Wow, you have stumbled upon our archived website with old blog posts and sermon recordings. To see the current website, visit https://www.calvarygreenville.org
My wife is crazy about peaches. Seriously, while I was typing this sentence the Fed-Ex guy knocked on the door and left another box of peaches…fresh from Georgia. Diane likes peaches plain, in ice cream, in pie, in crumbly stuff…life is peachy-good in the summer time. Imagine the disappointment of my peachy wife if the trees in Georgia did not produce fruit. Imagine the disappointment of the grower! His livelihood depends on fruit production. If the tree was full of green leaves and blossoms there would be great hope but if there were no peaches; there would be sadness. Peach trees were designed to bear fruit—fruit in kind. In other words, it would be super-weird if the Peach trees in Georgia starting sprouting apples. We expect fruit in kind from the seeds we plant. All the people using the Community Garden at the Montcalm site are looking forward to beans from beans and tomatoes from tomatoes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to us then that Jesus expects fruit in kind. He expects that when we hear His words we will receive them like good soil and produce what has been planted. Since Jesus is good and His life is good, you’d think it would be easy to simply do what He said. But, sometimes we don’t hear very well. Sometimes we have good intentions but we don’t follow through. Sometimes we start well but allow other things in life to choke out the fruit. Jesus identified these different types of hearing problems in the Parable of the Sower. We’ll study His teaching this week by His grace. Thankfully, the seed of Jesus often lands in good soil and produces a bumper crop. I am privileged to see this quite often from my “seat.” I am amazed at the grace of God in the lives of Calvary people who have taken His Word to heart. Watching them reflect the life of Jesus in the midst of this crazy world is as refreshing as a Georgia Peach.
“Oh, do I have a story for you!” When somebody says that it is about to get amusing. Stories are compelling and way more interesting than raw facts. I find it fascinating when the Olympics are on TV that the networks do as much with life stories as they do with the competition. Learning the “back story” about someone who is skiing down a mountain is sometimes more interesting than their actual skiing. I have found over the past 25 years of preaching that people remember the stories I tell way more easily than the doctrines I work so hard to articulate clearly. Somehow it is easier to remember how I looked when I went to Jimmy John’s last time than the structure of Matthew’s life of Christ. I am not suggesting that this is a problem; in fact, I believe we were wired for “story.” We learn through stories; that’s why the Bible stories of the Old Testament Books of History are easier to read and remember than the Sermons of the Minor Prophets. Jesus was the Master of the short story. We may struggle to remember the outline of Romans but most of us remember the story of the Prodigal Son and the story of the house built on sand. I mention all this here because we are entering a new section in Matthew this coming Sunday…the Kingdom Parables. There are many different approaches to the interpretation of the parables, some of them far more confusing than helpful. What we know for sure is that these parables are stories with a point. Jesus wasn’t just telling stories for entertainment. He was using what literature and culture people call “indirect communication.” We are not good at that in this country, generally speaking. Americans are known — perhaps stereotypically — as “in your face” communicators. We value clarity and communicating in such a way that no one can miss the point. Eastern cultures however often communicate in ways that call for us to read between the lines. In indirect communication, one has to listen very carefully and then think! We must understand this as we study the parables. Jesus could have been more didactic and direct but He chose parables to teach Kingdom truths. Parables allow those who don’t really want the truth to be entertained by a story but those who have ears to hear gain more light. So, if you have ears to hear, I have a story for you. If you don’t really care about truth, I have an interesting story about Eastern agronomy for you. It will be helpful as you garden this Spring.
