Long-Haul Faith, Pt. 7: The Good Soil

There were a lot of things about my grandfather – we called him Fuzz – that made him a great long-haul trucker. For example, he loved a good pair of bib overalls and a heavy flannel shirt, one rarely saw him without a cigarette in his mouth (although he often threatened grave consequences if any of his grandkids ever picked up the habit), and he could fix just about anything mechanical. Perhaps the two that really set him apart, however, were his passion and his stubbornness. The fact was, Fuzz wanted nothing more than to be a truck driver; he absolutely loved what he did. And he absolutely refused to quit even when times were tough. In fact, even after his retirement, Fuzz loved to drive until just a few months before he finally passed away.

Over the last several weeks, we have been examining several biblical characters who demonstrated a long-haul faith. We have considered Elisha, Matthew, Jonathan, the people that Paul greeted at the end of Romans, Barnabas, and even Jesus himself. As we conclude this series, however, the final character that we need to examine is not even a real person. Rather, I want us to look, finally, at a character in one of Jesus’ parables.

In Luke 8:4-15, Jesus told what has been popularly called The Parable of the Sower. The parable is named for its first character, a farmer who is sowing seed, but the main focus of the story is actually on the types of soil where the scattered seed fell. These soil types, Jesus ultimately revealed, represent different types of people and their response to the gospel message which is represented by the seed:

• The path represented people who are so hardened that the gospel never has a chance to take root.
• The rocky soil represented people who initially embrace the gospel only to fizzle because they are too shallow in their faith to find spiritual sustenance, especially when things get difficult.
• The thorny soil represented people who also initially embrace the gospel, but they are distracted by worldly things and so produce no fruit.
• The good soil represented people who embrace the gospel and allow it to sink its roots deep into their lives so that they both multiply and endure.

Certainly, there are valuable nuggets to be learned from each of these people, but given that our purpose is to discover the keys to a long-haul faith, we shall focus our attention on the good soil. In particular, there are four things that distinguish the people of deep faith who will multiply and endure from all the others.

We must listen.

The first distinction of the good soil is revealed in Luke 8:8, where Jesus finished the actual parable with this admonition: “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.” This curious saying was used in different forms throughout the Old and New Testaments. In fact, in verse 10, Jesus explained by quoting Isaiah 6:9: “Looking they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” The idea of both quotes, of course, is that many people have the physiological capacity to see and hear, but they actually do neither. Jesus’ admonition, then, is that it is not enough to hear or even know the gospel. Rather, the person who would be good soil will pay attention because he/she wants to hear.

Indeed, there is a significant difference between hearing and truly listening. For instance, which of us has not heard the voice of a parent, child, or spouse and yet had no idea what that person was actually saying because we were not listening? No, really listening involves tuning in to the sound, committing the mental resources necessary to understand it, and choosing to do something about it.

This last bit is important because the Greek word translated in verse 8 as “hear” and “listen” – yes, these come from the same term! – is actually the root for the Greek word typically translated, “obey.” Jesus, then, was saying that his listeners needed to think about what he was saying, discern the spiritual meaning in his words, and then apply it to their own lives. That is, if they wanted their faith to really take root and thrive to the end, then they needed to really listen, and we need to do the same. We must listen.

But what does that mean? Certainly, there are many voices to which we can listen. Politicians and news media, parents, and experts all come to mind. However, we must remember that the printing press was still 1400 years away. Therefore, the primary way people were exposed to the word of God was through their ears. Whenever they gathered, they would read Scriptures out loud for all to hear, and when they were alone, they would pray the word of God aloud. Jesus was encouraging us to consume Scripture and pray so that we could listen to God.

Truly, we can still hear the word of God today. The YouVersion app will read the Bible out loud for us, and a good sermon can help us understand what a passage means. Yet, we now have numerous other options for receiving the word of God as well. The point is that we must be deliberate about seeking, ingesting, digesting, and implementing the word of God in our lives. We must listen.

We must want to obey.

The need to implement the word of God in our lives, however, brings us to a second key found in verse 15. there, as Jesus described the people compared to good soil, he said, “These are the ones who, having heard the word with an honest and good heart, hold on to it.”

The words “honest” and “good” are, in the Greek language, complimentary adjectives. The word which we see rendered “honest” carries the idea of beauty, nobility, and authenticity. Similarly, “good” conveys the notion of excellence and honor. When these two adjectives are used to describe the heart, which Jesus’ first listeners would have understood as the center of a person’s feelings and desires, the idea here was that this person is genuinely committed to what is good and right. They want it, and they are going to do it.

Those who are good ground – that is, those who will have a long-haul faith – are the ones who are eager to get the word of God and live by it, even when it is tough. Indeed, 1 John 5:3 explains, “This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” It is not that God’s commands are easier to obey for those who are good soil, but that those who are good soil actually want to obey them. Obedience, then, is not a burden because we are glad to do it.

We must want to obey. That is, we do not listen and obey merely because God commands it. Neither do we listen and obey because it is the only way to heaven. No, we listen and obey because our character is increasingly aligned with God’s, and we actually want to obey.

We must produce.

Still in verse 15, we find a third key to a long-haul faith in the fact that those who Jesus compared to good soil will “produce fruit.” For Jesus’ disciples, this made sense. Good seed planted in good soil produced fruit, and the good word of God planted in people who desire to obey will do the same. In fact, these do not just produce fruit. Backing up to verse 8, Jesus pronounced that this good ground would produce “a hundred times what was sown.”

What a remarkable thing! While modern science and technology have allowed farmers to achieve astonishing yields, a typical harvest in Jesus’ day was seven or eight times what was sown. A stellar harvest would yield ten times what was sown. Jesus said that these good soil people would yield 100 times what was sown, a full order of magnitude better than the best harvest most farmers had ever seen!

The point was, and is, that good soil Christians will produce. It was not a possibility or a suggestion, but a certainty. We must produce.

But what sort of fruit will a good soil Christian produce? Fortunately, the Bible suggests at least three things. First, in Ephesians 2:22, Paul explained that believers “are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” That is, the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in us and is renovating us into a house fit for the King of kings and Lord of lords. What does that look like? Galatians 5 tells us that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This speaks to a much deeper transformation than typical behavior modification. This transformation affects our desires and motivations, and that will permanently affect our attitudes and actions!

Second, James 2:26 pronounces, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” That is, good soil Christians will produce acts of kindness and service. In Matthew 25, Jesus provided examples of these acts when he explained that those who will ultimately be welcomed into the kingdom of God will be those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner.

Finally, good soil Christians will produce more and better followers of Jesus. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus commissioned his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” To this, he added in Acts 1:8, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” If we are really going to listen to the word of God, and if we really want to obey it, then we will do everything in our power to tell other people about him and invite them to put their faith in him as well.

Yes, good soil Christians will produce the fruit of the Spirit, good deeds, and more disciples. We must produce.

We must endure.

There is, however, one more key to a long-haul faith that we can find in the good soil. In many English translations, the final word of verse 15 is “fruit,” but in the original Greek, the last word could be translated “with patience.” The term there carries several key ideas: steadfastness, constancy, endurance, patience, and perseverance. Synthesizing all of these notions, Strong’s explains that this term refers to “the characteristic of a [person] who is unswerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings.” Put another way, even when things go horribly awry, probably the most important key to having a long-haul faith is simply this: the good soil Christian will endure.

Now, I know that seems simplistic, but often, it is the simplest things that make or break us. A tremendous example of this can be found in NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter. For 10 months, this robotic probe traveled without incident from Earth to Mars, but then, just as it was arriving at Mars, contact was lost. The subsequent investigation discovered that a subcontractor failed to insert a single line of computer code to convert from an English to metric measurement, and as a result, the probe either burned up in the martian atmosphere or ricocheted off the atmosphere, never to be heard from again. A single, simple oversight caused the loss of a $327.6 million mission.

Indeed, we have seen in each of the other people we have examined the importance of a simple resolve to endure. Elisha butchered his oxen and burned his plow because he was resolved to endure. Matthew walked away from his tax booth for the same reason. Jonathan and his armor-bearer could have given up halfway up the cliff they had to climb, but they were resolved to endure. Barnabas sold the land he owned in Cyprus because he was, too. How many times did Paul get up and carry on after being stoned, imprisoned, and even shipwrecked? And how many times did Jesus resist the temptation to kick out disciples and start over from scratch? This is endurance, and ultimately, if we are going to have a long-haul faith, we must endure.

It means softening ourselves when so many others grow harder. It means digging in when the sun rises and the heat of trials and tribulations comes. It means weeding out all the things that distract us and choke out our faith. It means deciding here and now that, no matter what obstacles or setbacks we might face, we are going to stick it out to the very end. We must endure.

Conclusion

Throughout this series, we have met a lot of people and observed a lot of characteristics that enabled them to have a long-haul faith. Ultimately, however, all of these people and characteristics can be tied to these four characteristics of good soil. The truth is, people who have a long-haul faith will listen to the word of God, want to obey, produce, and endure.