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Commentary on "Optimism: Happiness and Healing"
Day 3: Monday, June 7, 2010 - The Cares of This Life
Overview
Today’s lesson explores how worries, riches, and pleasures can cause us to neglect our relationship with Jesus. In Jesus’ parable of the sower, the seed falls on soil where thorns are growing, and these thorns choke out the good seed. The thorns represent all the ambitions and anxieties that keep us from “nourishing our relationship with Jesus.” This relationship affects our lives in every aspect, and also leads to hope and optimism that will help through trials.
Observations
Among the four soils Jesus describes, only one receives the Word, retains it, and perseveres to produce fruit. The other three soils cannot. The thorny heart produces the same results as the hard, stony heart—no fruit. If our lives are so busy with worries and pleasures that we feel no need for the Word of God, it is an open question whether we belong to Christ. There are no “carnal Christians” who are saved, then continue their lives in unbelief and disobedience to Christ. That part Adventists understand well. What this lesson doesn’t understand is that the thorny soil cannot stop nurturing thorns or begin nurturing the Gospel seed. That kind of person wants to grow the thorns along with the new seeds, keeping the two kinds of plants in “balance.” But the seed cannot live with the thorns.
The lesson encourages the busy person to set aside resources of time and effort to “nurture” the relationship with Christ. What is missing here is the painful truth that we are naturally hostile to God’s Word; we want to reinvent to Gospel to meet our “felt needs.” Before the Holy Spirit regenerates us, our desires are corrupt, including any religious feelings we might have. We want Jesus (or something similar) to come into our lives to enhance our lifestyles and fulfill our dreams. To us, our thorns won’t look like thorns at all. Many churches will pander to us with prosperity and lifestyle gospels, but the gospel of Christ is a message of repentance and submission to Him. Without the new birth, there is religion, but no relationship with the living God.
The relationship begins when we are reborn through His Word (I Peter 1:23). The Holy Spirit shows us that our love of sin bars us from any relationship with God (John 16:8). The real Gospel holds up a mirror to our real condition, showing our utter helplessness to save ourselves through better living. He shows us the One who knew no sin, carrying all of ours to the Cross. We see how the real Jesus, through His life, death, and resurrection, forgives all our rebellion and fulfills all the promises of God. Our greatest need is not healthier habits; we need an entirely new life. Only the Holy Spirit, through the Gospel of grace alone, can provide this new life.
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” John 6:63
We don’t bring this living relationship into existence by our religious nurturing behaviors. The command to hold on to Christ is fulfilled in us after we have been forgiven and made alive. Only those forgiven by grace can stop worrying, count all their ambition as rubbish, and obey Christ. The commandment to persevere will then be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:3,4). Our willing and doing are promised as supernatural gifts:
“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
Conclusions
- The thorny soil will not produce fruit, only thorns. If the thorns of worry and ambition characterize our lives, our efforts to nurture our relationship with Christ will fail.
- We need outside, supernatural help to change our soil, something only the Holy Spirit, through hearing the Gospel, can do.
- The real Gospel is not a lifestyle gospel that focuses on improving habits and health.
- The Holy Spirit brings us to see our hopelessness, repent, and trust completely in our Sin Bearer for our adequacy.
- Only forgiven and trusting Christians will possess the supernatural willing and working that can do His good pleasure.
Copyright 2010 BibleStudiesForAdventists.com. All rights reserved. Revised May 31, 2010. This website is published by Life Assurance Ministries, Glendale, Arizona, USA, the publisher of Proclamation! Magazine. Contact email: BibleStudiesForAdventists@gmail.com.
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