The Parable of the Sower

Pastor Devon Ortiz opened in Luke chapter 8, reading through Jesus's well known parable: a sower scatters seed that lands on four different kinds of ground. Some falls on the wayside and the birds devour it. Some falls on rock, springs up quickly, and withers for lack of root. Some falls among thorns and is choked out before it can bear anything. Some falls on good ground and produces fruit a hundredfold. A parable, Pastor Ortiz reminded the church, is simply an earthly story carrying a heavenly meaning, and he called this the foundational parable behind everything else Jesus would teach in his earthly ministry. Jesus gives it an answer key later in the same chapter, one of the only parables he explains outright, and Pastor Ortiz built the entire message around a single verse in that explanation: verse 14, the ground choked by thorns, defined as those who hear the word and are choked with the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life, bringing no fruit to maturity.

The seed itself, Pastor Ortiz said, is the word of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, so without regular time in scripture there is no foundation for faith to grow on at all. He pointed out a strange trend: churches have never been more numerous, yet fewer people are genuinely committed to them, because more Christians are quietly abandoning the ordinary discipline of reading and hearing God's word, the very thing God normally uses to build faith in the first place.

Three Grounds, Briefly

Before settling on the thorns, Pastor Ortiz walked quickly through the other three. The wayside hearer's heart has been hardened by the pressures and disappointments of life until the word can only sit on top soil, never sinking in, which makes it easy for it to be lifted away before it takes root at all. The rocky ground hearer receives the word with real joy but has nothing underneath it, so there is a burst of visible growth followed by an equally quick withering the moment pressure or temptation arrives. The good ground hearer, by contrast, is marked by honesty: not confessing sin to a person or even to a church, but standing honestly before God, aware of the weight of eternity and admitting the need for a savior. That honesty is what allows the seed to take root and eventually bring forth fruit with patience, meaning steady growth rather than an instant harvest.

What Choking Actually Looks Like

The bulk of the message stayed on the fourth ground, where thorns grow up alongside the word until they choke it out entirely. Pastor Ortiz traced how that happens gradually, through ordinary life rather than dramatic sin. It starts with becoming consistently rushed, treating rushing as a permanent posture rather than an occasional inconvenience, so that everything feels urgent and nothing feels sacred. From there it grows into failing to live in the moment, being physically present at church, or even on a day off, while mentally already at tomorrow's obligations. That builds into needing to stay constantly busy just to feel like life has worth, measuring value by how full the calendar looks. Eventually work becomes the main focus of life, crowding out the instruction to seek first the kingdom of God, and whatever time is left gets spent on entertainment as an escape: hours lost to shows, scrolling, and streaming without noticing. The end result is complacency, a Christian life running on fumes because all its energy has gone everywhere except toward God. Pastor Ortiz described it bluntly: people show up on Sunday having already spent the week's attention on rushing, on work, and on entertainment, and then wonder why nothing in the service seems to land.

Pastor Ortiz was careful not to flatten this into one simple diagnosis. Some who fit this description may not be saved at all, since the thorny ground hearer sits alongside the other unsaved grounds in the parable. But he also allowed for a second, harder possibility: someone genuinely saved who has let the cares of this world choke out what the word could otherwise be doing in their life, left starved of the very nutrients that word was meant to supply. He put the question to the room directly. If you died tonight, has the noise of this world choked out any real evidence of salvation, or is there a saved life simply not bearing what it could?

Fruit, Not Size

God does not measure a Christian by how tall they have grown or how many years they have logged in a pew, Pastor Ortiz said, but by fruit. He referenced the fig tree Jesus cursed for looking healthy while producing nothing, and applied the same picture to churches full of long time members who look established but produce little, because work, money, or entertainment have consistently gotten in the way of what God actually asked them to do.

He connected this directly to money and time. Many churches would have everything they need for ministry, he said, if members were not consistently spending it instead on eating out, on subscriptions, and on whatever event promises a little more value to life, then coming up empty when it is time to actually give toward something that matters. The same distraction that keeps a Christian from opening their Bible also keeps them from being generous with what God has already provided.

The Rich Fool and the Man Who Learned Too Late

From there Pastor Ortiz moved to Luke chapter 12, where a rich man's land produces so much that he decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones, tells his own soul to take its ease, and then hears God call him a fool because his life will be required of him that very night. He pointed out how often the man refers only to himself, my barns, my goods, my soul, a life entirely fixed inward with eternity nowhere in view. Against that picture he set the story of Andrew Carnegie, who arrived in the United States from Scotland at thirteen, built a steel fortune he eventually sold for 480 million dollars, more than two percent of the entire United States economy at the time, and only late in life concluded that the man who dies rich dies disgraced. Carnegie spent his last two decades giving that fortune away toward libraries and universities instead of holding onto it. The financial lesson, Pastor Ortiz said, is the easy part to accept. The harder question is whether the same pattern shows up in faith: storing up church attendance and Bible knowledge Sunday after Sunday without ever doing anything with it, the same way the average household quietly carries thousands in debt built on wanting things right now rather than waiting.

What Are You Doing With the Faith You've Been Given?

Pastor Ortiz closed by circling back to the opening of Luke 8, where women like Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, and Susanna gave up reputation and position to follow and minister to Christ, regardless of their background. None of their circumstances excused them from bearing fruit, and Pastor Ortiz argued none of the modern excuses hold up any better against a Christ who gave his whole life on the cross. He was explicit that this was not a message built around a numbered list of applications, just one central question aimed at the room: what is being done with the faith already given, and is it the cares of this world, whether work, entertainment, or the constant pressure to stay busy, standing between that faith and the fruit God is actually looking for. The service closed with an invitation for anyone unsure of their salvation, or aware of being choked by distraction, to respond at the altar.