“Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.”

— Matthew 13:3-6

Why do some people fall away from the faith and others continue to the end? A person’s spiritual staying power depends on his or her inclination upon hearing God’s Word. Jesus explained this in detail by telling the parable of the sower. In this parable a farmer sows seeds on four kinds of soil; three were bad, and one was good. Each type of soil represents a way that people might hear God’s Word. Today let’s consider the first two types of soil and what they represent.

Seed first fell along the wayside path. In Palestine, small farms were divided by paths trampled hard by many feet, both human and animal. As the farmer sowed the seed, some of it fell on this hard-packed dirt. Because the seed was vulnerable on the path, the birds gobbled it up. This hard-packed soil represents the hearts of wayside hearers. Trampled hard by the hoofs of Satan and his herd of lies, lusts, and vanities, God’s Word has no place to sink in and take root.

Second, seed fell on rocky soil. This kind of soil was actually slabs of rock protruding from the hills or mountains with only an inch or two of soil on top. That soil was easily warmed by the sun, encouraging the seed to sprout quickly. But when the sun rose high, it scorched the seed. Having no root, the seed died. In the same way, rock-soil hearers feel enthusiastic about God’s Word when they first hear it. But while their hearts seem tender to the Word on the outside, inwardly they have no intentions of allowing the Word to change their hearts and lives. The instant that tribulation comes because of God’s Word, these people stumble spiritually, unable to withstand the heat.

Do you know people who fall into these two categories? Ask God to soften the soil of their hearts, preparing them to hear His Word and bear its fruit in their lives. Tomorrow we’ll address the third type of soil.

“Almighty God of truth and love, To me Thy pow’r impart;
The burden from my soul remove. The hardness of my heart.”
Charles Wesley

“… the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

— 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, niv

The problem of suffering, or as C. S. Lewis called it, “the problem of pain” has troubled believers for centuries. In fact, an entire book of the Bible—Job—addresses the issue of enduring pain and sorrow. Why does God allow us to go through heartbreaking times of tribulation? Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever cried in despair to God, desperately asking, “Why?” Maybe you’re experiencing suffering even now. And if you’re like the rest of us, you want nothing more than to purge yourself of all pain, trouble, hurt, and sorrow.

Despite our desperate cries, God often doesn’t remove troubles and sorrows from our lives. Why? Because God uses suffering to prepare us for helping others. Through our troubles and sorrows, God molds us into sympathetic and compassionate people. The Bible speaks of comforting those in trouble through the comfort that we ourselves have received from God. Only those who have endured the shadow, who have known suffering and trouble, can adequately comfort others.

In the Old Testament, when a man was ordained to the priesthood, he had water sprinkled on his head, his hands, and his feet. We who are the priests of God, in the universal priesthood of all believers in the new covenant, experience a baptism of tears that prepares us for the office of sympathy.

Where did Paul get the wisdom to write his comforting epistles? Where did David get the inspiration to write those solacing psalms that play such an important role in every believer’s life? Where did John get the foresight to write that tremendously hopeful conclusion to the book of Revelation? Each one of them gained the ability to comfort others by experiencing his own tears.

If you know someone experiencing hard times right now, comfort that person. Pray for him or her. Show sympathy and compassion. And if you are enduring a difficult time, don’t view it as a hopeless, needless tragedy. Perhaps God is using your trial to prepare you for an important work. Ask God today to transform your sorrows into sympathy and empathy.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
William Shakespeare

“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

— Acts 4:12

Have you ever had an unbeliever tell you that all religions are the same and that one is just as good—or bad—as the other? Many non-Christians seem to believe this. But the truth is that while many religions exist, only one gospel prevails. While many teachers have gained followings, only one Teacher—Jesus Christ—has saved us.

Christ is the solitary and unique Savior of the world. He is unique, first of all, because, unlike prophets of other religions, Jesus Christ founded His religion on Himself, not on His teachings (although His teachings are extremely important). For example, Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism, said, “Here is the way; walk in it.” He taught his followers a way. But Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Christ is the cornerstone of Christianity. You could be a Muslim without knowing much about Mohammed. You could be a Buddhist and know very little about Buddha’s life. But you cannot be a Christian without knowing Christ.

Jesus is also unique because, unlike the founders of all other religions, Christ rose from the dead. Go down into the caverns of the dead, and cry out, “Mohammed?” “Here.” “Buddha?” “Here.” “Confucius?” “Here.” “Jesus of Nazareth? Jesus of Nazareth?” You’ll hear nothing, because as the angel said, “He is not here, for He is risen, as He said.”

Make no mistake: All religions are not the same. Only Christ brings life and immortality to light. Only in Him do we have certain confidence of life everlasting.

“If I might comprehend Jesus Christ, I could not
believe on Him. He would be no greater than myself.
Such is my consciousness of sin and inability that I
must have a superhuman Saviour.”
Daniel Webster

“… love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”

— Mark 12:30

Have you had the wonderful experience of falling in love with someone? If you have, then you know how it changes your whole outlook on life. The grass looks greener. Music sounds more beautiful. Everything becomes more positive.

If this is true for human love, how much more for divine love? Christ loves us intimately, and He is more than worthy of our affections in return. Since the Son of God came to earth, we have the great privilege of knowing Him personally, walking humbly with Him each day, and loving Him intimately.

How can we tell if we love Jesus? Of course, we know we love Him when we obey His Word. But we can also tell whether we love Jesus in the same way we know whether we love a fellow human being. When we truly love someone, we love to talk with that person. We desire to pour out our hearts and souls to them. We feel confident that our beloved understands us and likes to listen to us. But we also love nothing more than to hear from our beloved. If he or she is away, we eagerly anticipate phone calls and letters from that person. And each time we interact with our beloved, we want to discover more and more of that person’s character, thoughts, likes, and dislikes. We’re not satisfied until we know that person well, knowing what he or she thinks about everything. And when we really love someone, we want to become the type of person he or she wants us to be.

Such things are second nature when true love is present. And they are the same thoughts and desires we should have for our relationship with God. Do you desire to love God with all of your heart, mind, and soul? If you feel that your relationship with Him could use some improvement, then look to the Cross. Look to that great source of love, and ask Christ to bring a coal from the altar of His love and set a flame in your heart—one that will never be extinguished so you may love Him with all your being.

“Pray that this day you will fall in love with Jesus afresh.”

“… My people have forgotten Me days without number.”

— Jeremiah 2:32

Do you know anyone—a relative, a friend, a hometown hero—who has given his or her life for our country? Memorial Day is a day when we remember those who have made that ultimate sacrifice, who have given their lives that we might enjoy the freedom we have in America today. How easily we forget the terror that filled the hearts of young men when they landed on the beaches of strange islands they had never heard of. How easily we forget the spilled blood of those who lay wounded in foxholes. We forget all those sacrifices in the midst of our modern pleasures and preoccupations.

But today we remember, and well we should. Let us remember Lexington, Concord, Valley Forge, Yorktown, the Battle of New Orleans, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, North Africa, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Pork Chop Hill, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, where hundreds of thousands of Americans laid down their lives that we might enjoy this day of peace and freedom.

As we remember those brave men and women, we also need to remember what they fought for. Did they sacrifice their lives for what we see happening in our nation these days, for our plummeting moral standards? Never in the history of the world, one writer has said, has any nation so quickly thrown off its belief system. For scores of years founders, presidents, and Supreme Court justices have said, “This is a Christian nation.” But we have forgotten or rejected our heritage by the choices so many of us have made.

Is there anything you can do today to remember not only the men and women who have given their lives for this country but also why they gave up their lives? Is there something you can do today—within yourself or with those around you—to help our nation get back on course? May God grant that we return to our roots and remember our rich Christian heritage and those who shed their own blood to preserve it.

“… the Almighty Being … has kept us in His hands from
the infancy of our Republic to the present day …”
Andrew Jackson

“But he was angry, and would not go in …”

— Luke 15:28

After the Prodigal Son had returned to his father, there was great rejoicing. Everyone celebrated the prodigal’s return … everyone, that is, except the older brother. Instead, he moped, and he lashed out at his father for celebrating his brother’s return.

We can put sin into two categories: sins of the flesh, which the Prodigal Son embodied, and sins of the disposition, which are typified by the older brother. Pride was the older brother’s main sin. C. S. Lewis, the great Christian author, has said, “It is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only between man and man, but enmity to God.” Since pride produces nothing but misery and division, it is not surprising that the older brother felt miserable and separated himself from his family.

Some people have tried to excuse the older brother’s tantrum by saying that it was only a fit of temper and nothing to concern ourselves with. But Jesus had enough concern about it to include it in this parable. We can’t dismiss the older brother’s outburst, for his tantrum reveals the rottenness of pride at the core of his being, pride which rose to the surface when his brother returned and would rise again the next time someone threatened his self-righteousness.

For as bad as the prodigal’s sins were, the older son’s sin was worse. While the prodigal came to the father and confessed his sins, the older brother never did. He never entered the house. Night fell and left him outside. And the story ends there. Why? The story ends with the older brother outside in the dark because a person with such a spirit can never enter Heaven. That kind of person must become grateful anew for salvation given in grace, never earned. The love of Christ must come into that person’s heart to remove the pride from his or her soul.

Does this hit a little close to home? Have you ever found yourself a tad indignant that someone who has sinned so greatly receives the same salvation God gives you? Then confess that pride today. Ask God to remove it from your heart. And thank God that His mercy extends to prideful sinners, too.

“Pride and grace dwelt never in one place.”
James Kelly

“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.”

— Luke 15:20

Do you remember the last time you waited to see someone dear to you? Perhaps your best friend from childhood visited you from a faraway place. Maybe a child came home from college. Whoever it was, how did you feel when that person finally arrived?

The joy we feel at a reunion with a cherished family member or friend is just the tiniest reflection of our heavenly Father’s joy when one of His lost children returns to Him. We get a wonderful picture of this in the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the son returns home, the father runs to greet him and welcomes him with open arms; so great was the father’s love for his child.

The prodigal had finally realized the frivolity of leaving his father’s house. He recognized the error of his ways. As he arose and made his way home, his father waited and watched. The father’s hair had now turned gray, and his heart had long been broken. Nevertheless, he sat on his rooftop, looking and yearning and waiting for his beloved son to return.

After waiting for so long, one day the father saw a head rise up over the hill, then a torso, then a body; and even though the person was clothed in rags, he recognized the gait. It was his son. The father rushed down the stairs; made his way out of the house; and, to the amazement of all the servants, took off running.

Some sinners say they’ll repent someday . . . one of these days or when they lie on their deathbeds. But every day they wait, they put off the tremendous reunion that awaits them. God waits to take them in at the slightest indication that they want to come home. To say, “I am going to turn to Christ next week” or “next month” or “tomorrow” means only that the sinner will spend that much more time in spiritual squalor while the Father’s love and the homecoming celebration wait.

Ah, dear prodigal, you who suppose you have sunk so deeply into the mire of the far country that God would never want to set His eyes on you again, Jesus has delineated for you a perfect picture of God’s unfathomable love, if you just turn to God once again, in true confession and repentance. He’ll be there, running toward you to embrace you and welcome you home.

“[He] who sins and mends commends himself to God.”
Cervantes

“… the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.”

— Luke 15:13

Someone once said that people can be divided into two types: givers and takers. The Prodigal Son in Christ’s parable was most definitely a taker. We can paraphrase his first words in the parable as “Gimme. Gimme the goods that fall to me.” “Gimme” is his attitude and the attitude of millions of people in our world today.

So the father divided the wealth and gave the son his living. With his newly acquired access to wealth, the prodigal set out for the “far country.” Where was that far country? Well, the original hearers of Jesus’ parable might have thought it was Babylon or Rome or Corinth. Today a prodigal might set out for New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Harvey Cox described the “far country” as the secular city, the place where most people live today, a world bounded by time with no thought of eternity or of God. People who adopt the secular philosophy don’t deny God outright; they merely ignore Him, considering Him irrelevant.

The Prodigal Son did just that to his father as he set off for the far country. But the far country wasn’t all he had dreamed it would be. The Prodigal Son soon found that out. The more he did what he liked, the less he liked what he did. He looked for liberty; he found tyranny. He looked for friends; he found pigs. He looked for sensuality; he found starvation. Those were the realities of the far country. When the prodigal had spent all he had in riotous living, a mighty famine came over that land, and he found himself in great need. To survive, he ended up feeding pigs, a most debasing task for a Jew. Further, he felt so hungry that he longed to fill his stomach with the slop he fed them. Such are the ravages of sin. It may look so glamorous at first, but it ends up so debasing.

The good news is that though we may venture to that far country, the Father anxiously awaits our return. If we repent and return to the Father, no matter how far we’ve strayed, He will welcome us in. Have you wandered off? Turn around and come back today. The Father is waiting with open arms.

“That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Then He said, ‘A certain man had two sons.’”

— Luke 15:11

Author Charles Dickens, who knew a great tale when he heard it, remarked that the greatest story in all literature was the parable of the Prodigal Son. For the next few days, we’ll examine this story that earned such distinction.

To begin our examination, let’s briefly review the story. You will recall that the parable is about a father and his two sons. The younger son came to his father, asking for his share of his inheritance. The father gave it, and the young man left for a far country and squandered the money he received on wild living (“prodigal” means wasteful). The younger son ended up broke and in dire straits, so he returned to his father in repentance. The father embraced him, rejoiced at his return, and celebrated with a feast. The older brother, who had never left home, was jealous of his father’s attention toward the younger brother. But the father told the older son that they had good cause to celebrate—the Prodigal Son had been dead and now was alive. (For the complete parable, read Luke 15:11–32.)

One theologian has pointed out that Christ is always crucified between two thieves: license and legalism. So it is with these two sons, the younger representing license and the older legalism. These two sons paint a picture of the entire human race, the depiction of two apparently opposite and yet related types of sinners. Both rebel in their own ways, alienating themselves from their father. Yet the father loves them both with a love beyond comprehension.

This rich parable teaches many deep truths, but the greatest of these is the love of the Father, who welcomes home those who have fallen into all kinds of sin. Whether we live wildly or we self-righteously judge those who do, the Father loves us and welcomes us home as His children.

“Love is God’s essence; power but his attribute;
therefore is his love greater than his power.”
Richard Garnett

“Be not misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”

— 1 Corinthians 15:33, NIV

We are all influenced by each other, and our ideas, thoughts and even mannerisms are shaped by the people around us. Who we choose as friends is critical in terms of who we ultimately become. Choosing godly friends will build us up in the faith and help us to become godly. Conversely, choosing ungodly friends will pull us down.

From the beginning of time, peer pressure has been a major factor in leading people astray. The book of Proverbs contains many practical warnings for us. For example, Proverbs 1:10 instructs: “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.” Solomon goes on to describe how ungodly acquaintances will try to persuade you to join in their activities.

How can we become close friends with such people and not be influenced by them? We can be friends with the ungodly inasmuch as we attempt to be gracious witnesses to them, but certainly we cannot, as children of God, take our cues from them or engage in their wicked activities.

The destructive effect of friendships with the wrong people can be seen in the results of a recent survey of inmates in an Illinois prison. Do you know the main reason for their criminal behavior? Not broken homes, poverty, or lack of positive opportunities in life. The main reason the prisoners cited for their wayward lives was their friends: peer pressure.

Don’t be misled: Bad company corrupts good character. Let’s commit to choosing our friends and associates carefully—even prayerfully.

“Associate yourself with men of good quality . . .
’tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
“Rules of Civility”
(Made Famous By George Washington)