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

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I love evangelizing people. I love telling them the good news about Jesus Christ, the sin bearer, who's raised from the dead.

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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.

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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.

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So I went in, and there was a trainer and a trainee, and we were talking about phones and things like that.

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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.

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I said, how do you know that? And he said, oh, your email, bbcpastor at bbcchurch .org.

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By the way, years ago, 28 years ago, I thought, why did I pick such a complicated email?

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And so we began to talk, and I began to talk about sin and creation and the

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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,

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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, he kind of looked like a gang member.

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He goes, yeah, yeah, I've been reading stuff about Adam and Eve and how we all had to come from two people.

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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.

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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.

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Now what if they get saved? How thrilling would that be? Or if they start coming to church, how thrilling would that be?

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But what if they don't care? What if they reject it?

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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, just be discouraged?

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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.

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And our passage this morning is simply this. How can Jesus encourage people who evangelize who don't always see fruit?

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So take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 8 to say once again, Jesus is prepping and equipping

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His disciples and us so that we understand when we preach the gospel to people, not everyone says, yes.

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Not everyone says, I believe that. I mean, you think to yourself, this is the greatest news ever.

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It's better than a cure for cancer. Why don't people accept the truth? Why do people reject it?

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You might say to yourself, I can't believe they stiff -armed such a message. So Jesus in 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.

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So when we go out and preach the gospel, we will expect rejection. We will expect temporary joy in the message.

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And when God pleases in His sovereign grace to give wonderful fruit and hearts that accept the message.

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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.

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Of course, Jesus rules and reigns as King. Of course, Jesus is the great priest who offered

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Himself as a sacrifice and prays for us even now in heaven. But He's also a prophet. He's a preacher.

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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

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He is. What a good teacher He is. We're thankful that He's revealing to us what

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God thinks. So when we come to Luke chapter 8, before we get into the text itself,

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I want you to see the theme and the key words in Luke 8 so you'll get the context.

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And the key word really is to hear. The key words to hear are hearing.

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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

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Jesus' words. Luke 8 1, you see it right there in the middle, proclaiming and bringing the good news.

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So Jesus is preaching. Verse 8 at the end of the verse, He said in a parable.

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Luke chapter 8 verse 4 rather. Luke 8 8, the second part of the verse, and He said these things.

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He called out, He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Verse 10, the last statement, and hearing they may not understand. Here it is again in Luke 8 13, when they hear the word.

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Luke 8 14, and for what fell among the thorns? As for those who fell among the thorns, they are those who hear.

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Over and over and over, He said, they hear, He called, He preaches. Verse 15, it's the same thing.

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They are those who hearing the word. Verse 18, take care then how you hear.

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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.

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So very, very easy to figure out what's the theme here? What's the focus? What's Jesus trying to do?

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What's the emphasis? And it's on hearing God's word, listening to God. As God speaks, we're to hear what

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He says. It's interesting, of course, God, we can't see Him, but He speaks.

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Unlike all the other false gods and idols, you can see them, a representation of them, but they don't speak.

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This section here is a unit on responding to God's word by faith, hearing, believing, and heeding.

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So for an outline today, just so we can follow along, we're going to go to chapter 8 verses 1 through 15.

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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.

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Who, what, why, and how, Luke chapter 8 verses 1 through 15, the importance of hearing

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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?

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Verses 1, 2, and 3. 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,

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Jesus, went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.

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And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities.

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Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Tusa, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.

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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.

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So there's something that's more important than healing, and Jesus is stressing that, proclaiming good news, talking about sin and the

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Savior. Remember John the Baptist? He was blazing the trail for this great prophet Jesus, and now

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Jesus is proclaiming the truth. Good news for all those who would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust

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Him. Talking about sin, talking about the Savior, talking about guilt and grace and gratitude, etc.

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All the promises of the Old Testament fulfilled in me, Jesus would say. And it's interesting, too, if you think about it.

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You might be thinking a proclamation of the defeat of the enemy would be what

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Jesus would talk about. And they would think the enemy, many of them would think the enemy would be Rome. That your biggest enemy, if you were a

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Jew back in those days, was the occupiers. Of course, that's not what Jesus is saying. The biggest enemy is not

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Rome. The biggest enemy is sin. And so Jesus is preaching, and He's got some people with Him.

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Oh, 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.

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As some would say, the tongues were wagging about this, because why would these ladies be following Jesus? Well, we're going to see real soon that they heard the message, and they responded, and they had good -soiled hearts, as it were.

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And these ladies even had a past. These Mary Magdalene did. Demons, a past, and here they are, serving the

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Lord Jesus. Jesus doesn't have women held in low esteem.

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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.

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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 7.

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The crippled woman. The healing of Peter's mother -in -law.

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The widow of Nain's son raised from the dead. One man said this, I thought it was interesting. Jesus was anointed by a woman for His burial.

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Women were the last at His grave and the first at His resurrection. To a woman He first appeared when

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He rose again. Women ministered to His once. Women bewailed and lamented

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Him. A heathen woman interceded for His life with her husband Pilate. And above all, of a woman

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He was born. Why are these ladies even here?

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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

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Jesus. That's the who. The 12, Jesus, and these ladies.

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Now let's go to the what. And here's the parable. The parable of the sower. Maybe the most famous parable of all.

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And it's got an interpretation, so that helps. Who was with Jesus?

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The 12 and these ladies. Now here's the parable. The what.

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And when a great crowd was gathering, people from town after town came to Him, He said in a parable.

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Well, let's stop there. Most of you know what a parable is. The Sunday school definition,

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I think, is an earthly story with a what? Heavenly meaning. Some have taught

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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,

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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, and it draws me in.

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Maybe the most thought -provoking definition of a parable comes from C .H. Dodd.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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That's how life works. That's how the world works. That's how God's world works. And Jesus uses this very often.

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Maybe one -third of all His teaching was found in a parable. And so, why this parable now?

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That's a great question. And the crowd, you see verse four, is gathering together. Now, of course, you know, a harmony of the

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Gospels puts Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together, and three of them are very similar, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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And did you know Matthew and Mark say where Jesus was? He's by the Sea of Galilee.

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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?

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Does anybody know? He gets in the boat and sits down, and they push Him out a little bit.

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You can imagine, great acoustics. Matthew 13 says, He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood on the beach.

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

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I hate the beach. I hate the beach. Just a bunch of dirt, sand. I never go to the beach. I'm just saying,

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Jesus was on the beach teaching. You've got to love the beach sometime. I mean, you ought not to trust people who say,

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I don't like the beach. I mean, some of them are coming for wrong reasons.

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

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Here's Jesus. And so He gets in the boat, and they push Him out a little bit. Easier to hear,

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I'm sure. No PA system. I love what John 7 says about Jesus' teaching.

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Never did a man speak the way this man speaks. And so Jesus was teaching them.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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And Jesus anticipates the disciples and their questions and their concerns, and He equips them. So He gives this parable.

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A sower went out to sow his seed. Actually, Mark says, listen to this.

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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 He could easily just look over there, and you watch a field.

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And there's two ways to sow seed. You either can just broadcast the seed, just broadly cast it out.

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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.

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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.

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And 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.

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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.

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And verse five, as he sowed, some fell along the path, was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it.

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That's easy to understand, a compressed path, and the seed doesn't get down into the ground.

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Birds just eat it. Some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, verse six, it withered away because it had no moisture.

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Now, the sower's 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.

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And it withers away because it has no moisture. The small coating of soil on the rock isn't going to do any good.

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Verse seven, some fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it.

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And again here, I don't think the sower is throwing in thorns that are above ground.

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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.

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And verse eight, some fell into good soil, and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.

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Boy, that's a bumper crop. And he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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He who has ears, let him hear. Some of the seed fell on really good soil, and man, there was a bumper crop.

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There were so many, I mean, it reminds me of, the only thing I could think of in my mind would be like cherry tomatoes.

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When they're ripe, you go out in the morning and pick some, and there's nothing like a warm cherry tomato, see?

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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.

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Amazing productivity. And Jesus says, I want you to really listen. Of course, they're listening, they're hearing what

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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.

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To put something along besides this word. So what's really going on? Now many parables, we don't get any interpretation.

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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.

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I want Him to give me the interpretation now, but before He does, He tells us why

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He preaches in parables. So so far we've seen the who, Jesus, the twelve, and the ladies, now with the big crowd.

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Now we've seen the what, the parable, super simple. Now the why.

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Why parables? Before the interpretation, why parables, verses nine and ten. And when

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His disciples asked Him what this parable meant, He said, to you it has been given, you might want to underline that word given, to know the secrets, literally mysteries, of the kingdom of God.

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But for others, they're in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.

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So the disciples say to Jesus, what's this really mean? They knew it wasn't about farming.

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They knew it wasn't about agricultural. They knew it wasn't about real seeds, and planting, and watering, and fertilizing.

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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.

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They reveal, and they conceal. Two things parables do.

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They reveal truth, when God wants to reveal truth. And they conceal truth, when

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

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I'm going to reveal this to you. I'm going to tell you the secrets. It's been given, the mysteries of God.

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And mysteries just simply means, something that God knows, that we can't know unless He tells us.

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Mystery is not like Halloween, spooky world, ooh, mysterious. Thanks for that laugh,

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Corey. There are some pagans here who celebrate Halloween, I know that. I'm watching you.

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Something that God knows, we couldn't know unless He tells us. That's why we call scripture a revelation.

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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, or we would see

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God by grace. So Jesus is saying, to you, my disciples, I'm telling you the inside story.

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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.

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It ends up like Romans chapter 1, three times, God gave them over, God gave them over,

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God gave them over. So parables either reveal a truth, or they hide a truth.

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Sometimes we get uncomfortable with God hiding truths, and God judicially hardening people.

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That's exactly what the text is talking about, is it not? It's right there. It says it.

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But for others, they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.

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That's right from Isaiah chapter 6. And you can start to think to yourself, oh,

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God is revealing this truth by His sovereign grace to the disciples, and He's concealing this truth to the scribes, to the

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Pharisees, to the hypocrites, to the guy in the last chapter, Simon. He says to you, it's been granted.

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And if you have a hangup 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

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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?

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So parables reveal, and they conceal. Matthew 13, it says, but blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear.

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You get to see. Who? Jesus, the 12, the ladies, and a bigger crowd.

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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.

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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.

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The who, what, why, and now, how do we understand this parable? Verse 11, now the parable is this, the seed is the

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Word of God. Jesus had been proclaiming, chapter 8, verse 1.

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He'd been evangelizing, chapter 8, verse 1, preaching in the synagogue, Luke chapter 8, and here we have the

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Word of God, and it's being broadcast. It's being preached out. It's being put over the airways, as it were.

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Not the Word of man, not the Word of philosophers, not the Word of psychologists, not the Word of anything else, but the living

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Word, the active Word, the inerrant Word, the authoritative Word, the sufficient

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Word, the Word that is centered on who Jesus is, the Word that if I had to summarize the

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Bible, we would talk about creation, and fall, and redemption, and consummation, and how

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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.

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The seed is the Word of God, and this passage isn't how

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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.

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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

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Christians listen? Christians should listen well, but this section is, what are the different kinds of listeners that hear the message about salvation?

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Four unbelieving kind of hearts, they hear the message, and how do they respond? So it's an evangelistic context here, unbelievers.

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Four different kinds of hearts that help us understand that not everybody, when they hear the good news, is going to say,

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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.

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Four soils, here's the first heart soil, and we'll just call it hard, like that path.

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Hard hearted people. You will preach to hard hearted people. I've preached to hard hearted people.

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Unbelievers who have super hard hearts, granite state hearts.

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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.

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You preach the gospel, believe. I've been on death beds before, and I ask people, are you afraid to die, and I'm preaching the gospel to them, and they just still will not believe.

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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

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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,

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I mean, sin is hardening, sin is awful, sin is calcifying, and then it's exacerbated by,

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I lost my loved one, how could God take my loved one? I have cancer, how could God give me cancer?

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I want to get married, I can't get married, God is not helping me, and all these things. So unbelievers have this framework, and they have all these excuses, and of course

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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

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Satan. J .C. Ryle said, nowhere does

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Satan labor so hard to stop the progress of that which is good, and to prevent men and women being saved.

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From him come wandering thoughts, roving imaginations, listless minds and dull memories, sleepy eyes and fidgety nerves, weary ears and distracted attention.

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In all these things, Satan has had a great hand. Interesting.

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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.

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When Stephen was preaching, he said they were stiff necked people, and hard hearted. Is it the problem of the scripture?

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Is it my problem? I mean, if you're not preaching the real gospel of who

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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.

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But hear Jesus saying, there's problems in the hearts of people. You preach and people are just hardened.

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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.

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There's this cosmic battle that's breaking out. People love sin.

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Satan uses all kinds of things to make hard hearts. Belief in evolution, belief that religion is bad, calling on Christians as hypocrites.

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It's not the message that's got the problem. It's not the messenger that's got the problem. For years, when

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I moved to California first in 1983, my mom said,

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I was 22, she said, you better be going to church. I wanted to say I'm a grown man, but I said to my mother, yes ma 'am.

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So I started going to Chuck Swindoll's church in Anaheim, excuse me, in Fullerton, California. And so I sat underneath Chuck's, well,

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I sat underneath Chuck Smith too, but Chuck Swindoll for years. And so when I met Chuck in California, I went up to him and said, you know,

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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.

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Oh, here's what I did say. He came out to Boston for two years and then had to leave and went to Fullerton.

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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.

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He then said to me, the problem wasn't New England, he said the problem was Chuck Swindoll. But of course

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Verse 13, and the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, they actually receive the message.

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They receive it with joy. Oh, isn't that interesting? But these have no root.

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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.

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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?

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Shudder, they tremble, they intellectually know and they, to use language of accommodation, they're shuddering, they're shaking.

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

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It's got knowledge, assent and trust. It's not just an emotional thing. We're not anti -emotions.

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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.

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We're not against emotions. But these emotions are just temporary.

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They have an intellectual faith, they believe for a while, but then testing comes. These people are like Herod, I love to hear

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John the Baptist until I don't. This is like Felix, I love to hear

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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.

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They receive it with joy and somehow in their minds they must be thinking, if I come to Christ by faith, my life is going to be easy.

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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.

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And by the way, if you come to Christ by faith alone, your most, most big, 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.

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But people come to Christ and they're thinking, you know what, I'm coming to get all these things and what they forget is

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Jesus is a suffering servant and he has servants who suffer and there are trials in the

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Christian life. Sometimes you get more trials once you become a Christian. But the biggest trial,

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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.

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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.

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And then they leave. And then trials come or sin comes or you get the driver's license and you go off to college.

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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,

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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.

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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

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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.

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I'm not saying if you sin, you sin, Christians sin, but it's a state of sin, a state of being.

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I've had people, this is kind of an interesting thing. What do people say to pastors after they get done preaching?

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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.

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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

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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.

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But I've had people, on the negative side, I've had somebody at the door say, you're a liar.

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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.

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And then I've had people say, that was just wonderful, tears in their eyes.

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Now maybe they've left and never come back here because they went to another church, praise the Lord, but often they receive the word and they're like, you mean to tell me

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I can have all my sins forgiven? The skeletons that are in my closet are gone. God would pour out

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His wrath on His Son, His beloved Son in my place. I mean, behold what manner of love the

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Father has given to us. And they're like, yes, I know that. I have an eternal soul, heaven to hell.

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And you mean there's a way out and they process it all at church and then they just leave. It's temporary.

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That's why when your loved one, your little one, your five -year -old, your 10 -year -old, your 16 -year -old says, mommy, daddy,

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I believe in Jesus. What do you say to them? No, you don't.

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I hope you don't say that. I hope you bend down. I demonstrate how to bend down now, but I can't get back up.

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I wondered why grandma always had those things that have long, how to grab things on the floor.

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Now I know. And I say, sweetheart, that's wonderful.

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And then I say two words after that each time, and you should say it each time. After you say that's wonderful, you should say what?

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Amen. Let's close in prayer. Keep believing. I'm not after professions.

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I'm not after a quick altar call. That's not what Jesus is after either.

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We'll see the good soil believes, holds fast, preserved by God, and perseveres by faith.

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But Jesus is making sure they all know, and they could be thinking, Jesus, you preached a sermon and not everybody believes what in the world is going on.

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We're preaching sermons and they're not all believing. I mean, it's the greatest news ever. I have good news for you. What explains rejection?

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From the human perspective, what explains rejection is hard hearts and superficial hearts.

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They believe, it says, for a while. There's a faith in the New Testament that's not a saving faith.

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It's a temporary faith. This is not you get saved and you lose your salvation.

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You never came up with your salvation. How can you lose something you couldn't earn or get or merit? It says nothing to do with losing salvation.

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This has to do with, I temporarily believe with emotions, but trials come and then

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I back off. The Puritans, Pastor Steve and I say this all the time, we've taken it from the Puritans, what will show the genuineness of saving faith?

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What would it be, Steve? Time and trials. Time and trials because they expose.

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Time and trials. They believe, but it's skin deep.

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They say they're trusting. They're vocal about it. They meet me at the door.

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That's the best sermon I've ever heard in my life and I'm thinking, you don't get out much. I have to tell you this one.

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There's a lady that came here for about a month and after a sermon once, she said, I think you're the smartest man

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I've ever met. I thought, out of all the things

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I want to convey in my life, by the way, I just have just a normal IQ. I'm public school product,

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Omaha, Nebraska. I'm not trying to talk about eloquence and 1

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Corinthians 2 stuff. I'm trying to say, a beggar who's found bread to another beggar who's found bread,

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Jesus is awesome. You should trust him. He's incredible. He's your only hope. He's a savior.

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Let me tell you about who he is so you can respond by faith. This is not a matter of IQ or anything else.

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Heart soil 3. Some have hard hearts. We preach to them anyway. Keep preaching. Some have temporary faith, superficial faith.

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That's why when people say, I'm a believer, okay, great, keep believing. The third heart soil is busy.

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We'll call them busy or preoccupied. Verse 14. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, so they've heard the sermon, they've heard law, they've heard gospel, they've heard guilt, they've heard grace.

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But as they go on their way, they're choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature.

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They're just busy people and they've got a life and other things come into play.

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Sometimes things that aren't even bad. Sometimes things that aren't even sinful. They're just busy.

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They're too busy with hobbies. I'm not against hobbies. They're too busy at work. I'm not against work.

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They're too busy on social media. I am against social media. We've got homes to remodel.

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We've got children to homeschool. I mean, you just, again, these things aren't wrong, but if they somehow take us away from thinking about eternal matters, about who

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God is, about a God who requires perfection and judgment is going to happen on that day, then they just run off.

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They're too busy. These are unbelievers who don't really have calcified hearts.

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They don't really have hearts that are harboring some kind of sin. They're just busy, too busy, car, desires, ambitions.

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First John 2 .15, do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the

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Father is not what in Him. Mark expands it.

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Instead of just saying cares, he says cares of the world, distractions literally.

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Instead of just saying riches, Mark adds the deceitfulness of riches because you can have a false sense of security when you've got a lot of money.

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And instead of just saying pleasures, Mark says the desires for other things, hedonism.

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So when we preach, we know some people are too busy to care. Some people are going to respond right away with, oh, that's great, but then they just fade off.

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And some people are just like, no. So what we don't do is stop preaching.

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What we don't do is change the message. What we don't do is say God's Word is not powerful. No it's like a hammer.

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What we don't say is, you know what, they're not to blame because God's sovereign. What we're supposed to do is keep preaching because sometimes the

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Word falls on good soil. And by the way, aren't you glad that the

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Spirit of God did a work in your life? Because you might have been the hard -hearted one.

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You might have been the one who had a profession for a while and then went off to college.

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Or you might have been the one that's just too busy to think about it. And yet the God of the universe, like Lydia in Acts chapter 16,

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He opened her heart. This is not, some people make their hearts better.

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Of course, we know behind the scenes systematically, theologically. To have a good heart, it has to be the work of God because it's by grace and by grace alone we're saved.

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Jesus is the Savior. We don't self -save. There's no self -salvation, autosotirism. We don't save ourselves.

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So, I'm just so thankful that even though I probably had a combination of all three, hard -hearted, busy, pleasure -seeking,

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God said, you know what? One day through the preaching of the Word, you're alive.

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I hope deep down you're thinking, praise the Lord. As a Christian, I'm happy that I have good soiled heart because God did all the work ahead of time.

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But what Jesus is doing and He's making sure that when you're preaching, don't be discouraged.

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You're the ambassador. You're the messenger. And sometimes you're going to run into people who just say, get out of my face.

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Sometimes people say, I believe and they cry and they come to church for two months and then they never come back. And other people are just too busy to care.

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But other people, the heart soil number four, not all soils are unproductive.

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Not all soils are fruit -bearing. Not all soils show that these people were never saved. This soil is receptive and fruitful.

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Oh, this is so good. Receptive and fruitful soil. And in my notes,

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I just say, but God, God is the one who did all this. As for that in the good soil, that is the seeds that's in the good soil, they are those who hear the

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Word because faith comes by hearing a message about Jesus. Nobody gets saved by looking at the stars. Nobody gets saved by trying to be good.

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Nobody gets saved by getting baptized and catechized and confirmed and all those other things. You're saved by trusting in Jesus Christ, the representative, the substitutionary sin bearer, the one who's raised himself from the dead.

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And you hear the Word and you hold it fast. It's real saving faith.

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There's a real trust. There's a real hope in an honest and good heart. They didn't make themselves that way.

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Of course, you know, it's God's grace. But once the Spirit of God preps that soil, prepares that soil, and you know what they do?

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Unlike the one that says, receive the Word with joy and then walks away, bears fruit with patience.

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Of course, theological, He will hold us fast. And the response to Him holding us fast, the response to saving grace is we trust

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Him. We hold fast the Word. We cling to it. Just another way to say believe and keeps believing.

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The God of the universe has prepared this soil, this heart, and there's going to be fruit.

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Can you imagine the God of the universe dwelling inside of you, the Holy Spirit, and there's no change?

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There's a change judicial, judicial, to use courtroom language, judicially declared righteous and then also imparted the

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Holy Spirit into us so we do righteous things. So Spurgeon said this when it comes to our evangelism.

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The evangelist, you dear Christian, has to leave the fate of the seed and the care of the master who gave it to him.

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For well he understands that he is not responsible for the harvest. He is only responsible for the care, fidelity, and the integrity with which he scatters the seed, right and left with both hands.

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It's easy to start cutting the contours of the gospel and who

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God is to get people to accept it more readily. In our pluralistic society, in our inclusivistic society, you mean to tell me

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Jesus is the only way? You mean to tell me there are no other gods? You mean to tell me that I have to be perfect to get into heaven and Jesus is going to judge me for all my sins?

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And if we're not careful, we so want them to go to heaven. Who wants friends to go to hell?

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Who wants family members to go to hell? Who wants enemies to go to hell? We don't want them to go, but we can't do anything with the message because we're not getting results.

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We just keep preaching. We just keep evangelizing. If what we say to believers, professing believers who respond with joy, if we say to those, keep believing, what do we say to people like you who want to go evangelize and tell people good news?

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Keep preaching. Keep preaching. God's Word does not come back void.

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God's Word does its work. And by the way, sometimes in my life,

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I've met people and they've said, I heard your sermon five years ago, one day ago, 15 years ago, and God used that sermon to open my eyes.

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I want to cry and sometimes I do because God used me.

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Who am I? I'm just up here proclaiming the truth and God worked in your heart in such a way.

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God prepared the soil in such a way that it wasn't hard or temporary or busy. And I just keep preaching.

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I don't have in the back of my Bible tick marks, how many people

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I've led to the Lord. You should probably put tick marks in the back of your Bible how many times you've preached the gospel to people.

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So hopefully you'll all go to Verizon today. I mean, it's a captive audience.

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They had to listen. Someone said to me, if you ask people to come to church, lots of times they just do.

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You're too afraid to preach the gospel? Why don't you just say, I'd love to have you come to church. So I said to those two men at Verizon, I said,

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I'd love to have you come to church with me. I'd love to have you sit right up by me in a place of honor in the front.

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But I didn't say right behind me. Is there a lesson to be learned about how

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Christians should hear the word? So we're not thinking about worldly things and not thinking, that's a message to be found in the next two weeks.

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But the parable of the sower and the parable of the soils, two different definitions for the same parable, is in this section for one reason and one reason only, or primarily at least.

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When you preach the gospel, there will be different responses. Expect it. Jesus, the great prophet, is equipping us.

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When we preach, not everybody's going to say, I believe. Matter of fact, how long was it before you first heard the message until you believed?

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How many people did God bring in your life to preach? I heard the message of Jesus when I was probably four and didn't believe it until I was 29.

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And so there's great hope for us as we continue to preach the gospel. So as we close,

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I'm going to pray that you preach the gospel to one person this week.

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And if you want to get off the hook, just preach the gospel to your little tiny kids and that'll be fine. I want you to preach the gospel to somebody.

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And I don't want you to say, I wasn't led to do it, because the scripture says to preach the gospel.

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Isn't that the Great Commission? The Great Commission does not make America a Christian nation.

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That would be two commissions. We have a Great Commission to preach the gospel. And so when you tell your children, you know, we're going to go to go get ice cream in five minutes.

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Please clean your room and we're going to go get ice cream. And you go back in the room and it's a complete disaster. You're stepping on Legos and everything else is crazy.

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And you look at them. Why didn't you clean your room? And they say to you, Daddy, I wasn't led. Well, Daddy's being led for some special instruction, certain ways.

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I was going to say it, but I'm on live stream. You don't need to be led.

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Haven't you just? I try to encourage you. It's okay. I mean, there are young men in this world that won't ask girls out because they don't want to be rejected.

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And to those men, I say, buckle up. That's part of it.

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You're going to get rejected. And finally, some girl will, like Kim, just have a pity party and you're going to get rejected.

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And when you preach the gospel, you'll get rejected too. And we're not going to be blaming God. We're not going to be blaming the message.

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We're not going to change the message. But God at the right time will give you just enough encouragement to say, you know what?

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I got to preach the gospel to somebody and I got to see them hear it, hold fast to it, and persevere with fruit.

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And if you don't see it on earth, you'll see it in heaven. Amen? Let's pray. Thank you,

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Father, for your word. I would pray for this dear congregation. First of all, if anyone is here and they have not believed, they have not trusted, they have not called out for mercy and been born again, would you do that?

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Would you show them their hard -heartedness and their sin and how the wages of sin is death and how it's appointed for man once to die and then the judgment and how their only hope is in a

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Savior who conquered sin, death, hell, and the grave? And for us as Christians, I pray that you would give each one a great opportunity this week, maybe today, to tell people about the love of God in Christ Jesus and how