Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Turn with me into Luke's Gospel, chapter 8. You have an outline there; you might want to follow along. There are Bibles in the pews if you didn't bring one. Very familiar story beginning at verse 1: After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women. Then Luke names these women and continues.

While a large crowd was gathering and the people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants.

Still other seed fell on good soil, and that came up and yielded a crop a hundred times more than what was sown. When he’d said this, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Well, then he explained it to his disciples starting at verse 11: This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so they may not believe and be saved.

Those 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. And the seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they’re choked by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures, and they do not mature. But 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.

So here’s Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God, the good news, it says, of the kingdom of God. What’s the kingdom of God? We hear that phrase so often. Jesus talked about the kingdom of God in three dimensions. He said the kingdom of God is among you. When did he say that? When he was walking among the people, when he was healing the sick, when he was teaching by the lakeside. The kingdom of God was among them because the King was among them, you see.

Jesus is the King. The kingdom had come to earth. God stepped down the stairway of heaven with a baby in his arms and put him in a bale of hay and set this world on fire. And Jesus grew up. The King grew up. The baby King became the man King. The kingdom of God is among you. Then he said the kingdom of God is near you. And when Jesus talked about the kingdom of God being near, he’s talking about the coming kingdom that’s coming when everybody in the whole world will bow their knee and acknowledge that he is King of kings and Lord of lords.

And then he talked about the kingdom of God is within you. What did Jesus mean, the kingdom of God is within you? Well, any sphere where the King is King is the kingdom of God. And so if he can be within us, our lives become his kingdom. I used to sing a little chorus with the children: May the flag fly high on the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there.

And it’s a wonderful picture of a castle. I remember in England growing up, and there might be a picture of the Queen in her castle. I couldn’t see the Queen, but I could see the flag because the flag was only hoisted to the top of the mast when the Queen was in residence. And when the King is in residence, he makes himself known, or should. The fact that God lives in us, should not that make a difference in our lives that is visible and tangible and knowable?

So the kingdom of God can be within us, and we can let down the drawbridge and Jesus can walk over the drawbridge into our lives. And we call that conversion. We call that turning from one way, our own way, as we just heard in the testimony, and beginning to face God’s way and going his way. That’s conversion; you turn right the way around. And Christ by his Spirit comes into our hearts. Jesus said to his disciples one day, "I’m with you now (the kingdom of God is with you); one day I’m going to be in you." Then he went on to talk about the person of the Holy Spirit and how he can make Christ real within our hearts.

So my first question to you is: Is the King in his kingdom within you? Is your life the kingdom of God, and is the King resident? Let me ask you the second question: Is he President? For many people, they let down the drawbridge and the King comes in, but he’s resident but he isn’t President. He is not King. He didn’t come in for you to tell him what to do; he came in for him to tell you what to do.

And one of the things the King does when he comes in is says, "Now, as the Father sent me, I’m going to send you. And you’re all going to be like me, a farmer. And I’m going to give you some seed, and you’re going to go out to the fields because they’re waiting for it." And the fields are the people in this parable. Jesus explained that. What are the fields? What do they represent? People. Wherever there are people, there are fields, harvest fields, mission fields. You’re either a mission field yourself, or you’re a missionary farmer sowing the seed.

I remember at 18, the girl in the next bed to me in the hospital said, "Jill, you came to Christ last night. Before that, you were a mission field. I was able to sow seed into your life. And now you’ve become a missionary." I said, "What’s that?" She said, "The mission field is between your own two feet at any given time. Now you’re going to share your faith with others."

So what are the fields? Jesus sowed the seed of the kingdom in the crowds that were before him, but crowds are made up of individuals. Mary called Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, the twelve disciples, Jairus and his daughter, Nicodemus and Zacchaeus who climbed his tree, the blind man and the leper, a Syrophoenician woman and a Roman centurion, respectable sinners and scoundrels, clever people, dumb people, black people, white people, hurting people, happy people. People! Soil! Fields! And they’re waiting.

You say, "I don’t think they’re waiting." Think about this young woman that just gave testimony. She was waiting. And I want to ask you a question: how can a young woman like this, who is waiting, reading her King James Bible in desperation coming home drunk from a bar, how can she live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, until her late 20s and never know how to let the drawbridge down into her life and the King be in residence? How can that happen?

Well, how it can happen is that we’re not doing our job. That’s how it can happen. And so God is looking for a harvest of righteousness in our lives. Paul said, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it with his tears and teaching, but God made you grow." And there is life in the seed. I have a little seed here in my hand. There is dynamic life. This is dynamite, the life principle in the word of God. And Jesus said the seed is the word of God. It is dynamite.

Here she is; all she has is a King James Bible. That’s foreign language to young people like her. But she reads it and she said, "I didn’t understand it." Ah, but you never know. You never know. And the seed was sown in her life and finally came to fruition. So the figure here is of a spiritual farmer. Jesus said, "As the Father sent me as a farmer, I’m sending you. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

And so Jesus did all that farmers do. And farmers just don’t sow. And this parable has many images in it of what farmers do. Jesus sowed his teaching of the kingdom in the crowds. He plowed it in with illustration and story. He watered it with his tears. He said at one point, "Come to me, come to me, Jerusalem. Why don’t you come to me?" He said to the woman at the well, "If you only knew, if you’d only come to me, ask me." Have you ever asked him? Have you ever just asked him? "I'm so thirsty, God. So thirsty, I'm so hungry. I just feel like dirt. I just feel like a field, dirt. And I know that something needs to be planted and flourishing in my life, and I need to produce something of meaning and purpose, a harvest of righteousness."

But I’m waiting. I’m waiting for somebody to have the heart to care for me. Nobody cared for my soul. The thing is to believe that that’s what people are looking for, and not judge from the outside and say, "Well, they’re terrible ground; seed would never take place in them or her or the woman at the well." Jesus knew. And what we do is sow the seed anyway. We’re generous, and we go out.

Do not bother plowing in the farmhouse; don’t plow up the carpet in the living room. You know, we’re supposed to be out, out, out. And what we do is invite in, in, in. And then we take one little seed and we put it in somebody’s life twice a year when we invite somebody here. And the sower goes out and he generously scatters the seed hither and yon. Listen, he or she that sows sparingly will reap sparingly; he or she who sows generously will also reap generously. A stingy planter gets a stingy crop; a lavish planter gets a lavish crop.

Are we stingy sowers? I used this illustration years ago, and a pastor’s wife on our staff who was moving to another city came up to me and said, "I have a neighbor and I have been bringing her here and putting one little seed twice a year in her field, in her heart. And now I suddenly find out that my husband’s job is moving him to Houston; we’re moving in two weeks." And she said, "I want you to know something: I am going home to empty the whole basket of seed over her head because I don’t have any more time. I thought I had all the time in the world." And she did. That woman is part of this fellowship, I believe, today.

Generous sowing; it’s not too hard. What farmers do is so natural. Why is it so difficult for us to share our faith? I mean, if you saw a farmer saying, "Oh, this is so hard, I’m so embarrassed to be plowing this field, I just hate this. It’s not my gift. I have another gift. I’m not an evangelist, I’m not a sower." Paul said to Timothy, "Do the work of an evangelist." Timothy was a teacher; that was his gift. But farmers do all of it. They sow, they plow, they weep over it, they wait in patience and they pray over it, and they trust God to give the increase. And then they cultivate the field and they keep the weeds out.

As Jesus was walking along one day, he heard his disciples talking. And the disciples were saying, "Who is going to be the greatest?" And Jesus heard it and he weeded his garden, his field. He said, "What are you guys talking about? He that would be master will be servant of all, like me." Jesus washed people’s feet. He used it as a teachable moment. He weeded the fields of his disciples’ lives.

And it’s not that hard. I never go on a trip without a bag of books and some tracts. I have a little tract called Peace with God written by Billy Graham. I take dozens of these with me. I have a whole lot here. I never leave home without them. And just on this last three-month trip when Stuart and I went all the way around the world, I’m thinking of some plane journeys. I had the Purpose Driven Life with me, a book that’s on the bestseller list. That’s easy; it’s not so hard.

I waited until the man next to me had finished reading all his material; it was a very long trip, 14 or 15 hours. And he got through all his material, and so when I was sure he didn’t have anything else, I handed him the Purpose Driven Life. I said, "Would you like something else to read?" And he looked at it and he said, "Oh, my wife wanted me to read this book." I said, "Good wife, good choice." And I said, "Well, if you’ve nothing else to read, I said it is on the Times bestseller list." I mean, that’s a given; that’s easy. It’s not so hard. So he starts and by the end of the trip, he’s finished it all.

The next trip, I was sitting on a plane next to this lady who was obviously unhappy about something. So after she’d been weeping into her coffee cup for a while, I leant over and I said, "I don’t know if I can help you, but have you ever tried praying about your troubles?" So she looked a bit startled and muttered, "Yes." And I said, "Do your prayers work?" She looked very startled. So I got out a book called Prayer That Works, and I gave it to her. I said, "This might help you because I see you’re in trouble. And when we’re in trouble, we really need to pray. But if our prayers don’t work, maybe this will give you a clue why they don’t." I didn’t tell her I’d written it.

It’s not so hard. Standing in a line waiting to get into the Philippines, five cases of SARS had just been found. My husband had a cold. I was fanning him with my everything to get him through the temperature thing into the Philippines. And so we stood there a long, long time being processed. And there was a man and a woman in front of me, and the man said to the woman at one point, "I don’t know what the world’s coming to." I tapped him on the shoulder. I said, "I do." He looked rather startled, so I told him what the world was coming to. We stood there for a long, long time because we were all held up being checked.

It’s not so hard. I remember after 9/11 being stuck in Newfoundland for six and a half days. Came back and had to go to St. Louis. It was me and the pilot and one other man on the plane. Got off and couldn’t find a taxi because they were all kept away from the airport, if you remember, on those days. Somebody told a taxi to come up, and the taxi came up and I got in. And there was a taxi driver in it and he was a dark man, and I said, "Where are you from?" He said, "I don’t want to tell you." And I said, "Why not?" He said, "I’m frightened."

Then he said, "I’m from Somalia." He said, "I came out of terrorism and anarchy. I don’t know what to do." And so I said, because we’d stopped by then, and I got him out of the cab and I’d positioned him where all the little bellboys who had nothing to do because there was no one in the hotel were standing listening. And then I had a little scattering ceremony. And I got out my little Peace with God and I said, "Young man, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. It's in here. Peace. Doesn't matter what's happening outside. Christ can give you peace. I have peace. Chaos outside, peace inside."

And I gave him a little seed. And he went off, and I had my eye on one of the bellboys who was a cute little guy standing there listening in. And so I said, "Young man, can you help me with my luggage?" Well, he looked rather startled; I had one small pull on wheels. So he said, "You want help with your luggage?" I said, "I really do." So I gave him my little pull and we walked along. And he said, "Heard what you said to the man. I’m frightened too." I said, "Do I detect a little accent?" "Yes," he said, "I’m Irish." And he said, "I want to go home."

I said, "Now let me get this straight. You’re from Northern Ireland and you’re frightened about terrorism and you want to go home?" "Oh," he said, "I know what to do with terrorism in Northern Ireland. I was born into it. My uncle was killed by a bomb. But I don’t know what to do with it here." Well, by now we got to the room. I asked him to go and get some ice while I frantically found if I had any left. And by the time he came back, I said, "Young man, look at me. It’s in here. Peace. Peace." It’s not so hard.

But of course you have to be focused. This isn't for professionals. Every Christian is a farmer, a laborer, a sower of seed. And the fields are waiting. Yes, they are. And of course, there is life in the seed. Go back to my seed. There’s an English graveyard quite by the house that Stuart and I used to live all those years in England. And in the graveyard, there’s a great solid rock—well, it’s a slab of concrete; it’s a grave from years and years gone by, 17th century. And right through the middle of it is an oak tree. It split open. They’ve left it there.

It’s a wonderful symbol of nothing else but life and resurrection. And I often think of it. And I look at this. Somebody came up after the last sermon and said, "I am somebody that studies forests and trees. And they say there are 1,000 trees in one of these." 1,000 trees. Life, dynamic, precious seed. And God’s word says you have to do it generously. He that sows generously will reap generously. Don’t be stingy. But you also have to believe that you will doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing your sheaves.

It’s what you believe about this that will determine whether you share this with other people, whether you scatter the good news of the kingdom of God around. What do you believe about this? That it’s just a good book, that it will help you when you’re in trouble? Or do you believe there’s dynamic in it? In Jeremiah 23, do you know what it says? This is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. There’s no rock that can withstand it. It’s powerful. And we’ve got to sow it. The seed is the word of God, and we must take it and we must sow it generously in the world.

But it also must be watered. And I come back to Paul saying, "I planted the seed and Apollos watered it." It’s a beautiful image. There’s a verse in the Bible that says, "He that regards the clouds will not plant. He that looks to the wind will not reap." And if we wait for perfect weather conditions that we think in somebody’s life before we share our faith, we won’t plant, we won’t reap. We don’t know. So just be generous anyway. Just take the risk. We just don’t know. And it’s God that makes it grow.

And we don’t know if the person we’re sharing with, in our family or a stranger, is sitting at home after being drunk in the bar, reading a King James Bible. God knows. And he has his way of putting us in the next seat on the airplane or in the checkout counter or going to the gas station. You just have to have eyes to see. What did Jesus say? "Lift up your eyes. Look, look, look. Get them off your lunch. Fields are ready."

But it must be watered. And he or she that goes out weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing. And we’ve got to care about the people. We’ve got to let God break our hearts for the things that break his heart. And the thing that breaks his heart is that people are waiting and they’ve never heard yet. And he knows how many of them would respond if we got around to sharing our faith.

Tears that tell an honest story of a heart that loves you still, loves a world that’s lost and lonely, longs to live to do your will. Love our lives away, Lord Jesus. See us here surrendered, given to the work of gospel telling all who need to hear of heaven. What a privilege to travel round the world that needs your word. Why allow me such adventures, reaching those who’ve never heard? Is it that the people swinging on this little globe in space need a drink of living water, need to hear a saving grace?

Father dear, forgive my failings. Jesus, save me from my fears. Make my life a watered garden, daily watered by my tears. If I do not look at people as God looks at them, I will never share the word of God. If I do not go out weeping for the state of somebody I believe is lost—and that’s the key. If you do not believe that people are lost without Christ, you will never share any seed whatsoever. That’s the key. I happen to believe it’s true.

I happen to believe that one day many people will come through the gate of heaven; in fact, everybody will go through the gate of heaven, but some will be asked to leave. That’s what the Bible says. "Depart from me." And oh, to take one great look at God and then never be allowed to look again. That’s hell. Literally. I believe it. I have no alternative. And I believe that this is saving gospel news of the kingdom and the King and what he came to do on the cross. And if I believe that, what am I doing going shopping? What’s driving my life?

What takes me from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday with one thing in mind? The fields are ready. And the laborers are few. How come they're few? Well, as far as I'm concerned, I've signed up. I'll be a farmer, and he knows it, and God will know it. Yes, he will. The problem is we have enemies. Why isn't there a bigger harvest? Why don't people know? Because of the wretched birds. The fields are waiting, but so are the birds.

I stood at that checkout counter—and I am sorry, my mind is so fried—have I told you about that Israeli girl? Okay. Can’t remember after four services who I told because I’m using different illustrations. But at the checkout in Jordan into Israel, we have Palestinian little girls here and we have Israeli girls here, all in the army, 18 to 22-year-olds. A whole lot of Palestinian girls gathered around me and I had a bag of books, Stuart’s and my books in Hebrew and in Arabic.

And so they were looking through them and they gathered around and they began to be very interested. And one of the little supervisors was reading, reading, reading, and the others gathered around and one turned it over and saw my picture. And so I said, "It's me, my books." And so they were like, "Oh, her books." And then I said, "Please take them. I would love to give them to you. Just have them, just take them, all take one."

And they looked at each other and they all took one. And then they went and put them in a little room behind the place they were looking through our luggage. And I wanted to get out of there as quick as I could, but we were stopped at the next window. And a little tap came on my shoulder, and it was this girl and she had the pile of books. And she said, "I'm so sorry, we're not allowed to take gifts. The supervisor said I'm to bring them back." And she held them out and she wouldn't let go. And I held them the other end and our eyes met.

And my heart broke. And I swear I heard those wretched wings and the snatcher came and snatched them away. And she turned and went. And that’s what he does. He’s the master snatcher. The devil’s a great traveler. I’ve heard of travelers; I’ve seen many parts of the world, but never had the perpetual peripatetic or universal walker like Satan. That’s what he does. He travels all coasts and all corners of the earth. He’s ever walking and his motion is circular and his unwearied steps know no rest.

He walks around; he walks. His walks are the circumference and man is the center, and the motive, cause, and main intention of his journey is to win man. Horrible picture of the walker and the snatcher. And you’re in the center. And listen: neither does he stop when man is lost to grace. And he’s walking around you and he’s walking around me and he’s walking around my kids and he’s walking around my grandkids and yours as well.

He’s the walker and he’s the snatcher and he’s the destroyer. And first of all, of course, he wants to snatch the seed from those that are hearing it for the first time. But he walks around the farmer as well. And he is intent on stopping us farming one way or another. Neither does he stop when man is lost to grace, and he will try and prevent, he will try and get your attention even when you’re sitting here right now. He’s trying to snatch. He’s a snatcher, he’s a snatcher, he’s a snatcher. He’s a walker, he’s a walker, he’s a walker.

But God. And if he can't get you directly by approaching your mind, saying, "All this is a lot of stuff, nonsense. You don't believe this, you weren't raised to believe this, you believe something else. Who says Jesus is the Son of God?" Listen to me, listen to me: people can sit in a pew and have that wretched bird talking to you, distracting you, preventing you from retaining what you’re hearing even today.

And if he’s not doing that, the stony ground and hard things. And you know if you commit your life to Christ, it’s going to cause ripples in your family. It’s going to be hard. Or there’s good things that are choking you to death. And you say, "Yes, yes, I’d like to be a committed Christian, but I have this criminal anxiety about secular concerns." We call it "affluenza" in the West. And we’re choked with the pleasures of this life, and we spend our life accumulating things and then we spend our life trying to figure out how to keep them.

And we go to bed, as it says in Ecclesiastes, and our body lies down, our mind sits up because we’re saying, "How can I keep it? How can I retain it? How can I give it to somebody that was going to use it?" And so we’re choked with this criminal anxiety about secular concerns. We have affluenza. And the enemy uses the world, the flesh, and the devil. He uses everything he can to stop us producing a harvest of righteousness in our own lives and a crop of converts.

Who is going to be good soil, patiently allowing God to farm our lives and produce something that’s going to bring him glory? Well, there’s power in this. One story and I’m through. Power in this. Man in Russia in the Cold War. I heard this story in China this year. True story. He was the only man as far as he knows that had a whole Bible because it was in the era when they were copying pages and passing it secretly from house to house and all of that.

They were meeting in forests to have church if that was even possible. But this man had somewhere, somehow, had a Bible smuggled into him. And he was a pastor and he was an evangelist and he was a farmer. And he was traveling all through Russia to find the Christians and share as much and copy, and by the light of candles, people would copy a page of Philippians or two pages of Mark. And he would pass on, and they would say, "Don’t go, don’t go. I’ve only got this much."

And he’d say, "I have to go; there are groups and groups of people that love Jesus and they don’t even have one page of the Bible." And one day he was on a train going to another group, and the police came on, the religious police. And they found his Bible, and they opened the compartment window and they threw his Bible out the window just like that. It was gone. Man was heartbroken. He went home.

Months later, somebody came to his door. And they said, "Pastor, your name was in this and we traced you. It’s your Bible." He said, "Where’d you get it?" He said, "Well, we were on a chain gang mending the railway. And suddenly a train went by, and the window opened. And suddenly, where I was digging, this Bible fell. And I didn’t know what it was, but I put a shovel of soil over it and looked around to make sure nobody had seen. And when we were finished, I dug it up and took it home, and I found that it was the word of God. And I read it. I want to become a Christian. You help me become a Christian."

Power! Dynamic! Precious seed! And those of us that will say today, "I’ll do it. I will go out bearing precious seed even if I have to do it weeping, and I will be a farmer just like you, Jesus." And if you will do that, you will doubtless, doubtless, doubtless come again rejoicing. I don’t know if it’s your mother, I don’t know if it’s your husband, I don’t know if it’s your wife, I don’t know if it’s your child, and you have been sowing and sowing and sowing and you haven’t seen anything. Listen: it says with patience. With patience. God’s delays are not God’s denials.

And you don’t sow seed and have a harvest the next week. So you need patience. God will give you patience to weep, water, water, water the seed. And one day you’ll come again rejoicing, bringing your sheaves with you. Where are you in the story? What sort of soil? What sort of farmer? Let’s pray.