The Seeds We Plant | Mother's Day | Pastor Jessica Amsler

I don't know if any parents in the room can relate to this, but I'm guessing that you probably can. But I have a child who, when they hear the word no, they don't hear the end of a conversation. They hear the beginning of a conversation. Anybody else relate. Like, I will give a simple instruction that just says something simple, clear, like, no dessert before dinner, but what they hear before the.

I mean, before the word even leaves my mouth. But, mom, let me explain. But let me explain. It's like I have just entered a legal proceeding that I was not aware of. And the crazy thing is this kid has evidence, he is prepared for his defense.

He shows up. And I'm telling you, at one point he's like, mom, if you can refer to page four at section B, I'm telling you, it's crazy, Crazy what these kids do. And, you know, I want to look at them and say, sweet, precious, relentless child. I have already thought about every single angle you could possibly take this. I have lived longer than you.

I know what's going on. Every angle you can consider, I have considered. I made up these excuses, and the answer is still, come on, can you help me? A resounding no. It is a no.

But, parents, you know what? I know that the word no is not restrictive for restrictive sake. It's love, it's care, it's wisdom, it's protection. And yet I'm still the bad guy for telling the truth. Come on.

Anybody relate to me this morning? Okay, good to know. Have you ever tried to love somebody towards something that they could not yet understand? Have you ever wanted something for someone so bad but they don't yet want it for themselves? Well, Jesus, he tells a story about that.

And the wild part about the story that we're going to get into today is that this happens on one of the hardest days of his ministry. Matthew 13. It opens with these three little words that we often overlook. Three simple words. That same day.

That same day. Well, let me give you a little bit of context of what's happening on that same day. That same day, Jesus, he has been out with the people. Crowds are gathering to him. They're coming from all over because they hear that Jesus can heal.

They show up. He is healing people. He is loving people. He is ministering and caring to people. On that same day, the religious leaders, they also show up and they don't like what he's doing.

And so they say, you know what? He's doing that by the power of the devil. Can you believe that? That's like you showing up to work, you're having a great day, Everything is falling into place. So somebody comes around the corner and says, I know why she's doing that.

She's a witch. Excuse me, I'm doing good things today. Well, this was the kind of day he was having. That same day also, his family decides to show up on this day. And I know at first that might seem kind of nice, but this is before Jesus family even believed that he was the son of God, that he was the Christ.

And so they show up, they're trying to shush him, they're trying to shame him. They're like, you need to stop this nonsense. And so it's on that same day that we jump into our text here. Maybe you've had one of those days before. One of those days where you are emotionally exhausted and you are just trying to help people, trying to get in the world and love them, and somehow you become the villain in somebody else's story.

Maybe things are just happening and nothing seems to be going to plan. That kind of same day, Jesus gets in a boat, he pushes away from the shore, and he looks at a crowd full of people waiting to see how he's going to respond to these religious leaders that came to his family that came. And I'm reading the text and I'm like, oh, I know how I respond. I'm going to give a sermon, it's going to be a good one, about when people jump into your life and they messing it up and they getting on your nerves. And this is what you do.

This is how you get revenge. But thank God this was not me preaching this message this day. This was Jesus. And so what he does instead is he gets in the boat, he pushes away from the crowd, and he talks about dirt. Kind of an odd sermon choice to me.

You're having a stressful day. You come and bring a sermon, and it's going to be about dirt. But here's the thing. Jesus is always intentional. Nothing is accidental.

So there's something in this story that the people needed, that we needed. And it matters. A day like today. So this is where we jump into our text. In Matthew, chapter 13, verse 2, it says on that same day, such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat, he sat in it, and while the people all stood on the shore, he said, a farmer went out sowing seed.

Now, the crowd would have been very familiar with this routine. They knew a farmer would take his satchel, put his hand in the satchel, and he would Spread seed out like an ark over his land, hoping that this would be the beginning of what they were hoping to be a good harvest. Jesus goes on to say, well, as he scattered seed, some fell along the path. Now, there was probably nearby paths. That's how the crowd got there.

And so they would know. Path, that makes no sense. It's hard. It's going to be trampled. The birds are going to come get it.

That's going to be a waste of seed. Jesus goes on and says, other seed fell on the rocky ground where the soil was thin. Maybe the people in the audience are thinking, well, that also doesn't make sense. Why would you plant seed where the soil is thin? The sun's going to come out and burn it up.

It's not going to last. He says other seeds still fell among the thorns. Maybe he motioned toward a patch of land that looked good from a distance, but when you get up close, it's got, like, some rocky, thorny bushes there. And then he ends with, whoever has ears, let them hear. And that was the sermon.

Can you imagine if you came here today and I was like, welcome to crossroads church. Old MacDonald had some dirt. That'd be a little bit strange, right? Odd sermon for having a stressful day. So let's talk about farmers slinging seed.

But the more you stare at the story, actually, the stranger it gets. So what is the point that Jesus is making? Well, first, the farmer is just throwing seed everywhere. We got hard paths, rocky paths, we have thorn bushes, good soil. Seeds are going on, all of it.

And if we're honest, this kind of feels a little bit irresponsible, because everywhere else in life, we are told to not waste your time, protect your resources, guard your energy. Don't waste your breath onto people who are not going to appreciate it. But this farmer in this story, he doesn't do that. He just keeps slinging seed. Which means it is not accidental to the story.

This is intentional. Now, obviously, this isn't just a farming story. This is about Jesus, the farmer who loves people. He loves people even when people aren't giving him any signs that they're receiving what he's giving them. Now, for many of you, you don't need to hear a sermon to understand that you live that.

You give wisdom to people who ignore it, love to people who don't appreciate it. You give grace to people who. Who misuse it. But the heart of the farmer doesn't view the seed on hard ground as wasting time or wasting prayers, because the heart of the farmer would Rather be rejected a thousand times than risk you missing one moment to receive him. See, later on, after the crowd kind of leaves, his disciples, they come and they're like, Jesus, you're going to have to explain this one to us.

What did you mean by all the seed and all these paths? He's like, guys, the hard path. It's people who are just resistant to the truth. They don't want to get it. Rocky soil is.

Maybe people are a little bit excited about faith at first, but it's just emotional. It doesn't last. Thorny soil or those that give it a shot. But then life just gets in the way and kind of crowds everything out. And so imagine as Jesus is preaching this message to the crowd, he is literally surrounded by every kind of soil that he just talked about.

He's got people who have decided, no matter what, they're not going to receive him. People that are excited about following him but a little unsure. And then he's got his disciples coming forward saying, can you explain this to us? The whole shore is a field. So Jesus became the illustration in his own sermon, preaching a parable while standing inside of it.

He looks at every kind of heart imaginable and space still sow seed. So that's the same day. We're talking about that same day. When people resisted him, he sowed. When they misunderstood him, he sowed.

When they questioned him, he sowed. And so I just want to say to somebody in the room this morning, I know that you are an exhausted parent. I know you are a weary spouse. I know. I know you're a frustrated friend.

And it feels like you keep sowing your best stuff and people are not picking it up, they're not receiving it. I just want to say, don't stop sowing because the ground is hard. Keep loving anyway. Keep praying anyway. Keep believing anyway.

Keep speaking life anyway, because you are a faithful farmer slinging seed. So Jesus says people's hearts are like soil. And there's all different types. And most of us read that. And what we do is we start categorizing people.

We're like, yeah, I know that type. Let me tell you about that. That girl over there, she is selfish. All she cares about over her kids. She is just career driven.

We start categorizing people into these different types, and that one has a hard heart and that one's shallow, that one's distracted. And we label people for not careful based on what we see on the surface. But if we're honest, haven't we all been those Types of people before, Same heart, different seasons. Haven't there been seasons when you were closed off? Seasons where maybe you looked alive, but it was only on the surface.

Seasons where life gets loud and then just faith just gets choked out. Maybe seasons where you're open to God and you're living by faith. The thing is, you are not one type of soil. You are the field. And the condition of the field changes.

Which means the story is not about figuring out how to label people. It's about recognizing what is going on inside of you right now. Because here's the thing. The soil might shift, but the sower hasn't changed. He is still out today slinging seed.

And so that's the hope of the story. The hope that we have today is that hard ground can be broken, rocky ground can be cleared, thorny ground can be weeded, and good soil still has to be tended. And so this is encouraging for us. That means that we don't have to stop sowing based on the soil. I just want to encourage you.

Don't be so quick to give up on somebody just because you saw them in one season. Just because you're experiencing them in one season doesn't mean that that's where they're going to land. God is still working on the ground. So keep sowing, prayer, keep inviting, keep loving, keep encouraging, keep forgiving. I know those little seeds that you sow right now don't feel like much, don't feel like they're landing anywhere.

But little is. Is a lot when God is in it. God knows the potential of the seed in its due season. So if we're not careful, I think sometimes we can approach the Bible where we're always the hero of the text. Right?

I mean, we are not reading the Bible like we're the villain. Are you kidding me? No. We are the hero of the text. I mean, at least we're the good guy.

Like, we're the one throwing seed, and everyone else is in their respective categories. So naturally, we pick a lane. Either we feel like the farmer who is just pouring out and nobody else is picking it up, frustrated at everybody else's heart, or we feel like the good soil, aware of everybody else's issues. But the truth is, we are both at the same time. You are the soil.

God isn't done with you yet. He's still working. And. And you're the farmer carrying a satchel full of seed. You see, when you walked in here today, you didn't just walk in here with a heart.

You walked in here with the satchel. And it's full. It's full of all kinds of stuff. It's full of seeds you chose. It's full of seed that other people chose for you.

It's words that have been spoken over you. It's experiences, it's wounds, it's patterns that you watched at a young age that you thought was normal in everybody else's family. And the dangerous thing about a satchel is the bag leaks. So everywhere you're going, you might not think you're sewing, but you're leaking something. The way you speak when you're stressed, the atmosphere that you create at home, you see what you normalize, what you tolerate, what you celebrate, what you ignore, what you laugh at.

Jesus says out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. In other words, you don't just say things, honey, you spill things. Seed is constantly falling from your life, and whatever is in the satchel eventually ends up in the field. Eventually, your family experiences what has been living inside of you. You see, the seeds that shape people the most are usually the ones you never meant to plant.

Unhealed wounds can become planted. Pain, anxiety can become planted. Fear, anger can become planted. Bitterness. And sometimes we can remain frustrated at today's harvest, but it's connected to a seed that we just keep carrying around with us.

And so here's the tension that I think that we wrestle with. You see, it can be easy in these moments to just blame our personality. That's just who I am. That's just how I was raised. That's just me.

But I'm wondering how many times we're blaming our personality when really it was a seed that was never examined and it was dropped in our heart at an early season. See, Proverbs 4 says, above all things, that means it's important. It's the most important. The most important thing you can do is guard your heart, because everything else you do flows from it. And so a wise person understands the condition of their heart.

What's in there? How did it get there? But the good news is other things can be planted, too. Prayer can be planted. Peace can be planted.

Forgiveness can be planted. Reconciliation, healing can be planted. Responsibility and freedom can be planted. You know what the craziest part of this whole story is to me? You know, you're reading it and you're expecting Jesus to say, and whoever, that you reap what you sow.

So get that in your spirit. You think he's going to say something like that? He's like, watch out. Be careful what you Sow because you're going to reap it. No, it's actually so much better than that, it's crazy.

Here's what he says. He says, when the Word finds you and the right soil and at the right time, God brings a harvest that multiplies beyond anything that you could produce on your own. 30, 60, 100 times. You see, that's not normal. That's supernatural.

That means it doesn't matter what age, stage or phase that you're in in life. It's not too late. Maybe your kids have been out of the house for 10 years, for 20 years, and you feel like, man, I missed it, or, man, their hearts are still hard. What this tells me is you never stop sowing because God can bring a harvest 30 times, 60 times, 100 times, he can restore the years. And so never give up.

You keep slinging seed. See, my kids love bedtime. Now, they don't love going to bed. Let's get this straight. But.

But they love bedtime. I think it's the part where it's quiet and it's the repetitive stuff, right? Like it's the same stories we tell, the same bedtime characters. They love the same old songs, the same back scratches and prayers. And I think that sometimes if we're not careful, we can forget that Jesus was a child too.

He came to earth fully God, but also fully human. He didn't just arrive in humanity as full grown Jesus. No. He was raised in an environment. He had a mother, he had a home, he had a childhood.

His mama tucked him in at night. Can you imagine Mary holding toddler Jesus, rocking him back and forth. How many times, I wonder. She told him the story about when the angel came. And she said, the angel came to see me.

She told me I was going to have a son and the son was going to be miraculous, the Savior of the world. And I was afraid. So the angel had to tell me, don't be afraid. And can you imagine Jesus just telling Mary, mom, what did you say? Maybe she said, you know, I was very afraid, but I just said, I am the Lord's servant.

Let it be to me according to your word. You see, I love the noun verb structure here in Luke. It suggests that she prayed herself into the will of God. And maybe she did what we do with our kids and she used this moment as a teaching moment. Maybe she was like, Jesus, there are going to be times in your life that are going to be really tough.

There is going to be a lot of pressure. But sometimes you have to pray yourself into God's will, even when you don't feel like it. You know, some scholars believe that it was highly likely that she repeated the same prayer so many times around her house that Jesus would have heard it so many times, it would be so familiar. It would be no normalized. You see, what's normalized is formative.

It doesn't take much for kids to pick up or repeat what we say. A few years ago, my son is nine now, but several years ago when he was probably two or three, we had this little cute little dog, but he's a stubborn little thing. And the dog was outside and I'm on the other side of the house and I said, Kate, can you open the door and let the dog in? Kate opens the door and he puts his head out the door and he says, flippin dog. And I'm like, cade, where did you learn that?

And he said, daddy, you see, it doesn't take much, you just gotta say it a couple times and what we repeat becomes normal and it gets repeated. So I can only imagine that Mary didn't make that prayer decision once when the angels came to her, that this was something that she repeated in her life, that she taught in her home. It was a story she chose, it was a direction that she chose daily. So when you fast forward 30 years of Jesus life, he's in the garden of Gethsemane, he knows he's about to go to the cross, he knows he's about to be betrayed. He tells his disciples, he's like, they're like, can you pray with me?

And they fall asleep. So he feels utterly alone. The Bible tells us that he's sweating drops of blood, the pressure is so immense. And he says, God, if there's any way, let this pass from me. But then in that moment, I think he reached back to something familiar.

And he said, father, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. In other words, let it be to me according to your word. You see, Jesus, fully God and fully human, was raised in an environment where surrender to the Father was normal. Because what gets normalized gets reached for. She didn't just raise a child, she modeled a posture.

That's why our language, when we're upset and frustrated with people, it matters. That's why our consistency in the house of God and showing up, it matters. That's why quick repentance and repair modeled in our homes, it matters because what we normalize gets reached for and what we plant gets reproduced. You see, you don't label seeds, you just throw them. And so One of those days, Jesus the farmer, he is slinging seed, and seed goes everywhere.

You see, you don't get to decide which seed grows. You just decide whether you'll keep sowing. And can I tell you something beautiful? Some of you are here today because somebody decided to not stop sowing into your life. Maybe it was a mother, a grandmother, a father, a teacher, an aunt, a preacher.

Somebody who kept believing and praying when your heart was hard. Somebody who kept believing when your life was rocky. Somebody who would come near you, hugging you when you were a pokey little thorn bush. But they wouldn't give up. Aren't you grateful they didn't keep sowing?

Aren't you grateful that God didn't keep sowing? He still loved you. He had a plan for you. He sowed seed into you, and you were that hard mess, and he sowed anyway. And that is the gospel.

The sower you follow never stops sowing you. Not one prayer unseen, not one moment wasted, not one act of faithfulness forgotten. And so I just want to set some parents free from guilt today. When the seed is cast, it's out of your control. You're responsible to sow seed.

People make their decisions and they are responsible for your heart, for their heart. But at the same time, it is never too late, never, ever too late to be the farmer you wish you would have been. It doesn't matter if your kids are 20 or 45. It is never too late to sow the seeds that you wish you would have sown. You can dig deep into your satchel today and you can sow love, mercy.

There is so much healing in asking for forgiveness and taking responsibility and being the person who initiates repair. God can do so so much in a moment, 30, 60, 100 times than you could do on your own in a lifetime. We are just responsible to be faithful farmers sowing seed.