Mark 4.1-20
11 March, 2007

This may be a disquieting sermon. And though I want it to be somewhat
disquieting, I also want it to be encouraging. The topic has to do with the
famous five questions for membership. [These are attached below.] There has
been some change in my thinking about these – I’d like to think that this
has been good. But this change affects you.

Let’s start with a quick overview of the five questions. The first two focus
on key points of the Gospel. The first has to do with acknowledging that you
are a sinner. The second has to do with whether you believe in Jesus as the
Savior. The last two have to do with your relationship with the church. The
fourth question deals with a commitment to our congregation, with the last
dealing with your relationship with the leaders of the church. It’s the
third question that I want to draw your attention to. When someone wants to
join Faith Reformed, normally I meet privately with the person before he
comes to be interviewed by the session. In times past, I would focus my
attention on the person’s response to the first two questions. I did that
with this question in mind, ‘Does this person have a saving faith in Jesus
in response to the life-threatening fact of his sin?’ I think that you will
agree that this is an important question that needs to be answered clearly.
But here is the problem. Saving faith is invisible. How can I or anyone else
know if it exists in a person’s life? Hopefully, the person displays an
awareness of the seriousness of his plight as a sinner. Hopefully, he has
some measure of emotional intensity when it comes to his looking to Jesus as
Savior. ‘Oh yes, I know that I am a sinner. I have no problem believing
that. And I know that my only hope is Jesus.’ And yet, that is far from
solving the problem. Pastors and elders can be fooled. People can fool
themselves. Because of this, I am now seeing that the focus of any
preliminary conversation that I might have with someone interested in
joining our church, and then the focus of the session’s interview, can’t be
the first two questions. They are important, and we need to listen carefully
as a person speaks about them, but they cannot be the focus. I am seeing
that there needs to be much more emphasis placed on the third question. ‘Do
you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance on the grace of the Holy
Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?’
It is here that, over time, we can see tangible, objective evidence of
saving faith. The question boils down to this, ‘Do you promise to follow
Jesus?’ Faithful discipleship or its lack is something that will be seen –
maybe not immediately, but it will be seen.

To see the importance of this you need to understand this thing called
‘membership’. What is happening when the elders and I receive someone into
the membership of our church? We are saying so much more than this person
now has voting rights at congregational meetings. We are making a formal
declaration that this person is a Christian. And we do that with the
authority of Jesus Himself. ‘If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are
forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.’ [John
20:23] This is not the power to cause forgiveness but to declare that it has
happened. Membership is the declaration that a person’s sins have been
forgiven by the Gospel. It is a declaration that he has saving faith. It is
a declaration that he is a Christian. And excommunication by the session is
a declaration that a person is not a Christian. So, you see, what pastors
and elders do when it comes to matters of membership is very serious. So, we
need to be careful that our declarations are accurate.

Now, we’re ready for our text, the familiar parable of the four soils. Here,
Jesus describes four responses to the preaching of the Word. The first – the
seed on the path – is that of no response. Then come the rocky and thorny
soils. Here, we find responses to the Word, but something is wrong. Jesus
describes the rocky soil as the person who receives the Gospel ‘immediately
and with joy’. It appears that there is saving faith. But what happens after
a while? Once the sun rises and brings its heat, ‘immediately they fall away
’. These begin to follow Jesus, but at some point they stop. Then there is
the thorny soil. This person also receives the Word. The seed is sown and
sprouts. But this sprout is surrounded by thorny weeds which battle with it
for the moisture and nutrition of the earth. This sprout stays just a
sprout. There is a response to the Gospel, apparent evidence of saving
faith, yet there is no fruit. It is the lack of fruit that proves that there
is no saving faith here. The sprout still stands. It is not withered, but it
remains fruitless. Then we have the good soil. There is the initial response
like the previous two, but there is also the long term evidence of saving
faith. There is also fruit.

Now, what is Jesus’ goal in teaching this parable? What does He want the
crowds to take away with them? First, there is this question, ‘Which soil
are you?’ The parable is a call to self-evaluation. The Apostle Paul makes
the same point when he writes, ‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are
in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves,
that Jesus Christ is in you? —unless indeed you fail to meet the test!’ [2
Cor. 13:5] Jesus calls us to ask ourselves, ‘Do I have saving faith? What
evidence could I point to in order to prove that?’ But Jesus also provides a
warning about the temptations that await His disciples. The rocky soil fell
away because of ‘tribulation or persecution … on account of the Word’. The
thorny soil failed to bear fruit because of ‘the cares of the world and the
deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things’. Do you see the
pattern? The rocky soil failed because of pressures that came from without.
This person felt the pressure from other people, pressure to conform and to
turn away from this discipleship thing. And he gave in to it, completely
turning away from following Jesus. The thorny soil, on the other hand, fell
because of the pressures that came from within. His own heart led him
astray. Here, Jesus is talking about anxiety about matters of this life,
being fooled by the allure of money, and the lusts for what we have no right
to. Because of these temptations there was no saving faith. And while the
seed in the rocky soil completely withered away to nothing, the seed in the
thorny soil continued to exist as the fruitless sprout. Some turn completely
away from Jesus, while there are others who still make claims of belief,
still do church, but the fruitlessness of their lives reveals the sad truth.
They have no more saving faith than the seed in the rocky soil. They are not
‘endeavor[ing] to live as becomes a follower of Christ’. Jesus’ parable
warns us of the challenges that we shall face.

As you examine your life, and as the elders and I do the same when we meet
with you from time to time, the key issue is not whether you can say, ‘I am
a sinner, and I believe in Jesus’. No, rather the key issue is this. Is
there the fruit of faithful discipleship? Is there objective evidence that
you have saving faith? Please note: this is not a matter of rummaging around
in your soul to try to find something that feels like saving faith – and
then being crushed because you chose a gray day to do that and all you found
were flat emotions. This test looks at your actions. This test looks for
obedience to Jesus. It is here that you can give thanks for the various
trials that Jesus sends your way. Let’s recall, once again, Abraham’s test,
the call of God to sacrifice Isaac. God didn’t come to Abraham and say,
‘Abraham, root around in your soul and tell me if you find any saving faith.
’ No, God called Abraham to act. This was a test of discipleship that was
objective, in the world of the five senses. And it was after he passed the
test that God could [and did] say, ‘Now, I know…’ The evidence of Abraham’s
faith could be seen. And thereafter, Abraham had more objective evidence for
his faith. There was something he could point to as fruit. Jesus sends tests
your way. They are a blessing in many ways – not the least of which is that
when you pass them you can tell yourself that there is more fruit, more
evidence of saving faith. You have something that you can point to.

Let me pull this together. If you are a member of Faith Reformed Church then
you have been asked this question. ‘Do you now resolve and promise, in
humble reliance on the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to
live as becomes a follower of Christ?’ When you became a member, you said
yes and made that promise. How are you doing at keeping it? If anyone here
answers me by saying, ‘I’m doing fine. I remember the promise, and I find
that I am doing quite well at keeping it’, I would have to conclude that
that person was either lying to me or completely out of touch with reality.
An angel might answer that way but not sinners like us. One good way to
answer that question would be to say, ‘I am working at it, ‘endeavoring’.
But I’ve got to tell you there are days when I am just failing left and
right. And even on good days, it sometimes feels like two steps forward and
one step back.’ Now, that is an honest answer of a faithful disciple. But
let’s remember that the fruit is something that you can point to. So, what
would you point to? Again, here’s one good answer. ‘Last week something
happened that got me mad. I know that my anger was wrong, but it wasn’t as
bad as it used to be. A couple of years ago I would have screamed and had a
royal fit. But I’ve been praying about this, and the Spirit has been making
some changes that I can see.’ The fruit here is not that there is no sin but
that there has been progress toward a godly response. Now, it does no good
to say anything like this about one area of your life if you’ve been running
from the Spirit’s vigorous attempts to get you to deal with some specific
sins in another area of your life. If your evaluation of yourself is going
to be of any worth, it needs to be honest and complete. So, are you
endeavoring – working at – living as becomes a follower of Christ? How are
you doing?

After all that I’ve told you, your response should be obvious. You need to
pray. You need to pray that the Spirit would help you in your working at
this. This is what ‘in humble reliance on the grace of the Holy Spirit’
means. How can you hope to bear fruit if you fail to pray? In your prayers,
you also need to give thanks for the tests He has sent. These are gifts so
that you can point to something as evidence of saving faith. And you need to
pray for the other people in this room. We aren’t in this alone. We are a
church, not just some collection of individuals. And so, we help each other.
And though the battle is at times incredibly difficult, we take the next
step forward with optimism. Jesus has promised to do us good. And He will.
You can bank on that. It’s the Gospel.


Questions for Membership

1. Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly
deserving His displeasure, and without hope except in His sovereign mercy?
2. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and Saviour of
sinners, and do you receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is
offered in the Gospel?
3. Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance on the grace of the
Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes a follower of Christ?
4. Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best
of your ability?
5. Do you submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church and
promise to study its purity and peace?