The Holy Spirit led me to re-read this morning again and the Parable of the Sower found in Mark 4:1-20 and to continue self reflecting on the extravagant sowing of God.
The extravagant sowing of God is at the core my Wesleyan understanding Christianity and of God’s grace, election and salvation that differs from my Presbyterian and Calvinist brothers.
His grace is not like a cruise missle of election, where God enters all the data and details, and launches it. And it cruises around all the hard hearted people, It swerves around the rocky and shallow soiled people, it ducks under the thorny covered people, and finally hits the heart of the one person who has been elected by God.
Actually, in a Biblical sense as I see it, the election of God is in the heart of every man and woman, including you, and including me.
God sows in every heart, and there are a variety of responses to his Grace, some rejection, some hardening of heart, some can’t hear it, but God keeps on sowing, Halleluiah.
Jesus explained to his disciples that parables both conceal or reveal depending on whether one is open to hearing what they teach.
That is the only way to makes sense of this text from Isaiah that is included in this passage that most sermons skip over, never talk about and ignore: Isaiah 6:9-10. Yet this very difficult text is found in Mark, Matthew and Luke,
“so that although they look they may look but not see, and although they hear they may hear but not understand, so they may not repent and be forgiven.” (Mark 6:12)
The fact that previenent grace is both enabling and disabling. People who hear God's word receive it with Joy, others hard hearts, but sometimes, it takes hardening of hearts for a later opening of the Gospel.
Sometimes even a hardening of heart is God's grace to us, waiting of the right time for it to take root and bloom.
The original text in Isaiah 6 9-10 reads:
“Listen continually, but donʼt understand!
Look continually, but donʼt perceive!ʼ
Make the hearts of these people calloused;
make their ears deaf and their eyes blind!
Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
their hearts might understand and they might repent and be healed.”
In the following verse, Isaiah 6:11, Isaiah says after hearing these horrible and shocking words asks God, "How long, sovereign Lord?"
For he knows this is not God's last word.
And the Lord replied, “Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated, and houses are uninhabited, and the land is ruined and devastated, and the LORD has sent the people off to a distant place, and the very heart of the land is completely abandoned." (Isa 6:11-12)
Until the devastation is complete and only a stump is left. Until a person loses it all, surrenders it all, until all our other sacred pillars are thrown down. Until their heart is completely abandoned, Until a person is in the pit, at the very bottom of it where there is nothing, where all there is, is Jesus
The holy seed God is extravagantly sowing does not come from or is found in the lofty grandeur of a trees branches, it comes from and is in the stump, the stump of Jessie.
That is what baptism symbolizes. Life, Death, New life in Christ.
You Can’t be raised from the dead, until you die.
You Can’t be saved, until you admit you need saved.
My family, the election of God is in sown into the heart of every man and woman, including you. I pray you will seek a place and time to empty yourself, so there is nothing, nothing but you and Jesus. Please pray tge same for me. God bless you my friends!
Please share your reflections and prayers with us on this blog in the comment box below.
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