The Parables of the King

Went to Sunday service in Community Baptist Church (CBC), I found there’s another lovely thing I like about this church. Pastor prepared his photocopied script that everyone can have one in our hand. While listening to his preaching, we’re required to “fill-in-the-blank”. This is definitely an interesting way of listening and paying attention to the teaching. Take your time to read this and you'll be blessing :)

The title for today’s sermon is “The Parables of the King Part 1” from Matthew Chapter 13, verse 1-58. Let’s define “Parable”. About the same as I looked through the dictionary in my phone, pastor gave definition of “Parable”----A parable is an earthly story used to illustrate heavenly (spiritual) truth.

Some parables were recorded in the bible, and I suppose pastor is going to explain one by one in the following weeks. I’m looking forward for it as I didn’t used to have such an easy-to-understand sermon when I was in my own church in Miri. Even though I ever heard about this part of bible and understand it before this. His preaching was still attractive for me. And I managed to learn again from the same story. 

The first part I gonna mention here is “The Parable of the Sower”. The story begin like this: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it didn’t have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop…” (Quoted from Chap 13 Verse 3 to 8)

The story mentioned above is about some responses of people when they received or heard about Jesus Christ or gospel. The seed is presented as the Word of God. The sower is one who shares God’s word. The soil represents the Human heart. Basically there are 4 hearts which means 4 types of responses given.
(1) The Hard Heart – Pathway Soil represents those who hear and does not understand it or rather does not let it sink into their heart. Some of this type of people had already made up their mind that they are not going to be affected by the content of sermon before entering the church. Exaggeratedly I said there may be even some are sitting there looking for grammatical error that the pastor made throughout the preaching.
(2) The Shallow Heart – Rocky Soil represents people with “shallow heart” who joyful receive the Good News of the gospel because of the promise offered. They understand some of the basics but do not allow God’s Word to be rooted in their hearts and make a difference in their lives.
(3) The Crowded Heart – Thorny Soil represents those with “crowded heart” who hears and accepts the Good News, giving hope of a harvest. But thorns grow up and “crowded” and choked the growing seed. The “thorns” here refers to the worldly worries and false sense of security brought on by the materialistic wealth and then crowded the hearts and distracted many believers “choking” them and making them unfruitful.
(4) The Fruitful Heart – Good Soil represents those with “fruitful heart” who hears and understands the Word; then rooted in the Word and bear fruit, i.e. “produces a crop…”
God’s Word can produce different kinds of spiritual fruit in the lives of believers, for instances, Winning souls to Christ; Christian character; Practical holiness; Good works; Sharing needs and blessings others.

From the 4 types mentioned before, I think I gonna admit that I’m so limited and imperfect as I used to be the (3) type of person. Usually when a lot of worldly troubles start overwhelming me, I lost my mind. I shouldn’t have become like this as I have the responsibility to behave myself. So which type you think you are?

Today’s Mitchell: The sermon gave impact to me, and I wish I can record every part and hence able to keep reminding myself about my role.