THE STORY OF JESUS: Matthew 13:18-23
“Good soil… produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
The point of planting seed is producing a crop.
Jesus often explains that the crop God desires is goodness, love, mercy, justice.
Also known as the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)
This is what believing in Jesus ought to produce in us, what God is looking for.
This is what Jesus defeated Satan for, and restored God’s Spirit for.
In Jesus we have “everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” (2 Peter 1:3)
The lack of a crop is not because of deficiency in the seed.
Many Christians fill their minds with ‘knowledge’, but knowledge itself is not enough.
Satan knows what we know (and more), and yet produces no crop.
To understand the message is to act on it, to put it into practice.
I do not understand ‘love your neighbor’ until I start loving them actively.
Satan finds ways to distract, discourage and defeat us, to keep us from understanding.
So many people Sunday after Sunday hear the message, but do they understand it?
That is, is it making a fruit difference, is the seed growing into changed living?
We have “everything we need” to produce a crop – in the seed, in Jesus, in the Spirit.
All this has been freely offered by grace, ours for the embracing and experiencing.
But are our hearts good soil, are we embracing Jesus and His message actively?
With longing?
What do you sense the Lord saying to you?
PRAYER
Lord, I don’t know everything, and what I do know I know imperfectly. But I know enough to put it into practice. Help me to stop just thinking, and start living the good news!