Hearing God\'s Word Luke 8:1-15

I love evangelizing people. I love telling them the good news about Jesus Christ, the sin bearer, who's raised from the dead. The other day, I needed to go to the Verizon store. And I thought, oh, I'm just dreading to go.

It's going to take for hours to go through all this. So Gracie and I went. It was a rainy day. I thought there'd be no one there.

It was crowded.

So I thought, I'll go back another time. So I went in, and there was a trainer and a trainee. And we were talking about phones and things like that. And then the one guy looked at me, and he said, so you're a pastor.

I thought, wow. I just had my gym shorts on and a sweatshirt. I said, how do you know that? And he said, oh, your email, bbcpastor at bbcchurch .org. By the way, 28 years ago, I thought, why did I pick such a complicated email?

And so we began to talk. And I began to talk about sin and creation and the creator and how God created them and how God's a judge over sin. And he's holy. And thankfully, out of God's grace, he sends Jesus the only way to be saved is to trust in him.

I started going back and forth. And before you know it, the one guy kind of looked like a gang member. He goes, yeah, yeah, I've been reading stuff about Adam and Eve and how we all had to come from two people.

So he was kind of helping me evangelize in his atheistic way. Anyway, I went out to the car. And I gave them each one of my books. And I said, here's the chapter I want you to read. It was a chapter on hell and how to be saved.

And I walked off. Now, what if they get saved? How thrilling would that be? What if they start coming to church? How thrilling would that be? But what if they don't care? What if they reject it? What if the next time I go in, they say, I can't believe how obstinate you are and narrow-minded?

Should I then, if they don't repent and believe, be discouraged? Should I change my methods? Maybe I should change the message. And of course, the answer to those, we ought not to do that at all. And our passage this morning is simply this.

How can Jesus encourage people who evangelize who don't always see fruit? So take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 8 to say, once again, Jesus is prepping and equipping His disciples and us so that we understand when we preach the gospel to people, not everyone says, yes.

Not everyone says, I believe that. I mean, you think to yourself, this is the greatest news ever. It's better than a cure for cancer. Why don't people accept the truth? Why do people reject it? You might say to yourself, I can't believe they'd stiff-arm such a message.

So Jesus at Luke 8, with a very, very famous parable, is helping the disciples, instructing them, and teaching us as well so that we'll be equipped. So when we go out and preach the gospel, we will expect rejection.

We will expect temporary joy in the message. And when God pleases in His sovereign grace to give wonderful fruit and hearts that accept the message. And so this morning, I want to encourage you when it comes to evangelism, through the words of Jesus in Luke chapter 8, verses 1 through 15, so that you're equipped.

Of course, Jesus rules and reigns as King. Of course, Jesus is the great priest who offered Himself as a sacrifice and prays for us even now in heaven. But He's also a prophet.

He's a preacher.

He's a teacher.

And there's no one like Jesus who teaches. And today, we'll look at a passage where you'll think, what an excellent teacher He is.

What a good teacher He is.

We're thankful that He's revealing to us what God thinks. So when we come to Luke chapter 8, before we get into the text itself, I want you to see the theme and the key words in Luke 8 so you'll get the context.

And the key word really is to hear. The key words to hear are hearing. So if you look just briefly with me, Luke chapter 8, verse 1, setting the context here so you just understand, this is a passage about listening to Jesus, hearing Jesus's words.

Luke 8, 1, you see it right there in the middle, proclaiming and bringing the good news. So Jesus is preaching. Verse 8, at the end of the verse, He said in a parable, Luke chapter 8, verse 4, rather, Luke 8, 8, the second part of the verse, and He said these things.

He called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Verse 10, the last statement, and hearing they may not understand. Here it is again in Luke 8, 13, when they hear the word. Luke 8, 14, and for what fell among the thorns, as for those who fell among the thorns, they are those who hear.

Over and over and over, He said, they hear,.

He called, He preaches.

Verse 15, it's the same thing. They are those who hearing the word. Verse 18, take care then how you hear. And then finally, Luke 8, 21, but He answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

So very, very easy to figure out what's the theme here, what's the focus, what's Jesus trying to do, what's the emphasis, and it's on hearing God's word, listening to God. As God speaks, we're to hear what He says.

It's interesting, of course, God, we can't see Him, but He speaks, unlike all the other false gods and idols, you can see them, a representation of them, but they don't speak. This section here is a unit on responding to God's word by faith.

Hearing, believing, and heeding. So for an outline today, just so we can follow along, we're going to go to chapter eight, verses one through 15, and I'm going to give you the who, what, why, and how.

Super simple, the who, what, why, and how, when it comes to this parable and the verses around it. Who, what, why, and how, Luke 8, verses one through 15, the importance of hearing God's word. So let's take a look at the who first, and it's kind of interesting, often overlooked verses, and you might ask yourself, why are these verses even here?

Verses one, two, and three. Soon afterward, right after the issue with the lady who is pouring the ointment on Jesus' feet at Simon's house, soon after that, he, Jesus, went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.

And the 12 were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.

So Jesus goes on his preaching tour. Of course, healing is important to show that God has power and compassion, but there's something more important than healing, because even if you get healed and then die later without your sins forgiven, you go to perdition.

So there's something that's more important than healing, and Jesus is stressing that, proclaiming good news, talking about sin and the Savior. Remember John the Baptist? He was blazing the trail for this great prophet Jesus, and now Jesus is proclaiming the truth.

Good news for all those who would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust him. Talking about sin, talking about the Savior, talking about guilt and grace and gratitude, et cetera. All the promises of the Old Testament fulfilled in me, Jesus would say.

And it's interesting, too, if you think about it, you might be thinking a proclamation of the defeat of the enemy would be what Jesus would talk about, and they would think the enemy, many of them would think of the enemy would be Rome, that your biggest enemy, if you were a Jew back in those days, was the occupiers.

Of course, that's not what Jesus is saying. He's saying the biggest enemy is not Rome. The biggest enemy is sin. And so Jesus is preaching, and he's got some people with him. Well, this is interesting, and some ladies are with him.

I mean, if you knew what people thought about ladies and rabbis back in those days, they would never go together. As some would say, the tongues were wagging about this because why would these ladies be following Jesus?

Well, we're gonna see real soon that they heard the message and they responded, and they had good-soiled hearts, as it were. And these ladies even had a past. At least Mary Magdalene did. Demons, a past, and here they are serving the Lord Jesus.

Jesus doesn't have women held in low esteem. Matter of fact, Luke doesn't have women held in low esteem. Think about all the women in the gospel of Jesus, according to Luke. We start off with the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth.

We've got Anna, Martha, Mary, the lady that we just talked about in Luke chapter seven, the crippled woman, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, the widow of Nain's son raised from the dead. One man said this I thought that was interesting.

Jesus was anointed by a woman for his burial. Women were the last at his grave and the first at his resurrection. To a woman he first appeared when he rose again. Women ministered to his wants. Women bewailed and lamented him.

A heathen woman interceded for his life with her husband Pilate. And above all, of a woman he was born. Why are these ladies even here? Well, it's a little hat tip where you're thinking, you know what, there are some people that have heard God's word and have responded properly and they're helping Jesus.

That's the who, the 12, Jesus, and these ladies. Now let's go to the what. And here's the parable, the parable of the sower. Maybe the most famous parable of all. And it's got an interpretation so that helps.

Who was with Jesus, the 12, and these ladies? Now here's the parable, the what. And when a great crowd was gathering, people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable. Well, let's stop there.

Most of you know what a parable is. The Sunday school definition, I think, is an earthly story with a what?

Heavenly meaning.

Some have taught Sunday school. Very good, thank you. It's a teaching device. It's a style and method of teaching that kind of makes you think, oh, Jesus is using real examples of modern day life and he's trying to make a point and I can almost make myself be in the story.

It draws me in. Maybe the most thought-provoking definition of a parable comes from C .H. Dodd. At its simplest, a parable is a metaphor drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.

So Jesus uses this teaching device with modern day examples and illustrations so that you kind of put yourself in there and think, oh, how does that apply to me? You have to think a little bit about the parable.

It teaches a lesson. And you say to yourself, yeah, that's how life is.

That's how life works.

That's how the world works. That's how God's world works. And Jesus uses this very often. Maybe one third of all his teaching was found in a parable. And so why this parable now? That's a great question.

And the crowd, you see verse four, is gathering together. Now, of course, you know, a harmony of the gospels puts Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together. And three of them are very similar, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And did you know Matthew and Mark say where Jesus was? He's by the Sea of Galilee. There's so many people crowding in on him. What does he do to kind of escape the pressure and the pushing of the people?

Does anybody know? He gets in the boat and sits down and they push him out a little bit. You can imagine, great acoustics. Matthew 13 says he got into a boat and sat down and the whole crowd stood on the beach.

Isn't that interesting, standing on the beach? By the way, I met people, friends of mine, they say, I hate the beach.

I hate the beach.

Just a bunch of dirt, sand, I never go to the beach. I'm just saying, Jesus was on the beach teaching. You gotta love the beach sometime. I mean, you ought not to trust people who say, I don't like the beach.

I mean, some of them are coming for wrong reasons. Some of them are coming for right reasons, physically, spiritually, and they are crowding in.

Here's Jesus.

And so he gets in the boat and they push him out a little bit. Easier to hear, I'm sure, no PA system. I love what John 7 says about Jesus' teaching. Never did a man speak the way this man speaks. And so Jesus was teaching them.

I mean, if I think about it, the greatest message in the world, forgiveness of sins by grace alone, through faith alone, why would anyone say no? You preach to your children, you preach to your parents, you preach to your spouse, you preach to other people, and if they're unbelievers, what would make them say no?

It's important for us to know ahead of time, people are going to say no, so let's not think it's our problem, let's not think it's the Bible's problem, let's not think it's God's problem. From the human perspective, there are people that say no, and Jesus anticipates the disciples and their questions and their concerns, and he equips them.

So he gives this parable. A sower went out to sow his seed. Actually, Mark says, listen to this. Jesus the prophet is saying, listen to this. Behold, the sower goes out to sow his seed. Now, I don't know if Jesus in the boat could easily see a field over there, and it could easily just look over there, and you watch a field, and there's two ways to sow seed.

You either can just broadcast the seed, just broadly cast it out, by the way, hence the term radio broadcast, because you've got the radio frequency, and you just cast it out broadly to whomever might want to listen.

Or you could tie a bag of seed to the back of a cow, and it had a little hole at the bottom of it. The seed bag, and it would, as the cow would move, it would kind of just slowly, the seed would come out.

Here we've got a man. He's sowing seed, broadcasting seed. It reminds me of Isaiah chapter 55. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout and giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes from my mouth.

It shall not return to me what? Empty or void. And verse five, as he sowed, some fell along the path. It was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. That's easy to understand, a compressed path, and the seed doesn't get down into the ground.

Birds just eat it. Some fell on the rock. And as it grew up, verse six, it withered away because it had no moisture. Now, the sower is not really throwing the seed on rocks. What he's talking about here is there's limestone underneath the ground, and there's certain parts of the ground that are thin and shallow.

And so you've got soil on the top, but rock underneath. And so you can imagine it's not going to last very long when there's no depth of soil. And it withers away because it has no moisture. The small coating of soil on the rock isn't going to do any good.

Verse seven, some fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And again here, I don't think the sower is throwing in thorns that are above ground. I think when you want to get rid of thorns in those days, you burn the thorns.

And underneath, there's a root system that starts coming up. And of course, the weeds grow faster than the regular plants, but nonetheless, pushes out, squeezes. And verse eight, some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundred fold.

Boy, that's a bumper crop. And he said these things. He called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has ears, let him hear. Some of the seed fell on really good soil. And man, there was a bumper crop.

There were so many. I mean, it reminds me of, only thing I could think of in my mind would be like cherry tomatoes. When they're ripe, you go out in the morning and pick some. And there's nothing like a warm cherry tomato.

See? And then you go out in the afternoon and there are some more ripe ones. They were green earlier, it seemed like, or yellow earlier. And they're just this great crop.

Amazing productivity.

And Jesus says, I want you to really listen. Of course, they're listening. They're hearing what he's saying. But with parables, there's another meaning. There's a meaning alongside of the words. And that's really what parable means, to put something along besides this word.

So what's really going on? Now, many parables, we don't get any interpretation. And we have to sit and we have to think and we have to work through and mull it over. But Jesus is going to give us the interpretation very soon.

I want him to give me the interpretation now. But before he does, he tells us why he preaches in parables. So, so far, we've seen the who, Jesus, the 12, and the ladies, now with a big crowd. Now we've seen the what, the parable, super simple.

Now the why. Why parables? Before the interpretation, why parables, verses 9 and 10? And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, to you it has been given, might want to underline that word given, to know the secrets, literally mysteries, of the kingdom of God.

But for others, they're in parables so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. So the disciples say to Jesus, what's this really mean? They knew it wasn't about farming. They knew it wasn't about agricultural.

They knew it wasn't about real seeds, and planting, and watering, and fertilizing. They knew there's something going on behind the scenes. Tell us what this means. Now, one of the things about parables that you need to kind of just lock in your mind, and it's an easy way to memorize it, parables do two things, they reveal and they conceal.

Two things parables do, they reveal truth when God wants to reveal truth, and they conceal truth when God wants to hide the truth. They reveal and they conceal. And God says here, the son says, do you know what, disciples?

I'm going to reveal this to you. I'm going to tell you the secrets. It's been given the mysteries of God, and mysteries just simply means something that God knows that we can't know unless he tells us.

Mystery is not like Halloween, spooky world, ooh, mysterious.

Thanks for that laugh, Corey.

There are some pagans here who celebrate Halloween, I know that, I'm watching you. Something that God knows we couldn't know unless he tells us. That's why we call scripture a revelation. That's why when Jesus returns, we call it a great revealing.

We wouldn't know unless we were told, or we would be seen by God, we would see God by grace. So Jesus is saying to you, my disciples, I'm telling you the inside story. It's been given. It's a mystery that you don't know, but I'm going to tell you.

But also, there are other people, based on God's judicial hardening, based on their hard hearts, based on both, it ends up sealing their doom. It ends up like Romans chapter 1, three times God gave them over, God gave them over, God gave them over.

So parables either reveal a truth, or they hide a truth. Sometimes we get uncomfortable with God hiding truths, and God judicially hardening people. That's exactly what the text is talking about, is it not?

It's right there. It says it. But for others, they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. That's right from Isaiah chapter 6. And you can start to think to yourself, oh, God is revealing this truth by His sovereign grace to the disciples, and He's concealing this truth to the scribes, to the Pharisees, to the hypocrites, to the guy in the last chapter, Simon.

He says to you, it's been granted. I mean, and if you have a hang-up on how does God somehow turn the dimmer switch of their mind lower and lower and lower and conceal truths from them, if you have a hard time wrapping your mind around that, might I suggest to you that it's even more amazing that God would reveal His truth to anyone, knowing who we are and what we've done?

So parables reveal and they conceal. Matthew 13, it says, but blessed are your eyes, for they see in your ears, for they hear, you get to see. Who? Jesus, the 12, the ladies, and a bigger crowd. The what?

A parable. The why? Parables. Because God has a sovereign purpose in His Word. It either has people come to life or it judges them. And now we come to the how. How do we understand the parable? And praise the Lord, Jesus tells us.

He doesn't tell us with every parable, but He tells us here to help us. The who, what, why, and now, how do we understand this parable?

Verse 11.

Now the parable is this. The seed is the Word of God. Jesus had been proclaiming, chapter 8, verse 1. He'd been evangelizing, chapter 8, verse 1. Preaching in the synagogue, Luke, chapter 8. And here we have the Word of God,.

And it's being broadcast.

It's being preached out. It's being put over the airways, as it were. Not the Word of man, not the Word of philosophers, not the Word of psychologists, not the Word of anything else. But the living Word, the active Word, the inerrant Word, the authoritative Word, the sufficient Word, the Word that is centered on who Jesus is.

The Word that, if I had to summarize the Bible, we would talk about creation, and fall, and redemption, and consummation, and how God is a great creator and has made everyone. How Adam has sinned, and we've fallen in Adam's sin.

What's the solution for sin? Redemption found in Christ Jesus, and then looking forward to that great day of consummation. The seed is the Word of God. And this passage isn't how Christians receive God's Word.

That's next Sunday. If you look in chapter 8, verse 12, it will give you a little hint again. At the very end of the verse, chapter 8, verse 12, so that they may not believe and be saved. This section, this parable is not, how should Christians listen?

Christians should listen well. But this section is, what are the different kinds of listeners that hear the message about salvation? Four unbelieving kind of hearts, they hear the message, and how do they respond?

So it's an evangelistic context here. Unbelievers. Four different kinds of hearts that help us understand that not everybody, when they hear the good news, is going to say, I can't wait to believe. And this should equip us.

It should help us. It should make us say, you know what? When we preach the gospel, not everybody believes. It's okay. Just keep preaching. Just keep proclaiming. Just keep telling people the good news.

Four soils. Here's the first heart soil. And we'll just call it hard, like that path. Hard-hearted people. You will preach to hard-hearted people. I've preached to hard-hearted people. Unbelievers who have super hard hearts.

Granite state hearts.

Verse 12.

The ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes, takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. You preach the gospel.

Believe.

I've been on deathbeds before, and I ask people, are you afraid to die? And I'm preaching the gospel of them, and they just still will not believe. What explains that? They have hard hearts. And not just their hearts are hard, but then now there's another issue, and there's a real Satan, and he swoops in and takes the word.

Isn't that what the text says? Isn't that what Jesus said? Now, I don't know why they have hard hearts. I mean, sin is hardening. Sin is awful. Sin is calcifying. And then it's exacerbated by, I lost my loved one.

How could God take my loved one?

I have cancer.

How could God give me cancer? I want to get married.

I can't get married.

How God is not helping me and all these things. And so unbelievers have this framework, and they have all these excuses. And of course, Jesus is blaming them. We're not talking about the sovereignty of God here.

We're talking about human responsibility. And they have hard hearts, and they have a bigger problem than hard hearts. They've got Satan. J .C. Ryle said, nowhere does Satan labor so hard to stop the progress of that which is good, and to prevent men and women being saved.

From him come wandering thoughts, roving imaginations, listless minds, and dull memories, sleepy eyes, and fidgety nerves, weary ears, and distracted attention. In all these things, Satan has had a great hand.

Interesting.

So we're preaching the gospel, and people have hard hearts. And Satan, and his demons, and his false teachers are igniting and exacerbating this hardness. When Stephen was preaching, he said they were stiff-necked people and hard-hearted.

Is that the problem of the scripture? Is it my problem?

I mean,.

If you're not preaching the real gospel of who Jesus is, if you're not talking about sin and the Savior, if you're not talking about the resurrection,.

If you're not talking about the God-man,.

Well, then it is a problem with my message. But hear Jesus saying, there's problems in the hearts of people. You preach and people are just hardened. Spurgeon said, the problem is not the power of the word or the performance of the preacher, but the problem is the heart of the hearer.

There's this cosmic battle that's breaking out. People love sin. Satan uses all kinds of things to make hard hearts. Belief in evolution, belief that religion is bad, calling on Christians as hypocrites.

It's not the message that's got the problem. It's not the messenger that's got the problem. For years, when I moved to California first in 1983, my mom said, I was 22.

She said,.

You better be going to church. I want to say I'm a grown man. But I said to my mother,.

Yes, ma 'am.

So I started going to Chuck Swindoll's church in Anaheim, excuse me, in Fullerton, California. And so I sat underneath Chuck Swindoll for years. And so when I met Chuck in California, I went up to him and said, you know, I was there for five years at the church that you were preaching at and I never got saved.

And it's your problem. No, I didn't say that. Oh, here's what I did say. He came out to Boston for two years and then had to leave and went to Fullerton. And so at the time, I think I had been here 20 years.

And I said, Chuck, I've outlasted you in New England by a factor of 10. He then said to me, the problem wasn't New England. He said the problem was Chuck Swindoll.

But of course,.

I didn't say that to Chuck because it was my hard heart. It was my love of sin. And then compounded by Satan taking away those words. So you preach the gospel. Sometimes you're preaching to hard-hearted people.

There's another kind of heart soil. And let's just call this temporary or superficial. Some people you preach to are hard-hearted, but we're not going to change the message. Some people are superficial in their listening and we're not going to change the message on that one either.

Verse 13. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, they actually receive the message. They receive it with joy. Oh, isn't that interesting? But these have no root. They believe for a while.

It's a temporary faith. It's just a profession. It's not a possession. And in the time of testing,.

Of persecution,.

Of trials,.

They fall away. They never had saving faith. It was a faith that had emotion. They had great joy. Matter of fact, in James chapter 2, verse 19,.

It says,.

The demons even believe in what? Shudder. They tremble. They intellectually know.

And they,.

To use language of accommodation,.

They're shuddering. They're shaking.

It's an emotional response. It's a visceral response. But we know that's not saving faith. Saving faith is receiving and resting. It's got knowledge,.

Assent,.

And trust. It's not just an emotional thing. We're not anti-emotions. We watched the lady in Luke chapter 7 in a very emotional scene where she's just crying over Jesus that he would have forgiven her.

And he's just accepted her. By faith and by faith alone. We're not against emotions. But these emotions are just temporary. They have an intellectual faith. They believe for a while. But then testing comes.

These people are like Herod. I love to hear John the Baptist until I don't. This is like Felix.

I love to hear Paul.

Until I don't. This is like Agrippa. I love to hear Paul come back again until I don't want to hear it. They receive it with joy. Somehow in their minds they must be thinking, if I come to Christ by faith, my life is going to be easy.

All my marriage problems will be fixed. My financial problems will be fixed. My health problems will be fixed. Political problems will be fixed. Everything will be fixed. And by the way, if you come to Christ by faith alone, the biggest problem that you have in life will be fixed.

Because the just will have died for the unjust so that he might bring us to God and we have forgiveness. But people come to Christ.

And they're thinking,.

I'm coming to get all these things. And what they forget is Jesus is a suffering servant and he has servants who suffer. And there are trials in the Christian life. Sometimes you get more trials.

Once you become a Christian.

But the biggest trial, God is angry with you, is taken care of. A church father in the third century said, people sometimes receive joyful instruction when they go out of the churches that once they forget the sacred doctrines and go about in their customary course.

I mean, they're so emotional when they hear the message and they're crying and they're weeping and they're having great joy. And then they leave. And then trials come or sin comes or you get the driver's license and you go off to college.

I've preached to people here at the church.

And they've received the word with great joy. And then all of a sudden, I begin to talk with them five years later, they're 22 years old, they're at college. And they'll say, I'm not really quite sure about the Bible now.

And is Jesus the only way? I usually say to men like that, something very direct. This is New England after all. I usually say, what's her name? Because to live with her and fornicate with her, it's not too good of a feeling if you're thinking God is holy and God has vengeance.

And if I do this, fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God and all this other thing. If you sin, you sin. Christians sin, but it's a state of sin, state of being. I've had people, this is kind of an interesting thing.

What do people say to pastors.

After they get done preaching?

Now, before COVID, I would stand over right at the door and I didn't stand there for you to come up and tell me that was a great sermon. I stood there because I wanted to say hi to grandmas, kiss babies.

I mainly wanted to say hi to visitors and that's a good way I could. I mean, sometimes visitors go out that back door and out the back ramp over by the garbage because they do not want to pass me, but that's okay.

But I've had people, on the negative side, I've had somebody at the door say, you're a liar. I should have said, I know, but I'm trying to repent and I don't want to lie. I'm not as big of a liar as I used to be.