4th Quarter, 4th Soil

We live in an urgent time. With the church in decline, deconstruction increasing, and people abandoning their faith in droves, followers of Jesus need to know how to navigate this cultural moment. And Jesus offers us an answer. In Mark 4, he tells a parable about a man who plants seeds in four different types of soil. Most of the seeds are fruitless, except in the 4th soil. Our goal at Passion Creek is to become this fourth soil. We want to be a church that hears God’s Word, receives it, and bears fruit. We do this by resisting the worries of this age, deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things, and instead reorient ourselves around God Himself.

You can take interactive notes here. At the end of the message, you can email the notes to yourself.

 What I love about New Year’s Eve, it’s actually one of my favorite holidays because I sleep through it, uh, but it is a reminder for our whole culture that the clock determines the play.

On New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 2008, we’re going way back, folks, I invited Jordan Smith to my house. Now, this, uh, I was hoping would become my girlfriend, and I am a pastor’s kid, so we couldn’t go out to eat. No, it was come to my house as my parents were supervising, but we had been texting for a while.

T9 text. Anybody miss those days? T9 texting. I was a king at that, and now I tried it the other day. Impossible. It really is a trait you lose over time, but in fact, that night,   📍 this photo was taken. This is me in Jordan. Yes.  That’s what the first service said too. Now, A couple things. One, you might not be able to tell, but I was very nervous when this photo was taken because I was about to see if she would say yes or not to being my girlfriend.

But also, I was a little bit annoyed in this photo because someone had to take that picture and it was my sister. And I thought, I will not ask if my sister is right next to us. And so I was praying that she would get the clue and be able to go inside the house while I popped the question. Now I was staring at the clock and you guys, if you don’t know me, I have It’s, I’m not clinically diagnosed, I’ve diagnosed myself via Instagram, but I am OCD, uh, my brain is wired that way, so my big fascination was, if I ask her to be my girlfriend right at midnight, I will always be able to tell you, by the second, how long I have been with Jordan, and, uh, We didn’t get married at midnight, so I’m just keeping to the clock of, uh, the New Years.

And so, I, uh, clock struck midnight, in fact, I actually asked at 1157 to give her time to answer accordingly right at midnight, and we were alone outside, and I love it, it was so beautiful. Guys, she said yes, and, uh, but she even said a thousand times yes. Which was, like, straight out of a book. Come on. So she said a thousand times yes, and because I think I’m the main character in every story, my neighbor that I don’t know was watching, of course, and seeing that I popped the question.

And so, right away, at midnight, he played, Celebrate good times, come on! And that just became our song. It was just, like, Beautiful. And I thought, how nice of that neighbor to be so mindful of me and my life situation to play this song. It’s not because of the new year, it’s because of a new relationship.

But every New Year’s Eve, it’s that one time again, we all collectively agree the clock determines the play. And this isn’t just a smart idea. It’s a biblical one. Psalm 90 verse 12, Moses is the one saying this. He says, teach us to number our days carefully. So that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. So every new year, we’ve kind of been doing this the last few years, we spend all month as a church family discerning the clock and writing up the play for what this year will look like.

I often have been calling 2023 our banner year, or lately I’ve been calling it our biscuit year, because no risk it, No biscuit. And so what we decided to do in late 2022 was to risk it all. We said, Hey, let’s empty our savings. Let’s stop being at a church on Sunday nights at another church building and let’s go for it.

Let’s meet on Sunday mornings. Let’s spend the money we have to get what you see today. And we were thinking maybe this will work. Maybe not. But no risk it no biscuit. And so we decided the play was these three practices. We started with sabbath and then in may we talked about scripture and then in august we put on simplicity.

And what a fruitful year that was for us. In 2024, what we just ended, the theme was as we were discerning the clock in the moment for our church, we decided it was going to be all about how to make friends and love other people. We felt a great sense of loneliness, not just within our culture, which I think is obvious, but also within our own community.

2020 really did a number on us, and we were still feeling its effect. And so we decided the playbook was to put on the practices of Jesus, of that which our hospitality, uh, Peacemaking and generosity. It’s all communally focused. And I’m so proud of how you guys stepped up to the plate and did exactly that.

And so for the last couple of months, I’ve been asking God, okay, these last couple of years have kind of worked. God, what’s our moment now? What moment are we in in 2025? Where is the clock and what is the play? I think this is imperative for us to do as leaders, not just of churches, of organizations, but also of families and of yourself, because one of the enemy’s chief tactics is to confuse us and to distract us from what time it really is.

I recently heard a pastor say that society today is designed a whole lot like a casino. I know we’re all Christians in the room, so we don’t know what that looks like at all. Let me describe it to you. In a casino, there are no watches, and there’s certainly no clocks. It’s designed that way so that you don’t know what time it is, so that you get lost in the game.

It’s also got no windows, so that you don’t know if it’s day or night. And so you have no idea when you came in and you have no idea what life’s going to look like when you get out. And in the middle of this casino, you have these illusions of delight. You see one out of a million hit jackpot and you think, maybe I can be next.

And so you slowly drain away all of your life savings and your energy to chase this illusion. Is that not the moment we’re in today? If you can’t tell by the signage and the shirts. I believe we are in a fourth quarter moment. Barna Research recently stated the church in America is in a state of, quote, irreversible decline.

They were saying outside of a move of God, which can still be an option, the number of practicing Christians, which I like that phrase, I think we should adopt that, the number of practicing Christians in the U. S. will dwindle decade by decade and generation by generation. This is in part due to, I believe, our settling of making attenders.

rather than making disciples. And instead of seeking his face, the church has turned to pragmatic business practices, to political idolatry and to subtle secretism to turn the tide. And I don’t say this to fear monger. In fact, I feel more hope than ever before, but we do need to understand what is needed for our moments because the clock determines the play.

To that end, let’s study together Mark chapter four. Mark chapter four, we’re going to anchor our whole year. In this parable, this parable is often called, as you’re turning there, the called the parable of the sower. Scholars argue probably a better way to summarize this is the parable of the four soils, because while the sower is of course, the most important person in the story, the purpose of the parable is to examine which soil are you.

This is the first parable in all of the synoptic gospels. That’s just a seminary word, which means Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We believe the Biography of Jesus was written by four Gospels, but John did his own thing. He did not follow the pattern of the other three. But the other three, usually if you find a story or a parable in Matthew, you can find that same parable or story just in a different light in Mark and Luke.

And so, some people actually call this, because it’s the beginning of all parables, and because of the heartbeat behind it, some theologians would argue this is the parable of all parables. If you understand this parable we’re about to study today, you get the rest of them. And parable, I know is a weird word too, this simply means a simple story.

illustrating spiritual truths. And so I’m so excited if you stick with us this fall, we’re going to be looking at 14 different parables of Jesus. And I’m so just humbled and excited to see how God will form us as we study that particular genre in the fall. But for now, let’s stand for the reading of God’s word.

We’re going to be in Mark chapter four, starting in verse 13. I will read, just follow along. Then he said to them, don’t you understand this parable? How, then, will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. Some are like the words sown on the path. When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the words sown in them.

Others are like seeds sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root. They are short lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away. Others are like seeds sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the word, but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, the desires for other things, enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

And those like seeds sown on good ground hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown. Father, we submit ourselves now to the scripture. May you make us a fourth soil. In Jesus name, everybody says, amen. Amen. You may have a seat. There’s actually a lot of words here.

I think I need to define to start out to help us. First is the sower. The sower is the person doing the act of sowing the seed. The sower is God. Primarily God himself. He’s the one who sows the word, gives the gospel to us, the soil, and we are the ones who receive it. And if we do, it brings us life. And by extension, as we become his disciples, we do the things that Jesus did.

And so we also can become lowercase s sowers, also sowing the word. Another key phrase obviously is this word, word. Word here is actually Lagos. Now, Lagos, before the Bible was written, had its own meaning. In Greek philosophy, Lagos was rationality, it was a series of ideas, it was principles. In other words, it was an impersonal force.

So it was great for somebody to have Lagos. It was this aura, but it’s not a person, it’s just a thing. I was even, uh, Uh, unfortunately, I was on YouTube the other day, and I saw Jordan Peterson, whom I don’t really listen to, but I know a lot of young men do. I was listening, uh, because he had a whole thing on the Four Soils.

I thought, this will be interesting. Let’s see his take. And I was a bit distraught, because he actually took this more Greek philosophical understanding of Lagos. He took this parable, and just kind of made it about ideas. And I think, ironically, what the parable is saying here, if you think it’s just ideas, you’ve missed the point.

The whole point in biblical theology, logos is the word of God, and namely Jesus Christ himself. If the last time we were together in December for Christmas, remember we looked at John one particularly, we looked at one 14 and we were talking about how the word became flesh and we focused on flesh being sarks.

Well, now I’m focusing on the word. The word is Lagos. So Lagos became flesh. Jesus is the Lagos, but this can also. Of course, point to just the gospel message that Jesus died, was buried, and He rose again, and He ascended, and He’s coming back. That is the Word. That is the Word that saves us. So, this Word is also paralleled and likened in this parable to a seed.

Why a seed? Well, first of all, to point to the soil, but also the seed contains power. If you think about a seed, it’s Unassuming. You wouldn’t think it can do much, but Jesus gives the parable that little mustard seed can grow into an oak tree. It has the power to change the entire environment, in fact, to influence the atmosphere if we’re willing to submit to it.

And that’s what the word of God, and that’s what the gospel of Jesus does. Now, another phrase you’ll see over and over that we have to study is this phrase here, or hearing or listening. We’re going to get back to that in a moment, but for now, let’s look at each soil. So in verse 15, the first soil is what I would call the hard heart.

And here’s where we have to be realistic. This can be some of you in this room. These are the ones who hear the good news. You’re exposed to the gospel message of Jesus Christ dying for our sins and raising again on the third day, but you don’t do anything with it. Anybody ever read Screwtape Letters by C.

S. Lewis? Any C. S., well, any C. S. Lewis fans? I think more hands, there we go. All right, so C. S. Lewis wrote this incredible book called Screwtape Letters, and one, uh, scene he describes is this man who was working on this line of thought and was leading to this conclusion that God must be real, and if he is real, I must do something about it.

And yet, in that moment, he remembered that it was lunchtime. And so he went and had lunch, and he never gave a second thought to that train of thought again. That is what the enemy does. This language here in verse 15, Satan comes and takes away, or some of your translations say, snatches away the word. And Satan does this by distracting us, by condemning us, by distorting the word, by saying, okay, the preacher is saying the Bible means this, but this is actually what it really means.

And contorting and making these different phrases mean different things. He loves to convince us with lies. There’s a few truces. Some of us adopt, and if we believe those, we refuse to believe in the Bible because some truths that are pervasive in our culture and are tempting to believe is one is that my life is all about having it my way.

Well, you’re not going to have fun with the gospel because it’s about surrendering to his way or that lie that we’re all born good and that we’re not in need of saving and that I can do it myself. If you hold onto that with a tight fist, you have a hard heart and the word of God cannot do anything to your soul.

Now here’s what’s interesting. A hard heart It doesn’t always actually need a radical encounter with God. Hear me out. Actually write this down. You don’t want to experience the hand of God if you don’t have a heart for God. Let me parse this out for you. Who is in the Bible, if you know your Old Testament, if not, you’re so welcome here, but in the Old Testament, a lot of us, we refer to the hard heart to being that of Pharaoh, any Prince of Egypt fans.

Okay. Okay. Probably more hands than script tape letters. Okay. Best soundtrack in life ever. Anyways, Pharaoh hardens his heart, but how? Because at some points of the text, it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then it says God hardened his heart. But what were the ways that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart?

It was through his miracles. God was showing his power. God was bringing provision and the same miracles that led the Israelites and some of the Egyptians to surrender and to say, okay, God, you are God. I’m going to worship you. That same exact miraculous power made Pharaoh even worse. See, if we don’t have a soft heart, even moves of God make us even more cynical.

So sometimes it’s actually the provision of God that he is slow with you. And not bringing a radical encounter because it could push you the other way This is why I believe jesus spoke so often in parables. It was a subtle Subversive slow way to change your heart Eugene peterson in one of my favorite books the contemplative pastor He talks about jesus’s parable strategy this way quote   📍 as people heard jesus tell these stories They saw at once that they weren’t about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty.

So they relaxed their defenses.   📍 They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. He was talking about God, and they had been invaded.   Also notice the gentle spirit of Jesus. He doesn’t overly intrude.

He invites and waits for you to respond. So that’s the first soil. This is actually the most negative one. This is one that never took root. But notice these next three soils all responded positively, at least initially. And that should bring us actually some pause. Verse 16 and 17, we see the second soil.

And I would define the second soil as the shallow heart. Let’s look at verse 16 again. And others are like seeds sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root. See the shallowness? They are short in spirit. This, uh, phrase, no root, short lived should hearken us back to another illustration Jesus gives in Matthew seven, when he talks about the storms, remember, and the person who has a solid house versus the house built on sand.

And what was the difference between the two storms came to both houses, but the one who received and did the word was able to withstand the storm. But those who heard the word and did nothing about it were the ones where the house was totally, you know, fell away. This is that same kind of word picture and Jesus is saying here’s how and why some people hear the word with joy But they fall away and it says quote because of the distress and persecution that comes because of the word So it’s not distress that comes from life.

Some of us, I mean, to be human is to suffer, but there is a certain suffering that comes from following Jesus. It’s the suffering of saying no to previous sins. That’s the suffering of being seen different from friends and family because you live a different way. It’s the quote unquote suffering of changing your calendar so that you serve the body of Christ and you sacrifice your finances for the sake of the kingdom.

And after a period of time, sadly, some people consider it a cost that is not worthy. Of pain. And so they step away and look at that next phrase. They immediately fall away. Now, I think it’s really helpful to note. First of all, this doesn’t mean it was by accident. We don’t believe you can accidentally fall out of love, right?

And so Christ is there for you, but this isn’t an accident. But what’s fascinating about this word, and usually the Greek, it helps us a little, but this phrase helps us a lot. This word fall away also has this connotation of taking offense. So when people fall away, it’s because they were offended by what the gospel of Jesus was asking of them, and they simply had enough.

They were offended and bothered by the claims and commands of the gospel. Think about it. A lot of us were sold a gospel, come to Christ and you’ll be forgiven. That is the gospel. Okay. Beautiful. But as you follow Jesus, what do you learn? Forgive as you’ve been forgiven. That hurts. It hurts. That’s a lot. I love the idea of Jesus forgiving me, but me forgiving them?

We take offense. Some of us begin to fall away. Or some of us present the gospel, and this is partially true. Come to Jesus. He will fulfill your desires. Yes, but we also have some desires that aren’t holy. We’re going to look at this next week. That’s our primary idea. It’s going to be the big idea in February as well.

Some desires will actually destroy you, but some of us take offense. You’re telling me some of my desires aren’t who I am? How dare the Lord ask me to sacrifice such things, and so we fall away. Thomas A. Kempis, the saint and theologian from the 1400s, I read it this morning and I put it in last second. He put it best, Jesus has always many who love his heavenly kingdom, but few who bear his cross.

All desire to be happy with him, but few wish to suffer anything for him. So I just have to ask. Do you have a shallow heart? Or do you at least see the subtlety of how it can become your heart? I think this is, we’re supposed to read this with humility. I think to be faithful to Jesus here, we have to ask in each soil, Lord is this me?

But here’s the good news. I don’t believe this is saying you’re stuck in that soil. Jesus is sharing this parable to free us and to invite us away from a stubborn heart and into the fourth soil. But before we get to the fourth soil, let’s look at the third soil, which I think is the trickiest one to spot of all.

Verse 18. Others are like seeds sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the words. And notice, they’ve heard the gospel as well. But the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, And the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. Here we see the third soil is the crowded heart.

I can almost say with full assurance we have crowded hearts in the room because this is the American culture to the T. Notice the three chokeholds. Number one, worries of this age. Who among us aren’t worried? Watching news 24 7, worried about our career or the future of our children, overwhelming our schedules with work, sports, and activities.

Who among us haven’t fallen for the deceitfulness of wealth? We talked about this a lot in August as a faith family. Money itself isn’t evil, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It starts to convince you that you don’t need God, you just need money. And the desires for other things.

Again, come next week. That’s a plethora of things, including sexual identity and desires, entertainment, hobbies, and even distractions. We’re going to study each of these three in depth for the rest of January. So I encourage you to even just meditate here on this passage and see what the Lord brings up in your own life.

But notice this imagery of choking. It’s a fascinating one. In other words, it doesn’t matter where you’re at. If you’re choking, it demands all of your attention and energy. You can be almost to midnight, ready to ask your girl to be your girlfriend. And if you start choking, those plans are thrown out the window.

You could be at your favorite restaurant and you start choking. You don’t care where you are at. It demands all of your energy and attention. And the enemy loves when we caught up in these three soils. And I would just say, if you are in the third soil, God could actually be speaking to you. He could already be giving you direction, but you’re too busy choking on the worries of the sage, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things to even pay attention or listen to his promptings.

So that’s the warning. But let’s talk about some good news. Jesus points to the fourth and the fifth. And final soil in verse 20. The fourth soil is what I would call the receptive heart. You can also do surrendered heart or yielded heart, or a lot of people say soft heart, all the same. Uh, notice again, like the second and third soil, it starts with hearing the word, but it goes a step further.

Let’s look at verse 20. And those like seeds sown among, uh, good ground hear the word. Yes, but then welcome it and produce fruit. 30, 60, and 100 times what was sown. This idea too, agriculturally, 30, even 30 times would be a miracle. 8 times would be the most that you can expect. 30, 60, 100 is absolutely insane.

What is Jesus saying here? The difference between this soil and all the rest is not perfection, but reception. A willingness to receive the Word and all of its implications. One commentator, Kyle Snodgrass, put it this way.   📍 The parable emphasizes both receptivity and bearing fruit. Two of the three sowings that fail describe people who respond positively to the message.

They even hear the message with joy, but their hearing is still superficial.   📍 Receiving the kingdom of joy is not enough. A message that a modern church desperately needs to hear. Faith that is temporary and unproductive is not true faith. Any hearing that does not result in productive living in relation to the Father is not valid hearing.

  📍 As C. Keener observes, the only conversions that count in the kingdom are those confirmed by a life of discipleship.  To put it another way, the only attenders that count in the kingdom are those who become disciples. And that gets us to that final phrase that we need to understand is hear. In the Hebrew language, hearing is always synonymous with obeying, obedience, which is a word we don’t like to focus on much in modern day times.

We even see Mark hint at this at the end of Mark 3. In fact, Kyle Snygrass was the one that pointed out that That, uh, bookends the beginning right before the parable. And right after is this idea of doing, obeying, actually doing something. Let’s look at the example. Mark 3 35. It’s the verse before Jesus says the parable in Mark four, it says this.

Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. What makes you into the family? Part of it, he at least says is doing it, doing the will of God. Of god not just a mental ascent see in the bible hearing is always correlated to doing A couple months ago. My dad flew me up to spring springerville, arizona.

Anybody ever heard of springerville? Wonderful pray for rain and snow. It is so sad. We usually have a white christmas up there. It’s fine I like to tell people by the way, i’m the poorest rich person you ever meet or the richest poor person I’m, not sure which way it’s grammatically correct, but my father has money You I don’t, and that’s fine, but I get to experience all of his gifts.

So I have a, I don’t have a cabin, but I have a cabin. You with me? I don’t have a plane, but I have a plane. My father’s a private pilot, and so he needed to get some more hours logged in, and so he said, Trey, you want me to fly you up to the cabin? Maybe do your nerdy study stuff. I was like, wow, this is a Christmas gift from heaven.

So I said, yes, absolutely. He flew me there. It’s usually a four hour drive was like a 50 minute flight. Love and life. Land. I get to the cabin. I’m all alone, which is introvert heaven with my books. And I read and read and read the next 24 hours. That helps influence this series. And, um, It was great. Best time ever, but I missed my family.

I was excited to go home. So, I had to add that. You know, I need to have a good day. So, we get there, and I get back to the airport. And, um, I see that my dad has somebody with him. My dad’s an extrovert, so he, like, loves to bring anybody along. Me, I’m a ambivert. It just depends on the moment what I feel. And so in that moment, I didn’t want to talk to anybody.

I was just excited to get home. So it was the weirdest thing. I get up there. I actually get a text like a troubling text that made me really anxious. So I’m already kind of off right before getting into the plane. But what’s weird is my dad doesn’t even talk to me. He goes from the front, goes immediately to the back seat, and takes his hat, Puts it over his head and starts snoring like within three minutes.

Like he is out, he is sleeping. I thought that’s a weird way to say hello, but that’s fine. And so I get into the cockpit. But I’m like, I don’t want to sit on the left side. I’m sitting on the right. I’m a co pilot. I’m not a pilot. I’m actually even scared to share this story, because I don’t even know if this is legal, what I just did.

But, the other guy was an instructor, so he’s like, no, you’re doing it. So I was in the left, uh, side. It was the real thing. And he’s like, you’re going to take off. I said, listen, brother, I don’t know what my dad has told you. My dad’s an exaggerator. I love him. But he probably told him that I was this pilot.

I am not a pilot. I have been in the plane. But the whole time I’m like looking down looking for animals. I’m not looking at what’s in front of me. I have no idea what’s going on. And so he says, No, yeah, the instructor said, I’m under strict commands. You’re the one flying home. And so we start playing chicken.

I’m like, Well, I’m not gonna do it. And he’s like, so he takes his hat. Okay. Okay. Whatever you win. I’ll do it. Just tell me every talk to me like I’m five cause I know nothing. And so he tells me all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. I take off. And it turns out taking off is not that hard. So if you’re ever in an emergency situation and you need to leave, You can all take off.

I don’t know about landing. Okay. So we get there and we’re in the middle of the air and I’m like, this isn’t that bad. But then I thought, well, of course this isn’t bad. This is Springerville, Arizona. There’s no other plane. I don’t have anything to worry about. There’s no traffic. There’s no towers. I’m fine.

We do autopilot. So I’m chilling. And then. We are approaching Superstition Mountain, and I know the time is coming. Once you cross Superstition, Tom, I know, is in the room. Uh, once you, he’s a pilot. It’s like, why are you talking about Tom? He’s a pilot, okay? So as I cross over Superstition, it’s time to get ready.

Cause Gateway Airport is pretty close. And so, I tell him, man, please, like, I don’t have any money. My dad does, but I’ll find his money and I’ll give it to you. If you land this plane, he’s like, Nope, strict commands. I thought, Oh, no. And so he’s like, it’s, it’s fine, Trey. It’s just really important to listen to the tower and respond appropriately.

And I was like, listen, I have flown 100 times. I know how important it is. But please hear me, man. Before I was a pilot, I’ve heard the tower my whole life. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to listen to the tower. I have no idea what they’re saying. I’m the type of guy on Netflix Captions are absolutely needed.

If I turn around, I and I look back and I know exactly what they’re saying. ’cause the captions, anybody else, right? I’m a caption guy. I have no captions in this moment. I need an interpreter. And he says things like this. He says, these are very important phrases, and when you do it, you need to do it. So he was like, yeah, you need to request blah, blah, blah for the visual approach, runway, blah, blah, blah.

I’m like, okay, I didn’t hear the blah, blah, blah. Can you say it again? No, you need a hurry. Other things like cleared to blah, blah, blah, way point, maintain, blah, blah, blah, altitude and contact approach on blah, blah, blah. And I was stressed out of my mind, I thought. I’m never going to make it. And I hate that the spoiler alert is that I obviously survived or else I wouldn’t be here right now.

So I want to like hold the suspense, but it’s kind of pointless. I did land the plane. Now when we landed, celebrate good times, come on, entered into my mind upon arrival, but what made me, what made me listen this time, I’ve been in the plane a hundred times. It was the urgency of the moment. In fact, it was so urgent.

I didn’t have time to be frantic. It required all of me to stay focused. And that’s the heartbeat for our church in 2025. See, if we’re truly living in the fourth quarter, it’s time to become the fourth soil. And maybe you’re not convinced the end of the world is near. And I don’t know if I am either.

That’s not a hill I want to die on. But. We are all in a fourth quarter moment. Some of you, you’re in the fourth quarter of your marriage. Decades ago, you married your best friend and you dreamt of growing old together. You wanted that front porch swing and you wanted to see you guys begin to develop gray hairs together.

But now it’s hard to even look at each other. Bitterness and unforgiveness has been stacking up and taking over. Forget about making it to the end of life. You’re not even sure you can last until 2026. Friends, it’s time to become the fourth soil. Some of you, you’re in the fourth quarter of school. Love talking to seniors, both in high school and college, and you’re about to move out of the house and be on your own, and you’re stepping into the unknown and a terrible housing market, by the way, good luck.

You need to put on the fourth soil. Others of you are in the fourth quarter of your career. Retirement is just around the corner and you can be entering into the most fruitful season of your life. That’s actually filled with loving people and expanding the kingdom of God, or it could turn out to be the most wasteful season of your life, wasting it away, being choked out by the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things.

Others of us, I put this in, me in that category, we’re in the fourth quarter of parenting because the reality is you don’t have your children as long as you think. Are you leveraging these little small moments together? Are you letting distraction take the time away? I believe in faith. Our church is in a fourth quarter moment of being portable.

This next Sunday we’re celebrating nine years as a church family and all nine years we’ve never been in our own home. God is at work. Just look around. God has been generous to us and through us, and I want us in this fourth quarter of being portable, I want us to be faithful in a cafeteria so he can trust us to be faithful with the cathedral.

I don’t know if we can afford a cathedral, but that sounds better than something else. And some of us, honestly, in the fourth quarter of life, our beloved Celia, the one who would always come on Sunday mornings in her walker. She passed away Christmas Eve, and Dawn, her brother, who we love and is also a member of our church, let us know, and I was so sad and thinking about it, but then it made me reflect on our last conversation.

She was here Sunday, December 22nd, just two days before passing. And she has such a cheerful spirit. It was great. It was when we did the Coco’s coffee and whatever, Christmas, a bunch of C’s. And, uh, we had a lot of hot cocoa out there and she gave me a hard time. She says, hot cocoa is great, but where’s the coffee?

And I said, don’t worry. We got you go to the lobby. You know, we’re here for you. And we joked and joked and we actually, the last interaction we had, she was talking about how she was so excited to serve at the Cultivate Women’s Conference in February. What a beautiful example of somebody who was in the fourth quarter and she was living the fourth soil, seeking to use every moment for the glory of God and church.

I don’t know what kind it is, but we are all in a fourth quarter moment. It’s time that we become the fourth soil because the clock determines the play. And the time is now. So the question, of course, is how do we become the fourth soil? That’s what we’re gonna look at this month and honestly all of this year.  📍

It’s what the ancients called active and passive spirituality. I’ll be brief.  Active spirituality is just doing what you can do in the kingdom of God. So when we did the practice of hospitality, for example, you’re the one who invites the neighbor. You’re the one who cooks the meal or orders takeout and that’s fine if you’re not a good cook.

But you did, you did something. It was on you. It doesn’t just magically appear. Passive spirituality though is asking and allowing God to do what only he can do. It’s realizing how powerless you are. It’s being fully dependent on God and saying, God, I’m doing this, but if you don’t show up, none of this is all pointless.

Jesus says that in John 15, apart from me, you can do nothing. And so in 2025, as a church, we put on three practices, and our first one will be fasting. We’re going to focus on fasting in February, praying in May, and also witnessing in August. And what we need is active and passive spirituality. I think that’s a bit of an ancient term, so lately I’ve been thinking it more as mastery and mystery.

On the one hand, fasting will require mastery. To require you to have discipline, to say no to food for at least a set period of time. That’s hard. That requires willpower. We need some mastery. Prayer. You’re gonna have to be the one that moves your calendar around so you can have time with God. Witnessing.

You’re the one who has to be bold and start the conversation. But at the same time, all of this is worthless. without the mystery. Mystery is the hand of God at work. Mystery is God showing up and doing what only he can do. We see this in Mark 4. So we’ve been studying that passage up to verse 20. Let’s look at verse 26.

Just quickly, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is like this. He said, a man scattered seed on the ground. But look at this next line. He sleeps and rises night and day. The seed sprout. Notice the inactivity. Notice like he did his thing, but now there’s nothing. The seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn’t know how.

What’s hard about our modern moment is we can say, but we know how it works. We have science, and we have cameras, and we know what happens in the seed. You’re missing the point. Jesus is saying, and all the things in life that you don’t know how it works, which to me is like electricity. I still don’t understand it.

I just flip on the light and it works, and I don’t ask any more questions. In that same way, that’s how God works. God does so much behind the scenes, and we can’t even describe it, but we welcome it, and we worship him for it. Fasting. Mastery side, it’s just saying no to food, and that’s really hard, but the mystery side, when we fast, there is something incredible that happens.

We’re given the grace of holiness and righteousness. That’s something we can never purchase or do on our own. When we ask God for provision, yeah, we did the praying, but God is the one who miraculously provides in incredible ways. We try to make disciples. We do all that we can, but God is the one who wakes disciples.

He’s the one who brings the death to life. All of these practices, the six we’ve covered the last two years and the three that we’re about to cover are all about mastery and mystery. Mastery without mystery is just a Pharisee. Doing all these right things, but the heart is far from God and the power of God is far from it.

In the same way, mystery without mastery is just hypocrisy. We can say until we’re blue in the face that we want to see a movement of God, that we want to see the church grow, that we want to do all this stuff, but if we’re not fasting, if we’re not sitting aside time to Sabbath and to read our scriptures, what are we doing?

We’re just hypocrites. What I am convinced of is we need our community filled with grace and love and compassion Putting on mastery and mystery together. And I am so proud of you, Passion Creek. I believe we’re getting pretty good at mastery. We ask you to do something and you do it. But what’s even harder, especially in our secular age, is engaging in the mystery.

And so what I want us to do, this will feel uncomfortable. I want us to spend the next few moments in silence, opening ourselves up to the mystery. of God at work. And I’m prompted by this because of Mark 4 9. Mark 4 9 says that Jesus said, let anyone who has ears to hear, listen. I don’t even want to give you a prompt.

Let’s just spend some time in silence asking God to speak to us.

Maybe the Lord has told you which soil you’re in.

Maybe your call is to confess To surrender and ask God to change your heart to become a fourth soil, would you spend moments talking to him and asking for exactly that?

Father God, you are so gracious in your provision. You’re so gentle with us and patient. I pray for the first soils in the room who have not even entertained the truths of the gospel. May today be the day of salvation. May they respond either by coming forward or by staying around after to talk about what it looks like to become a fourth soil.

God, we come to you humbly recognizing how easy it is to become the second soil. Our hearts have been shallow. We haven’t actually taken the time to dig deep roots into the gospel. And so the moment. Hard times come because we’re following you. We take offense and walk away. Forgive us.

Restore us. Change our hearts. God, even our ministry can be tempted to become the third soil. Or we get caught up in the worries of this age, of the world’s definition of success and popularity, and we forget our first love. We put our hope in riches.

We forget everything comes from you. We begin to assume every desire we feel is right and good, although it’s contrary to your word. God, help us see there’s no maneuver out of this. There’s no way we can pick ourselves up off our bootstraps. The way to the fourth soil is through confession and surrender.

And we just say to you, we confess.

Sorry, Lord, for the things that we do in the quiet. Sorry, Lord, for when we say one thing but mean another.

Sorry, Lord, that maybe we’ve been playing the game, acting like we’re doing the practices, we’re acting like we’re all about it, but we are so far from you every other day of the week. God may Satan not come and snatch us away by telling us how bad we are or how we have to work to earn back your favor.

Lord, help us see. It’s all about just receiving your grace and your love and walking in it. Would you meet us in this moment? Would you make our church a fourth soil church? We can do all we can, but God, without the mystery, without you, Holy Spirit, at work, we are dead on arrival. And so come,

do what only you can do. May we do whatever you say in Jesus name, amen.