"All Because Of You" - U2
I was born a child of grace
Nothing else about the place
Everything was ugly but your beautiful face
And it left me no illusion
I saw you in the curve of the moon
In the shadow cast across my room
You heard me in my tune
When I just heard confusion
All because of you
All because of you
All because of you
I am...I am
I like the sound of my own voice
I didn't give anyone else a choice
An intellectual tortoise
Racing with your bullet train
Some people get squashed crossing the tracks
Some people got high rises on their backs
I'm not broke but you can see the cracks
You can make me perfect again
All because of you
All because of you
All because of you
I am...I am
I'm alive
I'm being born
I just arrived, I'm at the door
Of the place I started out from
And I want back inside
All because of you
All because of you
All because of you
I am
I love the line in the U2 song we just heard that says, ‘You heard me in my tune, when I just heard confusion.’
I am so thankful that God ‘hears us in our tune’. He knows us so well. He looks at us and sees all of our potential. He sees what he created us to be.
LOOK AT VARIOUS SEEDS
For these seeds to be all that they hold the potential to be they have to do a lot. Now think about all that has to happen for a seed to become what it is created to be. They have to be dispersed. They have to open up, they have to take root, they have to have the right conditions for growth (the right amount of sunlight, water, soil - and seeds needs are very different) they have to be given the opportunity to grow and be given their needs during their growth.
Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23 (Message)
3-8"What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn't put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.
9"Are you listening to this? Really listening?"
The Meaning of the Harvest Story
18-19"Study this story of the farmer planting seed. When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn't take it in, it just remains on the surface, and so the Evil One comes along and plucks it right out of that person's heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road.
20-21"The seed cast in the gravel—this is the person who hears and instantly responds with enthusiasm. But there is no soil of character, and so when the emotions wear off and some difficulty arrives, there is nothing to show for it.
22"The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the kingdom news, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it.
23"The seed cast on good earth is the person who hears and takes in the News, and then produces a harvest beyond his wildest dreams."
Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23 (NIV)
3Then he told them many things in parables, saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear."
18"Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: 19When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. 22The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. 23But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown."
The sower is anyone who spreads the Word of God
The seed is the Word of God
The soil is the heart of the person hearing the Word of God
Now as Jesus told this story he was speaking to those living in the region of Palestine and so the palestinian way of sowing and reaping a harvest would have been their mental backdrop to the picture Christ was creating through the parable. Explain the sower throwing the seed from the bag flung over his shoulder and the roads between and through the fields
The seed that falls on the road represents a hardened/calloused heart.
This is like the person who hears the word of God but because of a hardness, a critical spirit, a harsh judgmental way of viewing life - it never takes root in their heart and Satan comes and steals the Word, steals what was never able to penetrate the hardened heart.
The seed that falls on the gravel or stoney ground.
You picture this as soil w/lots of rocks, but it isn’t. In the land of Palestine much of the ground was just a bit of topsoil that was on top of rock. When seed fell on this ground it didn’t have enough earth for the roots to dig down deep enough so whenever there was any kind of problem, when the sun came out, when conditions were anything less than perfect then the seed just dried up. This is like the person who casually hears the word of God and lets it kind of get into his heart but really doesn’t think about it or ponder it too carefully. Churches all over our country are full of these individuals right now. They are in church because they keep up good appearances there or they maintain good business contacts over the weekend or it’s obligatory and they just feel like they ‘should’ go to church and so in they go and they hear the word of God and it may even catch their attention - for a minute -but they don’t take it seriously enough to let it really go deep into there spirit and it just withers away as the hours and days pass by.
The seed that falls in the weeds.
This one hits home with all of us because we’ve all experienced weeds in our lives. These seeds represent the word of God that falls on listening ears - not calloused hearers - not casual hearers, but those that want to know God in a greater way, those that desire a greater depth of relationship with Him, but our lives are so crowded with family life and business life and all the stuff that the thing that we really wanted - time w/the Word, time to hear it and time to apply it, and the Word - the very Word that is life to us and to our souls - it just gets choked out - becomes unfruitful in us.
Then there is the seed that falls on the good soil. In this soil the Bible tells us the seed, which represents Word, germinates. It takes its root and it bears fruit. Some of it 30 fold some 60 fold and some 100 fold. It is a heart that is ready to receive the Word of God. When the Word becomes imbedded in a persons heart it begins to multiply, to transform into what God designed it to be.
Now let me show you this...the difference between all of these seeds growing is not the seed, not the sower, but the soil. It’s not always the sower who does a bad job of sowing, it’s never the word of God (the seed) that doesn’t produce, the Bible says that in this particular story the problem is the one who hears, the soil, the listener.
I wonder where you find yourself in this parable? Are you a calloused heart? I mean are you here because you kind of have to be, either by design or by conscience and your going to hear everything but really that’s it - you really don’t want to go any further. Are you casual about it - you know, kind of yeah I hear yah, but a little time passes and well....it’s gone. Is your life crowded so that really you don’t have time at all for the Word of God? Or are you developing a caring, concerned heart to receive God’s truth? Do you say to yourself, ‘Boy I’d really like to move to the next step here - to advance in this journey that I’m on.’ Let me direct you to one more passage in scripture to look at
James 1:21-24
"In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like."
Who here can relate to that? You read something and someone can ask you about what you just read and you don’t have clue?
A guy by the name of Mortimer J. Adler wrote a book called ‘how to read a book’. And in it he said this:
The 1 time people read for all they are worth is when they are in love and they are reading a love letter. They read every word 3 ways. They read between the lines and the margins. The read the whole in terms of the parts and each part in terms of the whole. They grow sensitive to context and ambiguity, to insinuation and implication. They perceive the color of the words, the order of the phrases and the weight of the sentences. They may even take the punctuation into account. Then if never before or after, they read it carefully and in depth.
Now I’m telling you if we learn to read the Bible like that - we will be surprised what happens. When we ask questions. Why is that there? Why is this here? What does this mean? You don’t just read it. You read it and absorb it and you work with it. But don’t just read the words. Let the Word of God get into your heart as you focus your attention on it’s truth. If you don’t do that, then reading the Bible will be a meaningless ritual and that’s not what God intends for it to be. Look at the next verse there in
James 1:25
"But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action."
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