Seeds in the Storm | Pastor Marcus Mecum

"Then he spoke many things to them in parable, saying, 'Behold.'" Everybody say, "Behold." This is a powerful word. It means that you are to lean in, you are to get ready, you are to watch what's about to be said. This is the drum roll. This is the spotlight, if you will. In your language, this would be the musical score in a movie that begins to draw the audience into the moment. And really, the musical score here is like the scary parts coming. Don't, don't, don't. I don't know. I don't know what's I supposed to do. "Behold, a sower went out to sow." And as he sowed, some seed fell or were scattered by the wayside. And the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on the stony places, the rocky places, where they didn't have much earth, and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. And then some fell among the thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop, some 100, some 60, and some 30. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. I want to talk to you about seeds in the storm, seeds in the storm. We can see here that the sower is, the Bible says he's going forth to sow. He has a dream. He has a vision of the potential future harvest. He's imagining the possibility of a great orchard or a beautiful vineyard. In the bottom line, as he knows, within that seed, it is his responsibility to assure ongoing fruitfulness. He believes in the potential of the seed. He does more than talk about it. He gets his hands on it. He gives his time to the seed, and he knows the influence of that seed. But yet that potential will be squandered. It will be missed. It will remain dormant without the partnership with the soil. And so Jesus says, "Behold, lean in, get ready, watch what's about to happen." The sower went forth to sow. In verse 11 of that same chapter, Jesus reveals to us that this story was given that we might know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. So Jesus introduces this as relevant to the kingdom of God, but he goes beyond just the kingdom of God, and he introduces the plant kingdom. We have weeds and seeds. The animal kingdom, we have birds. Mother nature, you have the sun and the heat and the environment. We have mother earth, the soil and the rock. We have the bacterial kingdom that is the unseen contributor in the story that germinates the seed. And then at least we have the human element, or we have the sower. Or you could say not necessarily the human element or something not limited to the human element,

just any way the seeds are sown. Any possible way the seeds behold, the sower went forth to sow. In the first thing it says that imagining, finding the good ground. But as he's sowing those seeds, the Bible says that some fail or some were scattered on the wayside. The wayside would be off the path. It would be off the, in other words, the wayside is the wrong side. The wayside represents those people who were on the path, but for some reason they fell off. They were on the road, but they fell off. And now because of one reason or another, they become hardened in their heart. This is the prodigal sons and the prodigal daughters. These are those people that have maybe been hurt by the church or maybe they're mad at God or maybe they're just out there and they know the word, they've received the word, they're not naive to the word of God, but they just couldn't fully accept it. They just, they like some parts, but not other parts. They like the grace part, but in the holiness part, I'm not really sure of. They like the forgiveness part, but they don't like that God has standards part. They like what they can get out of it. They don't talk to me about what this costs. And I love this part of the story because it says some of the seeds were scattered there on the wayside. They were scattered on the wrong side, which I don't know about you, but that's where I was. I was on the wayside. I was on the wrong side. I wasn't on the straight and narrow when the seeds of God's word found me, but somehow some way in the wrong place, in the wayside place, in the hardened place, in the lost place, in the addicted place, in the prideful place. Is anybody thankful today that we serve a God that knows how to scatter on the wayside?

It's not a waste of his seed to throw it in the hard places. And it went to the rock, the stony places. This is those who want it. They're all about it. They give God their immediate yes, but the trial comes. The testing of their faith comes. The adversity shows up and just under the pressure of it, just under the heat of it, they throw in the towel and they walk away. And then it mentions the thorns. The thorns had it. They received it, here, the seed makes it the furthest. But then it gets choked out by the cares of life, the pressures of life, the stresses of life, just strangle the seed, the cares of life, all the worries that we have. This is where we trade the sacred for our success, consume with success, consume with trying to make something of ourselves. This is where we trade the scripture for a screen. We trade worship for our worry. And before we know it, the cares of life begin to suffocate the love of God out of our life. Behold, watch this, hear the score, dun dun dun. He's sowing. There's all the potential in the seed for a great harvest that we read about. But yet for some reason or another, one of the mysteries of the kingdom is even though people got it, for some reason it was ripped away from them. Behold, the sower went forth to sow. On May 21st, a violent F4 tornado formed in rural Iowa. It tracked about 44 miles and went 44 miles, think about this, in under 48 minutes. Its peak winds reached 185 miles an hour according to Doppler radar. It reported that some of those winds exceeded 300 plus miles an hour. It struck the small town of Greenfield, Iowa, the hardest. It destroyed wind turbines.

It snapped trees in half. It caused extensive damage everywhere that it went. It killed five people, 35 more were injured. And so this was a major, major, major storm. These people experienced not just any kind of storm. One of life's greatest storms ripped everything they knew apart. And as they begin to rebuild and clean things up, after about six to eight weeks, but what they begin to notice was that there were corn stocks growing in unusual spots along this storm's path. They noticed that corn stocks growing in sidewalks and random places where the foundations of homes were all that was left. Just random places that corn begin to sprout. People begin to look at it and say, what in the world is this? No one in their right mind would plant corn in these places. I mean, who thinks about planting corn in a sidewalk or in a foundation, in some hard place like that. We all know that that's not where you plant corn. If you're gonna go out and you're a sewer, you're gonna sow the corn seed in nice, neat, perfect little roaks. But people begin to realize that as these plants randomly appear that what had happened was the tornado struck during a typical corn planting window. And what happened is the tornado lifted the seeds up

from the recently planted fields. And so the seeds are in the tornado. And then that same storm is breaking up the ground, is disturbing the soil. And then those seeds that are in the storm are planted in scattered places all over. And it's what they called the seed scattering effect where unexpected growth happens in the midst of destruction. I'm talking to you about seeds in the storm. But hold the sewer, went forth to sow. I think that most of us do think that way. We do think that life is supposed to be clean, nice, little pretty, little perfect rows. And if God's in something that should fit our little perfect row. But when the corn storm took those seeds and scattered them in unexpected places, when that storm took those seeds and took them and scattered them in these wayside places. I mean, take a minute and just think about it with me. If God allows the storm, if God sends the storm, its purpose is usually one of two things. One, it's to perfect you or two, it is to correct you. But the good news is there are seeds in every storm and that the storm can scatter the seeds in places you would never expect. This is the point that the storm has a way of taking the message and the gospel and the word of God to places we would never go voluntarily.

Some of you are getting chemo treatment and you're in a hospital and you would have never chose that storm, but here it is, you're in the middle of the storm and you would never go there voluntarily. But yet there you are, a seed that's been planted in an unexpected place. Maybe you've lost a loved one and you're sitting there saying to yourself, I can't understand, but all of a sudden you're finding other people that are traumatized by loss and traumatized by losing someone that they love and you're looking at it and you're just the seed that's in the middle of the storm, but God sends that seed to places and to people that would never hear any other way. We see the destruction, the pain, the heartbreak, the loss. But storms have a way of scattering seeds. There's seeds being scattered right now in the middle of your storm. When you really study the Bible, you see this significantly. In the book of Acts, Luke actually ties the early church's growth to persecution. This is the sequence of events in the early church. This is the sequence of events throughout church history. Great persecution hits. God's people are scattered, and then the church multiplies. Acts 11, 19, now those who were scattered, why? That's an agricultural term, scattered. They were scattered because of persecution that arose over what? Stephen, the first martyr, who's just been stoned to death. So there they are in Jerusalem. Just a nice little neat little comfortable church. Persecution breaks out, and watch what happens.

Now they're scattered to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to the Jews. But there were also some who spoke to the Hellenist, the heathens, also preaching what the Lord Jesus, that's the seed, preaching the Lord Jesus, and the hand of the Lord was with them and great. There's the multiplication, persecution. They were scattered and a great number who believed turn to the Lord. You see, Jesus promised, as He was ascending in Acts 1, that you will be witnesses, not just in Jerusalem, He told them, but Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. But without persecution, they just stayed there in Jerusalem. But when the persecution hit, what Jesus had commissioned them to do, that storm, that metaphor, tornado storm, grabs ahold of those early church disciples. And it begins to scatter them into Judea, into Samaria, into Antioch, into Cyprus, into Phoenicia, into the uttermost parts of the earth. It went to Asia, it went to Italy, the gospel went into Turkey, it went all over the world. But it was never going to happen had God not sent that storm. The storm of persecution grabbed ahold of the early church seeds and it scattered them all over the world. I'm saying there are seeds in the storm that you're facing. Persecution became the sower that scattered the seed. God used intended harm to scatter the seeds. That persecution that was meant to crush the early church picked up those seeds and scattered them all over the world. An ancient rabbi was being executed. They tortured him, I'll make it simple, basically they had an instrument that would lacerate and strip the skin off of a person's body, it was a Roman torture technique. In other words, literally this ancient rabbi because of his faith was being filleted alive. And as he is there, skin stripped off of his body, some of his students looked at him, they're suffering and they noticed his murmuring lips as he was quoting scriptures, quoting Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 and 5, he's quoting the scripture and his students said even now in this condition, you're still scattering the seed.

And this is what he said, he said, "All my days I've been troubled by this verse that But you shall love the Lord your God with all of us. He said, "When else will I have an opportunity to fulfill this? "Now that the moment has come, shall I not fulfill it?" He realized there's seeds in the storm. I'm not a fear preacher. I like to encourage. And I'll get back to encouraging in just a minute. But I say this as an obvious warning to any discerning believer. That the times are short and we are living in the last days. And God has blessed and prospered this country. But we continue to whine and criticize. And we continue to be negative. We continue to overlook the great provision that God has given us. We're so thin skinned that it's very possible that what we need is for God to send an F4 tornado of persecution to the church. And rip through all the excuses we have, rip through every compromising preacher, rip through, yank them off the platforms if they need to. But also judgment starts with the house of God, rip through the congregation, rip through our compromise, rip through our sin. Come on, rip through all of it, tear it all down. But in some way or another, pick up some seeds and scatter us that we might multiply the good news of the gospel in unexpected places. Back to the encouraging part. When you're going through one of the greatest storms of life, the picture perfect plan is being ripped apart. The storms can be so extreme that we feel absolutely powerless. Life can at times lead us to say, God, why? Why the storm? Why have you sent this storm into my family? Why have you sent this health storm?

Why have you sent this financial storm or if not sent, allowed it? But I came to say instead of asking why, maybe you should ask God just to use it. Ask God to use your storm to scatter seed. There's somebody out there on the wayside in a hard-to-reach place. There's somebody out there that unless you go through that storm, that seed remains in the little perfect rows of a church. But we need some seeds to go out and be scattered to the wayside. There are seeds in my storm. And I don't know what all the things I think are important are going to look like, but God used the storm. There's really nothing else I can take from the storm other than if you can use it, if somehow it can glorify your name, if somehow it can lift God's people, if somehow it can make the gospel go forth, then I'm fine with that storm. Praise the name of Jesus. The fourth response was the good soil. This is the person that says, "I'm going to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength." This is the person that's prepared. I'm ready for the storms. I'm ready for the opposition. I'm ready for the threat. I'm going to dig down deep. When the word stretches me, I'm going to dig down deep. When the word demands much of me, I'm going to dig down deep. If it fillets me, I will love the Lord, my God, with whom else will I have the opportunity to fulfill that scripture. Shall I not fulfill it? Shall you not fulfill it? At some point we got to recognize that those storms that come are there to pick us up like seeds and scatter us in the hard places. And this is the promise. This is the beautiful promise. [Music] That if we keep our heart right, and that's the test, not keeping their heart right and their heart right, not judging everybody else's heart,

not being a little keyboard warrior, everything is wrong in the world. [Music] Put your heart, put your hand on your heart. This is where God does it. This is where God doesn't work. [Music] This is what God wants right here. [Music] But if you'll love him with all your heart, with all your soul, that's tough with my soul. That's my mind, that's my decisions, that's my feelings, that's my choices. That when worry comes, no, that's not how I love him. When the cares of life come to choke, that's not how I love him. I love him with my soul. It'll be what it's going to be, but nothing will keep me from loving him with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength. The promise is 30, 60, 100-fold. The promise is no matter how difficult life is, that God has the plan as to so are he's out. Behold, the so are went forth to so. Which are you going to be? Which one are you today? Where did you see yourself in the story? Where have you seen yourself in the story? I've been on the wayside. I've given God my yes and then thought, oh, I should have done that. I've had the cares of life. Get me. Where are you at? What's going on with you? Isn't it important enough to look at your heart and pinpoint it? You say, Lord, don't let the thorn choke this out. Don't let the shallowness that sometimes I tend to lean towards. Don't let it cause me to lose the seed. I don't want to give because of hardness. I don't want to give your word, your potential to the birds. Does anybody here say I want to love you with all my heart?