“I can’t go on like this. I’m at my breaking point. I can’t take it anymore!” Have you said words like these? Have you spent a day or a decade feeling like your situation is untenable? Work, family, sickness, even church can try your patience, tempting you to lash out in ways strident, selfish, sinful. “I can’t can’t go on like this!” is the cry of someone who has lost patience.
Today Jesus tells us (Luke 8:4-15) not just, “Be patient,” but to hear the Word of God with patience. Yet before He gets to that, He describes what prevents the Word from doing its work in us. Jesus is asking us to look carefully at ourselves, and consider if we have been living and acting as one of the three kinds of soils that fail. How easily we set aside the message God has for us, so that it ends up trampled, devoured, withered, or choked.
Yet God is liberal, for see how liberally, recklessly He sows. He does not discriminate at all. To everyone comes the seed, to everyone is preached the Word. What is that Word? Repent and be baptized! Repent and be saved! Repent and receive forgiveness! Repent, and bear fruits worthy of repentance! Turn from your foolish ways, your bickering, your obsessions and addictions, your sins and pride, and behold the Lamb of God, who died for your sins and delivers you from death and hell! This is the seed, this is the Word, this is the message God has for you.
Do you have a heart of stone, so that you hear the Word, but never seriously consider it? Do you come to preaching but leave no different than when you came? Do you make no room for God to break into your daily life, yet have plenty of room for work, TV, reading, and sports? How can you consume so much of the things of this life, yet consume so little of the Word of God? Repent, lest the Word get trampled down on your hard heart, and the devil lift it off and it is gone.
When things go well, we believe with joy, but when we have a bad interaction with a fellow Christian, or a misunderstanding with the pastor, or are disappointed that the church doesn’t do enough or say enough about this or that, we are tempted to leave and turn back. In today’s parable, some hear and believe, but having no root, they wither in the face of temptations. Jesus says, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” The judgment of God should cause each of us to tremble.
And what is the last and greatest danger? “The [seeds] that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.” Has your heart gradually become preoccupied with the love of money? Have you developed a liking for the pleasures of this world? Have your worries and anxieties supplanted faith and hope? Our Lord describes riches as thorns, for touching them can quickly wound us, pricking us with some sin. Did not the same Lord say, “How hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”? The blessings of this life do not have to be a cause of sin, but how easily and often they are! David says in the Psalms, “If riches increase, do not set your heart on them.”
Through all of these dangers, Christ is setting us up for His word of comfort. That word is patience. It sounds like law. “Keep, cling on to the Word with patience.” Yet it is not law; it is not a command. Nothing is more irksome than, when in the midst of your impatience, you are told to be patient! It doesn’t help.
But Christian patience is no mere self-mastery, a technique of self-control. Christian patience is hope, a confident expectation of victory. “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?” says the Psalmist: “My hope is in You.” Our Lord can tell us to hang on to the Word with patience because the Word tells us everything is done already, everything has been finished already by our Lord Jesus Christ. He has overcome death; He has conquered the grave; He has atoned for sin; He has opened the way to everlasting life; if these things are true—and they are—how could you possibly despair? And if there is no reason for despair, no reason for sorrow, than there is no reason to lose hope, and no reason to lose patience. For everything has already been done for you.
This is why the book of Daniel concludes, “Blessed is the one who endures” – a theme taken up by St. James: “Be patient … brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruits of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.… Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.”
So when next you are tempted to say, “I cannot take it anymore,” know that our Lord has already taken everything for you. When next you are tempted to sin, know that our Lord was tempted in every way you are, and did not fall. When next you are provoked to anger, remember how our Lord prayed for His enemies’s forgiveness, and gives you grace likewise to forgive. When next doubt enters into your mind, hold fast to the Word of Truth. When next you are lured by riches, remember how our Lord became poor for your sake, and learn simply to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When next you are bewildered by the losses and trials of this life, remember our Lord who gave us the words to say: “Thy will be done.” When next your conscience accuses you of past sins, hold fast to the Word of absolution which you have heard from the Pastor. And when at the last you are frightened by death and the darkness of the grave, rejoice that Christ has won the victory, and all of His good works are imputed to you.
Hold fast to that Word, for He will never let you go, He will never leave you nor forsake you.