.

Okay. So that's what we signed up for when we said yes to Jesus. We didn't sign up for an add-on. We didn't sign up for him to be integrated into our lives.

We signed up to be integrated into his life, right? We abide in him. He doesn't abide in us. And so he is Lord.

And that's what it looks like to follow Jesus. So it's not, it's maybe not the gospel that we signed up for originally. So maybe some of us have to actually make a decision to surrender every part of ourselves to him and go, man, I signed up for a gospel that was all about me getting what I want. And now I'm realizing that's not what following Jesus is about.

Following Jesus is about him getting everything that he's worthy of because he died for me and he created me and he's a creator. So I'm just a son. I'm just, he's the father. I'm a servant.

He's the master. I'm the bride. I belong to a groom. I'm not my own.

I was purchased at a price. And so I'm not mine. And that includes every part of my life. That includes my sexuality.

That includes my pocketbook. That includes my thought life. That includes my family, my relationships, every part of me. And that's why a couple weeks ago we were going, Lord, I present my members.

I present my body to you. And I offer this part of my body that's actually been in rebellion to you. I give you this part of me, right? All it is, all it is is is the gospel.

That's all that we've been talking about. Like, when you just break it down, so you've been talking about Jesus in the gospel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got it.

So we're going to go after Matthew 13 because Matthew 13, Jesus is telling a parable to prepare his disciples to hear about the kingdom of God. And he's basically telling them, hey, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to hear these parables. But the question is, how are they going to respond? That's what we've been actually going after.

How are we going to respond to him talking about the kingdom? This is probably the final intro to the kingdom of God. Maybe. I don't know.

We'll see. All right. The parable of the sower. Let's read it.

Matthew 13. That same day, Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach, and he told them many things in parables saying a sower went out to sow.

And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path and the birds came into power them. The other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil. And immediately they spring up and since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose, they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away.

Verse 7, other seeds fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them. And other seeds fell on good soil and produced grains some 100-fold, some 60-some, 30. He was ears. Let him hear.

Now let's look at verse 18. Here then the parable of the sower. So his disciples are going, hey, what does this mean? Verse 19, when anyone hears the word, so this is Jesus commentary on the parable that he has shared.

Verse 19, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom, it does not understand it. The evil one comes and snatches what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.

He has no root in himself. But in two words for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world, and the deception of riches chokes the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.

He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case, a hundred fold, in another sixty, and in another thirty. Jesus is telling this parable, and we see right with what we just read, that God is the sower, right? So God's the sower. Everybody say God's the sower, and he's got some seed.

So God's got a lot of seeds, and what are seed seeds are the word of God? So when we say word of God, then everybody's brain is shut off, and they go, oh, the Bible. That's what you all did. The word of God, oh, the Bible.

That's what you said internally. I heard you. I heard it all throughout the room, and I don't know. There's like mind reading that just happened.

The word of God, I just have to break down the word of God. Yes, it's the scriptures, but it is when we talk about words, what are words? They're ideas that are communicated. They're truths or directives, opinions that are communicated, right?

So when we're talking about words, we're talking about, yes, we're talking about the scriptures, but we're also talking about the Lord going, and telling us to do something. We're also talking about God speaks something in a profound way through a brother or sister, through the body, because the Holy Spirit is inside of them, and it actually aligns with Scripture, and it's even like corrective, and it's sharpening iron. And the Lord is communicating his ideas, his thoughts, his opinions, his corrections, his discipline to us, through somebody else, through the scriptures, through hearing in our conscience by the Holy Spirit, prophetically, and he is sharing his ideas, and those are the seeds of the word of God. Now, for all of you, Baptist, and people that come from my background, you're going, no, it's just the scriptures.

I heard you say that too, okay? The word of God, Jesus is the word of God. So it's like his character, what he's like, who he is, all of his thoughts, those are his word, like he is the word, and he communicates himself. He reveals himself, okay?

So it's like he's sharing things all the time. Is there a shortage on seeds? Is there a seed problem? No.

Is there a sower problem? No, because he's the sower, right? So what's the problem? The soil, the soil is the problem.

So you're telling me that there's, oh man, you're telling me that I'm not waiting for God to send a hundred x kingdom fruitfulness. You mean I'm not waiting? So sassy. Yeah.

I never put my hands like a circle. I always have a mic in my hand, and I don't like it. Yeah. It feels really weird.

It did not feel like me. The totapping too. I've never done that, maybe ever. But listen, we think that we're waiting on God for the kingdom.

We think that we're waiting for God to descend into this room, and maybe we could have a guest speaker that's really anointed, so you could line up and he could put his finger on your forehead, and you could fall over. Then the kingdom is going to come. And then when I see the parable, I just see, there's crazy potential that he's talking about. I mean, if you invest 100 fold, can you believe this?

Some of you like Roth IRA, ETF people, you know, you're like stock crypto, meme coins. This is probably, meme coins are the only way you're going to get 100 x. I'll tell you that right now. It's the only way.

Do not do that, but it's the only way that you're going to see those types of returns. 100 x means you give you so a thousand dollars and you get a hundred thousand dollars. That's really that's math. Did you see that?

I am a pastor and I can do simple math. And it's pretty great. So listen, that's that's amazing returns. But it seems as if he's done all and he's continuing to do all the work that's necessary on his end.

And the only thing that's holding the kingdom back and fruitfulness that's 30, 60 or 100 x is actually what type of soil? It's not even it's not a watering issue. It's not like a sunshine issue. It all comes down to our hearts and how we respond to his words hitting our hearts.

That is upsetting to me because then I hear stories around the world of 30, 60, 100 fold. And I'm feeling jealous. I'm feeling honestly, I am provoked to jealousy by everything that God is doing through our brothers and sisters around the world and the fruitfulness. And I'm not just talking about salvation.

I'm talking about Jesus being formed in us as the church and us being shaped and molded by him. So what's standing in the way is just a bunch of bad soil. So we got a lot of bad soil in the room. I'll tell you that right now.

Just got in bad soil. You want to know how I know that? Because I don't know any 60 fold or 100 fold believers. And I know some of you.

I love I like I know all the deacons here and I can't think of one that's 100 fold. But I love them all. Right? And when I look at my life, I don't see.

I don't know. I don't think I see 36, 36 fold. Not 30, not 60, not even 36. Okay.

So what's the problem? It's a soil problem. It's my soul. It's how I'm responding to him as my Lord.

Okay. So let's look at the bad soils and then we can respond rightly so that we can endeavor to get some good soil. All right. Is that okay?

Now I want you to listen. I was working with this. I want you to kind of do an audit of like, man, what kind of soil do I got? Okay.

So this is not listening for your spouse. Okay. It's like, oh, she's for sure. It's with thorny.

She's got, oh, yeah, my coworker, path for sure, path. Like we're not doing that right now. Okay. So you're not thinking about the speck in your brother or sister's eye.

You're thinking about the log in your own eye. Okay. All right. Are we ready?

All right. Matthew 13, 3, 3, 4 is talking about the path. Talking about the soil that has been hardened, the soil that's been trampled on, the soil that's been walked on. And when we look at parables, what we have to do is we have to know how our rabbi teaches.

We're going to do this in the next couple of months. Every single parable that Jesus is sharing, he's actually hiding little hints and treasures in those parables for us to discover. I want you to listen to this. The apostle Paul does this too when he's writing.

What they do as they teach, because they're so brilliant, is they will hide little treasures or hints about an Old Testament passage that will give greater understanding to what they're talking about. Okay. So that's called a Rames. Everybody say Rames.

Rames is your like treasure hunt hint. Okay. And so what Jesus does is he'll say a phrase. And the way that you find Rames is just being curious and going, I wonder if that shows up in the Old Testament and just like googling some of the phrases and going 100 fold in the Old Testament.

And it will bring you to a story and there's only 30 fold doesn't exist, 60 fold doesn't exist, 100 fold does exist and it exists in Genesis 26 where Isaac, what a guy. He tells this king that his wife is his sister and it goes sideways, so embarrassing. But at the end of the story, he still obeys God and is faithful. Even after he experienced embarrassment, he still obeyed God to stay in the land.

And then God in one year gave him 100 fold increase for his crops. And he became very rich. It says in one year, he got 100 fold in one year. And it was all just because he said I was going to obey.

So that is a Rames. So Jesus dropped the phrase 100 fold and then I here in 2025 go, huh, I wonder what if that's in the Old Testament. And then I search in the Old Testament, find it. And it's actually connecting to the meaning of the passage.

Okay. So that's how Jesus talks. That's how he teaches. Okay.

So turn in your Bibles to Hosea 10. And sometimes we kind of just, we don't know. But we're curious. And so what I think is that Hosea 10 is actually got the the Rames for the path.

So the first thing I want to do is just articulate, okay, what are the features or the symptoms of the soil that's like the path. Okay. So what happens? And I want you to think about like, is this what I'm like?

Jesus is describing the path. And usually people that have a soil like this, they become a callist, okay, because they've experienced pain and they've been trampled on by their circumstances or by people. And so what they do is they become resentful and bitter and they have unforgiveness in their heart. So then when the word tries to get dropped and sewn, their soil rejects it because really their soil is in self-defense mode.

And so no matter if it's a person trying to love them or God trying to love them, they are in defense mode with their arms kind of stiff-arming. Okay. That's going to result in no fruitfulness. If you have like no inputs from God, it's going to be really difficult to hear God's voice if you got resentment.

You're going to be like, man, why can't I hear God? And it's like, well, you've been holding onto this thing and it's protecting you, but in all the wrong ways and it's not good for your soul. Okay. So that's what oftentimes the path soil or the path soul, they'll be in self-defense mode.

And then Jesus starts talking about what does he talk about the birds? Everybody say not the birds. Not the birds. The birds are the enemy.

They are the demonic. You want to know the best way for the enemy to get invited into your life to choose not to forgive somebody? Oh man. You want to know how to give access to the enemy in your life is to have resentment and bitterness.

And then what God soars the word and the enemy just has full access to snatch it right away. He soars truth. He's so is love. Snaps.

He's so is compassion snatched up. Okay. Jose attend. Oh wow.

I lost my place in Jose attend. Jose attend verse 12. So for yourselves, righteousness, reap steadfast love. Break up your path ground or your hardened soil, your follow ground.

Break it up. For it's time to seek the Lord that he may come and reign righteousness upon you. That word righteousness in Hebrew is actually deliverance. Freedom.

That he may come and reign freedom and set you free from the enemy. Some of us are experiencing oppression. Some of us are experiencing demonic attack. Some of us are experiencing demonic accusation that is stealing the word of God from you.

Where you hear God, but then immediately you have an internal voice that internally says no. And it might be demonic and it might not. It might just be the no. I'm not worthy of love.

It might be the no. I'm not beautiful. No, I'm not handsome. No, I'm not desire.

No, I don't have worth. Whatever it is, you've been trampled and birds want to steal the seed and accusation wants to steal the seed. And Jesus is going, I want you to break up the follow ground. That's what he's getting at.

He's going, I want you to break that soil up. And so the remedy that Jesus gives us is right in this verse. He says, seek the Lord. You're like, well, man, I would think that he would say something like, receive God's hugs and compassion.

But I think what Jesus strategy is, I think his strategy is to allow him to come into those places of pain. And so what you have to do is just break up that callousness. And the way that you do that is you just decide, God, I'm going to seek you within the context of my pain. Listen to me.

Some of us have callousness on your heart. And I need you to lean in right now. You might be getting tired and I want you to know the birds want you to get tired. So stir yourself up, just like move around a little bit.

There's 30-fold potential here. There's the kingdom is at hand. The kingdom is near. The kingdom is here.

Don't get sleepy on me. Listen, this is like life and death stuff. This is demons wanting to kill you and steal from you and destroy your life. If you got an enemy like that, we got to lean in a little bit.

I know, I'm teaching, I'm not, I had to preach a little bit. It's kind of like, okay, we're okay. But listen, if you seek him in that place of pain, you experienced abuse. Now you're going to respond, instead of going, I'm not going there, I'm not going there.

We're not going to go there. That's communicating. I don't want you to bring freedom in this area. I don't want you to bring healing in this area.

I don't want you to touch this area. But instead, what you're going to do is you're going to seek the Lord in that space within that context. You go, Lord, this has caused pain in me. This is making me stiff-arm everybody around me and you.

And I want to seek you in that context. And I want to find you in that place of pain. Because guess what he's going to do? He's going to take that place of pain that used to be a path.

And then he's going to implant his seeds in the very place that there was callousness. And then that's going to be the place of a hundredfold return. That's going to be the place where restoration is brought. And then that restoration gets multiplied.

That restoration starts spreading through you. So what the enemy meant for evil now starts turning for good. Not even just for you, but all this. You guys, it's like Joseph, guy of many, you know, code of many colors gets trampled on by his brothers, gets trampled on by Potiphar's wife, gets trampled on by being a prisoner, gets forgotten about.

Guess what? Genesis 50. There he is. He didn't allow it to rule his life.

He didn't allow the birds to steal the seed. He remained faithful to God. And then he forgave his brothers. And guess what happened?

It didn't just benefit him. It just didn't, it didn't just result in benefiting him and being a hundredfold for him. The hundredfold was for the world. The hundredfold fed every single nation around Egypt through one man.

Obein God. Let's go. Wow. There is so much potential for those of you with hearts that are like the path.

He specializes in path soil, really good with path soil. Really good. He's good at it. He can help you.

All right. Rocky soil. Everybody go, uh oh. Rocky soil.

Man, this is when a person receives what God is saying. Very agreeable. He just loves, loves the word. Loves when God speaks, right?

Loves when they listen to the podcast, loves the preacher, loves when the preacher preaches good. Kind of gets tired when he doesn't preach good, but he loves it, loves the good preaching, right? Rocky soil. Loves being around people that know the word.

Loves being in community. But then when 2020 happens, everything is up for grabs around the character of God. Then when you lose your job, you're still just, you're like, man, I saw God was good, though. Now all of a sudden your circumstance, this is the person with a rocky heart, your circumstance has the ability to put the character and the knowledge of God on trial.

The Rocky soil puts God into the stand and takes the seat of judge when things get tough and when obedience actually costs something, when it's not convenient, when it costs reputation, the Rocky soil struggles with the praise of man and the rejection of man. Really love the praise of man. I'm sorry for any sound issues. Really love the praise of man.

But when that rejection of man hits, that's hard. And they just get sidelined. It might be sidelined for a couple of days. It might be sidelined for months.

But when the word and actually walking in obedience is required, the Rocky soil has a lot of trouble. And the reason why is this? Because they were taking everybody's word for it. Everybody around them had amazing faith.

Everybody around them had history in God. Everybody around them actually dug wells and tapped into a personal connection with God. But the person with Rocky soil, if you ask them like, hey, have you, I don't know, been in the Bible yourself, have you built a history in the Word of God? Do you have a history with God where when you read the Word and when you talk to somebody was, well, man, this sounds so judgy and it's not judgy at all.

I'm just naming a soil. If you've been a Christian for more than a year and you've been following God for more than a year, and you haven't connected with God personally, and you would feel really uncomfortable to pray out loud. It speaks of Rocky soil. Because what that means is you haven't built a history in God to actually have confidence in your relationship that there isn't a lot going on here.

And that feels almost, some of you might go, well, that's like a personality. I just don't, that feels like private. And I just want you to know that when you get in private with God, it shifts and changes things about who you are, that all you care about is I just want God. And I don't care what people think about me.

So if I don't pray a good prayer, it actually doesn't even matter because I just love God and He's changing who I am. So like we build history with God, we read the Bible and then we pray the Bible and we talk to God and it's a constant, we are like connecting with Him. And then every single time things happen, our circumstances happen, those things that we're believing actually get challenged. It makes us stronger if we bring those to Him and we build history in those places of difficulty.

So what's the remedy? The remedy for the Rocky soil is developing deep roots of relationship with God in private. And you know, developing a root system of relationship with God, it costs something. Can I just name that?

It costs something. It costs you time. It's not, relationships getting developed. It's not easy.

Okay? Like just have your expectation. Like developing relationship doesn't just like happen overnight. You can't microwave history with God.

Okay? You can't do that. Relationship is a crockpot. Relationship is like time everything gets like mixed stuff together and it's messy.

Your relationship with God is supposed to be a little bit messy. A little bit like David. David's just like, I can't believe you God. How dare you?

You're abandoning me. Like he says things like that. And then God meets him in that place. That's like build some good soil that isn't rocky because you built history with being honest with God.

Thorne soil. Oh my goodness. Thorne soil. Do you see how these things just completely ruin multiplication in our life with God?

Just like how am I going to be fruitful with these things? Thorne soil. There are hearts that want to walk out the words that God is speaking. So they got good hearts that want that.

But the cares of this world and the deception of riches actually chokes out what God is saying and God's ideas and God's thoughts. Okay? I think we are living and swimming in a culture that is thorny. Okay?

America is a thorny nation. Turn to numbers 33. Numbers 33. Verse, say amen if you're there.

All right. We're good. Numbers 33. 55 says this.

God is speaking to the Israelites right before they go into the promised land. I want you to look at this. If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. And they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.

This is the Ramese that Jesus is hinting at. This is that hint that he's wanting us to gain more understanding of what he's talking about in this parable about this oil. Okay? So the scenario is this.

He's speaking to the nation of Israel. He's preparing them to go into the promised land. He's flowing with milk and honey. Lots of cows.

Lots of bees. All right? That's really good. That means that the land is good.

All right? So the land is going to be amazing. They're going to experience fruitfulness in the land. Probably 30.

Probably 60. 100 fold. All right? But he's going, I need you to be aware though that there's people there and the people, what's unique about the people and like the Amalekites and the Philistines, all of these groups of people that are in the land is that they worship a couple gods that are not Yahweh.

They worship Baal and they worship Ashra. Maybe you guys have heard those names before. Baal is the god of provision and Ashra is the god of fertility. Okay?

And the way that Baal, listen, we're going to get there. Okay? Okay? The way that Baal and Ashra are worshipped is through sacrifices like human sacrifices as well as sexual immorality.

Okay? So like temple prostitution, things like that. And God knows if they don't clear out all of the land of the people, then they are going to actually partake in all of the sins of the people of that land. And the sins of the land is wealth and riches and sexual immorality.

And what does Israel do over and over and over again? They don't drive out the people. It compromises the promise. It compromises the fruitfulness.

It compromises their whole storyline. They are unfaithful throughout their whole storyline. God still loves them. So God's still like, I love you even though you're not 30, 60, 100, 100-fold, right?

But Jesus in this story, I'm going to bring this whole circle. Jesus in this story is going the cares of this world. He's talking about like all of you gamers out there, the cares of this world. He's talking about all of you parents that have your kid in new sports and you are not at your house five days out of the week.

He's talking about the cares of the world, all of the planning that you're doing for your next vacation, the cares of this world. How am I going to make more money? How am I going to do another hustle? How am I going to do another hustle as a side job?

He's talking about the cares of this world where you're under this like entertainment thing. All you do, you get home, take a break, sit on the couch, and it's just the cycle, right? He's talking about entertainment. He's talking about shows.

He's talking about movies. He's talking about the cares of this world, these fears, but also these distractions. The best way I could describe it is sensuality. It's sensual.

I'm not talking about sexual. I'm talking about sensual. It's like a lust. Listen to me.

It's a lust for more. It's a lust for more. I must have more. The thing that God is so incredible at is he knows when to say that's enough.

And mature sons and daughters are able to go, ah, that's enough. He set boundaries for the waters of the ocean and said, you can come here and no farther. He's the God that knows when enough is enough. And when we're under his leadership, we don't have to be in the current of more, more, more, more, veg, veg, binge, binge, more, more wealth, more riches, more convenience, more fill in the blank, more Amazon prime, more clothes, more style.

So I can be like, maybe cool enough to be in Josh, Pastor Josh's like, styles style. I'm like, I'm just taking notes and I just want to be like him in my style. It's just like, hey, you need to know when enough is enough. And that's enough, right?

Absolutely enough. You don't want that. All right. But I want to lean in.

I want to lean in to this passage that Jesus is getting at with this numbers passage. Okay. Because I really believe that the Lord, this is what I think. The Lord has intentions when he sows the seed to get 36 year, 100 fold.

He's not thinking when he sows the seed that there's just going to be no return. He's not the Lord isn't like, whatever. I knew it wasn't going to work anyways. I don't really care.

Jesus is worthy. And Jesus is sewing with intention of fruitfulness. So I'm actually convicted by the fact that I've made this whole passage primarily about me and me doing something. This passage is primarily about him and getting as the farmer, as the sower, what he's worthy of, because he's the one that did the work to sow the seed.

He's the one that opened up his mouth and spoke it. And he has an expectation on man, we're just talking about expectations and he's full of grace, he's full of mercy. It's the gospel. He's showering you with mercy.

When you don't give any return, when you're not fruitful, he's like, I love you. He's like, I've removed your sin from you as far as the east is from the west, but I'm telling you this, there's an expectation that the sower is going to get a return on the seed that was sewn. And so it makes sense that we would actually have good soil so that he would get what he's deserving of. And one of the things that is choking us out is sexual immorality.

It's choking us out. And I want to just call us as a people to name and notice, if you're struggling with sexual addiction, I want you to notice that it is costing you a lot of time. And the days are evil. And the Lord is asking you to make the best use of your time.

And it's actually hindering you from the very thing that you're aching for, connection with God. It's hindering you from experiencing everything that you really want. It's destroying you. But what's happening is we are responding to messages like this with toleration.

We are tolerating what the Israelites they tolerated. Jezebel. Jezebel was a queen that worshiped Asrah and Baal and brought prostitution center stage into the nation of Israel. And what we are doing, and Jesus corrects the church in Revelation for actually tolerating her.

Tolerating immorality, tolerating pornography, tolerating just a little bit. And I'm telling you, it is actually choking us out as the people of God. It is choking out fruitfulness that we are just tolerating whatever we feel like. Well, it's not that bad because everybody does it.

Yeah, I know everybody does it in the world. I know that 90% of the population of America, I think that's the stat. I think like 90% look at pornography in America. I don't take my word for that.

I don't know. Sounds right. I should look that up. But listen, I know it's a whole, we are swimming in a pornographic culture.

We are swimming in a culture where it's like in a moment, it's DM and another DM and another DM and another DM. And it's more and it's more and it's more and we are tolerating it all the way to the edge of the cliff and going, man, should I? Maybe I just want to get close. And we're thinking, we're not even realizing we're already down there, but we're thinking we're just hanging out by the edge.

And I just want to call us to wake up, wake up from the slumber, from the leadership of Jezebel. Because Jezebel is drawing us and it's on the way to destruction. And so I want to call us to realize a name when we tolerate just a little bit. It will domino effect.

And it is, man, the reality is that sexual addiction, whatever, sexual perversion, even addiction of any kind, I mean, like substance abuse, whatever it is, drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, the desire for more, whatever the vices, it doesn't even just have to be sexual. I'm just talking about sensual. It's not that thing, whatever the vices, whatever your vices, that thing is actually a solution for a problem. So you're looking at pornography, you're sleeping with someone, you're going to the club, and the reason for it is because you have a problem and you need a solution and it's acting as a solution for you.

But when you realize that it's not a good solution and it's a bad solution for your problem underneath the surface, then you'll come to your senses and realize, I think I have a problem and my problem isn't my sexual addiction. My problem is something underneath the surface that's feeding it. It's some type of pain. It's some type of like, I didn't get invited to the party and so because I have pain of rejection, because I might have rocky soil, I have pain of rejection and it hurts.

And the way that I bring a solution to the pain of that hurt is I cope with some type of vice, some type of sensual answer to bandage that thing, to bandage it up. And we're not realizing that our sensuality is not the problem. It's actually a deeper problem that's feeding it. And so when we can name that, then we start going, Lord, I want you to uproot everything, everything.

And I want you to bring healing to my soil. I want you to heal my soil. I want you to uproot the lies that I'm believing that is actually feeding my addiction. Listen, God is in the business of fathering us right now.

He is such a good dad. He's the best dad in the whole world. He's so kind. He knows exactly what you need.

He knows what's good for you. And as a father, he's going toleration of immorality is not good for you. Having it be gray is not good for you. Living with it a little bit is not good for you.

I want every part of you. It's the lust for more. And we are swimming in it. It's our culture.

And that's okay, because all throughout the Bible, they had very similar cultures as we do. You look at the early church. It was all just baked into the culture. Temple prostitution.

You want to get into some of the places like Corinthian, like Corinth, Ephesus. There's people, there's temple prostitutes that are meeting Jesus. And then they're entering into leadership in the church. This is not new.

We can do it. We can live lives consecrated to Jesus. And then when we screw up, we can bounce back and go, Lord, here I am. I don't want that.

I don't like that. That's not who I am. But I know that you have me living in righteousness. I'm the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

And that wasn't like that. But I know that I'm a son of God. And I don't drink from those streams or those wells. And that's going to leave me dry.

But I want you, Lord. And you come running to God. You don't just go in shame and guilt and go, you go to Him. Lord, just uproot whatever it is.

Lord, what's alive that I'm believing? Why did I do that? And you just start asking, why? Why?

Why? Why? You're going to get down to the root of why you were doing that. Because it's not just about that.

It's not just about white knuckling it. Not just about, I need to be better. Some of us are, I need to be better. I'm going to take a break from God.

I need to be better. What has that got you? Nowhere. You just go in the cycle.

I'm going to get better. It should be a better Christian. Then you feel condemned. I should be better than this.

Guys, go to Him. Bring Him in. He loves having conversate. He's good with all these soils, actually.

He's really good. He knows how to handle thorny soil, rocky soil, the path. He's good with all of them. He's a good shepherd with all of them.

He's a good gardener with all of them. All right? Okay. What we're going to do is a practical thing together real quick.

Okay. We're going to wrap up quickly, but I want us to do something because we don't want to be soil that goes, I heard your word, but I'm just going to do whatever I think now. We actually want to be a people that are responsive to Him. I don't want to just be here.

I want to be a doer. What we're going to do is we're actually going to ask the Lord, Lord, and maybe you've already been looking at this. But I want you to look at these soils and go, Lord, what do I got? Because I haven't had good soil.

So what kind of soil do I got right now? Do I got a bird problem? Do I got like a man, I got a thorn problem or a path problem? Whatever it is, it's rocky.

It's rocky over here. Right? And so what we're going to do is we're going to just take a little bit of time with the Lord and just do a little audit individually. And then what I want us to do is we're going to turn to a neighbor and we're going to get in groups of two or three and we're just going to share, hey, this is the soil that I feel like I have right now.

And you can share why or you can maybe like, I don't even know you and I don't feel comfortable with that. But at least you can share. I feel like I got this type of soil. Okay?

So what we're going to do is take 30 seconds and we're going to talk after, no, it's probably like a minute or so. We're going to do some self reflection with the Holy Spirit and then we're going to share what type of soil we got. All right? You guys ready?

Lord, give us discernment. We just want to listen. We want to listen to you. We want to hear you.

Maybe this is helpful before we jump into this. Here, look up at me. I want to throw on the screen this table. There we go.

It's a little, listen, I did this. That's why it looks like that. Okay? So can you just, that's me.

This is me. Okay? You're like, man, that's not as beautiful as it normally is. That's because I did it.

Okay? So really quick, as a review, as you're looking at this, we've got the path, the hard heart. These are the verses that are connected to it. Hard heart is due to like anger, resentment.

There's some bitterness, unforgiveness there that actually brings that callousness and that you may be experiencing oppression or accusation and that remedy is what we talked about. Okay? I'm just going to go through the symptoms though for Rocky Ground. Lips through others, vulnerable to circumstances, praise and rejection of man is actually like a forming thing, how you get rejected or how you get praised, shapes you and forms you.

Your yes is brittle. Oh my goodness. I feel that. Where it's like, my yes is like, yes, Lord, I'm going to obey.

And then it's so brittle and fractured. And then all of a sudden I get back to awakening service the next week and I'm like, what did I even say, yes to again? Have you ever, just me? No?

So like, just me in Savannah. Yeah. The one's with brittle yeses. Okay.

All right. Please are who wants to be pleased. You're a people pleaser. And then, but you're actually wanting somebody on the outside to actually make you happy.

And when God lets you down because you're a people pleaser, you expect God to actually bring that for you. And when it doesn't work out, it's like sidelining. You don't know what to do with that. Okay.

Thorny soil. We just talked about that. Self-dependent, double-minded. You're distracted or you're tolerating immorality.

Okay. So these are the soils. Now I want you to reflect with the Holy Spirit and then we're going to talk about it. Okay.

And then I want you to stay if you're like, man, I think I'm going to head out because I don't want to do this. I want to encourage you to stay for five more minutes because there's something that I want to share with us and what we're going to do and how we're going to respond. Okay. All right.

Ready, set, go. All right. All right. Let's wrap it up in these little groups.

Okay. Okay. Let's wrap it up. All right.

Where am I? Where are my people that got a rocky problem? Right? Raise your hand.

You got some rocky problems over there. How about you got some thorny soil? You got some cares of the world? You got some thorny soil out here?

How many of you are all three of them? Yeah. Come on. My goodness.

This is not good. No. How many? How many have you got past problems?

You got some paths? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.