Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: We're going to look at a parable in Matthew, Mark, Luke—three gospels give this parable. It's the parable of the sower and it's a very familiar one. If you've been in Sunday school or taught Sunday school, it's probably one of the first that we teach the children. It's got a lot of visual in it, and kids like stories and they like visuals.

I think we'll use Mark 4, which is a succinct look at the parable. Why don't we just read it first and then we'll talk about it. Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. "Again" means that he'd had a long storytelling day. He'd done nothing actually but tell stories to thousands of people. Do you know how tiring that is? Especially with families and children with them and no microphone to help him.

Another gospel tells us that he got into a boat—this is on Galilee—in order to tell this story. We know he got into a boat in Luke chapter 5 when he called Peter to leave his nets and follow him. I wasn't aware until I studied this that there's another time he gets into a boat, and it's here. He gets into a boat on Galilee and the people, it says, are standing on the shore.

The crowd that gathered around him was so large he got into a boat, sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables. In his teaching he said, "Listen! 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 so that they didn't bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times." Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

And when he was alone, the twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding, otherwise they might turn and be forgiven."

Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was given to them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.

But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others are like seed sown among thorns. They hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others are like seed sown on good soil. They hear the word, accept it and produce a crop—thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown."

This is a teachable moment. Those of you who have children or have been children yourselves, your parents have taken opportunities to give you a teachable moment. I remember Stuart having a teachable moment with our grandkids when they were young once. We were on a little Reedy Weedy Lake, a good fishing lake, and he was down there with two of our grandsons, probably nine, ten, eleven in age.

They both wanted to cast at the same piece of land. Actually, it was a dock and they both wanted to stand on one side of the dock because they thought that was the best side, and they were nudging each other. Stuart said, "One of you come over here. You're going to get your lines tangled." They started arguing. In the end, he said to one of them, "Dan, over here," putting a real grandpa voice on.

Danny stomped over to the other side and threw his fishing line in the water. As soon as it touched the water, a fish took it. He said, "I've got a fish! I've got a fish! I've got a fish!" Stuart said, "Go on, reel it in, reel it in." He got all excited. Then apparently, coming off a story he'd heard in Sunday school, he turns over his shoulder and says to Stuart, "You're a bit like Jesus, aren't you, Papa?"

Then he said, "And I'm a bit like Peter." Stuart said, "Why do you say that?" Danny got it before Stuart applied it. "I don't like doing what I'm told. Peter didn't like doing what he was told." Teachable moment. They talked about it. Jesus used them all the time. Usually, he used a story. He was a master storyteller.

Having just been in a part of the world where storytelling is part of the fabric of that society and has been for thousands and thousands of years, I'm reminded that a good storyteller is a wonderful way to scatter seed of the gospel. All of us need to learn how to do that. At the end of a long storytelling day, Jesus had been using parable after parable after parable.

He had an incredibly long day and crowds and crowds of people. He was changing the image, using the story to get attention. At this point, getting into a boat so that the water in between himself and the crowd would act as a microphone and take that sound and magnify it. He didn't have the advantage we have of all the modern things we have in our society.

The master teacher used many different ways to teach. My work hundreds of years ago at university was in words. Words are weapons for good or ill. I often tell people I heard Churchill's speeches putting vibrant guts into the British people as we waited for the invasion to start, which was absolutely certain, so we were told. I heard Churchill's famous speech myself: "They're coming, there's nothing we can do to stop them, but we'll fight on the beaches, we'll fight house to house, we'll fight hand to hand, we'll never surrender."

I also read in the newspapers Hitler's speeches. One for good, one for ill. Hitler's words took the world nearly into hell. Churchill's words—good words—strengthened the people that were trying to stop it. Words are weapons for good or ill. I remember in my training, it wasn't what to teach—my training's in education—it was how people learn.

I realized that God was giving me some palace training. I always think of Moses having palace training in Pharaoh's palace for everything he'd have to do to keep a million and a half people alive in a desert. He got it in Pharaoh's palace. Everything that goes to make our background what it is, secular or otherwise, God will use.

I thank God for the training I had at Cambridge that taught me to ask the big question: who's in front of me? How do they learn? Then apply in the method of teaching how they learn. Jesus did that. Parables are earthy stories with a heavy meaning—as a child said when asked what a parable is. Something down to earth, something common with a heavenly meaning.

Parables are like riddles. The East was full of riddles, proverbs, and wisdom literature. A riddle was a puzzle. It was words giving people mind work to do. What Jesus taught was important because it had eternal significance, but he wrapped it up in a story to get people's attention. Another way he taught was peripatetic. I was listening to Stuart teach on this last trip and he was explaining to pastors what that word meant.

It means walking around. The rabbis in Jesus' day would just walk around. As they would walk around, they'd say, "Oh, look at the birds." Or, "Look at that city on a hill. It's going dark and it's all lit up. A city set on a hill can't be hid." If you just take one gospel and follow his sandals, it would probably take you about 30 minutes to read from one end to the other and just see how Jesus walked around and his people followed him.

If they wanted to learn anything, they had to follow him physically. Jesus used a walking around method of teaching. He also used parables. "Ponder the parable deep in your head. Use your ears," he kept saying. "Think!" I remember again my husband. He sat our small grandchildren down once and I heard him say, "Nobody has ever died of thinking." I thought, my word.

The kids were looking at Papa. He said, "Many people have died without it." There was another long silence while the children took this in. He was trying to tell them to use their mind. One of the children said to Papa, "Well, didn't you watch TV, Papa? I mean, you must have watched TV." Stuart said it wasn't invented when he was young.

All these little eyes turn wonderingly to Papa. "Wasn't invented?" One of them said, "What did you do?" Stuart said, "Oh, funny things like read and think." The story and the parable was continuing. Thinking. Jesus was always saying, "You've got ears to hear." That didn't mean just the sound waves. It meant think. Think! A riddle was a way to get them thinking.

I was reading a wonderful book called "Spurgeon's Letters to His Students." It's about a famous preacher in Britain who had an evening Bible school for pastors. They were very poor; they didn't have any money for any books except a Bible. At night, he would go back and talk about how to put a sermon together and what to do when you didn't have books to help you.

He talks about truth that needs thinking about. He said, "I asked a little girl once who asked me, 'What is my soul?'" He said, "What do you think it is?" She said, "My soul is my think." I like that. "My soul is my think." Spurgeon replied, "Methinks too many people have too little soul." In other words, too many people don't think.

The mind is incredibly important when we're listening to Jesus. You mind your mind; God will mind your heart. I'm afraid in America all we want is attention to our heart, to our emotions, to our feelings. No, we mind our mind and God will mind our heart. What we do with our mind is we take the seed of the word of God and let it bring righteousness into our life.

That's what Paul says the word of God scattered in our own souls is meant to do: bring forth the fruit of righteousness. As that happens, we'll need to think. We'll need to mind our mind and God will look after the rest in our emotions and our feelings. This farmer, the Son of God, is the farmer. Jesus is now explaining the parable to people.

The farmer is the Son of God who is the word himself. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. The word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood—our neighborhood, our world. Wonderful. He was the word. Jesus was the word. But Jesus also said the word of God—the written word of God—is the seed.

Over and over again he is quoting the Old Testament Scriptures. That was his Bible. The farmer is the Son of God who is the word himself, but he wants to use this picture of the seed as this word of God as he's teaching the people. He sends out his workers into the world to scatter the seed which takes root and brings a harvest of life and righteousness.

You need to look up Galatians 6:10. It gives you the reason for the seed taking root in our lives and bringing forth the likeness of Christ. You can't do it without the word of God and obedience to it. It doesn't work any other way. Jesus the great farmer was sowing his teaching of the kingdom in the crowds. He was plowing it in with illustration and story.

Then he was weeping over it in his own prayer time with his Father. He was watering it with his tears and he harvested some of the firstfruits: people. After Pentecost, he expanded his farming operation globally. Jesus is the farmer. But then there's the farmhands—that's you and me. The people who live on the farm. We're the farmhands.

The team of workers called to follow him, both men and women. Look in Luke chapter 8. Twelve men called as the apostles to follow him and begin to watch him scatter the seed and to do it themselves. In Luke chapter 8, women were added to that team. There is a list of them there: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna. Three or four women mentioned.

Unheard of that a rabbi would travel with women until Jesus did it. Radical. But he added women to his team to help with the crowds, to look after the babies and the people that came who were sick. Not just to do that, but to scatter some seed themselves. As they helped with the crowd control, they helped talk to people. Crowds, it said, from town after town were coming.

There is nothing more exhausting than crowds and people at this rate. The team grows as Jesus continues to spread the word and proclaim the truth. What about the farmland? What about the soil? Here we see it represents the crowd, the variety of people Jesus is talking about. We read how they represent people that have thorns in their lives.

The enemy of our souls robs us of the seed and tries to mess it up even though we receive it. In another passage of Scripture, Jesus says, "Look at the fields. They're white. Look at the fields. They're waiting. They're waiting to be sown." Often people ask us when we come back from a trip, "It seems so dark and difficult out there. People seem so angry and so vicious when they hear the gospel. Is this true?"

Well, that's there, but the seed that falls on the good ground is all among the bad ground. Think about a field. There's everything there: the stones, the weeds, but there's the good soil too. It's all mixed up together. Jesus said they're white; they're ready for harvest. They don't look like it maybe, but they are.

I think of my own heart just before I ever met Christ. I was waiting for somebody to sow some seed in my life. I didn't look like it; I didn't sound like it. I looked like the last person in the earth that would be interested. But inside all the time I'm crying, "If only somebody would say something in my life that makes sense."

I was just waiting. That's all soil can do: just wait for somebody to care enough to go and sow some seed in our lives. They're white and they're waiting. I think of Stuart and I in our coffee bar days and the youth work we did for all those years. I remember the young man after Stuart had been in that dark place all evening answering questions for all these kids.

He said, "Well, I've got to go now, mister. And by the way, I don't believe a word you've told me." Stuart said, "Why don't you believe a word I've told you?" He said, "Because what you've told us is so incredible that if it was really true, people like you would have been down here a lot sooner to tell us kids. That's why I don't believe."

I think of the people we've been with who spent many years in Asia who told me heartbreaking stories of tribal people that came over the mountains to one tribe who had received the good news of God. This people group actually had never been reached by anybody, but they heard that gods had come to earth. They told all the secret of the gods to this people group.

They left their homeland and brought animals, beautiful homemade clothes from the skins of animals, and food. They brought their wealth and they arrived in this people group who in its entirety had come to Christ. It had taken about ten years of living there and working there. In fact, two of our missionaries that we still support were the ones that took their little family and did that work.

They came to the elders of the village and they said, "Who are you?" They explained they heard the gods had come to earth. They asked what all the animals and gifts were for. They said, in essence, "We have come to buy a missionary. Is this enough? If this isn't enough so we can buy a missionary so we can hear the story that you've got to tell, we'll go back and we'll get more. We'll bring everything we've got."

The fields are white and the fields are waiting. Jesus said we need to get out there and sow them. So where do we start? The mission fields between our own two feet at any one time. That's what I was told the day I came to Christ in hospital. The girl that led me to the Lord, who happened to be a nurse in the next bed to me, pushed me into it.

She said, "Everybody that comes to your bedside today, Jill, you tell them what you just did." I began to scatter seed. I had no idea what I was doing, but listen, how hard is it to chuck seed over people? I was giving this talk once somewhere and a friend of mine, who is a Bible teacher herself now, was listening to me.

She had a neighbor who she had been very carefully for years putting one little seed in her drink or whatever. She listened to me and, to my horror, she told me the next week, "Jill, I listened to you and I thought this isn't going to be." She said, "I went home, I filled my basket with seed, I went over to my neighbor, I knocked on the door and I chucked it all over her!"

I said, "Elizabeth, what happened?" She said, "She's sitting there. I brought her today." How hard is it to just do this? We don't have to make it grow. We can't do that. Paul says, "I planted, Apollos watered, only God can make it grow." All we have to do is scatter it and don't worry about it.

I remember my doctor coming to Christ in 1970 and his beautiful wife and their children. It wasn't long before he packed up and went to South America for the rest of his life. They served a wonderful mission out there. They were with a radio station, HCJB, and he was the doctor for the whole missionary community.

She said, "We go down in town a lot and it's pretty grim down there. It's an open sewer and it's disease-ridden. We pass this garbage pile for the whole city and it stinks. You can smell it a mile away. It's actually smoking. We can't get to this village any other way but past this garbage pile. One day as I was walking past it, I looked and said, 'Jack, look! Look at that!' And there in the middle of the garbage pile was an orchid."

She wrote to me and she said, "Only God can grow an orchid on a garbage pile." But the seed somehow had fallen from the orchid that climbed up the tree and it found a little bit of good soil. On this trip, I've had people say to me in essence, "I'm just a garbage pile. I've been infected by the garbage pile." Then the seed of God was sown in my heart.

Somebody cared enough to scatter the seed even on the garbage pile. And the seed found the good soil which it always will, and there's the orchid. Do we believe in the power of the seed of the word of God or do we not? What's our excuse? Don't miss a sowing season. A farmer can never miss a sowing season. It's very important so somebody can come along one day and harvest to the glory of God. Amen.