Smith, Harold: Chr.Living-How Is Your Garden Growing

Thank you, brother. Good evening, everyone. It's good to see you out. Good to see so many from, uh, a little bit away that coming out for this first meeting. Now we're going to look in the book of Song of Solomon, chapter one. Song of Solomon, chapter one. If I were to ask you, how is your garden growing? You might think I was just not with it. Well, I want to talk a little bit about your garden, and I want to talk about how is it growing. So we look at that a little later. The Song of Solomon. Now, many critics, Bible critics, say this song should not be in the Bible. They say it's just a sexy song of Solomon that he wrote about a girl, beautiful little dark girl, that he couldn't, uh, win her love, and, uh, it shouldn't be in the Bible. The Jews, on the other hand, look at this book as the holy of holies. They see themselves in it, in the picture in this little girl. There's others take this little girl as a picture of the church, or Solomon as a picture of the church, and the the little, uh, uh, Christ rather, and the the little girl is a picture of the church. Now, we're just going to look at verse one for now, and this is what we read, the song of songs, which is Solomon's. The Song of Songs. Sometimes you see in the Bible, like, the Holy of Holies. And you read about the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Well, here, the Song of Songs, the the little phrase is very special because it means this is a special song that he wrote. And you might not know it, but if you read First Kings chapter one and verse three, that he wrote one thousand and four other songs. This is the one thousand and fifth song that he wrote. And he's saying, of all the other songs I wrote, they are really, uh, in a different class altogether. This is the song of songs. What's it all about? Well, Solomon at this time, he wrote three books in the Bible. He wrote the book of Proverbs, and in that book you're going to, you'll, you'll find wisdom personified as a person. It's a very spiritual book, very practical book, a book that should be read very, uh, uh, uh, regularly. He wrote another book, the s- the book of Ecclesiastes, when he was an old man, he was looking back over life, and he says, it's all vanity and vexation of spirit. He's looking at everything under the sun, nothing above the sun, everything under the sun. And this book he wrote when he was getting away from the Lord. He had, I think, about eighty queens and sixty concubines, as mentioned in this book. So he's writing about, he's writing about some, uh, virgins that he has in his waiting chambers, and he over- often picks one of them, and he marries her, and he goes, and he ended up with a thousand of these altogether. I don't know how he ever handled the whole situation, but he did. But there's one little girl in here he just can't seem to win. She's more beautiful than all the others, and but she just can't seem to, he just can't seem to win this little girl. Nowhere in this book does it imply that he ever won this little girl's love. She had a shepherd boy she'd met under an apple tree, and uh, she never seems to see him. She dreams about him, she talks about him, she imagines he's looking in the window of her house, and, uh, his hand is on the door, and she imagines she hears his voice, come my love, my fair one, and come away, and but she never seems to see him. But she loves him. five times over, O thou whom my soul loveth. It's in verse seven. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth. This is, this was a shepherd boy. Now it's not Solomon. Solomon was not a shepherd. He was a, he was a king with all the pomp and glory and prosperity of a king. He wa- he was not a shepherd. David was a shepherd, his father, but Solomon was not a shepherd. She's talking about a shepherd boy out somewhere she loves, and he's feeding his sheep, and she, she loves him. Now, isn't that the characteristic we should have of the Lord Jesus Christ? The Lord commands us to love one another, but we should only love one another because we love the Lord Jesus Christ. The thing that la- that's lacking mostly in my life and your life is our love for the Lord Jesus Christ. How much do we really love the Lord? Do we love him with all of our hearts? Well, so her life is characterized by her love for a shepherd boy. And naturally, she's loyal to him, because where there's love, there's loyalty, there's faithfulness. So if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to be faithful to him. We're going to want to obey him, we want to be true to him, we want to be loyal to him, and so we're we we're going to be faithful to him. Solomon is a picture of the world. He has a lot to offer this girl, but she's not a bit interested. And if we love the Lord Jesus Christ like we should love the Lord Jesus, we're not going to be interested with the love of this world. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life is only something we're going to use, but not something we're going to abuse and something we're going to be all taken up with. So it's, it's the, it's a song about a little girl that loved her shepherd boy and was loyal to him, and almost in every page, uh, end of every cha- chapter, she longs for him to come. Make haste and come. Be like, because where there's love, there's loyalty, there's faithfulness. So if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, we're going to be faithful to him. We're going to want to obey him, we want to be true to him, we want to be loyal to him, and so we're we we're going to be faithful to him. Solomon is a picture of the world. He has a lot to offer this girl, but she's not a bit interested. And if we love the Lord Jesus Christ like we should love the Lord Jesus, we're not going to be interested with the love of this world. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life is only something we're going to use, but not something we're going to abuse and something we're going to be all taken up with. So it's, it's the, it's a song about a little girl that loved her shepherd boy and was loyal to him, and almost on every page, at end of every cha- chapter, she longs for him to come. Make haste and come. Be like a rope upon the mountains that separate us. Isn't that the characteristic of us? Shouldn't that not be the characteristic of us as Christians? Our love for the Lord Jesus Christ, should it make us loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ, and we should be longing for him to come and take us away. So that's the Song of Solomon. Now, she uses several pictures here, but I want you to notice over in chapter four, six times in this chapter, she mentions a garden, and she is that garden. And Solomon speaks to her in verse chapter four in verse number twelve, and he says, you are a garden that's enclosed, my sister, my spouse. He tried to win her, but says you're like a garden that's enclosed. You've got a hedge about you. You've got bars about you. I can't find- get access to you. So she says, I, I, he says, you're a garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. You're like a spring. There's nothing better than good spring water when you're thirsty, but she a spring shut up. That's what she was like, a fountain sealed. See, he's trying to win her, but she's not interested in him. She says, I am my beloved's, and he is his. She talks about this shepherd boy. She dreams about him. She's not interested in Solomon. But he calls her a garden, a garden shut up, a a and a spring, uh, uh, shut up, uh, garden barred and a fountain sealed. He goes on to describe her and the plants, say, thy plants are an orchard of pom- of of pomegranates with pleasant fruit, campfire and spikenard, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all the trees of fragrance, uh, of frankincense, myrrh and aloes with all the chief spices. Beautiful garden, lot of fruit and a lot of fragrance. Isn't that like my life should be and your life should be? A lot of fruit and a lot of fragrance, beautiful fragrance. You know, Christians, we should, we, we, we have a smell, and it's not Avon products. It's, it's, it's Christ. We're a savor of life unto life and death unto death. And, uh, so here she is, he describes her like a garden with beautiful fruit and a nice fragrance. And she, in verse fifteen, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters and streams from Lebanon. And listen to what she says here to her lover. Awake, O north wind. And the wind in the Bible quite often is, is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Blow upon my garden. When I come in here tonight, Connie came in with a beautiful ba- thing of flowers, and they they were beautiful to look at, but she said smell of them. They smelled better than they looked. They had a beautiful fragrance. That's what she's talking about. Let me put this in New Testament language. Come, O Holy Spirit, and blow upon my life, that the fragments might go out to his garden. Notice this. Awake, O north wind, come, thou south, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant, his pleasant fruit. So what she's saying here, Solomon's saying, you're a garden, a beautiful garden, beautiful fragrance there, but you're a garden barred. You're a ba- garden with a hedge about you. You're a garden, and I can't get access to the fruit and the fragrance of it. I can't enter into it. He describes her so beautifully, a- a- as as a garden. So she says, awake, oh north wind, and come south wind, blow upon my f- my garden, and the fra- and let the spices, the fragrance go out, and let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruit. I hope you get the picture. In the verse number, we'll get it for you in a minute here. In chapter twenty eight and verse number... Now, if I get in the book of Ezekiel, I get it. I'm in the book of Isaiah, so you give me a moment. We get in the book of Ze- Ezekiel, chapter twenty eight. and we're going to read there in verse number thirteen about Satan, who at that time was Lucifer, the son of the morning, and we read about him, and I'm not going to read much about him, but I just want you to notice the phrase in verse thirteen: thou hast been in the Eden, the garden of God. Now, that wasn't the Garden of Eden, as we read, and this was the Garden of Eden, which is in heaven. This scene is in heaven. It's when Satan was a covering cherub, as we read on. It was the fall from this place, uh, that it was where he sinned, iniquity was found in his heart, but it was in the Eden, the garden of God. God had a garden, evidently before he created the world, and Satan was in that garden, and that's where Satan sinned. Now, when you look in the book of, uh, Genesis chapter two, you're going to find a, a garden, uh, in Eden on, on Earth. In chapter two and verse number eight, we read, the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. That was not the garden of Eden, it was the garden in Eden, Eden. Eden was the place where the garden was. So the Lord planted a garden in Eden. It's interesting that when God told Moses to build a tabernacle, he gave him a pattern of a tabernacle that was in heaven, and he gave him a pattern of it, and he built it on earth. When he planted a garden in Eden here for man, for the man that he made, he had, he evidently had a pattern of that in heaven, where Satan was, where Satan sinned. And, uh, he planted a garden i- i- in Eden on earth. So, here we read the first garden. Now, the first three chapters of the book of Genesis, you're going to find a garden mentioned thirteen times. You'll find the garden mentioned. The first three chapters of the Bible. In that garden, there was one special tree called the Tree of Life. Many trees and much fruit, but one special tree called the Tree of Life. God drove man out of that garden lest he have access to that Tree of Life and evidently live in a sinful state, uh, and die and go to hell. God drove him out lest he should eat of that. When you get in the last three chapters of the Bible, chapters nineteen, twenty, or twenty, twenty one, and twenty two of the Book of Revelation, you're going to read about a city thirteen times in the, in those three chapters. And in chapter twenty two and verse twen- uh, verse one of the Book of Revelation, you're going to, you're going to read about the tree of life again. There's a garden in that city, in, in, in that, in that chapter, rather, and the tree of life comes back into you. It starts bearing fruit, and the fruit is for the healing of the nations because there's no record in the Bible of people that die, uh, during the millennium, that, uh, and people that go into the millennium in natural bodies, there's no record of them ever being changed in the moment, in the twinkle of an eye. There's no record of them dying and being raised again, and evidently what happens there, uh, they must be raised again, but what happens there, the tree of life heals them, and they, and they, and they completely healed, and they go on eternally in an immortal body. So, a garden to begin with. Now, I want you to notice something about this garden, and this garden in E- in Eden is a picture of our lives. He took that man, and he put him in the garden. It's not only a picture of our lives, it's a picture of the assembly. It's a picture of Israel. But we want to look at a little bit about this garden. First, I want you to notice in verse eight that the Lord planted this garden. He does that in our lives. He plants the seed that bears all the fruit in our lives. He plants that in us. The Lord Jesus put it this way. He said he was like a sower, a farmer, and he took some seed, and he went out and he scattered it, uh, uh, by the wayside, and he scattered it a- a- among the rocks, and he scattered it among the thorns, and he scattered it among our good ground, and some of it grew a little bit and faded away and so on, and the- and this on the good soil, it brought forth fruit. Now that's a picture of a garden. That's a picture of the spreading of the gospel. How we should broadcast the gospel everywhere. There's plenty of it, far more than man can ever exhaust. The the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, whoever believes it. So go, we go on the scat. He explained that by using it as four different types of hearers, but he said that he was this, he was the son of man who was throwing the seed, and he said the seed was the word of God, and the planting of that seed on the good soil, soil was like in a garden. You can't have a garden without seed and without plants, and and and it grew, and it produced fruit, some thirty, some sixty, some hundred. So the first thing we read in verse eight here, Genesis chapter two is that the Lord planted that garden. He also caused it to grow. Notice, uh, in verse nine, and out of the garden, out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree. So he, he, he, he planted it, and he caused it to grow. Now, if you're not growing in the things of the Lord, I can tell you why. The same reason when I'm not growing. We're not letting the Lord plant the Word of God into our lives. It's the Word of God that's quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It's the Word of God that works in us. It's the Word of God that will mold us and make us. The Spirit of God is working, but he works through the Word of God. So the Lord planted the, uh, this garden. He placed the, the gospel seed in our hearts to begin with, and we, and we accepted that, but the Lord makes that to grow. So we're to grow, as one brother was praying, we're to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. So we're, we're like a garden. We're like a garden. So we go, go on to read, and he not only made it, uh, planted the garden, he made it to grow, but it, it was beautiful. Notice the tree was pleasant to the sight. Something beautiful. Beautiful f- flowers. When you read the fruit of the Spirit, and by the way, there's no fruits of the Spirit, it's just one cluster with nine lovely fruit. Love, joy, peace. Beautiful. Very pleasant to the eye. So the Lord planted the garden, the Lord caused it to grow, and it was beautiful, pleasant to the eye. How pleasing it is to the Lord to look down and see s- a soul being saved. You know what Luke fifteen says? There's joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents. God takes great delight in seeing the sinner saved. The book of Ezekiel chapter thirty three and verse eleven, he says, as I, as I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God has no pleasure in seeing wicked people die and go to hell. So he plants that seed in our heart, he causes it to grow, he waters it, he feeds it with his word, he causes it to grow, and we should be bl- we should be a beautiful garden. Like this little Shulamite girl in the song. We should have a garden that's full of spices, that beautiful fragrance, beautiful fruit, they should all be coming out in our lives. I have a garden home, a literal garden home. I delight in gardening. I have a big garden, and there's times I wouldn't want you to come around to see my garden because it's full of weeds. It hasn't been tilled for a while, and it's not very nice. But when I till that garden up and get all the weeds out of it, I take great pleasure in showing people my garden and how it's growing. And that's the way it is with our lives. We have nothing to show our fellow Christians or nothing to show our f- uh, the, the unsaved people around. No beauty, no fragrance to us. Then we're not a good testimony for the Lord. If we love the Lord, we want, we will want to be like him, and the only way we're going to be like him is the Lord has to, uh, to to enable us to grow as we feed on his word and and make our lives nice, pleasant, loving, and kind to the world all around us. Now, the interesting thing of this garden was that the Lord planted it, the Lord made it grow, and that was beautiful. But man, man had to till the garden. If you look in verse fifteen, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it. That word is to till it. It means to cultivate it. It means, eh, probably there wasn't any weeds there, but there sure are weeds in literal gardens today, eh, had to weed that garden and, uh, uh, look after the garden. So man had to look after the garden. And he also had to keep it, and the word keep there is to guard it. Down our way, we have some deer. So what I do with my garden after I, after it starts to come up, I have an electric fence around my garden, and I have never had a deer bother my garden with an electric fence. I put a hedge about it. And I tell you, if your, if your life, I'm going to talk about that hedge. If your life has got a hedge around it that God has put there, don't be afraid of anything ever happening in your life that's not the will of the Lord. We'll talk about that a little later. So, the garden God planted and put the man in become the man's garden, and he was to till it, he was to, uh, dre- dress it and care for it, and he was to guard it and keep it safe. Man didn't guard that. He let the old serpent come in that garden, and we know this that story, how she tempted Eve. In the garden that was pleasant to the eyes, to the sight, and good for food, in verse eight, she looked at it in the wrong way, and she ate of that fruit, that forbidden fruit, and so on, and plunged the whole world into sin. Now, let's look with me in the book of Isaiah, chapter five. and we're going to see that God likens the nation of Israel, his people in the Old Testament, he likens that- them to a garden. In chapter five of the book of Isaiah. It's called the vineyard here, but it's the same thing. Chapter five and verse number one. Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. Zion. Now notice this, he fenced it. God put a fence around his vineyard, a hedge. He gathered out the stones thereof and planted it with the choicest vine and built a tower in it, and also made a wine press therein. And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. It's a picture of Israel. He took Israel as a vine out of Egypt. He planted her in a, in a pleasant land of milk and honey. He built a tower around her, a watchtower to watch for the enemy, put a hedge, a fence around her, and instead of bringing forth good grapes and good fruit, brought forth wild fruit. Wild fruit. I wonder how much wild fruit we bring forth. We have a couple of apple trees home. One of those trees I can eat the apples off of, the other one I throw them away. They're sour, bitter. They're, they're, they're not the same. You can have some kind of fruit in your life that might be wild fruit. The Lord wants some good fruit. Now notice he likens this vineyard to Israel, and uh, he ma- he made that hedge around it in verse number, in verse number four, What could have been done more to my vineyard than I have, uh, that, uh, to my vineyard that I have not done to it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, it brought forth wild grapes. Now go to. I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up, and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. I will lay it waste. It shall not be pruned nor digged, but there, but there shall come up briers and thorns, and I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel, and so on. The Lord has done that, hasn't he? He's taken away the hedge from Israel. All she's producing now as a nation is briers and thorns. There's no showers of blessing coming on her from heaven. God will restore her in the future, but he's taken away the heads. You know, the devil doesn't always lie. Sometimes he tells things that are true. And, and in Job chapter one, he talked to the Lord about Job. Job was a good man, hated evil, feared God, walked uprightly, and the devil said, that's because you put a hedge about him and his family and his substance. Now that's not a lie. God does do that, but he only does it to the obedient believer. That's why we read in Psalm thirty four and verse seven. we read this: The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him. And to fear the Lord means you respect the Lord, you love the Lord, you're lo- loyal to the Lord, like that Shulamite girl. The fear of the Lord, uh, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivers them. See, God put a hedge about Job and his family and his substance. And God took the hedge away from his substance. And the devil came in and took all of his cattle and camels. He took the hedge around his family, and it, the devil come in and took away his ten children. And he finally said, yeah, but skin for skin. He- it's his life, touch his life, and he'll curse you. God took the hedge away and limited. He said, you can't take his life. And poor Job, he lay in a heap, sick, and we have the story of Job. The book of Job is a, is a, is a contrast between the devil and the Lord. The devil is sure Job isn't what he claims to be. The Lord says he is. And in order to do that, that the Lord allowed, permitted the devil to do all that to Job, and Job come out on the other end twice as good. He had twice as many children, ten more children, and he had, he had twice as many cattle, twice as well off as he was before. But the point I want to make is this, that God put a hedge about that man, and the devil could not touch anything he had, or his children, unless the Lord permitted it, unless the Lord permitted. So he put a hedge around I- Israel here. He put a hedge around there, he put a watchtower there to watch for the enemy, he fenced her in, and he put a hedge there so that the enemies couldn't come in. If you've ever been to the Holy Land, you're, you're going to find that every city is built on a hill because they want to be able to see the enemy coming from afar off. And every city has a hedge around it, a wall around it. Every city, uh, has a wall around it to protect it from the enemy. Well, God puts a hedge around his people. He could guard his people and he care for his people. Now, when you look at the New Testament, you look at, look with me in First Corinthians chapter three, and you're going to find the same metaphor of a, of a, of a garden that represents the New Testament assembly. So the garden in Eden is just a little picture of Israel and about our lives as well as our assemblies. So in First Corinthians chapter three, we read in verse number six, Paul says, I have planted. That's the language you use of a garden. He planted the gospel seed at Corinth in chapter eighteen of the book of Acts. Apollos came along, he watered it a bit. He's using the language of a garden, but it was God gave the increase. I plant my garden. If it's dry, I water it, but you know, I can't make it grow. God doesn't make it grow. That God can't make it grow if I don't do some planting. And if I don't water it, it's extremely dry. But God gives the increase. So he's using the language to plant the garden. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but it's God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his works. Now we are laborers together with God, ye are, notice this, ye are God's husbandry. That's a garden. That's a word for garden, a planted garden. Ye are God's building, God's garden. Now this garden at Corinth had to be guarded. God puts a hedge around assembly, the same as he does around a Christian. And nothing can break that hedge or get inside of that hedge, uh, that that God, that God does not allow or permit to come in, but the sad thing is we can break that hedge. Now, if you look over in chapter five of the same chapter, and I'm quite sure you're familiar with the, with the contents, there's a man in the assembly that's a, a fornicator. He's living with his stepmother, and, uh, they are not too concerned about it. There's sin in the camp. The hedge is broken to that assembly. So in verse number two of chapter five, ye, and ye are puffed up and have not rather mourned about this situation, that he that had done this deed might be taken away from among you. Now, I believe if the church of Corinth had have been spiritual and not carnal, they would have never had to put away that fornicator. He'd have never come. God would have taken him away. God would have taken him away. But since they were carnal, he, he felt quite comfortable there. There are probably some more like it. So he ends up that they are told to put him away in- in verse number, in verse number thirteen. But them that are without God judgeth, therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. To me, the hedge of that assembly was broken, and the devil could come in and- and- and have access and- and rule the whole assembly. Now, God puts a hedge about our lives. If we love the Lord, and we're loyal to the Lord, and we are longing for the Lord to come, he puts a hedge about us. Nothing can touch us, anything that comes inside of that hedge. I- I- if we are living in obedience to the Lord, and we fear the Lord and honor the Lord and are loyal to the Lord, anything that comes inside of that hedge that we don't like, it's not going to hurt us. Just accept it. It's not going to hurt us. Might be sickness, it might be troubles of one side or another, but it's all for a good purpose. But if we break the hedge, be careful. Ecclesiastes chapter ten and verse eight says, whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent will bite him. We know who the serpent is. And if we willi- if we willfully disobey the Lord, and let me, let me define what I mean by disobeying. Disobeying the Lord isn't just doing something wrong, it's failing to do something right. Let me give you an example. If an opportunity comes up for you to witness about the Lord Jesus Christ to some unsaved person, and it's obviously an opportunity that the Lord has opened to you, and you, uh, to it, and you don't witness. That's disobedience. That's disobeying. So disobeying the Lord just isn't doing something wrong. It's failing to do something that you should do. James puts it this way, James four and verse seventeen. To him that doeth and knoweth to do good and doeth it not is a sin. Now, when we knowingly and willfully sin against the Lord, we're breaking the hedge. And whoso breaketh an hedge, the serpent will bite him. Our brother was praying about the serpent going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He cannot bite us through God's hedge, unless we break that hedge, then he can bite us because we get outside the hedge. There's no hedge. Take my electric fence down around my garden, and I'm going to be missing some of it in a few days because I live too close to the deer in the ginna. Long as I've got the hedge around there, they don't bother it. As long as God's hedge is about your life and my life, the devil cannot do anything that God does not permit, and God will not permit anything to happen to his children that is not for their good. But if we break the hedge and disobey the Lord and break the hedge, then the serpent can bite us and have access to us. Now, my time is gone, and I'm not going to keep you too much longer. But in the parable of the sower, there were four types of soil. The wayside ground that received the word, and it, uh, uh, for a moment, the devil come and took it away. And the birds of the air come and took the seed, but it was a picture of the enemy taking the word away. Then there was sort of an emotional hearer that fell among the rocks, and, uh, an emotional hearer that received it with joy and got all enthused, and in this very short time trouble come along, and he had no depth, no depth there at all. It was rocky ground, hard hearts, and, uh, didn't amount to anything. Then there was a thorny ground hearer, and they received the word, but they didn't bring forth any fruit, and there were three things there that hindered them from bringing forth fruit. The cares of this life. That word cares there is anxieties, the worries. To be all worried about things distracts us from the things of the Lord. That's why the Lord says, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall wear. It doesn't mean to be careless. It doesn't mean not to plan your meals or to plan, uh, buy your clothes. It doesn't mean that. It means don't be distracted from the things of the Lord with all those things. So these thorny ground hearers, whether they're saved or whether they aren't, is beside the point, but there's thorn- th- those people, they w- they were caught away, distracted by the ordinary things of life. The Lord emphasized this over and over in his ministry, so far to say that he that loveth his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He even put it in one of the other gospels, the in the in the negative. If you hate not your father and mother, you're not worthy of me. Now, he doesn't mean to literally hate. That's a violation of his own commandment, that we should love and honor our parents. It means if you prefer your family more than you do the Lord and the gospel's sake, if you put them ahead of the gospel's sake, you can't be my disciple, he said. You can't be my disciple. One would-be disciple said, let me first go bury my father. And I understand that was an old saying that was just an alibi of getting, get away from doing something. The chances are his father wasn't, didn't die. He just didn't want to go at that time. Let me first go bury my father, and then Jesus said, let the dead bear the dead, you go preach the kingdom of God. So it's putting the Lord first, giving him first place. That's loyalty. And if we really love the Lord, we will give him that loyalty. Just how much we are loyal to the Lord is the same amount of our love for him, our faith, faithfulness and love to him. So the next thing in their lives that was the pleasures of life carried them away. That's in Luke chapter eight and verse eleven. And the treasures of this life. And there's probably no one thing that carries people more away from the Lord than money. Money, the love of money, getting more. We've got plenty. I remember Billy Graham saying many years ago when he went to the far East, I went to the Middle East somewhere to preach, and he come back and said, everybody in America's rich. There are no poor people here. I remember riding on a, a, a plane with a man, a soldier in Canada that went down to Bosnia, and he said he'd been down there six months, and they sat with him on a plane. He said, if everybody in Canada was in Bosnia, they'd never complain about our government or our country. So people want more. Materialism is eating up Christians everywhere. They got all, they got all, they've got all they, they need far more than they need, and they want more, want more, want more. Those are things that's gonna hinder our garden from growing. Those are weeds. Those are weeds that's going to choke out the fruit. This particular, uh, crowny, this stony ground cro- uh, uh, f- uh, garden, uh, it it didn't produce any fruit. It got choked out with the treasures and the pleasures. You know, some, I go down to Florida quite a bit in the, uh, meetings down there, and the one fellow told me that most all the nor- the northern Christians that come down there and settle in Florida, they, they ask two questions. Where is the best restaurant? Where is the nearest golf course? That's their interest. That's sad. That's sad. At the judgment seat of Christ, the Lord isn't going to tell us any of those things. But they are what second Corinthians five and ten says, that we're going to be judged for those things that are good and those things that are bad or worthless. And that, and to have our lives all occupied with sports or anything, treasures, money, and things and pleasures, those are weeds in our garden. Those are the thorns. And it's not hard to pull thorns out. Sometimes it's hurt because they- there's- they're hard on the fingers, and they- they- they stick in your fingers. But there's no- it's not hard to pull thorns out of your garden. You have to work in the garden and keep it weeded. I have all kinds of weeds in my garden, but I keep working away at them, pulling them out, because I know I'm not going to get any nice vegetables or fruit or anything else if it's full of weeds. So it is with our lives. If our lives are full of weeds, if our garden is full of we- weeds, and we don't do anything about pulling those weeds out, everybody has sins that says so easily beset them. We all have them. We have have weaknesses for one, one or two certain things. Hebrews chapter twelve says we should lay them aside and run the race with patience, looking unto Jesus who has gone on before us, ran the race and finished the course, all for the joy that was set before him of accomplishing the will of the Lord. May the Lord help us to weed out our gardens and let the beautiful fruit grow, that there might be fruit and fragrance in our lives for his glory. Shall we pray? Our Father, we ever thank thee for the garden that our Lord Jesus went in and agonized that this cup would pass from him, if it be possible, if it be thy will. And we thank thee that in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. And in that garden, we thank thee that he suffered and bled and died for our sins, that our lives might be gardens planted by him, and that good seed planted in us to bring forth fruit unto thee, and to bring forth fruit to the world all around us, that they might see Christ in us, that they might want him and turn to him. So we ask thy blessing to be good upon each one of us. We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you.