"Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear!" That means, brothers and sisters in Christ, if you have ears attached to the sides of your head: Listen up! Pay attention to Christ's Word! Don't plug your ears and shut our God's Word. Don't let the Words and Promises of the Lord go in one ear and out the other! Hear God's Word. Study God's Word. The Sower goes out to sow His seed. Just like the parable of the workers in the vineyard, this parable of the sower is no earthly story. Just as the Vineyard owner did something unheard of in this world, namely, give everyone the same pay though they worked different hours, so this farmer is unlike any earthly sower. He doesn't care where the seed lands. He doesn't seem to care if He wastes any. He just sows everywhere! Throwing seed, chucking it all over the place, letting it land where it will. This is is how Christ showers His Word upon us. Limitless. Not restricted. His Word sown everywhere so that all may hear and believe. The astute observer here at Bethel will note that the new pastor is big on Bible Study. Sunday morning. Sunday night. Monday afternoon (yes, ANYONE is welcome to join the young catechumens), Tuesday night, Thursday morning. In our preschool. In our meetings. Why so many Bible Studies? Because the sower sows the seed. The Word is to be cast out everywhere; that's what you've called me to do! The word that saves us. Calls us to repentance. Turns us away from trusting in ourselves to faith in Jesus Christ. The Word that delivers the forgiveness of sins to poor sinners! The Word that plants itself in the new hearts that the Lord has given us and brings forth an abundance of fruit! So listen up! Pay attention! If you've got ear holes in your head, hear Christ's Word.
And Jesus' Word today is this parable of the sower and it's given to us to warn us! To wake us up! To call us to repentance. And to save us. Brothers and sisters, the Lord teaches us that His Word is sown but so very little of it is received by the ground to bear fruit. Here the Lord lays bare for you your own hearts and teaches us you how easy and how often you despise His saving Word. Some seed is snatched up by the devil. When we let the Word of God go in one ear and out the other without learning it, inwardly digesting it, we should know that it is the devil who is snatching the Word away! It's not just that some people learn better and some folks can stay awake during a sermon better—no! If you walk out of that door knowing the same or less of God's promises than when you walked in, or if you haven't learned anything else since the day you were confirmed and threw your catechism in the back of your closet, then know that it is the devil snatching away the Word so that you won't have it and believe it! Then there is the seed that falls on the rocky ground and withers because of of the heat of temptation. What trials and temptations in your life tell you that God's Word is not true and is not worth listening to? Oh, sure, we start with good intentions, all excited to hear God's Word and grow in it. But then the suffering of this life withers us and God's Word takes no root. This too is the work of the devil who wants none of us to hear and believe God's Word! What then of the seed that falls among the thorns? The cares and pleasures and riches of this life come and choke off faith. What things in your life are better than the Word of God? More important? More exciting? What things keep you from Bible Study and the Divine Service? Brothers and sisters there is not one of you who is not afflicted by such birds and shallow soil and thorns in your life. There are those of you who hear the Word but never learn and grow in your understanding. There are those of you who have faced suffering and difficulty and so don't think the Word of God is of any use. There are those of you have have many more important things to think about than learning what the Word of God has to say. Here the Third Commandment condemns us for we so clearly despise preaching and God's Word and we don't hold it sacred and we don't gladly hear and learn it! Brothers and sisters, whoever has ears to hear, let them hear! That is our Lord's call to repentance! To cry out that indeed Christ's Word finds no good home in our hearts and that we want Him to plow our hearts and plant His Word so that we will hear it and believe it and live and not perish eternally!
Brothers and sisters, what hope is there against such hard hearts upon which our Lord's Word falls fruitlessly? The only answer can be the Lord Himself and His Word. Jesus tells the disciples, who themselves don't get it: "To you has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God." To you it has been GIVEN! What is given? To know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. How? How is it given? By the Lord coming in the flesh to preach His Word to His disciples. To YOU it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God? How? Because you have been given a pastor whose only job is to preach and teach you this Word so that you will be saved. The Lord explains this parable so that you will be given a new heart, as Ezekiel says, not a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh, that "good and clean" heart that our Lord says receives His Word. Brothers and sisters, if you recognize yourself and your life in any of those bad soils, then cry out to the Father to break up your heart and grant you His Holy Spirit that you may hear and believe His Word. And listen to the preaching and teaching of your pastor so that you will be saved from being carried away by Satan and instead kept by the Holy Spirit in the faith of Christ.
Again, this salvation is our gift. We would never have hearts to receive God's Word if not for our Lord being Himself sown into the ground for our salvation. Jesus comes into the flesh and suffers the fate of the seed. After all, Jesus Christ, the Son of God is Himself the Word of God. The Word, Jesus, is snatched away by the devil as He is grabbed and arrested, mocked and condemned and killed by the devil's own preachers and agents, the Word-despising Pharisees and clergy and Roman governor. Just as the seed falls on the rocky ground, so our Lord is planted in the rocky tomb, put in the earth as a seed that is sown. Our Lord even says that "unless the corn die it cannot bear fruit!" Our Lord is sown as seed into death for our salvation. He is choked with thorns and thistles as He wears a crown of thorns and suffers the curse of sin on the cross in our place. In all these ways, the seed, the Word, Christ Himself suffers the fate of sinners and unbelievers; He suffers and dies for us! But our Lord is the Son of God. Death cannot keep Him down! Where He is sown, there is life! Christ rises from the dead, sends out His preachers, the Word-sowers, delivers the forgiveness of sins to the world and therefore produces fruit a hundredfold and more.
Therefore, never despair, dear Christian, of the salvation the Lord has for you. Don't despise His Word but believe it and see that it is GIVEN to you to know it and be saved by it! Jesus says that the ground that bears fruit is seed that is sown in a good and clean heart, received by those who "keep it." That word, "keep it" is the same word from which we get "Catechism" and "Catechesis" and "Catechumen." hear and learn our catechism and God's Word. The Gospel of the forgiveness of sins is the word that drives the devil's birds away from the Word. The waters of Holy Baptism are the waters which wet the soil of our hearts and keep us from withering under temptations. The Body and Blood of Christ attach us to the True Vine who raises us above the thorns and thistles that would choke us off. It is the Word of God itself, brothers and sisters, which delivers us the Word of God Himself, Christ our salvation. "To you has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God." That has been given to you, dear Christians, because you have been given a pastor whose job it is to teach you those mysteries by pointing you to Christ. Despise your pastor, despise the Word he preaches, and have no doubt the devil will come and ruin you. Therefore cling to the preaching and teaching of the Holy Gospel, live in your baptism, daily rejoice in the gifts that your Catechism unfolds and explains.
We heard Isaiah say today that the Lord's Word does not go out and come back empty. Rather, it accomplishes what the Lord desires it to do. The Lord desires to grind up and plow our stony hearts and to give us the heart of Jesus which receives God's Word and bears much fruit. To you has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. To you has been given the Word, sown richly and in abundance. You can despise that Word, you can reject it and let the things of this world take it away from you; then you will perish eternally. But to rescue you from such a fate, your Lord has given you His Word in abundance. He has given you Himself, sown into the ground, planted in His death and raised up on the Third Day so that His Word that is now preached to you and given to you in His church and through His sacraments is a life-giving Word that delivers His salvation. It forgives your sins, takes root in your hearts and by the Spirit's patient work bears fruit in your lives to the benefit and service of your neighbor and to the glory of Christ who with the Father and the Spirit is blessed forevermore. Amen.