Wednesday, March 24, 2021 PM

The Parable of the Sower and the Lamp as Revelation

It appears that the response has been pretty good overall. I mean, there's definitely been opposition, but overall it looks pretty good. But in the parable of the we discover that the story can only be fully told over time.

Some of the seed will of course be snatched away by the devil. But then the sown seed in other people's hearts will spring up very quickly and appear to take root immediately. However, like the seed on the shallow soil above the rocks.

So also here, this initial exuberance and zeal will peter out, it won't last. And then there'll be others whose initial commitment and profession concerning Jesus, that will be choked out. By their cares for the world, but there will be seed sown.

And this, I think in Jesus's parable is the majority over time, the seed will be on good ground and there's going to be a lot of fruit. Now, when Jesus tells the parable about the lamp, he's telling a story here, which is also very familiar.

This is very mundane, this is very boring. A sower goes out to sow, throwing seed. Yeah, that would be like saying a computer engineer sit down to type. This is not exciting, right? This is, well, it isn't, I'm sorry, Ryan.

It's not exciting. Okay, fine, I'll pick on Norm. A mower went out and sat on his mower. This is not news, this is so, this is mundane. This is not anything incredibly interesting to Jesus's audience.

Little bit interesting to us that a sower went out to sow. You know, most of us aren't farmers. We don't do that every day. But in this case, it's so also, it's similar. When someone lights a lamp, everyone knows where you put the lamp.

You put it up a lamp stand, very often on the side and the wall of one of these houses. They would have had carved out a little alcove. You have an oval lamp filled with some olive oil. You have a little wick stuck into one side that will feed off of that oil.

You light the wick and you put it up high, and then it gives light to everybody. It will reflect off the wall, it will reflect off the ceiling, get your maximum amount of light. So this time, Jesus states the obvious.

Nobody, when you light a lamp, they don't hide it, you know, with a vessel. They don't take some clay pot after they light their lamp and stick it over it. Well, that's almost too obvious to even bother saying, but Jesus says that anyway, because he needs to make a point.

You also, when you light a lamp, you don't put it under a bed. Immediately, you're thinking four posts and the place where you stick all the junk onto the bed. No, these beds are flat on the ground. Okay, this would be smothering the lamp.

Okay, or perhaps setting something on fire. Okay, so nobody does that. Obviously, when you light a lamp, you put it up high so everybody can see the light. Notice how he puts it. He sets it on a lamp stand that those who enter may see the light.

The Word of God Exposes What Is Hidden

Now, this is connected to the parable of the sower in that Jesus has been going to every city, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. Everybody needs to hear it. He'll go preach it in the synagogue, but not everybody goes to synagogue.

So he goes out and he preaches it on the hillside. He'll preach it in somebody's house. He'll preach it out by the sea. Everywhere he goes, he's sowing the seed of the kingdom. He is, in a sense, he's talking about lighting a lamp and setting it up high.

Okay, so for everybody to see. He wants people to see the light. And then he says, for nothing is secret. That will not be revealed nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. And we talked about last week that the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, the preaching of the word, Jesus telling these parables is a sifting mechanism.

It sifts.

It shows who's who.

The preaching of the word simply just shows who's who. It brings everybody into an awareness of their need for the savior, whether their relationship to the kingdom. He's preaching the kingdom. The question is, are you in the kingdom?

Are you out of the kingdom? Just naturally, the word of God sifts. Well, here the light is, since Jesus is saying the light is going to reveal what is secret. It's going to expose that which is hidden.

And that's the story of the parable of the soils. What was hidden? What's hidden in the parable of the soils? Parable of the soils. What's hidden? The layer of limestone that's hidden in there.

What else was hidden?

Verse seven says, some fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up with it. Thorns were hidden, weren't they? Thorns were hidden. The nature of the soil itself was fairly hidden.

Wasn't it?

You just didn't know what it was. When the seed was planted in there, what happened? The seed demonstrated the nature of the soil, right? The preaching of the word demonstrated the nature of the soil.

So Jesus is saying, so the light, he says, when you light a lamp, you set it up high. You make it obvious. You put it at the most advantageous point you can. And then that which is hidden will come to the light.

That which is secret will be exposed. And so just like the sowing of the seed exposed the nature of the soil. In other words, Jesus is saying, I'm sowing the word of God. I'm preaching the word of God.

He said that. The seed is the word of God, he says. So we know what the light means in the next parable because he's keeping with it, just giving a little bit more clarity to what he's saying. And when the seed comes up, we see the nature of the soil.

And that's what he says here in verses 17 and 18. Notice verse 18, therefore take heed now how, take heed how you hear. Take heed how you hear. For whoever has, to him more will be given. And whoever does not have, even what he seems to have, will be taken away from him.

Take heed how you hear. Take the person who perhaps hears in the way that Jesus does not want them to hear. They don't take heed to how they hear. They hear a parable of the sower and they don't come back to ask for more.

They maybe hear some of his teaching as we saw, his sermon in Luke six. They hear some of the things he says about the kingdom. And this all sounds pretty good. But they don't press in to know anymore.

Even what they seem to have will be taken away from them, he says. Or take for instance the religious leaders and those who are lockstep with the Second Temple Judaism that Jesus is encountering and resisting in his ministry.

They have the scriptures, right? They have the scriptures. In fact, they search the scriptures because in them they think they have the formula for eternal life and so on and so forth. They're very dedicated to those things.

But they seem to have a lot. They seem to have a lot. But they're not really taking heed to how they're hearing Jesus preach the word. So what they seem to have, that will be taken away from them. But whoever does have, to him more will be given.

This is one of those transition verses in Luke where we've already talked about the transition, the old wineskins and the new wine and the old wineskins and the old garment and the new patch and all those kinds of things.

He's saying, take heed how you hear. And they're gonna have to listen to Christ. They're gonna have to listen to him preach. They're gonna have to hold on to what he is saying if they're going to have anything left.

Otherwise, even if they seem to have a lot, they're gonna lose it. And so he's saying, take heed to how you hear. Now this, there's a distinction here in verse 18. Some are going to hear and hear well and more will be given and then others are not going to hear and then they're gonna lose.

Well, we have that same basic distinction in the parable of the sower. Seed falls on certain types of soil and there seems to be something there, but then it's actually nothing. And then the seed falls on the good soil and a lot is produced.

So in this, Jesus is saying, pay attention to how you hear. How are you hearing? And this goes with what he said in verse eight of chapter eight. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Think about, are you actually hearing?

The word is a sifting. So this is something where Jesus is saying, he's preaching to the crowds, he's preaching to the people and he's saying, how are you hearing this? How are the people in our lives hearing the word of God?

How do they hear the scriptures? Are they taking heed to how they're hearing? Is it taking actual root? Is there fruit being produced there? Is there a real life there? The word exposes that. It may not be known at first, but nothing is secret that will not be revealed and or anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.

And this is true over the course of time, but it's true in the ultimate sense. When Jesus tells the parable of the sower, he speaks from the end result. He talks all the way to the end of the harvest.

All right, he's talking about what the stalks of grain look like at the very end, hundredfold. So he's talking about all the way at the end of the harvest and saying what everything looks like in the field.

Well, there's the patches where the thorns choked it out. There's the shallow patches where they didn't ever spring up we still have the footpaths with the seeds where never penetrated the ground and the birds came.

But over here we have the hundredfold. He's looking at the very end. So he's talking about the perspective from the day of judgment, from the day of evaluation, looking at the full results. And also with here, the revealed light.

He said, everything's gonna come out. Everything's gonna come out and the word of God is the arbitrator. The word of God is what's gonna classify what's what. And then we have Jesus' mother and brothers coming to him and they can't get to him because of the crowd.

The New Covenant Family of God

Verse 20, and it was told him by some who said, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. But he answered and said to them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

So what do we think about that? Jesus being rude to his mother again. Some people blame him for the wedding at Cana. He really wasn't being rude to his mother. Here's a ready-made parable. Someone comes up to him and says, hey, family's here.

Your mom and your brothers are here. Ready-made parable. So he tacks this on to parable about the lamp. This is an extra explanation for what he's been trying to teach them about the kingdom. And so he, what is he saying?

Now think about, again, we're talking about transition. He's trying to teach them about a transition. He's the one who brings in the new covenant, right? This is what they've been waiting for since the day that Jeremiah has told them in exile, do not decrease.

You're coming back to the land and God's gonna bring in the new covenant. They've been waiting for this for hundreds and hundreds.

Of years.

Well, Jesus is here now, and he's there to start the new covenant, and he's telling them what it's all about. And what's one of the main differences from the old covenant to the new covenant about family and the people of God?

It's not biological. In the old covenant, you were in because you were born of a Jew, born of the Jewish family. All right? You were born, and if you were male, you were circumcised the eighth day. That's the general way you got in.

Of course, there was ways to get in, you know, Rahab, Ruth, and et cetera. But in the old covenant, people of God were defined by biological. People of God were Israel. Here's the, now, expressly stated in Jeremiah and so on, other passages, even in Hebrews.

New covenant's different. New covenant, it wasn't if you were born in Abraham, it was whether you were born again, right? Not if you were circumcised in the flesh, but circumcised of the heart. And so Jesus is saying, okay, so in that sense, family is different.

Jesus is not saying here, family's not important, okay? He's not saying here, you can't be a Christian and have a family, a real biological family. He's not against the family. That's not what he's saying.

He's in the middle of teaching them about this transition. And the transition is this. Those, well, those who have hearts like the good ground, those who receiving the word of God, those who have been given a good heart, a new heart by the work of the Holy Spirit, those who are hearing the word of God, those made in the image of God, those who are born again in the image of God, those hear the word of God and they respond because they're alive.

They're no longer dead, they're alive. The heart of stone has been removed. The heart of flesh has been put in. No longer is the law external written on tablets of stone and put in the Ark of the Covenant.

The law is written right there on the heart. God's word is written inscribed there. So now he's saying, my family, to understand family now, understand it by those who are spiritually alive. That's a big move to make.

That's a big move to make for the Jews. Because before, everybody, you know, like think about Paul. When he's citing all of his qualifications in Philippians, he cites his family qualifications as part of his, the things that he decides to, he decided to lay aside and count as loss for the sake of Christ.

He was laying aside his family connections, his family prestige for the sake of Christ. And so Jesus is talking about that here as well. It's not about, it's not about you being born into the kingdom, Old Covenant.

It's about the kingdom being born into you, New Covenant. At the new birth, right? And so that's a transition that he's teaching about here. But again, it comes down to hearing. It comes down to hearing the word of God and then responding.

And we're gonna see this happen time and time again throughout the gospel. Jesus preaching, Jesus teaching, giving the word of God, and then we see the responses. And we see that today. What are the responses to the word of God?

Even just the bare reading of the scripture. Can be too much for some people. Yeah, very interesting to underscore the point that it matters how we hear the word of God and respond. The next two stories are about Jesus speaking the word of God, and then us beholding wondrous responses, right?

The Storm and Legion Obey Christ

So the next story is what? A storm, the winds and the waves obey Jesus. The next story after that is legion. The demons obey Jesus.

What about you?

The storms obey Christ and the demons obey Christ.

What about you?

Well, yeah, I guess that's one way to put it. There is warning.

There is warning in the, yeah. Okay, someone's available. So I'm gonna get Norm some water.