Sunday, February 7, 2010
Pastor Jason Clouse
Valley Grove Baptist Church
Morning Worship

“Going To Church Doesn’t Do Any Good”
Matthew 13:1-9 ; 18-23

Introduction: Why are you here? Why did you come today and what difference is it going to make in your life?

Why did you come today? Perhaps you came because your mom and dad made you. Perhaps you came because you were expected to. Some of you came because this is the first Sunday and you are one of those that perhaps only come on the 1^st and 3^rd Sunday. Perhaps you are here because you made a New Year’s resolution to be more faithful to church so you are trying to stick to that. Perhaps you came today because you wondered if I would actually have something to say.

Why did you come? What is the purpose in your being here? Did you come because you were raised that way? Did you come because it is expected of you? Did you come because there wasn’t anything else to do or anywhere else for you to go? Did you come because it is good for the people in the community to know that you go to church? Did you come because you had some new clothes to show off? Did you come because you’ve got a new car to show off?

Why did you come to church today? What difference is it going to make?

For most people who visit churches in America today of all denominations, go to church today but it makes no difference in their lives tomorrow. It will be an isolated event that stands by itself and it will not make any difference in how they act and react in the days to come.

Church ought to make a difference in our lives. It ought to affect and permeate every area of our lives.

Jesus is giving a parable on the sower, the seed, and the soil. This is a crisis day for Him. Opposition is growing. Pressure is coming from all around Him. The Pharisees are beginning to mount their attack against Him. Jesus is coming to them and He gives them a parable.

Jesus often spoke in parables. He talked in stories. He took familiar surroundings. Perhaps here as He spoke He was watching a sower sowing his field while He was sharing this story.

This parable has often been called the Parable of the Sower. It is not the parable of the sower. It is the parable of the soil. If you read that parable in its context you will find that the Sower is Jesus Christ. You and I would admit that there is nothing wrong with the sower. He is a good sower. He knows how to sow. That is His occupation. He sows. Jesus Christ is a good Sower. There is nothing wrong with the One sowing the seed.

Mark says about this same parable that the sower went forth and sowed the Word. He emphatically tells us what the seed is. It is the Word of God. I think we will all agree that there is nothing wrong with the seed. There is nothing wrong with the Word of God. From Genesis to the maps to genuine leather on the back, it is God’s Word. There is nothing wrong with the Word of God. When we read it, study it, sit under it, apply it, it has an affect upon our lives. It has a positive affect on our lives.

There is nothing wrong with the Sower or the seed. So where’s the problem?

The problem is with the soil. The soil is my heart and your heart. There is nothing wrong with you and me today that a good opening ourselves up and allowing the sower to sow His seed and us not try to conflict with Him on how He does that wouldn’t take care of.

We try to blame it on the preacher, or the Sunday school teacher, or anybody else. We say, “Well it depends on who’s preaching.” It doesn’t depend on who’s preaching. The seed is still the seed regardless of who’s preaching. The Sower, Jesus Christ, uses the Holy Spirit to sow the seed, the Word of God, in our hearts. There is nothing wrong with the Sower and the seed. The problem is with our soil. It is our response.

Too many churches today are as dead as a hammer and dry as the dust because of the condition of our soil. Many say, “Well, if we would get a different preacher, I’ll grow.” Or they say, “Well, if I had a different teacher or went to a different church, then I would grow.”

There are people in every church that could here the greatest preacher around and yet they would still walk out that door and say, “No one is changing my mind about anything.” Too many people come to church with a predetermined, preset plan that they will not be moved. That they will not respond. I am convinced that they best thing that person could do is quit going to church.

Some of you this morning, I want to encourage you to not come to church anymore. If you get far away from God, and you get cold enough in your heart, you’ll start coming looking for a fire. You sit here with a lukewarm heart and you won’t do anything about it. If you get out there and find out what it is like to be away from God’s people. You find out what it is like to not sit under the Word. You find out how cold you can get and how dry you can get and how stale you can get, you’ll come looking for a fire sooner or later.

The best thing you can do for yourself is quit coming to church. Try to live it on your own. Try to do it on your own. Try to get out there and make your decisions and settle your problems without having the Lord to depend on and the fellowship of God’s people.

Why do you think the writer of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews 10:25 to, “not neglect our meeting together?” Why? Because of the deceitfulness of sin. Get out there and find out how deceitful it is!

For a lot of people it would help them to quit going to church. They would get desperate enough to come to church for the right reasons.

Illus: Drive Thru Church Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QFKS4LzS4

It doesn’t do us any good to come to church for the wrong reasons. I want you to see where you are today. You have one of four kinds of hearts that are laid out in this parable today.

1. The Stony Heart.

A. He talks about this kind of heart and then explains it in verse 19.

1. This is about a 3 ft. path that the farmer would walk down and he would sow the seed on either side of it.

a. It was a hard beaten down path.

b. It was one that he had trod over year after year after year.

c. It was almost like concrete.

d. You almost couldn’t till it up.

2. As he was sowing the seed in the tilled up soil, He would drop some seed on this hard beaten down path.

a. Nothing would happen.

b. It fell on the ground, but it didn’t go in the ground.

B. That is the way it is with a lot of Christians today.

1. For a lot of people the Word of God falls on their heart but it doesn’t go in their heart.

a. It goes in that pounded down flesh.

b. We just let it lay there.

2. I am convinced that a lot of people lose the Word before they ever get out of the doors of the church.

a. They come and they sit and wait for the invitation and if it goes more than two verses they begin to look around and wonder why we are going so long.

b. They walk out the doors and all they want to talk about is where we are going to go eat and what we are going to do this afternoon.

c. It didn’t do you a bit of good to go to church because the Word of God just fell on you, but it didn’t go in you.

C. The stony ground.

1. He talks about how the stony hearts are those who “does not understand it.”

a. The word “understand” means, “to absorb.”

b. It has never been absorbed in their life.

c. The Word just lays there but it has never been absorbed.

d. It is almost as if there is a sign over that life that says, “Do Not Disturb.”

2. Three reasons why people have stony hearts.

a. PRIDE.

- It is that, “I don’t need any help. You can’t tell me anything. I know more than anybody else” attitude.

- The Scripture says that God knows the proud afar off.

- They want the Word of God proved to them.

- They want God to prove it to them.

- As if God owes us an explanation.

- As if the Sovereign God has to move heaven and earth to get our attention.

- James tells us in James 4:6 that God “opposes the proud.”

- That means that He resists them, He fights them, “but favors the humble.”

- If you don’t want to be at arms distance from God don’t approach Him with a prideful heart.

b. FEAR.

- We are so afraid that God is going to ask us to do something we don’t want to do.

- We are afraid we are going to have to change.

- We are afraid that someone will make fun of us.

- We are so afraid that we will lose our reputation.

- We are afraid of how it will affect our business.

- We are afraid that people will call us a fanatic.

Illus: Michael Catt said it best, “It is easier to tone down a fanatic than to breathe life into a corpse.”

c. SIN.

- There is some area in our lives.

- A stronghold in our life.

- We are petting it.

- We are holding on to it.

- We come to church knowing there is an area of our lives where we are disobedient to God.

- God won’t tell us anything until we do something about the last thing He told us to do.

D. We come to church with pride, fear, and sin.

1. If you have come that way today, this is not my evaluation or explanation; this is from the Word of God.

2. God says, “You are a fool.”

a. Proverbs 1:7 , “…fools despise wisdom and discipline.”

b. Proverbs 23:9 , “Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice.”

3. That is God’s evaluation of someone who will not listen.

4. Some of you will leave here today with a stony heart and going to church didn’t do you any good.

a. Getting up this morning didn’t do you any good.

b. Why?

c. You wouldn’t listen to what God was trying to say to you.

2. A Shallow Heart.

A. He explains the shallow heart in verse 20.

1. There is that thin layer of soil with a limestone layer of rock underneath.

2. Luke 8:6 tells us that this soil lacked moisture.

3. Everything in this soil grows upward.

4. It grows quickly because it is shallow soil.

Illus: If you have ever planted anything and you didn’t go down deep enough you know that what you planted may sprout up quickly but it will die off. Why? There is no root to support it. The roots have not been able to go down deep into the ground and the sun comes up and burns it off.

B. All the growth is upward.

1. Everything is reaching straight up looking for life.

2. There has got to be life down in the soil as well as life on the surface.

3. The picture is that as you reach up to the Lord you need to be reaching from within and growing from within.

C. The sign of spiritual growth is fruit not foliage.

Illus: Find a pecan tree. Leaves everywhere but not producing pecans. Not cost effective anymore. Why? It has lots of leaves. It has a lot of foliage. However it is not producing what it was created to produce.

1. Shallow.

a. Everything is upward.

b. Everything is growing out.

2. There are a lot of people that have a lot of foliage, but no fruit.

3. God said, “By their fruit” not their foliage, “you will know them.”

4. What is the fruit of a Christian?

a. ANOTHER CHRISTIAN.

- You ought to spread your life.

- There are opportunities in our life to just plant a seed of the gospel.

b. FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT.

- Galatians 5 – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

- There are a lot of folks who go to church every time the doors are open but they don’t evidence one thing of the fruit of the Spirit of God.

- There are a lot of people that educate their flesh instead of teaching their Spirit.

- When you have been taught by the Spirit of God it does not produce foliage, it produces fruit.

5. To many Christians have spiritual spurts, but not spiritual growth.

a. Growth is steady.

b. Growth does not depend on the circumstances.

3. A Suffocating Heart. (vs. 22)

A. Notice that He talks about “the worries of life and the love of wealth.”

1. This soil is good soil.

a. It is good ground.

b. It is rich.

c. There is great potential here.

2. One problem!

a. It is cluttered.

b. It is suffocated.

c. It has been fertilized.

d. The works has been done to try to get the grain to grow.

e. The nourishment is being tapped off and pulled out by weeds.

f. The weeds are taking the nourishment that was intended for the good grain.

B. The heart is cluttered.

1. It is being damaged.

2. The energy is being drained off by the weeds.

3. You don’t have to encourage weeds.

a. Weeds look for your yard.

b. You don’t have to encourage weeds.

c. They just come up on their own.

C. Our hearts can become cluttered.

1. When our hearts become cluttered, church becomes just another activity.

Illus: C.S. Lewis was right when he said, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. Some die in ashes. Some die in flames. Most die inch by inch, playing silly games.”

2. It is so easy to get caught up in the worries of life – the cares of this world.

a. We can get so caught up in our job.

b. We can get so caught up in what we are going to have to do next week.

c. We can get so caught up in things that really don’t demand that much of our attention.

d. We can get caught up on what comes on TV this afternoon.

3. We can get so caught up that if we are not careful we will miss the point.

a. We miss what it’s all about.

b. We miss the real reason.

D. Why are we here?

1. We are here to worship God.

2. We can’t do it because we have so much junk strapped to us that it looks like we are carrying backpacks.

3. We worry about so much that we totally miss God.

E. The only thing you should deal with in church is what God shows you is sin in your life.

1. You deal with that.

2. We ought not to come before God with suffocating hearts, but with sold out hearts.

4. A Surrendered Heart.

A. If you notice only ¾ of the seed did not bear any fruit.

1. Only this part bore fruit. (vs. 23)

2. This soil receives, hears, and obeys.

3. ¾ of it did not.

4. It says, “It bears fruit.”

a. It has multiplied.

b. It is manifested.

B. Notice the comparison between the four soils.

1. This soil is soft.

a. It is cultivated.

b. It is not hard like the other soils.

c. This soil is deep.

d. It is not like the stony soil.

e. It has been toiled over.

f. It is clean.

g. It is not weed infested.

2. It is a surrendered heart.

a. It is a heart that walks into church, and wakes up everyday of their life saying, “Lord, here I am, use me.”

Illus: Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Illus: George Mueller when asked the secret of his life said, “There was a day when I died. I utterly died. I died to George Mueller. I died to his opinions, his preferences, his taste, and his will. I died to the world, to its approval and censure. I died to the approval or blame even of my relatives and friends.”

b. That is a surrendered heart.

C. Someone made a statement one time, being critical of Christianity that Christianity in actuality doesn’t work.

1. All that we say about Jesus.

2. All that we say about the Holy Spirit.

3. All that we say about living.

4. All that we say about abundant life.

5. All that we say about the truth shall set you free.

6. All that we say about the promises of God.

7. All that we say about perfect love cast out fear.

8. All that we say about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

9. It doesn’t work.

D. When you look at come Christians – they are right.

1. The problem is not with the Sower.

2. The problem is not with the Seed.

3. The problem is with the believer who will not have a surrendered heart.

a. The problem is not that Christianity doesn’t work.

b. The problem is that Christianity has not been tried.

4. Surrendered hearts.

a. People who put no strings attached.

b. People who draw no lines.

c. People who build no fences to God.

5. People who simply say to the Lord:

a. Lord, whatever you say, I will do.

b. Lord, wherever you lead, I will go.

c. Lord, whatever you want, You can have.

d. It is not my life, it is Your life.

e. It is not my body, it is Your body.

f. It is not my possessions, it is Your possession.

g. It is not my hands, my feet, my eyes, my ears, my tongue, it is all Yours.

h. All I have or ever hope to be – it is all Yours.

E. If that is not you.

1. It is not the preachers fault.

2. It is not the teachers fault.

3. It is not anyone else’s fault.

4. It is your fault.

5. The fault lies in your own heart.

a. If you leave here with any other heart, than a surrendered heart, going to church today didn’t do you any good.

b. In fact, you just hardened your heart a little more.

Conclusion: The question is not what kind of heart you had when you came in today. The question is when you walk out, what’s your hearts condition?

“Seeking The Lord”
Jeremiah 29:10-13

Introduction: I don’t know if you embroidery or not, but embroidery is somewhat interesting to me. Not because I do it, because I don’t.  However, what is interesting is how it is done.

            Have you ever looked at the back of a piece that has been embroidered?  It is messy.  It is tangled.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense. No pattern.  You can’t make out what it is suppose to be. It is just a big mess.

            However, when you turn it over to the front side, it is a beautiful picture.

            There are times in our lives when our lives look like the underside of the embroidery.  Just a lot of tangled threads.  Different colors. No pattern.  A lot of things going on in our lives at that moment just don’t make sense.

            We try to fit everything together.  We say, “Lord, I don’t know why this is happening.  It just doesn’t make sense.  I am a Christian, why is this happening to me? It’s all like a tangled mess of threads going nowhere yet going everywhere, making no sense, no pattern whatsoever.”

            That is the way our lives look sometimes because we’re looking at it from the bottom side.  If we could see it from the top side as God sees it, we would see that God is weaving and making a beautiful picture.  That He does in fact have plans.

            It is always interesting tome that here are the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, who are carrying off these people into captivity and they’re going through houses and they’re taking away all their possessions and these Israelites are standing there watching all of this and God says to them, “I know the plans I have for you…”  I don’t believe that a single Jew believed that.

            They thought that God didn’t have a single thought of peace toward them.  It all looked like that all the thoughts of God toward them were thoughts of evil, thoughts of catastrophe.  God had it in for them.  He was punishing them in some way.  But God says, “I know what I’m doing! I know the plans I have for you and they are plans to bring you a future and a hope!  I know it looks to you like My thoughts toward you are thoughts of calamity, but I know what I am doing! And everything I am doing is to bring you to a future and a hope!”

            What God was trying to say is in verse 12.  Verse 12 begins with the word “then.”  He says, “Then when you are in captivity and you don’t understand what is going on in your life.  Then when you call upon Me and you pray to Me I will listen to you and you will seek Me with all your heart.”

            God was telling them, “The reason that I’m bringing about this captivity.  The reason I am doing all these things in your life is to bring you to a place where you will seek Me.”

            They had become so satisfied and settled in their “religion” that they begin to seek after other gods.  They were giving their affection and their attention to other gods. So God said, “What I’m going to do is I’ve got to capture your attention and I’ve got to get you to the place where you will turn to me and seek Me, so all of this is happening, all of this captivity that is coming up on you is so that you will come to the place then, then, then, one of these days you will turn to Me and seek Me with all your heart.”

            That’s what I want to talk about tonight – SEEKING THE LORD.  To some that is a difficult concept. What does that mean?

            Paul was talking to the Philippians one day and he said “he counted all things loss that he might know Him.”  He said that “he continued to count all things loss that I might know Him.”  What did Paul mean? What was Paul saying? Paul was saying that there’s a difference in knowing Him and knowing Him. 

            There is a difference in knowing the Lord and knowing Him.  God wants us to know Him.  God just doesn’t want us to just be settled with getting saved.  He wants us to seek Him.  He wants us to KKOW Him.  He wants us to know the glories that He has for us.  He wants us to know all the beauty that is in the Christian life.  He wants us to know all the strength and the resources that are there.  He wants us to KNOW Him.

            We are to seek Him with everything we are.  We are to seek Him with all of our hearts.  But how? If we are to seek the Lord, and if that is what the Lord desires, how are we to do it?

We are to seek the Lord:

1. EXCLUSIVELY.

A.      Notice verse 13.

1.       That is a striking verse.

2.       What is so striking about is that He doesn’t tell these captives to seek freedom.

a.       If I were a captive, that’s what I would be seeking.

b.       I would be seeking release.

c.       I would be seeking freedom from my captivity.

d.       I’d be seeking a miracle.

e.       I’d be seeking a sign.

f.        I’d be seeking something other.

B.      But God tells them, “I want you to seek Me…exclusively.”

1.       One of the problems in our day is that we are seeking everything in the name of the Lord, but we’re seeking everything but the Lord.

a.       We are seeking His blessings.

b.       We are seeking His gifts.

c.       We are seeking His miracles.

2.       Are we seeking Him?

C.      When He says that we are to seek Him exclusively, that means to things.

1.       We are to seek nothing else.

a.       Why should we seek for anything else?

b.       The Bible says that all things are in Jesus, and if that is so, then why seek anything else?

c.       We are not to seek for anything beyond Him because there is nothing beyond Him.

d.       When you have Jesus you have everything.

e.       What more could you have?

f.        We read in Colossians 2:9-10, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete…”

g.       What more could you ask for?

h.       You should not want anything more.

2.       You should settle for nothing less.

Illus: The story of the Shunnamite woman.  She was barren and she prepared the Prophet Elijah’s room as a reward.  Elijah promised her that God would give her a son.  We are told that when the son was older he was out working in the fields with his father and he suffered a stroke, basically, and died.  Everybody was saying, “Oh the boy is dead!” However, the mother said, “Well, he may be dead, but Elijah told me that God was going to give me a son and I’m going to Elijah and tell him to do something about his to make this right.”

            She got on her donkey and she began riding headed for Elijah’s home.  When she got in sight, Elijah’s servant saw her and said to Elijah, “That Shunnamite woman is coming.”  We are told that Elijah sent his servant down there to see what she wanted.  So the servant went down there and asked her, “Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband, and with your son?”  Basically what he asked her is, “What are you doing here? Do you have an appointment?”

            She told the servant, “My son is dead and I’ve come to see Elijah.”  The servant went back to Elijah and told him what she said, and Elijah tells the servant to take his staff and go back to the woman and take care of the problem.  However, the woman wouldn’t have any of that.  She wasn’t going to settle for the servant.  She wanted Elijah and I can just see her as she fell at the feet of Elijah and wrapped her arms around him and said, “As the Lord lives and as your soul lives, I will not go without you.”

            The Bible says that Elijah went to the Shunnamite woman’s home.  He told the servant to take his staff and go to the room where the boy was and raise him up.  Unable to do so, Elijah says, “Well, I guess I’ll have to do this myself.”  He goes into the room of that little boy and laid down on the boy with is mouth and breathed on him and the boy came to life.

a.       The point is this…had that woman settled for the servant that boy would have never been raised.

b.       She was on the way to Elijah and had she settled for the servant along the way the boy would never have been healed.

c.       She refused to settle for less.

3.       Many times we seek the Lord and we want Him in all of His fullness and along the way something comes along, like a blessing or a gift, and we settle for that.

a.       We settle for less.

b.       We stop short of the goal.

D.      We are to seek the Lord exclusively because in having Him you have all that there really is!

We are to seek the Lord:

2. EARNESTLY.

A.      Go back to verse 13.

1.       I want you to underline a word in that verse.

2.       It is the word “search.”

a.       That word is very important.

b.       It is not talking about a casual looking around.

c.       That word is talking about an intense investigation, an intense search.

3.       It is the Hebrew phrase, “with determination…with desperation.”

4.       It means that you are willing to do whatever is required to find Him.

B.      It reminds me of Hebrews 11:6 where we read that, “He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

1.       Another translation reads, “God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

2.       The word “diligently” is the same word for “earnestly.”

3.       It is the idea of something that will only be satisfied, only in the finding the Lord out of desperation.

a.       Desperation that whatever God wants me to do I will do.

b.       Whatever it takes know Him as much as it is possible for me to know Him, I will do.

c.       I will do whatever it takes to find Him.

C.      Sometimes we get to thinking that the only way we can serve God is if everything is just right and just perfect.

1.       One of the reasons for their captivity was that they believed they could only worship God in one place.

2.       The Psalmist even said, “How could we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?”

3.       They didn’t think they could.

a.       They thought that they had to have the temple.

b.       They sought the temple more than they sought the Lord.

c.       They valued the temple more than they valued the Lord.

4.       One of the reasons for the captivity was to teach the people that you can sing the song of the Lord in a strange land.

5.       The Christian life works best under adverse circumstances.

a.       That is when its power is really manifested.

b.       Even the lost can praise God when everything is going swell.

c.       God says, “You think you can’t sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, I’ll show you you can.  You think everything has to be perfect? I want to show you something.  There is going to come a day when you will give up seeking the perfect environment and you will discover the Lord even in the midst of adversity.”

D.      We should seek Him earnestly (out of desperation).

E.       If you get desperate enough you’ll call upon the Lord.

Finally, we are to seek the Lord:

3. EXPECTANTLY.

A.      Notice verse 14.

1.       Notice all the times the phrase “I will” appears.

2.       Over and over God says, “I will...”

B.      When you determine to really know the Lord, you can expect things from the Lord.

1.       I am talking about really knowing Him.

a.       Thank God for His fullness.

b.       Thank God for His blessings.

c.       Thank God for His gifts.

d.       Thank God for His miracles.

2.       I am talking about a desire to really know Him.

a.       You want more than anything else to KNOW Him!

b.       He tells us that we can seek Him and He will allow us to find Him.

c.       When we seek the Lord we can expect to find Him.

C.      Psalm 130 tells us that those who wait upon the Lord are like those who wait for the sun or the morning.

1.       They won’t be disappointed.

2.       The sun does rise.

3.       He who waits for the sunrise does not wait in vain.

4.       He who waits for the Lord does not wait in vain.

a.       He is not wasting time.

b.       He says, “I will be found by you and I will restore all the things that the captivity has taken away and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you.”

Conclusion:  Ron Dunn put it this way, “Father, it is one of the frailties of the flesh that we have a tendency to seek for lesser things and to settle for lesser things.  While we would never despise your gifts no belittle your blessings, we know that there is something more than that…something beyond that.  Allow the Holy Spirit to do His work of illumination in our lives and hearts and wills.”

How are we to seek the Lord?

EXCLUSIVELY…EARNESTLY…EXPECTANTLY.

            Don’t settle for anything else or anything less than KNOWING Him.  Seek Him with determination and desperation as you have never done before. 

            Is there a desire in your life to have more of Him, experience more of Him in your life?  Seek Him, for when you seek Him, then and only then will you find Him.