Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

In the Gospel reading for today we heard Jesus’ familiar parable about the sower of the seed (Matthew 13:1-10), the one who preaches the Word of God and scatters it abundantly. The Old Testament reading has a slightly different metaphor which the LORD has given through Isaiah the prophet (55:10-13). Although life and blessing are the end goal of both parables, in Isaiah the Word of God is likened to the rain and snow which fall from heaven rather than the seed that is scattered from the sower’s hand.

 

From God for His Purpose

To be sure, the implication in both is that the source of the Word is the LORD God whether He Himself is the sower or the sower is one whom He has sent to preach His Word. The rain and snow coming from heaven make the implication more direct. They come from God our Father who is in heaven. It is worth taking just a moment to emphasize the source of God’s Word.

 

The Bible, while written by many men whom God had chosen for the task, is the Word of God Himself. The holy writers were carried along by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The words are God-breathed through these human instruments and so are without error or malice. The words are divine and the message is one of salvation founded on the love of God for mankind, which we see so clearly displayed in the sacrifice of the Son of God to which all of Holy Scripture points us.

 

The parable of the sower seems to emphasize the sower who scatters seed abundantly on all different kinds of soil. Jesus also spoke of God as the One who “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). He wants all people to receive His gifts of life and blessing through His providence in creation as well as through His Word of salvation.

 

Jesus spoke the parable of the sower to the apostles whom He had sent out to preach that He was coming to the towns and villages. He had warned the apostles that they would not always find a warm reception. The parable of the sower explains that while many do reject the Word of God like different surfaces that are incompatible to growth, nevertheless it accomplishes a great harvest of salvation because some do hear and receive it.

 

This is the main point that is emphasized in the Old Testament reading. God’s gifts always accomplish His purpose. And in so giving them, He has great delight as they achieve what He has sent them to do. It is like the natural gifts of rain and snow bringing productivity to the earth and causing it to sprout with vegetation. One of the reasons that I plant a vegetable garden every year is to see the amazing miracle of growth that happens when you place dead seeds in the dead earth, and then just add water.

 

The prophet Isaiah needed to be reminded of the creative power of God because he wasn’t seeing the kind of results that we would have liked from his preaching. And so it is with most preachers who faithfully handle the Word of God. What registers in our memories are the times when we get a negative reaction, like when we water dead seeds and they just remain dead. And so Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all of the prophets lament how people spurn the Word of God.

 

Jesus had to encourage His apostles that despite all of the places where their scattering of the Word did not show growth, that Word of God is always accomplishing the purpose for which God has sent it and He finds delight whenever new life and salvation spring up. He does not let the negative responses dry out His pleasure when a dead and dusty sinner is showered with His Word of salvation and new life blossoms forth.

 

It is the rain from heaven watering the earth that causes the dead earth to bring forth life. It is the rain from heaven that causes the vegetation to sprout. Without the rain the earth remains dead earth and there is no life in the dead seed. But when the rain hits it, life appears from where there was no life at all. In the same way, the Word of God in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians describes fallen humanity as being dead in trespasses and sins until God in His mercy and love made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5).

 

Paradise Restored

This connection between God sending rain to give life for the earth to bring forth vegetation and God restoring the gift of eternal life to humanity fallen in trespasses and sins takes us back to the beginning recorded in God’s Word given in the Book of Genesis.

And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. (Genesis 2:8-10).

All was beautiful and full of life in that garden paradise. God spoke and His Word created out of nothing and His provision of water brought life in abundance.

 

But you know what happened. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the one tree from which He had forbidden them to eat. And hear what happened to that garden paradise.

And to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return. (3:17-19).

 

“Therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (3:23-24).

 

In the day that they ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, they surely died. The gift of eternal life through the tree of life was taken away, and the life-giving produce of the land was turned into a field of thorns and thistles. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground.”

 

We have a regular reminder of the curse of our sin and the death that it brings as we toil to bring forth from the ground what we need for life. Even if you don’t have a vegetable garden or raise any crops or livestock, you know how difficult it is to provide for your family. And no matter how hard you strive to give them the necessities of life, sometimes death takes them unexpectedly and nevertheless death still takes us all. The curse of sin has reached all of mankind because all of mankind has sinned.

 

But along with those regular reminders of how difficult it is to keep ourselves alive, how much toil and effort we have to put into it because this earth no longer produces with the ease and abundance it did in paradise before sin brought a curse to the ground and those who dwell upon it, we are also given regular reminders of the salvation and life that are given to us by the God who promised to remove the curse from us.

 

Our vegetable gardens yield their meagre produce and our flowerbeds have bursts of beauty. These are reminders of the salvation that God provided through His Word of promise to Adam and Eve and still provides for us through His Word. He promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head through the crushing of His own heel (Genesis 3:15), and our Lord Jesus Christ, born of the blessed Virgin Mary, suffered and died upon the cross for our sins of ignoring God’s Word. He fulfilled the Word of God’s promise and He rose victorious from the dead, opening up to us once again the way to paradise and the tree of life.

 

We have forgiveness and eternal life in Him, who came down from heaven like the rain and snow and accomplished the heavenly Father’s purpose to be our Saviour from sin and death. The Word of promise and life became flesh so that He could give us the eternal life that was lost to sin, but is now regained through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has returned to heaven in His risen body, having accomplished the purpose for which He was sent. He did not return to the right hand of the Father empty or in vain, but accomplished what He purposed.

 

When God sends forth rain and snow and it waters the earth to bring forth vegetation, seed for the sower and bread for the eater (Isaiah 55:10), God rejoices and has great delight that His purpose to bring the needed food for the life of mankind has been accomplished. So much greater is the heavenly Father’s delight that His Son has accomplished the purpose of our salvation. And even now there is great rejoicing in heaven when the Word of God sent forth from heaven accomplishes the purpose for which He sends it. There is joy and delight in the heavenly council of saints and angels and the Lord God Himself, when His Word accomplishes the purpose for which He has sent it to you.

 

Through the prophet Isaiah the LORD draws our minds to consider the very rejoicing of creation when God’s purposes are accomplished through the gifts that He sends to us. The mountains and hills sing and the trees of the field clap their hands (v. 12). When we celebrate the coming of the Saviour to earth we bid “heaven and nature sing” with us. We acknowledge that “fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy” (Joy to the World, LSB 387).

 

St. Paul related the Lord’s teaching that the whole creation groans with us (Romans 8:22-23) for the time of the redemption of mankind. The ground that was cursed at the time when Adam and Eve fell into sin is groaning in expectation of that time when all of creation will be renewed at the coming of Jesus Christ. Those who have placed their faith in the Word of God’s gift of salvation in Christ Jesus will have open and free access to the tree of life (Revelation 22:2-3). “No longer will anything be accursed” (v. 4). Our sins completely purged from us will allow us to live forever without any guilt or shame or malice or lust or worry or fear in a new heavens and new earth full of life and beauty.

 

The Word of God which goes forth from His mouth shall not return to Him empty. It shall succeed in the thing for which He sends it (Isaiah 55:11). He sends it to accomplish something for you. He sends it to bring to your mind and conscience an awareness of your sins, so that you despair of every vain toiling to work them off for yourself. You cannot do it, just like toiling in the earth for food cannot keep you alive forever.

 

But that same Word opens your ears to hear of His gracious provision for your salvation. How, just like He sends the rain and snow, so He sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you life, to feed you with His body, the bread of life given into death for you, and to wash away your sins by the blood that He shed for you on the cross. In this gift poured out from heaven for you there is the eternal life of joy and peace that He always intended for mankind to have with Him.

 

The LORD has sent His Word straight from His mouth to you. He sends it to all of mankind so that they might receive the divine gift of eternal life from Him. He pours it out on the just and the unjust, in all kinds of places so that all people have the chance to hear and receive it. It will give Him and all the company of heaven great joy if it should fulfill His purpose for you, if you should not despise it but gladly hear and learn it, if you should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.

 

You may not notice any discernible difference between the weeks that you begin with attending church where His Word is read and proclaimed to you and the weeks when you have something else to do instead. You may pay more attention to the infertile look of your life of faith and how you seem to be still so dead in your trespasses and sins whether you read God’s Word daily or not. That is the way that the apostles felt when their preaching of Jesus was rejected and the way that Isaiah and the other prophets felt when the people spurned them for declaring God’s Word.

 

But God gave to them a promise and He gives that promise to you, too. The Word that goes forth from His mouth will not return to Him empty. It will accomplish the purpose for which He sends it to you. It brings forgiveness, life, peace, and joy for you, that will yield an abundant harvest. Even you only see dead earth and thorns and thistles, He has a purpose for sending His Word to you and that is that you might live now in its blessing and rejoice with all of creation in the day when all the effects of the curse of sin are gone.