So we made jokes this morning. How many of you also have the Corey Feldman video from the Today Show this week? Anybody else catch that? Any of you guys have a weird as I did?
We had to get Katrina to do some music for me to dance up here this morning, but they said that wasn't a good idea, because it was even creepier than Corey Feldman. But how many of you have had a nice car before? When I was a kid, we had this car that my mom claimed was nice. What I remember about this car, this is actually the first car I can actually remember.
Mom said this was a nice car. All I remember is the fact that we had Nick named it the bomb. And she still claims and claims that it was a nice car that somebody sold it to. It was really cheap.
It was out of their fleet vehicle from their nursing home. It was a 1977 fully loaded Buick Park Avenue. With that weird kind of yellow, not yellow, kind of cream, not cream exterior. And had a green velour interior.
It was comfortable. The back seat of this thing was like a size of like a queen bed. That's the only thing I loved about it. I get all my toys out for a big long drive.
You know, you set a window that little motion. You kind of get into this kind of put you asleep. But the one redeemable quality the bomb had was that an eight-track deck. And we had three eight tracks.
I remember all three of them. The first one we had Glen Campbell's greatest hits. My mom goes, Glen Campbell. I have been rhinestone cowboy to death.
We had a Beach Boys eight track, which was pretty cool. But the last eight track was the one that I always wanted to put in. And it was an eight track of the greatest hits of possibly the best storyteller of the 20th century. It's a man named Jerry Clower.
You all know who I'm talking about here? Don't you all? Yeah, Jerry Clower. He was larger than life.
Put football for Mississippi State, I think. I mean, just huge, huge guy. But he told stories. And his stories were of his family.
And they may or may not have been true. I've always kind of fact, how true can this be? But they were good. But there's stories of just simple everyday life in the Depression and Depression era, South Mississippi in 1930s.
And they were simple stories. They were funny stories. They were stories about his cousins, Eugene and Eugene, and Marcel Ledbetter. I can close my eyes.
And I've had this image in my head for 30 years of what Marcel Ledbetter looks like. But they created an environment. And they paid a picture of what 1930s South Mississippi looked like. They made an environment they could feel comfortable in.
And at the very end, his stories were always just absolute nonsense. I mean, just absolute nonsense. But at the end, he tied it together. It tied together really, really quick.
And you laugh because the nonsense began to make sense. Just brings it together. Jesus taught. And he told stories.
And we call them parables. It was actually a pretty common first century teaching method. But they're stories of everyday life. They're stories of just common things that people are used to.
They paint a picture that anybody can find themselves inside of. And so for the next few weeks, we're going to look at Jesus' parables. And we're calling this series stories we find ourselves in. Because here's the thing.
Every one of us can find ourselves in this parable. Every one of us can be a character in this parable. That's what they're designed to do. They're designed to be stories that we could all identify with.
And that they might seem like nonsense. It might seem kind of unbelievable. But at the end, it's all wrapped up. And we see what's going on.
And Jesus used parables to create a picture, to create an environment of a different world, to create an environment that makes us think about things. And so we're just going to jump in this morning. Matthew chapter 13 verses 1 through 9. You can read it in your Bible.
Or you can read it on the screen behind us. But Matthew chapter 13. Later that same day, Jesus left the house and sat beside the lake. A lot of crowds soon gathered around him.
And he got into a boat. And he sat there and taught as the people stood on the shore. He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one. Listen, a farmer went out to plant some seeds.
And he scattered them across his field. And some seeds fell on a footpath. And others came and ate them. Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock.
And the seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun since they didn't have deep roots. They died. Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants.
Other seeds fell on fertile soil. And they produced a crop that was 30, 60, even 100 times as much as had been planted. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. So Jesus is here and he's telling these stories.
And a lot of times we think about, why did Jesus have to tell stories to teach us? Sometimes we would think that I would like Jesus to start talking about propositional fact, right? Like we really want to understand the answer. Like I want bullet points, man.
Like can you give it to me bullet points? Like don't make me question or think or try to guess. Like I just want it straight. But that's not how Jesus rolls.
It's all parables because he wants to create that environment. He wants us to find ourselves inside of that stories mattered to Jesus because stories narrate how our choices and other people's choices can change things. Salvation, the gospel, it comes to us by grace and by face. What Jesus's parables do is they outline how discipleship, though, it comes by decision.
It comes by choice. It comes by how we interact and how we react to our situation and our circumstances and how we learn to live in this world alongside of Jesus. The thing we're going to talk about and learn this morning is the fact that what we create creates. Matthew chapter 13, some people call it the parable of parables.
It's the first big one that we see in the gospel of Matthew is actually found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it's the only parable where Jesus actually explains himself. You go home, wait on today and you can read most of chapter 13. You'll read the nine verses that we read.
And then Jesus is having his interaction with his disciples talking about why he's teaching in parables and why parables matter. And then he refers to the prophecy of Isaiah about people having the ears to understand and to hear and to be changed. And then Jesus explains the parable. It's the first one for us to look at.
It's the big one for us to look at. But what Jesus shows is the power of creation inside of it. Now every parable, when we read parables, we get into a situation where we start trying to find the characters inside of it. Over the last few weeks, I've spent every single parable several times just looking at this.
And we always find the character that's important. First thing for us to do when we begin reading these parables is we try to find the characters and then we put aside and figure out which character are we supposed to play. So this morning we see the story of a farmer scattering seed. And the farmer is, you just kind of obvious, there's an agricultural metaphor that goes all throughout scripture.
We find it from Genesis to Revelation. It's some very familiar that they would understand. We see this farm, we can kind of at first glance figure out who that's supposed to be. The second one though is this seed.
And this seed seems to be really important in seeds talked about all throughout scripture. And this seed is scattered in many ways, this seed serves a metaphor for scripture. But we're not that seed. So what's going on?
where's the rub here? Where's the place for us to think and understand what's going on? And we realize that that's inside of the soil. That this soil matters, this environment matters.
And we see a story that goes in four movements. It's about the environment and what the environment provides and what the environment creates. Do parables help us to understand how our life that Jesus affects the environment we are in, but also how we can then go and affect that environment? So four questions for us to ask this one.
Look at these, there's four types of environments. And this is the first one is this. What environment are you guarding? Verse four, it said, he scattered a seed across the field.
And some seeds fell in a footpath. And the bird came and ate them. All week long, I have learned more about first century, Middle Eastern agriculture than I ever wanted to learn in my life. What they would typically do is they would actually plow a field first and then they would scatter seed.
And then they would plow the field again. If you've ever garden before, you know you have to have a footpath. You have a place to walk around and you're going to trample down and everything. Some of the seed falls on this footpath.
It never has a chance. It doesn't get plowed back under. It's just going to sit there and either bake or the birds are going to come and get it. It's not been guarded whatsoever at all.
Jesus explains this and it helps the disciples understand this. Later on, it's verse 19, it says, the seed that fell in the footpath represents those who hear the message about the kingdom and don't understand it. And the evil one comes and snatches a way to see that was planted in their hearts. The seed is consumed by something that's uncontrollable and recognizes this is about people who have heard the word of God.
This is not discounting folks who have not heard or had a chance. This idea of what environment are you guarding, it's actually not about us. It's about other people. How are we guarding that environment for them for the seed to take hold?
What environment are we creating to where they can be safe? What environment are we creating where they can learn? What environment are we creating so that we can dig them down a little bit to give them a chance? What we create creates.
We've got to create environment that guards. The second question is this, is what environment are you digging deep, 13, 5, 3, 6? It says other seeds fell in the shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds try to quickly because the soil was shallow, but the plants soon wilted under the hot sun since they didn't have deep roots, they died.
In this area where Jesus was, it wasn't uncommon to have bedrock that lied just a few inches below the surface. That soil on top was great soil. They've been plowed. They've been fertilized.
Everything they could do to it was there. And these seeds come up quickly. They're going strong. But it gets the point to where the root system simply can't dig down.
It can't hold on to things. It can't reach the nutrients that it needs. What's over at all? Jesus' interpretation.
He tells disciples later on, it's pretty spot on. We don't have to explain it that much. It's as literal as he can get. He says, the seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy.
But since they don't have deep roots, they don't last long. They follow away. As soon as they have problems, they're persecuted for believing God's words. They hear Jesus.
They see Jesus. They react to Jesus. They react with joy. And we react with joy.
But that bedrock is just a few inches underneath. We've got to break through that. We've got to dig down. We have got to create environments with strong root structure.
And then an hour on Sunday morning just doesn't cut it. You can't make it work without spending time personally and scripture, personally and prayer, and doing these things with other people. We've got to break through that. What environments are you digging deep?
The second thing is this. And this is where the third thing. And this is where it gets interesting. What environment are you curating?
That's kind of a weird word. I'll explain that a little bit. What environment are you curating? Because this is about a competing crowd.
Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. Here's the thing. We all live in places and situations. We're going to have thorns.
OK? How many of y'all have ever been in a place that was absolutely perfect and nothing was getting thrown at you? It doesn't happen. We're going to have thorns.
We're going to have things in our environment that are competing against Jesus. In scripture they call that idolatry. Another parable. There's a lot of agricultural parables.
Another parable tells a story of a farmer planted a field. And they notice that the plants were coming up strong. There's also a lot of weeds. And his workers said, do you want us to come in here and clean out all these weeds?
And he says, no, we can't. Because the root system is so intertwined and tangled up by now. If we pulled out the weeds, we pull out the weeds. We've got to let them grow up together.
We separate it when it's all said and done. Especially parables. It's about the personal choice and the decisions that we make. We've got to realize that sometimes we plant thorns in our environment.
I know I do. Sometimes we run away from the things that we know will be up against. Then sometimes we end up introducing them in. To curate something is to select.
It's to choose. It's to take care of. Think of a museum creator. They're collecting things.
They're ordering and organizing things because what they want to do is present the absolute best presentation or best story. What environment are you curating? What are you doing in your own heart? And in the lives of the hearts of those people that you're around to stay away from this, the ones that are to keep them back, to grow strong plants, to let them get bigger, to be healthy, to have a life that is healthy.
And the last planting cycle is this. It's what environment are you celebrating? If you notice every single one of these, the plant's getting stronger and stronger. This first one's never had a chance.
The second one started shooting up. Things looked good. And they got rough. The third one's a big grew.
And then they got healthy. This last one that they are full, mature plants. What environment are you celebrating? What scripture says?
Still, other seeds fell in fertile soil. And they produced a crop that was 30, 60, and even 100 times as much as had been planted. And anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. They have fertile soil.
They're producing fruit. This is what Jesus says. And he interprets the ending of this to his disciples. It says, the seed that fell in good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God's words and produce a harvest of 30, 60, or even 100 times as much has been planted.
Here's the thing. And the parables, and we're going to look at this next week as well. The parables start naming numbers. What's wild is that every single of these numbers, the smallest one is absolutely unbelievably large.
They have a field on average. At this point in time, in this location, a field with a good yield was five times what had been planted. 30 times is absolutely unbelievable. 100 times is just no earthly weight.
That could happen. Here's Jesus saying, but the people who plant themselves in fertile soil, and they pay attention to what this environment is. They do every single thing they can. They're going to see a return that's significantly larger than anything they can imagine.
It's easy for us to look at this and get kind of selfish. Especially when I'm saying what environment you celebrate because it sounds like a self-righteousness there. But this is what's going on. We're not celebrating this for ourselves.
The biggest call to action, to hearing and obeying, to trusting and understanding that Jesus talks about that. The biggest call to action that we can ever have, and this reason to celebrate, is because when we grow to maturity like this, we can then be harvested and be sent back out to help create these environments for other people to grow, for other people to feel safe, for other people to be guarded. We can help other people dig through and break through that bedrock and build strong root systems. This is all about other people.
What we create creates, the environments that we create and guard are there for a reason. So folks can learn what this is like and can be a safe place to grow with Jesus. The environments that we create and we dig deep is we let folks begin to know what maturity might look like. The environments that we curate are important because we're focused on that fruit building.
One time I convinced Meredith that let me plant squash in our front flowerbeds. My squash leaves were this big. They were huge. They were gigantic.
I got two squash off like eight plants. The plants were awesome. But they didn't produce. It weren't worthwhile.
I didn't take care of them enough. What Jesus wants us for us to be people that are bearing the fruit of him and our lives. What we create creates. Everything is something we do matters.
The decisions we make with Jesus are going to matter. The news about all of this is it's about being part of other folks finding out about this story. This is never about us. This has always been other people.
When Meredith and I were on our honeymoon, we had been driving for about eight hours and we had exhausted every single CD I had in the truck. We were absolutely bored and we were at that point to where we were about to start killing each other. So we stopped at the gas station, got ice cream because that's always a good idea. And as I was at the checkout counter and on the racks of impulse buys, I saw something that caught my eye.
They had two different Jerry Quower cassette tapes. I don't get married to you, I heard Jerry Quower before and she said, nope. And I was like, all right, I'm ready to gamble now. I got both of them.
And I realized this point in time, she might be willing to throw me out and get rid of me. But I'm willing to take a risk. And now, whenever we've been driving for a long time or we kind of get started to get bored or she can tell I'm getting agitated and I'm behind the wheel too long, no longer it's not an eight-track tape anymore. It's not a cassette tape anymore.
She'll pull up Spotify and plug it into the Oxt Jack. And she'll fire up the best one ever is the coon hunting story. And she'll fire up Jerry Quower. And she'll create that environment that reminds me, not only of my childhood and being an old junkie Buick that she'd been taking off the road years before we ever had it.
Takes me back to our first road trip as husband and wife. It creates this environment. She puts me in part of a story that's much bigger than that moment. We can find ourselves in these parables of Jesus.
But these parables are always gonna push us to go and find other people and to put them inside of the story. To be open, to be vulnerable, to be truthful, to be loving. So this morning I asked you the question, what environment are you creating? How is your garden growing?
Not to hold guys, my grandfather's buddies, I'll talk about their tomatoes. How your tomatoes do it? How? How's your garden growing?
What are you planting? What are you harvesting? How are you seeing growth? And how are you seeing growth in other people?
Let's pray. What do we thank you for putting us in a world where we matter? To where our interactions and our decisions aren't accidental but they're consequential. And so many times we think of consequences as being some negative thing.
It's like God you've given us choice. You've given us a freedom. Or do you get us the power to bring other people into this relationship? The ability to come and engage with you face to face.
You're a God who cares for us. And as you've created this world, you've wired this world to create in response to you. In order each of what seven days a week can create spaces, can create environments for other people to grow, for other people to know you. So be with us, as we take part in that.
We hope to succeed and to do well in that. Mr. and we pray.