Mysteries of the Kingdom; Parable of the Soils, Matthew 13:1-23; Luke 8:4-15

We turned a major corner, a pivot point in chapter twelve as we looked at the rejection of Jesus in terms of His claims to be the Messiah and His offer of the kingdom by the religious leaders, the scribes and Pharisees. It was at that turning point that everything shifted in Matthew. Prior to this point the message was one thing: Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. After Matthew chapter twelve there is a shift. Never again do we hear the offer of the kingdom to Israel and the message to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Never again will Jesus perform the miracles in public that He did in the first twelve chapters. There is a major shift that takes place.

At this point Jesus begins to teach in a new way and He has a new message. As He makes this shift it is evident that everything is changing. The gospel of the kingdom is not going to Israel anymore; there is going to be a reorientation towards the Gentiles. There are still numerous Jews who will become saved but in terms of God's program, in terms of His overall plan for humanity that plan to bring the kingdom into historical existence with Israel has been postponed because of Israel's rejection of the truth. Negative volition has consequences and there are times when our negative volition, even in our individual lives has such a consequence that the negative results are irreversible. This is what happened in the last chapter with what we call the unforgiveable or unpardonable sin when Jewish leaders accused Jesus of doing what He did in the power of Satan. That was not a sin that applies to any other generation. It applied only to that generation; it was not a sin that related to the individual's eternal salvation but it was related to God's plan and purposes for the nation Israel. This is evident from the context which sees this shift that takes place where no longer is the kingdom offered to Israel, the consequences of divine judgment on the nation that will come in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the scattering of the Jews to the four corners of the earth is at this point irreversible; it is set in concrete.

That doesn't mean that there is not a legitimate offer of the kingdom when we get into Acts. That offer of the kingdom, if accepted, would not have changed this irreversible judgment that would come in AD 70; it would just shorten the church age a good bit. We covered all of that in the book of Acts.

What we see in the flow of material in Matthew is that up to this point Jesus taught openly. He now begins to teach the crowds in parables. He taught clearly before; now He obscures His message. He was obvious in His meaning up to this point but now it becomes opaque to those who are not responsive to His teaching.

So let's remember something about the structure of Matthew up to this point. In the first three chapters we have the birth of the King when Jesus comes by virgin conception and birth and He is born to the line of David, which gives Him the credentials to be the promised Messiah from the Old Testament. In chapter four with John the Baptist, also in fulfilment of many Old Testament passages that stated that someone would come who was the forerunner, the announcer of the Messiah. Before a king is crowned he is first of all anointed by a prophet, because the king serves under the authority of God. In the same way Jesus is preceded and announced by a forerunner who is a prophet and then the King comes on the scene in Matthew chapter four. The King announces the same message as the forerunner.

In chapters five through seven, known as the Sermon on the Mount, we see the preaching of the King as He is contrasting the divine perspective on righteousness with that of the legalism, the superficial tradition-based teaching, of the Pharisees. Then in chapters eight through nine the proclamation, the message of the King is backed up by the works of the King, the power of the King, and Matthew there organized various groups of miracles to show that Jesus was who he claimed to be by the miracles that He performed: giving sight to the blind, healing the lepers, forgiving the lame man. These were all miracles that could only be performed by the Messiah.

In chapters ten through eleven we see the rejection of the King where even the people are condemned by the Lord, and He announces that there will be a judgment on Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum because if the miracles done there had been done in Gentile cities, like Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre and Sidon, then the people would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. In other words, with the heightened level of revelation given to the villages in Galilee through the messages of the disciples and the messages and miracles of the Messiah more was expected of them, yet they reject Him. This leads to the confrontation in Matthew chapter twelve where Jesus casts a demon out and the Pharisees accuse Him of doing this by the power of Satan. The question the people ask is couched negatively: "This can't really be the Messiah, can it?" When they ask that question the Pharisees are going to justify their position by giving an explanation, i.e. that Jesus does this by the power of the Devil, accusing the Holy Spirit of being the Devil, and this is a national sin; it is not an individual sin.

This leads to a shift that takes place and in that context Jesus talks about the fact that a tree is known by its fruit. That is a passage that we need to understand a little bit more just as background to what we are looking at in chapter thirteen because He is not talking about the fact that you know whether a person is a believer or not by what they do, how they live; but He is specifically talking about the fact that what a person says in this context of what the Pharisees have said about Him (that He has received His power from the Devil) that that reveals what is going on in their thinking, in their heart. The word "heart" in Scripture refers to core of a man's soul, and where a man in thinking and the decisions he has made, and that is revealed by their words. In this context it is what they have said about the Messiah. So at that point He gave them their last chance and said to either make the tree good and the fruit good or else make the tree bad and the fruit bad, for a tree is known by its fruit. He is talking specifically in terms of what they have said about Him. That brings us up to what happens in Matthew chapter thirteen.

Here we are going to be introduced to the mysteries of the kingdom, the kingdom parables. There are seven parables that are grouped together by Matthew and they all relate to teaching something previously unrevealed about the kingdom. That is a very important statement but you will not find too many people who understand the concept. We will get into that as we go through this. This is one passage that is difficult for many people to understand. The focus is now on the training of the twelve for what will come in the future. The word "church" hasn't been used yet, so don't read the church into Matthew chapter thirteen and the mysteries of the kingdom; it is not the mysteries of the church. We are talking about the kingdom.

We recognize here that Jesus starts to teach in parables. Matthew 13:3 ^NASB "And He spoke many things to them in parables …" Jesus hasn't taught in parables yet. No rabbi in history has ever been known to teach in a parable prior to Jesus. So this is a distinct way of teaching that comes as a result of the rejection of the King by the religious leaders of Israel. The word "parable" is from the Greek word PARABOLE and it is used also in the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, to translate the Hebrew word mashal. This is a broad word and can refer to any kind of story or saying that illustrates a truth. A parable basically takes one thing—a story, an event, something that happens in everyday life—and lays it along side, parallel to a spiritual or universal truth, a didactic point, a teaching point. The purpose of a parable is to teach. So the term "parable" came to mean some form of illustration, some form of an analogy that would be used to teach something. In the Old Testament the word mashal had a broad range of meanings whereas it begins to be narrowed a little bit when it comes into the Gospels. A parable differs from a fable in that a fable is a personification of animals to teach general principles, e.g. the tortoise and the hare. It differs from a myth in that myths derive from prehistoric or non-historic times. A parable is using something from everyday life and lays it alongside a universal principle in order to teach something.

Another thing to note as we go through Matthew is that the parables in the Gospel passages are parables related to the kingdom. What is the kingdom? That is an important concept. It hasn't changed. The prophets in the Old Testament predicted a future utopic time in Israel's history where Israel will be living in peace and the Messiah would be ruling over the world, and it would be a time of unparalleled prosperity, happiness and peace. It was a literal geopolitical kingdom centered in Jerusalem with a King, a literal, physical, biological descendant of David sitting on a physical throne in Jerusalem. That is the kingdom. When John the Baptist came on the scene, did he change the meaning of "kingdom"? Not at all. He meant the same thing. If Israel would turn back to God then God would bring in the literal, physical kingdom. When Jesus came on the scene He didn't change the meaning of the word "kingdom", it still meant the same thing. When He sent out His disciples He didn't change the word kingdom, it still meant the same thing—a literal, physical, geopolitical kingdom ruled by the son of David on a throne in Jerusalem.

And now when we get into Matthew chapter thirteen we are going to hear about the mysteries of the kingdom, and the meaning of the word "kingdom" doesn't change. It is not talking about Christendom, it is not talking about the church; it is talking about mysteries related to this literal, physical, geopolitical Davidic kingdom that will be ruled by the son of David from a literal throne in Jerusalem. So it is talking about some new information.

Jesus is going to shift His teaching style at this point and begin to use parables in order to do two things. He is going to use these parables in order to conceal truth from many of His hearers, and He is also going to use them to reveal truth to His disciples. So He is concealing from many and revealing for some. What we will see in these first four parables is that He gives them to the multitudes but He only explains the first two to the disciples. He goes off in private to explain them and leaves everyone else out there scratching their heads and wondering what it was all about and what He was really teaching, because He is concealing truth to the masses for a number of different reasons. Primarily it was because they have already rejected Him as King and rejected the offer of the kingdom. Instead of teaching more openly which would fuel their rejection and their antagonism and hostility to Him, the Lord is concealing what He is saying to the masses. He is not going to get them all riled up as He teaches more and more negative things about what may transpire in Israel.

When His disciples ask Him about this in vv. 11, 12 He says, "To you [the twelve] it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him {more} shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him."

In these verses the Lord is quoting from a passage in the Old Testament (Isaiah 6:9-10) and He is using that by way of application. In Isaiah 6 Isaiah is announcing judgment upon the southern kingdom of Judah that will ultimately come to fulfillment in 586 BC. He is facing the southern kingdom and their negative volition, and He is announcing that because they have already chosen to reject what God had provided for them the natural consequences of their negative volition is that God is going to harden their hearts, harden their hearing. It is not that God interferes with their volition, it is that their volition is already engaged and they have rejected what God has given them; so God is saying that these are the consequences of that negative volition. You will become further hardened; you will become further distanced and divorced from reality because that is the nature of negative volition.

This is the same thing Paul is saying in Romans 1:18ff where he says that the ungodly, the unrighteous, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The unbelievers reject that and as a result the more they reject the truth that God has given them the more God is going to harden their hearts. What He does is sort of pull back the restraints, and the natural result of that is that they become more and more divorced from reality, more and more hardened to truth, and it is all the result of a decision that has already been made. We have to understand that the issues in life flow from volition. At the very beginning God created Adam and Eve, place them in the Garden, and He gave them a choice: You can eat of any of the trees in the Garden but if you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will instantly die; it is your choice. Are you going to obey me and have life or are you going to disobey me and have [spiritual] death—separation from God and all of the horrors and corruption and everything that follows from that in human history; famines, wars, global warming and global cooling? All of these things are part of the corruption of the universe because of Adam's sin to disobey God.

Ever since Adam's sin it has been God's plan to reverse that judgment, which is done through grace, and ultimately it has to be resolved with the starting point of the redemption price being paid for sin, which is what occurred on the cross. This payment price was made in AD 33 and eventually this is going to roll the curse back on the physical universe, and when people trust in Christ as savior it begins to roll the curse back in their individual lives. They are regenerated, made spiritually alive; they are no longer spiritually dead. That again, is our volition. We decide whether we are going to accept God's free gift of salvation or not, or whether we are happy living in the death world of Adam or we want to have the life that Jesus promised and that He has given to us.

So we see that this is often described as the first divine institution, the divine institution of individual responsibility; and the more that that is negated by human culture and human conventions the more difficult it is for people, but it doesn't negate their individual responsibility. It doesn't really matter what your circumstances are. It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter what your nature might be, that is, in terms of your inherited trends from your sin nature, and it doesn't matter what the nurture is ultimately—family training or lack thereof, the environment in which you were reared, the education you had, or your economic situation. Ultimately the most important influence in life is your own individual volition. You decide the kind of life that you are going to have and your life is the product of the decisions that we make. We all make good decisions, we make bad decisions, but ultimately we need to make the most important decisions which first and foremost is to trust in Jesus as savior so that we have eternal life, and secondly, to pursue the life that God has given us—develop and nourish it, build it, so that we are what Matthew describes and what the Lord describes, that disciples are learners of Christ, who are applying that in their life. Volition is the issue.

A great example of that was brought to our minds just a couple of days ago as we awakened to the news that B.B. King had died. A lot of people went back and looked up things related to his life, and he had a fascinating life, but it was the result of decisions that he made. He was born into a black family in Mississippi. Those weren't good circumstances. He was economically deprived, deprived in education, it was very difficult and there wasn't a whole lot of love in his family. When he was four years old his mother ran off with a man and he ended up being pushed off to a grandmother and reared in her home. So as a young child he was experiencing economic deprivation, a lack of education, and a lot of things going on that were negative. He was rejected by his mother and by his father. But he made positive decisions and when his life returned around as he made numerous decisions in the course of his life, he had quite a success and prosperity, and he impacted many. That was a result of his volition.

Our lives are not determined by external circumstances. Only somebody who is pretty much a waste of time blames their circumstances—blames their parents, their culture, their background. Everybody has deficits, it doesn't matter who they are. Everybody grows up in families that are controlled by sinners. It is what you do that counts. It is not the hand that you are dealt; it is what you do with that hand that is important. It is up to your individual volition to make life what you want it to be.

These Jews at the time of Christ made a bad decision and there are consequences for their bad decision. It reflects the same kind of bad decisions that two previous generations of Jews had made. There was the generation in the wilderness. They were freed by God from Egypt and they hardened their hearts against God while they were in the wilderness. God said that because they had rejected Him they were not going to go into the land. It would be their children who would go into the land. Then, years later the generation at the time of Isaiah was rejecting God in favor of idolatry, and God said because you have rejected me I am going to harden your hearts. So this is what is being applied now to the generation of Jesus' time. They are doing the same thing that their fathers did in the wilderness and what their fathers did at the time of Isaiah; they were rejecting what had been provided for them by God, and they were going to go against God. As a result of that Jesus is now going to hide what He is teaching; He is going to conceal it in parables. That doesn't mean people can't exercise positive volition; it doesn't mean that God has reached in and tweaked their volition; it is the result of their own decisions and their own volition.

Matthew 13:13 ^NASB “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." They are the ones who have already made the decision. They saw but they refused to accept what they saw and heard. This isn't any different from a lot of people living in California. They just can't understand that the liberal policies of the environmentalists have created this drought situation. And no matter how bad that drought situation goes they are so enmeshed in their negative volition to truth that they can't see the truth when it is slapping them in the face. That is what happens when you reject truth. You have only one way to go, and that is to go further and further into a fantasy world. The more that you justify your fantasy world, whether it has to do with Darwinistic evolution or global warming or all the other environmental myths that are so popular today the result is that you are going to adopt policies for your life and for your country that just create more and more trauma, simply because you are blind to the truth. You have blinded yourself to the truth and made yourself deaf to the truth. So this characterizes that generation.

What happens now is something distinctive as Jesus teaches to the multitudes. The context: Matthew 13:1 ^NASB "That [same] day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea." It is very precise in the Greek, it means on that day, on the very day that had witnessed the casting out of the demon, that had witnessed the Pharisees saying that He was casting out on the power of Beelzebul and not on the power of the Spirit, that He announced that this was the unpardonable sin and that the ultimate judgment on Israel was now irrevocable, and on the same day that they said told Him He needed to really forget all this talk about the Gentiles, you need to focus on your family. All of these things were on the same day.

Now He leaves the house where He has been and He goes out and sits by the sea. As this huge crowd (Luke tells us they came from other villages) was gathered to Him so that He got into a boat and sat. He sat because when a rabbi taught he would sit down and the people would stand up. We do it different. The pastor gets up and stands; everybody else sits down. The position of a teaching rabbi was a position of authority, so He goes into this boat and begins to speak.

Matthew 13:2, 3 ^NASB "And large crowds gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was standing on the beach. And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow." The first parable is recorded in Matthew 13:3-9 and then there is an interruption of the parables in verse 10: "And the disciples came and said to Him, 'Why do You speak to them in parables?'" And then we have this statement where He talks to them about why He is speaking to them in parables. Matthew 13:11 ^NASB "Jesus answered them, 'To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted'." He is talking to His disciples. That is important. The mysteries of the kingdom of heaven is not for everybody, it is for a restricted number of people to understand what is going on. As He says this He is going to talk about some new information regarding the kingdom.

Let's just review what we have learned from the general context. First, the kingdom could no longer come because the King had been rejected and His kingdom message had been rejected. So the kingdom can't come at this point. It is ended, no more offer of the kingdom; the kingdom can't come because the people have to repent before the kingdom can come. That is important to understand. The second thing is that Jesus can't talk openly what is going to happen. Now that the kingdom isn't coming, something else is going to happen. He can't talk openly about the something else because it is just going to anger the multitudes. Think about it. If the average Jew that was sitting there listening to Him didn't understand or accept the person of the King or the offer of the kingdom they certainly wouldn't understand or accept the postponement of the kingdom. If they are not willing to accept what He has said about His person and His offer of the kingdom then the postponement of the kingdom certainly wouldn't be understood and it would anger them even more.

Matthew 13:34 ^NASB "All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable." He is not trying to make things clear to the multitudes. [35] "{This was} to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: “I WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.” So we have another fulfillment here, the application of what happened in Isaiah. What He is going to talk about in these parables has never been revealed before. That is another really important thing to understand. 1) The kingdom is not coming. He is not going to be talking about some new form of the kingdom because the kingdom is postponed. He can't talk openly about it because He would be stoned or crucified early. He is teaching that this is something that has been kept secret, it has never before been revealed. This helps us to understand the next key term we have to talk about, and that is the term "mysteries" from verse 11: the mysteries of the kingdom. What do we mean by this word "mystery"?

It is not a who dunnit? It is not a suspense novel. The term "mystery", from the Greek word MUSTERION, referred to something that was previously unrevealed. It really clears up the meaning of this when we translated it by saying that He is now going to talk about previously unrevealed information about the kingdom. This is the same kingdom that He has been talking about, so now we are going to learn that because the kingdom can't come in due to rejection something is going to take place between this point and the coming of the kingdom. It is important to understand that.

There have been some important errors that have developed around this whole phrase of the kingdom of heaven. The liberal concept is that instead of it becoming a Jewish kingdom it has now become a universal spiritual kingdom. There is a conservative version of that that it really developed from, and that was known as amillennialism: that there is a spiritual form of the kingdom today and Jesus is ruling from a spiritual throne of David, and the church roughly equals the kingdom. That is not an accurate view.

Second error: Jesus isn't talking about a new form of the kingdom. Unfortunately an error has developed around that from a number of dispensationalists. They read into the passage that Jesus is talking about the mystery form of the kingdom. Do you see the word "form" in there anywhere? No, and it is not in the Greek either. It is not in the Hebrew or even in the Latin. They read this and thought, Well, He is talking about what is going to happen in the church age, He doesn't use the word "church"; He is clearly talking about what is going to happen before the kingdom can come in, so this must be a mystery or previously unrevealed form of the kingdom. That would imply that we are in some form of the kingdom today, but the kingdom has been postponed. This is an erroneous view that dominates a lot of evangelicals today. It is called the already-not-yet view of the kingdom: that we are already in some form of the kingdom but it is not yet fully here. This is a root of a whole lot of error and a lot of misunderstanding about the role and the purpose of the church today. There are elements of this that are consistent with Christian anti-Semitism. I'm not going to say it is a necessary connection but it is consistent with it, because it changes the kingdom from being a Jewish kingdom to being something related to the church. Once you start doing that you are taking away from Israel and giving to the church what God will still give to Israel.

So the mysteries of the kingdom describe previously unknown and unrevealed information about the kingdom because it has now been rejected. Unfortunately some historic dispensationalists, like Scofield and Chafer, Dwight Pentecost, and others held to this view of the mystery form of the kingdom. I don't agree with that; there is no mystery form of the kingdom.

The greatest work that has been done on the kingdom was a work done by a man named George N. H. Peters who was an itinerant Lutheran pastor in the late 1800s. This man was impoverished way below the poverty line most of his life. He wrote a three-volume work called The Theocratic Kingdom, three volumes of 10-point print! He didn't have enough money for most of his career to buy paper to write on, so he wrote on napkin, any scrap of paper he could write—three volumes of about 400 pages. This man controlled the data; it is a phenomenal job. This is the view that George N.H. Peters takes; Alva J. McClain, founder of Grace Theological Seminary, also takes this view, along with Stan Toussaint from Dallas Theological Seminary and a number of others.

This is not a mystery form of the kingdom but what will transpire between the ascension of Christ and His return at the Second Coming when He establishes the kingdom. The information here is about the intervening period between the ascension and the Second Coming, and it is previously unrevealed. In many passages Paul uses the term "mystery" to refer to the church. The church age takes up the Lion's share of that time, it doesn't include the Tribulation. It is important for us to understand that we are not living in any form of the kingdom today. The King is not present; the King is not on His throne and He is not in Jerusalem. The throne that he is sitting on in heaven is the Father's throne, not His throne. We are in no form of the kingdom; that is the error of progressive dispensationalism, of covenant theology and a number of others.

Another thing we need to recognize is that the kingdom is only comprised of believers. All believers—church age believers as well as those at this time who were Jewish believers—are all going to end up in the kingdom. Matthew chapter eight talks about them as the sons or heirs of the kingdom. Colossians 1:13 ^NASB "For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son." That doesn't mean the kingdom is here now; we are the sons of the kingdom. That is what Jesus says in Matthew 13:38 "and the field is the world; and {as for} the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom …" That is us. We are not in the kingdom yet but that is our destiny. We are going to be in the kingdom. So this terminology is used of church age believers and some of these Jewish converts at the time of Christ, because they are going to end up in the kingdom.

One of the issues that we will see here is that in the organization of these parables neither the first parable nor the last parable have the language that the kingdom of God is like something. That's not there. The five in the middle compare something to the kingdom of God, but the first and last parables are expressing more universal type truths, and the reason we have the parable of the sower is to describe the fact that that there are going to be different responses to the message that Jesus gives. It explains why there were different responses and why the kingdom has been rejected. There is application to the church age but it is primarily focused on what is going on at that time.

He says, "Hear the parable of the sower". He explains it in vv. 19-23. There are four different responses. The first one is the unbeliever but two, three and four are various responses from believers. You will hear from some people that the first three are unbelievers and the last one is the only believer because for a lot of legalistic evangelical Christians they believe that the only way you know you are saved is by the fruit that you bear. But the Bible never says that; the Bible says salvation is by faith alone and not by works. Works are not the evidence of your regenerate status; they are the evidence of your growth. There is a difference between birth and growth and they miss that. This is evident especially in this first parable. What they want to do is make growth the evidence of birth. But there are a lot of people who don't grow much beyond infancy and this is true in the spiritual life.

Matthew 13:19 ^NASB “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil {one} comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road." This is the picture of the sower. He has a sack of seed hanging at his side and he reaches in and grabs a handful and scatters it. Some of it falls on the roadside. The roadside is hard, it is beaten down, there is no way that the seed can germinate and grow at all, so the birds come along and take the seed away. This represents an unbeliever who has no response whatsoever to the message of the kingdom. The Luke passage states it a little more clearly: Luke 8:12 ^NASB “Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved." It is very clear that this first soil represents the person that doesn't believe and is not saved.

The second soil is the rocky or stony soil. This is where the seed lands in an area where there are a lot of rocks. Luke puts it this way: Luke 8:6 ^NASB “Other {seed} fell on rocky {soil,} and as soon as it grew up [sprang up], it withered away, because it had no moisture." For seed to spring up, what has to happen? Generation and life. Seedlings are evidence of what? Death? No, life; there is life there. That's it with regeneration. There's no life in the first one; there is life here but due to external circumstances there is no growth. This seed produces life. There's regeneration. These people are saved. It springs up but then withers away because of lack of moisture. Luke 8:13 ^NASB “Those on the rocky {soil are} those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no {firm} root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away."

They receive the word with joy. Now the lordship crowd are going to say that this is superficial; that they are just having an emotional conversion here. But the word "receive" is the Greek word DECHOMAI, which is used in a number of places to indicate the reception of the gospel. What happens here is that they don't grow very much and when temptation comes they just fall away. But they are saved. Matthew uses a different word than DECHOMAI.

Matt 13:20 “The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives [LAMBANO] it with joy;

[21] yet he has no {firm} root in himself, but is {only} temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away." There are external circumstances and he just doesn't have enough truth. He is not given any content after he is saved. He is a baby that is born but doesn't get any nourishment, so he can't grow to withstand the testing, the tribulation, the adversity. This word LAMBANO is important. We find it in John 1:12 ^NASB "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, {even} to those who believe in His name." LAMBANO is another word for believing in Christ. So they receive it. DECHOMAI, which was the first word that we saw, is used in Acts 8:14 ^NASB "Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God …" In context they became believers. Acts 11:1 ^NASB "Now the apostles and the brethren who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God." Acts 17:11 talks about the Thessalonians who "received the word with all readiness". 1 Thessalonians 1:6 ^NASB "You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit." Both of these words indicate the reception by faith of the message of the gospel.

Then we come to the third response, the thorny response. Matthew 13:22 ^NASB “And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes [GINOMAI] unfruitful." GINOMAI means to become something you weren't. He becomes unfruitful. That suggests that he started to bear fruit but then became unfruitful. Luke 8:14 ^NASB “The {seed} which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of {this} life, and bring no fruit to maturity." They are not seedlings like the rocky soil; there is growth but there is no fruit. The Bible talks about fruitfulness, but fruitfulness isn't growth. There has to be a lot of growth before a plant produces any kind of fruit. First you have birth, then you have growth, and then you have fruit. Lordship salvation comes along and says that if you don't have any fruit then you weren't saved. Basically what they are saying, although they don't understand it, is that if you don't grow to maturity then you weren't really saved. It is a violation of the whole gospel. As both Matthew and Luke record it the issue here is that there is some growth. It is not just the seedling, there is more growth but there is no fruit production; they don't reach maturity.

Then final type of reception is the good soil. Matthew 13:23 ^NASB “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.” But there are different degrees of fruit production. At that time, in context Jesus is talking about the fact that in Israel there were a lot of people who didn't received the message of the kingdom. There were two kinds initially but they didn't go very far because the details of life and their concerns about other things choked it out. There was only a minority that responded and bore fruit.

The same thing happens today. There are people who hear the gospel. Some of them reject the gospel. They don't want to become a believer; they don't want to have anything to do with it. Their destiny is the lake of fire. Then there are those who respond. Some just respond and there is a new birth but they never take in the Word to grow and mature, and when adversity in life comes they say God doesn't work, Jesus doesn't work, Christianity doesn't work; I am out of here. They are still saved; they are going to be in heaven.

The third type, again, reflects a certain number of believers. The get saved and for a while they are excited, go to church, grow a little bit, and then they just get distracted with education, with raising their kids, with work and career; all kinds of things come in and they just don't have time for their spiritual life. They don't have time to go to church on Sunday, they don't have time to go to Bible class, they don't have time to read their Bibles; they say, I'll do that when I get older. And you keep hearing that until it is time for the Lord to take them. Non-productive and probably won't have any rewards at the judgment seat of Christ.

Then you have the kind who bears fruit and for that they will be rewarded at the judgment seat of Christ. The question we need to take with us is: What kind of soil am I?

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