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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/jerry-jennings/cares-lust-deceitfulness/
Mark chapter 4, verse 14. Mark's Gospel, chapter 4, verse 14. The sower soweth the word, and these are they by the wayside where the word is sown. But when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.
And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground, who when they have heard the word immediately receive it with gladness. And have no root in themselves and so endure, but for a time afterward when affliction or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.
And these are they which are sown among thorns, such as hear the word. Now notice verse 19, that's where I wanted to get. And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things enter in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
I'm thinking of three simple little things that's found in this verse. The first one I want to think about is the cares of this life. And then I'd like to think about the lust of other things. And then I'd like to think about the deceitfulness of riches.
Just three simple little things found in the verse. I take it that these three are the devil's deception. These are things that he uses to draw away the disciples of Christ. He uses these things to occupy the mind, to occupy the heart, to occupy the head, to occupy my hands, and to occupy the heels.
These are the devil's deceptions. These are things that he uses to distract us from the things that matter the most. Life's priorities. What are my priorities? What are your priorities? Is the person of Christ a priority in my life?
Should be a number one priority in my life. How about the people of God? Are they a priority in my life? In your life? How about the place of His name? The assembly of the Lord's people. Is that a priority?
Should be. How about the precepts that we learn in the assembly of the Lord's people? Principles. Patterns that are clearly found in the Word of God relative to a scripturally gathered assembly, company of believers.
You know, Nehemiah was a man that had priorities in his life. It was simply a wall. Just a wall. But it was a priority in his life. And there was a couple of persons that came to him, Sanballat and Geshem.
They sent unto Nehemiah saying, Come let us meet together in some village in Ono. I remember having meetings, gospel meetings one time in a little place down Mississippi called Ono. And when you went to the door to invite them in, what you heard all the time was Ono.
They had other priorities, other things that they were interested in. One lady said to me, she says, Why would I come to those meetings when I can turn on the television and I can listen to good preachers?
I said, I don't have a clue. I don't know. She never did come. A lot of folks nowadays, you know, you knock at their door and invite them to gospel meetings and they say, Okay. And that means only kidding.
The wrong priorities in their lives. It's not their soul, it's their silver. That's what they're taking up with. The dear unsaved in the world today, sad to say. More interested in silver than their soul.
Their silver is only going to last for a little time, but their soul for all eternity. Priorities. I wonder, is that a priority in my life as a child of God? Silver or souls? Something to think about.
Think about this little thought here. The cares of this life. You know they can be so distracting at times. That's what I've picked up on my brother just before me. Fear. Distracted. By the cares of this life.
So distracted that Christ is crowded out. Don't have time for Him. I'll just have time for the cares in my life. Just the ordinary things of life. Sometimes they pile up, don't they? Just plain, simple, ordinary things.
As we live our lives. And we get on day by day. Living and loving and laboring. And all the cares of life seem to come in. And they seem to pile up. And they seem to clutter up the life. Clutter up the mind.
Can't think about Christ right now because I'm thinking about something else. The cares of life. Clutter up my heart. With things that pertain to this earth. And I'll tell you what we're going to do with it.
We're going to leave it all behind. Sitting on the shelf. Sitting in the pantry. Sitting in the garage. Sitting in the backyard. Sitting out in the shed. Not taking it with us. It's been stressed upon me.
My brother-in-law just died. He had all kinds of things. He had a cap collection. Thought a lot of it. He probably had more Bibles than most of us in this room do in his house. Books. Bibles. Caps. Pocket knives.
Key chains. You name it, he had it. Do you know what happened when he died? When he took his last breath? He left every bit of that in that house in Bernice, Oklahoma. And just before he died, when he went into the room for an operation, I got a chance to get close to his ear and talk to him a little bit.
And I told him, Brother, I can't pray for you. I can hardly talk. Do you know what he asked me to do? Quote the 40th Psalm. I didn't quote the whole Psalm. I quoted two verses to him. He said to me, I'm good to go.
He's the first man that ever spoke to me about my soul. The very first that ever said anything to me that I had a priority in my life, and that was my soul. And it wasn't a silver. And it wasn't the trinkets, or the baubles, or the bangles, or the cares of this life.
It was my soul. And when he went into eternity, he left everything in the house that was important to him. Do you know what you're going to do? You're going to leave everything in the house, except for the things you've treasured up for heaven and me as well.
What's our priorities today? You know, when the cares of this life take over in my life, I'm going to have very little time or taste for the things of God. Very little time for it. And you know, I think that can all be summed up in one word, and that's worry.
Do you worry? Do you have any good to worry? When you worry, do things change? When I worry, do things change in my life? They don't change. They don't change in your life either. Worry isn't going to change anything.
And yet we worry. I really wonder, do we worry or do we just wonder? I have an old mother that's 96 years old. Every time she sees me, she tells me she worries about me. I don't think she really worries about me.
She just wonders about me. This strange son that she has. Preaching the gospel. Traveling all over the country. She says, why don't you go and stay home? I said, well, there's nobody in the house. Just me and the four walls.
Why would I stay home? She worries. You know something? All of her worry has never ever changed anything. I've known her for years and years. I'll tell you how many years I've known her. 71. Now you know how old I am.
She's getting started, right? I've always known her to worry. And I've never known that her worry ever changed one thing or made one thing better. The cares of this life. The great question, what shall I do?
What shall I do about this? What shall I do about that? Well, you know what the Lord says in John chapter 15 verse 5? He says, without Me you can do nothing. And you know without Him we really aren't nothing.
Are we? Cares of this life. How about the lusts of other things? I take it that the other things are the things that were taken, that the man in Luke chapter 12 and the man in Luke chapter 16 were taken up with.
Other things. One thing's certain, the man in Luke chapter 16 wasn't taken up with his soul because he landed up in a place called hell. You know, he wasn't a wicked man as we think of wickedness, really.
He was just a man getting on in life. And he was so taken up with the cares of this life and the lusts of other things that he lost his soul. He lost his most precious possession himself. The soul isn't something you have.
The soul is something you are. Something I am. You know, and they were so taken up, this Luke 12 farmer guy, he was really taken up with things, too. He was going to build, he was going to tear down the barns and build bigger where he may bestow all my fruits.
He called them his fruits. Never even gave God recognition that it come from the good hand of God. Do you know what he did? Sad. He left his barns unbuilt. He left his orchards unpicked. He left his fields unharvested.
Isn't that bad? But you know worse than that? He left this world with his soul unsaved. An unsaved soul. Simply because he was taken up with the lusts of other things. And the Luke 16 man, he was just taken up with the things of time and sense.
The things that he could see and feel and touch. And how many in the world today are doing the same thing? How many believers in the world today are doing the same thing? I don't know. It's sad that these things cost these men their souls.
Just things that we think are good for us. And you know, they didn't land up in the place they landed up because they had riches, but they landed up there because riches had them. The riches had them.
The lusts of other things. Remember the words of Peter so long ago in Matthew 17 and verse 4? He said, It is good for us. And while he was speaking, the Lord interrupted him and said, God interrupted him actually and said, This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
What's God saying there? I think he's saying, listen. I think God is saying, look. And He isn't asking you and me to look at things. He's asking you and me to look at Him. He's not asking you and me to look at the provision, but He wants us to look at the provider.
Never mind the provision. It's the provider. Because if it wasn't for the provider, you and I wouldn't have the provision. And there's so many people in the world today, they're looking at the provision, but they don't look at the provider.
I have an old dad. He's 98. He has massed wealth in his life. Smart farmer, good businessman. A gentleman, a very, very gentle man. And he has gone in for the lust of other things. Now he's 98 years old and he's deaf.
He's blind and his mind is failing him. And he's not saved. You think it's worth it? The lust of other things? Is it really all that important? Fifty years from now, it won't make a matter, will it? Not to you and not to me.
And he told me one time that he provided all of these things for himself. And after all of those years and all of those blessings, he told me, he says, I've never had a crop failure. And he never acknowledged that it was the goodness from the good hand of God.
It was him. The lust of other things. How about the deceitfulness of riches? You know these things first appear to be honorable, don't they? They seem to be like an honest ambition in the lives of men and women and boys and girls.
A real honest ambition to pay the bill, to get ahead. And it just seems so right. And we do indeed need to pay the freight. You need to pay your freight. I need to pay my freight. And any other attitude is really simply laziness.
It's carelessness. It's slothfulness in spirit. There's no sin in having riches. But it's sin when riches have you and me. Because if riches have you and me, those riches are going to possess our minds.
And you know, those things are going to command our concentration. And those things are going to dictate our activities and our actions. And they could very well jeopardize our integrity and our relationships with the family.
Family relationships, social relationships, business relationships. A child of God should be honest above board. We should be the very best citizen in the United States. The most honest. Never squeezing, never wiggling, never cheating on the income tax.
Not at all. Pay the freight. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. And unto God that which is God's. What's our defense against these things? These things that seem to distract us. These things that seem to clutter up our spiritual life.
These things that seem to cool the flames of our love and our affection and our devotion and our consecration to the Lord Jesus. To the one who delivered us from the bondage of sin, from the plague of sin, from the power of sin, one day from the very presence of sin, from the penalty of sin.
Could it be that the things of this life, cares of this life, the lust of other thing and deceitfulness of riches could consume our thinking and our minds and our hearts so much that we've no room for Christ and they would cool our love and devotion for the very one that delivered us from our sins.
He's the one that experienced the affliction that was do you and do me. The agony that was do you and do me in the abandonment of a lost eternity. Hebrew writer tells us in chapter 12 and verse 3, 4, consider him, consider him.
And God help us to gather up. God help us to bring under control our hearts, our minds and our souls. The soul in its action and the mind in its attention and the heart in its affection. So may we labor in this world for that which matters most.
As Nehemiah did so many, many years ago. I'm doing a great work, he said, and I cannot come down. I know someone else that was doing a great work and he never came down. That's the Lord Jesus upon the cross of Calvary.
Labor for that which matters most. Seek not the things of time and sense. That's all we're good for is time. Not good for eternity. Never seen a U-Haul trailer or a Brinks truck behind a hearse. Never seen it.
Set our affection on things above, not on things of the earth. And seek those things which are above rather than achievement. It's only temporal. Rather than assets, that's only temporal. I'm going to leave it here.
Achievements will be left here. Attaboys are going to be left here as well. That's why the Word of God exhorts us to seek those things which are above. And do a great work while we have the time, while we have the talent, while we have the health to do it for the glory of God.