Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. (Mark 4:3-9).

 I find gardening frustrating. There are several facts of life about gardens that I don’t particularly like. Among them is this simple fact: Weeds are easier to grow than flowers. No matter how well you prepare the soil, no matter how much fertilizer you put in the ground, no matter how-well tilled your garden is, sooner or later the weeds begin to take over—and when they do, they choke out everything else. I don’t know why God could not have created a world in which the flowers crowd out the weeds in my garden. It makes perfect sense to me, anyway.

In the Midsouth, we are so used to Bermuda lawns that we forget that in other parts of the country Bermuda is thought of as a weed! When it gets into a border, or a flowerbed, it is almost impossible to get out, and it eventually will take over the garden. Just across the street and the pond from our yard is a wooded area. This wooded area has poison ivy in it. The poison ivy gets into my yard every spring, and I have to eradicate it. There are also thorns in the woods. The variety of thorns we have are not particularly bushy, but they have a deep tap root and are almost impossible to get out of the garden once they have become established. I have several pretty large azaleas in my front yard and in two of them these thorns have managed to get well-established. The root system of the thorns is intertwined with the root system of the azaleas and it is almost impossible to keep the thorns from choking out the plant. Every spring, I fight another year of the never-ending battle between the azalea grower and the thorns. I guarantee you if I stopped fighting for five years, the thorns would win.

The same phenomenon is true in the spiritual life. It is far easier to develop negative spiritual qualities than positive ones. If we are not vigilant in rooting out the thorns in our spiritual life, sooner or later they will come to dominate us.

The Parable of the Four Soils

This is the third blog in a series of four blogs on the “Parable of the Four Soils” from Mark. In this parable, Jesus describes the human heart as like four soils, hard, rocky and shallow, dominated by thorns, and fertile.

Two weeks ago, we talked about the problem of hardness of heart—a heart so hard that the Gospel simply cannot find a home. Last week, we talked about the shallow, rocky heart—a heart in which the gospel finds a home for a time, but when hard times come and growth is necessary, that person’s heart is too shallow for faith to take root and grow. Today, we are talking about the third problem—the cluttered and thorn-filled heart where faith can grow for a while but is eventually choked out.

Life among the Thorns

In Spanish, the word for “Footpath” is “Sendera.” One day, years and years ago, I went hunting on a ranch on the north side of the King Ranch in South Texas. Large bushes, some of them thorn bushes taller than a man’s head, cover the land. In order to get from place to place, someone had bulldozed paths through the bushes called “Senderas” by which a person or jeep could get from one place to another. There were some smaller paths that animals had made in the predominate brush. (I had a frightening encounter with a havalina, which is a kind of wild pig, in one of these Sendera’s.) These thorn bushes were all the plant growth there was in places they took over, because once it was overgrown with the brush, light could not reach the ground and everything else was killed. The thorns and brush choked out every other kind of growth.

In the Holy Land in Jesus’ day, some of the land was sometimes covered with bushes, what Jesus calls “thorns,” because these bushes did have thorns on them. If land were left unattended for any length of time, these thorny bushes would take over a field. The way farmers tried to control the thorns was to burn the ground after each harvest. This would burn any thorns to the ground. However, in the spring, the thorns would take over again, and if a farmer were not careful, they would choke out a crop. [1]

As I mentioned in the first blog, this parable is significant because Jesus explains the parable in detail to his disciples, and that explanation is found in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Here is how Jesus explains the parable in Mark:

Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. (Mark 4:15-19)

 So we see that Jesus sees the thorns as representing (1) the worries of this life, (2) the deceitfulness of wealth, and the (3) desire for pleasureable things. This is one of those cases when the Bible might as well have been written yesterday. These same things choke out our faith today.

When our staff met this week, Cindy immediately took us to the first thing on the list: worry. So often, when reading a list that includes greed and desire, we shift our attention immediately to those things as potential thorns. This is unfortunate because “the worries of this life” are more common ways in which our faith is choked to death. What are the “worries of this life?” The worries of this life are all the things that you and I legitimately worry about taken beyond the point where there is anything productive in our worries. For example, we all legitimately worry about our children. It begins to choke our faith when we worry and worry without trusting that God will take care of them once we’ve done the best we can. We worry about our work. We all worry about having enough money when we grow old. We legitimately worry about a lot of things. When we continue to worry once we’ve done all we can do, our worry begins to choke out our faith. I could go on and on because there are as many worries of this life as there are things to worry about!

The second thing Jesus mentions is the deceitfulness of wealth. I think that the only way we can get a handle on this in our society is to think about what was wealth in the ancient world. Wealth in the ancient world did not include stocks, bonds, investments in hedge funds, gold futures, 401k plans, IRA’s, or any such things. In Jesus’ day a wealthy person owned his own home, and it would have been nicer than most but not nearly as nice as most of our homes, had a reserve of food of some amount, and had accumulated some silver or gold items. This was wealth in the ancient world.

Over and over again, the Bible makes two comments about wealth being deceitful. First, it promises a life without the worries of the common person—but it never delivers (Proverbs 11:28). The wealthy worry just like the poor. Second, it promises a security it cannot give. Proverbs warns us that wealth can flee away (Proverbs 25:3). As we begin trusting in riches and in power we come to trust in an idol—in something that will, in the end, leave us empty. Having enough is important. However, we cannot focus all of our attention and time on making money. It cannot be our ultimate source of security in life.

Finally, we can allow the good things of this life, the pleasures of this life, to gradually choke out our faith. Once again, these pleasures are not bad things in themselves. They become thorns that choke out our faith when they take up too much of time and energy. I don’t want to belabor the point—and there are a thousand possible illustrations. Perhaps just one in one area will give us some idea of how good things can become bad things when taken to excess. Let’s suppose I have a hobby, like sailing. (It is a safe bet that most people in Memphis do not spend a lot of the time sailing!). I purchase a small boat that I can afford and I begin sailing. Pretty soon, I am leaving work early on Friday, taking of all day Saturday and Sunday to sail my little boat. I begin to buy extra equipment for my little boat, and I must take classes to qualify as an expert in the use of all of them. One day, I decide I need a bigger boat, and after a while a still bigger boat. What was once a hobby to help me relax from work has now become a huge distraction. I no longer have time for church, for my family, for friendships, or for God. My little boat has become a big thorn bush. This same analysis applies in every area in which there are pleasures of life we can legitimately enjoy or let them dominate our lives.

Clearing out the Thorns

If we are going to be able to allow the garden of our hearts to grow in discipleship, we have to get the thorns under control. This can be hard because as I said at the beginning, thorns are not necessarily bad in themselves; they just take too much of our time, talent, money, and energy, sapping us of the ability to bear fruit for God. In some ways, the easiest thorns to get rid of are the worst: if I am an alcoholic or a drug addict, I know I must get rid of my alcoholism before I can grow in Christ. It is not so easy to see the necessity if I am a workaholic. Working hard is a good thing. Therefore, it can be hard to see when it has become something demonic. Golf or exercise, or any hobby is a good thing. It can be hard to see when it is taking up too much of my time, money, and energy. Some thorns need to be eradicated; some thorns just need to be controlled.

One of my worst thorn problems in my front yard is, as I said earlier, in my azaleas. I cannot get the root system for these thorns completely out of my yard. However, I have learned that what I can do is control the thorns by cutting them back as far as possible the minute they come up and I can see them. The thorns don’t threaten the azaleas because I have stunted their growth. Our dealings with thorns can be the same. There are thorns, like the allure of pleasures and riches that we cannot entirely eliminate, but we can get them under constant control. We can prevent them from dominating our lives.

Life in a Thornless Field

One day in those Sendera’s in South Texas, I went down a winding path looking for a javelina or a deer.  After a few twists and turns on the path, I was pretty well lost—and I had a hard time finding my way out. As I mentioned before, the bushes, some which were thorny, were taller than my head and it could be dark inside the path. There was always the danger that you would turn the next corner and face a charging animal (which never happened). Not only do the thorns choke out the spiritual life within us, they also cause us to lose our sense of spiritual direction.

One of the benefits of cutting out the thorns from our lives and burning them to the roots is that we can gain a clear vision of what God is calling us to do and to be. We have a clear set of priorities—with God firmly implanted in first place. And, because we have God in first place, it gets a whole lot easier to put everything else in the proper place as well. Pretty soon, we have a kind of peace, not a peace in the sense of no possible worries, but a peace in the sense of having done the best we can possibly do.

Not long ago, I went to a professional about a problem common among people my age. I was worried about the problem and had taken a lot of steps to solve the problem over the years. After our consultation was over, and I and done what was asked of me, I felt a kind of peace. I had done all that I knew to do about the problem. Now, the future is in the hands of God. I’ve done my part, and all I need to do is to keep doing my part. If it doesn’t work out, I’ve done my best.

The peace we get from getting the thorns out of our lives is the peace of having done the best we can do. We may still wish we had a bit more money, more things, more pleasures, etc. However, we have them in the proper place; and, we can no longer be seriously shaken by our desires. With God first in our lives, we have plenty of time and money left for secondary things—and these secondary things no longer dominate us the way they used to. There is something liberating about this.

An Important Key to Fruitful Discipleship: Get Rid of the Thorns

This week our text really asks us to do two things: First take an inventory of the thorns in our lives. Secondly, we must perform what I call a “thornectomy” on them. No two of us have exactly the same thorns. For some people, things are thorns that barely bother others. However, we all have thorns in the garden of our heart that can and will crush out faith if we let them grow. If we are to be the disciples God calls us to be, one of the first things we must do is cut the thorns out of our lives or burn them to the ground so that they no longer choke our faith to death.

Copyright G. Christopher Scruggs, 2015, All Rights Reserved

[1] William Barclay, “Mark” in The Daily Bible Study Series Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1975), 96.