Soil Classification: A Taxonomy of Hearts

The Parable of the Sower: Luke 8: 1-15

So I think I am going to start with a nerdy confession. I love soil. No, really, I mean it. I have a master’s degree in soil mechanics. I moved from my home in Northern New York, to Madison Wisconsin (which at the time was the farthest west I had ever been) just to study soil with some of the best. I went to Kenya a couple weeks ago and here is a sample of some of the pictures I took.
I was so enamored with the rich red soil of Africa that I tried to bring some home and got it confiscated by the customs folks. Yup, I really like soil. And one of the things you learn to do, when you move half way across the country to study soil is how to classify it. Here are a dozens of standard soil classification systems:
You classify it by what size it is, or how cohesive it is, or what color it is, or how much water it can retrain or a wide range of other intrinsic factors. So it occurred to me, as I was reading this passage, that it is one of two ‘geotechnical’ passages that Jesus teaches (the other being his course in foundation design). But Jesus does not classify the soil based on an intrinsic property, but a functional property: how it responds to seed. He uses the metaphor of soil to classify four basic responses to his message and claims.

So I read this passage and I immediately thought of…Raiders of the Lost Ark. See if you can figure out why:

Video

The reason I thought of this sequence is because Harrison Ford is after a treasure. He is desperately seeking something real and valuable. But it is not an easy path. There are traps set for him along the way to take him out. Malevolent forces designed to derail his pursuit. In his excellent commentary on Luke, Darrell Bock says:

“Weather riches, fame, success, desire to be accepted, pursuit of pleasure of comfort, or fear of letting God have control, the road to fruitfulness is packed with black holes that can swallow up any progress towards spiritual vibrancy.”[1]

And I essentially feel like this is the picture Jesus is drawing for us here. He is saying that during the pursuit of Him and His kingdom and His purposes, the things of greatest value, there are three main traps set along the way. The parable of the sower, which is more appropriately called the parable of the soils, is about three things that can go wrong between here and the finish line.

1. The Birds: Cosmic Medaling

11"This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 12Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.

Dan has made it very clear that this is a community for two kinds of people. It is a place for Christians to meet and grow and learn. But it is also a place for the spiritually curious. This is precisely the same makeup of the crowd that first heard Jesus tell and interpret this parable. His committed followers were there, but the majority of those listening were spiritually curious men and women from the surrounding towns.

But it is you, the spiritually curious, that Jesus is warning in this first illustration. He says, you may think you are on an intellectual quest…and you are…but it is not purely intellectual. There are spiritual forces at work. There are personal, malevolent forces at work that have a vested interest in you loosing interest in the gospel. The idea of spooky boogie men running around doing spiritual mischief is outside of our modern plausibility structures. But Jesus does not problem with a belief in a real and personal devil. Jesus says he is real, he is devious, he is powerful, and his primary agenda is to keep the gospel from finding a welcoming and fertile home in your heart.

Most images of this personified evil, or a personal devil, are just caricatures. They are either stylized images of a mythical beast or ridiculous deconstructions of the historical belief:
Actually, there is very little specific information about the devil in the scriptures. This is pretty much what we get. He is our enemy and he would like to keep us from Jesus and the liberation of the gospel. The most direct description of his activities is in 1 Peter 5:8;

“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

This gives me a chance to show one of my more interesting Kenya pictures. Two things impressed me about lions in the wild. They are powerful and they are constantly on the prowl for the next unsuspecting gazelle that they can tear to shreds and consume. They are seriously bad ass creatures. This is the picture drawn for us of a spiritual enemy that would collude with our unresponsiveness to deny us the gospel. If you are here and are just checking Jesus out, Jesus says, hey, it’s worth knowing that there are spiritual forces at work to keep you away.

But there are two things working together to destroy the seed in this example. The birds sweep it away, but only because thy have access to it. This heart is resistant. The birds only have access to the seed sown on the hard soil. The heart is complicit in the stealing of the seed. There is no room for Jesus’ message so it essentially bounces off and the meddling comic opportunist is there to dispose of the unwanted message. Charles Spurgeon, a famous British preacher of the 19th century, spent over half of his sermon on the sower on this soil saying: “there is too much traffic in your heart to make room for the word.”

Jesus’ plea is ‘If you’ve got ears, please use them not just to comprehend, but to apprehend. Don’t just try to figure the Jesus thing out, but make it your own. And be careful, because there are those who do not want you to.

2. The Rocky Soil: Derailing Pressures

13Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away.

I used to get really excited when someone became a Christian…and I still get pretty excited when this happens, but there is a hesitance to it for me. Instead, I get really excited when someone is still a Christian after several years. Because we have all seen this. Someone we care about aligns with Jesus. They hear his message and it grips them and they say “Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I want in on that.” And it is really sincere. They aren’t messing around, it’s for real. But then something happens. After a couple weeks or a couple months or a couple years they drift away. They are just not into it any more. Now I do not have any idea why this happens. The reasons are probably as diverse as the people who choose this path. Jesus gives us a hint though. He says that in many cases it happens because the new faith is not robust enough to survive trouble.

I think this often is because we do not always traffic in the real gospel. ‘Accept Jesus, clean up your life and God will bless you’ is not the gospel. ‘Sell out for Jesus, get on the right team and your life will have meaning and purpose’ is not the gospel either. Christianity is not a program of moral improvement to earn God’s favor, or to force his hand or any permutation of the idea that God’s response to me is based on my moral performance. If that is the gospel you responded to, you are in danger of wilting – because what happens when things go poorly. When the metaphorical intensity of mid day the summer sun bears down on you do you have the theological resources and the depth of relationship with Jesus to not only survive, but grow? If we behave well in the hopes that God blesses us, what happens when things get worse? What happens when things get worse precisely because of our new faith?

But if we respond to the actual gospel of rescue rather than improvement: My sin is a horrible offense to a holy God and separates me from him indefinitely. But God was not satisfied with this separation so he sent Jesus to pay our penalty and make a relationship with God available again. Because Jesus died I am free from condemnation and live a life of grateful service. If your roots go deep into the truth of the gospel, you know that you are not exempt from suffering. If God would put himself in the way of pain on our behalf, he would certainly put us in the way of pain on behalf of others or his sovereign will. If anything, the gospel exposes us to more suffering.

People often cite personal tragedies as the reason they can not believe in God…but this is a inconclusive argument The same tragedy will cause some people to reject the message of Jesus and it will cause others to cling closer too him. Your response to pressure reveals the taxonomy of your heart and usually, if you got a hold of the real good news of Jesus.

I want to tell you a story of something horrible that happened to someone I care about that revealed what kind of ‘soil’ he is. My brother Nic was expecting his third child at the same time we were expecting Charis. Of our 5 collective children (including the one Amanda and I are expecting in February) Jude was going to be the only boy. But I got a phone call half way through the pregnancy that devastated me. Nic recently blogged about it and I’ll let him tell you the story:

Jude brought about another of these predictive happiness-faith conundrums as we found out at 4.5 months he was going to be severely handicapped. We were told he would have trouble moving at all and would likely have little or no brain function… I will always remember my wife and I, drinking tropical smoothies in Tallahassee, with tears streaming down our faith, confessing to each other that we must receive this child and yet ashamed that we both preferred him to die. My iconic family dream had always been Alexi and I and our teenage or grown kids hiking through the Grand Tetons, and this was the greatest possible blow to two athlete, graduate level trained parents- a physically disabled, mentally impaired child.[2]

Nic said that within 30 seconds of their first appointment with the specialist they were talking to him about elective abortion. When Jude was born he was arced all the way backwards so that his little crooked feet touched the back of his head. He was a little circle of sadness. I decided to spare you the pictures. But it was just a really hard time for them. Now If Nic and Alexi’s roots had been shallow…if they had responded to the gospel because they thought God would bless them…if they were not deeply rooted in the gospel so that they realized that God owned them, loved them and had every right to ask extraordinary things of them, this very well could have been the end of their faith. But they embraced it as the opportunity to learn, love, grow and testify to God’s goodness and faithfulness through terrible things.

Now Jude is doing great. He is extremely smart and cute and can even stand already (something the doctors were almost certain he would never do). And so we thank God for his gentleness. But this event showed me more than any other single thing Nic and Alexi have done, that they understand the gospel and are have deep roots in its good soil.

3. The Weeds: Death by Pleasure

14The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.

Now Jesus sets up a strange paradox in verse 14. He says there are two opposite states that can shipwreck our faith. We can be crushed by pressures or choked by pleasures. Now this is not an anti-pleasure passage. Fruitful Christians can enjoy film and music and sports and sex and food and all sorts of things within the safe boundaries that God sets for these things. In fact, CS Lewis says that most sin is just the misuse of the good things God gave us for our pleasure. But the picture that Jesus is painting for us here is that of a life for which Jesus is not the central priority, where pleasure becomes the main pursuit. Neil Postman, in the brilliant introduction to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, juxtaposes the warnings of two high school books: 1984 and Brave New World and suggests that our society needs to be more concerned about death be pleasure rather than pressure.

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that along side Orwell’s dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known but equally chilling: Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of the autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that we would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with the equivalent of feelies, the orgy porgy, the centrifugal bumble puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.” In 1984 Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell is right.” Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death

My favorite scientist/theologian had a lot to say about the role of diversion in impeding spiritual growth or realization.

“Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”

“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”[3]

Pleasure and pressure are the twin perils of the heart. The first is usually inflicted from without and the second we usually inflict upon ourselves. It is this understanding that probably lead the author of Proverbs (ch 30) to say:

7 "Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'

Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

This is the reason that simplicity is a discipline of the Christian life. Developing the discipline of simplicity helps uncluttered you life and keeps room in your heart for Jesus and his kingdom.

4. A Couple Thoughts on Fruitfulness

So the first three examples are negative examples, warnings if you will. Jesus says, be careful not to be like this. But the fourth example, the good, productive soil is a positive example. To wrap things up I’d just like to make a couple of brief observations about the soil Jesus tells us to be like. I will ask two questions: (a) what is it that we are supposed to produce and (b) how do we get it:

15But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

(a) What do we produce?

The metaphor of agricultural productivity shows up throughout the New Testament. But what does this look like. What does it mean to ‘produce a crop’ or ‘bear fruit.’ Well this metaphor generally refers to 3 different aspects of Christian growth:

i. Character: The most common referent of the ‘agricultural productivity’ metaphor is the image of making progress in the development of your character. Galatians calls it love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. In Ephesians Paul calls it goodness, righteousness and truth. One of the things the gospel is supposed to produce in us is progress in a wide range of aspects of our character.

ii. Kingdom priorities: Elsewhere in the scriptures fruitfulness refers to having kingdom priorities like Paul’s collection for the famine in Israel.[4] Those $ given to alleviate the suffering caused by a famine was called Christian fruit. Other places, it is just hard work for the things that Jesus cares about.[5]

iii. Finally, fruit or harvest or crop is a metaphor to describe the reproduction of the gospel.[6] Offering the liberation and forgiveness of Christ to anyone who will listen.

(b) How do we produce it:

There are three clues in this text

i. hear the words of God
ii. retain
iii. persevere

Jesus asks us how we approach his word. I had a friend in college who used to say that we should not read the scriptures, we should let the scriptures read us. This whole story is about hearing the words of Jesus with an open heart and a desired to be rattled by them. But these three words, hear, retain, persevere, these are not casual words. The final lesson of the parable of the sower is a familiar lesson in Luke. Be tenacious in your pursuit of Jesus and the things he says.

_________
[1] Darrell Bock The NIV Application Commentary: Luke, p 234.
[2] http://nicolablog.blogspot.com/2008/10/order-of-happiness-part-2.html
[3] And more from Pascal on the topic of diversions: The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us, gradually and without ever adverting to it, to death.
[4] Romans 15:28
[5] Philippians 1:22, Colossians 1:10
[6] Colossians 1:6