Turn in your copy of God's word to Luke chapter eight. Luke chapter eight, our text will be from verses one through 15. So hear now the eternal word of the glorious triune God of the universe. Soon afterward, he 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 Chuzza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means. And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. Some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. and some fell into good soil, and grew, and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things, he called out, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this. The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no root. They believe for a while, and in time of testing, fall away. And for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Please be seated. And as we say, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we ask now that you would oversee the preaching of your word, that it would instruct the saint, that it would enlighten the eyes of the blinded unbeliever that they might hear, see, and believe. Lord, and that all might be blessed by your word. Your word promises in and of itself, in Isaiah 55, that it goes forth and it does what you commanded it to do. We lean on that promise, Lord. We ask that you would oversee this time, use it for your glory, your great glory, glorify yourself by these truths, that as we sit and read and expound and think, ponder, contemplate, meditate on these truths that are somewhat familiar to many of us, that you would bring great glory, you would heap glory upon glory for yourself through these truths, and that we would walk out here further conformed to the image of Christ, more able to walk in the paths of righteousness for your namesake, just as David prayed in Psalm 23. Bless this time and use it, Lord, we humbly ask in Christ's name, amen. Well, for those who are just joining us, we are back in the Gospel of Luke. We took a break for a month of May to look at the topic of ecclesiology, the topic meaning how the church is functioning and what it is to be and what it is to do, but now we're back in our series in Luke. We did chapters one through seven, now we begin chapter eight. What I wanna do is give you just a brief review to get you a running start at where we've been. Chapters one and two in Gospel of Luke is Jesus' early history. This is Jesus' birth story, John the Baptist's story is connected in that, and that's also his childhood as he's growing, the moment where he's left behind, and his parents come and find him in Jerusalem. Then chapter 3 through 4.13, that's Jesus' preparation for ministry. He's being prepared to be sent out to do the public ministry that he was coming to do. And then now we are in the section of 414 through 950, as Jesus' ministry in Galilee. It's harder in Gospel of Luke to pin down things thematically as much, and you end up having to be just a bit geographic. So where is Jesus when he's teaching these things? He has a Galilean ministry, we're in that till chapter nine, verse 50, and then he's on the road to Jerusalem, then he has the ministry in Jerusalem. That's kind of how we follow Luke's trajectory because Luke is being a precise historian, but he's not overly concerned with a timeline. He's just saying things that Jesus said and where he said them, locationally. So that's where we are. We are in Galilee still. Remember, if you remember chapter six, we're fresh off of the Sermon on the Plain, very similar to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, little bit different, bit of a different emphasis. And then in chapter seven, what we saw was a bunch of personal interactions with Jesus and an individual. Jesus interacts with the centurion, with the widow, He interacts with John the Baptist and then the sinful woman who was forgiven of much. So that's where we are. And now we crest into chapter eight. And what we're going to see, as you know, we just read the first look at a true parable. Luke's given two accounts of Jesus using an illustration, like a man who owed a bunch of debt and that it was forgiven. And those will be categorized more as illustrations and not necessarily as a parable. Well, we're going to see a parable today. He uses the parables, or the parables come to us in Luke in a bit of a different fashion than they do in Matthew. Matthew, there's a very clear line of demarcation from chapter 12 to chapter 13, that Jesus is now exclusively, almost exclusively speaking in parables to the end of Matthew. Luke has them scattered throughout the book in a far more, haphazard is very much the wrong word, a far more spread out manner. They're spread out through the gospel of Luke. Now a parable, we gotta define what a parable is. A parable is, and it's been said before many, many times, somewhat helpful, it's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Simplest way to think about an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. The problem for the people listening is not going to be the earthly part. The problem is going to be the heavenly part. Now parables also have a two-fold purpose that Jesus himself is going to define for us. The two-fold purpose is to harden those in their unbelief who are rejecting or have rejected Jesus. and to soften, instruct, and enlighten those who have been redeemed by faith in Christ or are being redeemed by faith in Christ. Two-fold purpose. Now, the number one rule that we need to keep in mind about parables is not to get too down in the weeds. And we can tend to do that. And what we'll be like is, you know, what the kind of bird that Jesus is talking about that came and snatched it away was probably this kind of sparrow. And that means that it's a black hawk helicopter in our world today. No, no, no, it's just a bird. It's a bird. Leave it there. We're at a simple meaning. What's the simple, plain meaning? It's supposed to be simple. That's what we're after. Now, the parable of the sower, or sometimes called the parable of the soils, we're not getting into the weeds about the name, this functions in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Synoptic means with one eye, they're seeing things the same way. John's a bit of the odd man out, he has a different perspective. But in all three of them, this parable is the chief of parables. It's the first one in Matthew and Mark of any kind. It's the first one of any real significance as a true parable in Luke. Prime position in all three. And what it does is it's paired with Jesus' purpose for parables. He connects in all three of those gospels, this is why I'm using parables. And this is what they mean. So he connects it to those three things. Now, the main thrust of all parables, before we get into our text today, the main thrust of all parables is not moral teaching. The main thrust of all parables is eternity, heaven and hell, who is saved, who is lost. that it's the threat, who is in the kingdom, who is out of the kingdom. The parables have eternity in mind. They are not Christian versions of Aesop's fables or Grimm's fairy tales. Sometimes we can treat them like that. It's just a good story on how to be a good person. And if that's all we needed, then Aesop would have been sufficient in 600 BC. those stories about the rabbit and the tortoise and the hare, things like that. And Grimm's Fairy Tales, which gets turned into a lot of Disney stories, but they were originally 18th century or 19th century German stories for parents to help kids keep them from getting killed. It was like, if you go into the woods, guess what you'll find? There's gonna be an evil lady with a house and lure you with candy and then eat you. So don't go in the woods without mom and dad. That's the whole point of that story. They get Disney'd up eventually, but they were originally written to teach kids to obey. And that's not what Jesus is doing in parables. It's not how to be a better person. It's how do you know you're going to heaven? Who are those who are saved? Who, what is eternity? Who's in the kingdom and who's out of the kingdom? That's the point of all these parables. Jesus is not a teacher of morality. He is a preacher of the gospel. He's not after making better people or sinners behave less sinfully. He's after changing sinners into saints. The new birth, that's what he's after. And that's clear from the first section we have, verses 1 through 3. The work that he's doing. Soon afterward, he went on through cities and villages proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. He's still after that work. He leaves Simon the Pharisee's house and the sinful woman who had been forgiven and uses her as his example of teaching on forgiveness from God. And he's still after his mission. Y'all remember his mission, chapter four, verse 43, when he says, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose. And then he says it again in chapter five. Verse 32, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This is what I'm here to do. So he's just still on point. He's proclaiming, what does it say? The good news of the kingdom of God. The good news of the kingdom of God is God has a kingdom, but you're not a citizen. You can be though, if you will turn from your sins and trust in me, says the Lord Jesus, then you will be a citizen in the kingdom of heaven. That's the purpose of what he's saying. Now it says also in this first section, the 12 were with him and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary called Magdalene, of whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuzzah, of Herod's household manager. Susanna and many others who provided for them out of their means. Luke records more about women in Jesus' life than any other gospel. He records more about them, and it's a fascinating thing. We don't have a ton of time to dwell on these ladies. We'll come back to them at the very end. But it's a fascinating thing. One, who's supporting Jesus' ministry? He doesn't have a job, and all the 12 disciples gave up their jobs. So now, how are they eating? These women are coming alongside as disciples, and that's how. Secondly, Jesus, as a teacher or a rabbi in that day, no rabbi had women followers. They wouldn't allow it. But Jesus does, why? Because men and women in the eyes of God have equal dignity and value. They have complimentary roles. These women are not apostles, but they have equal value. Jesus doesn't say, well, just to keep up appearances in this culture, don't be around us. No, they're there and they're with him. And it's fascinating to know. I did a lot of reading on these ladies. We don't have a ton of time to get into them. We'll do it another day. But it's interesting to note that in all four gospels, there's never a single woman who ever opposes or is negative towards Jesus in any way. Now, that's not saying that women are inherently better than men, because don't forget about Jezebel and Delilah and Athaliah. So, but it is interesting to note that in this three year period, no woman ever opposes him. They're the ones that are the last at the cross. They're the first at the grave. They're the first to see the resurrection. It's a fascinating reality. It's just a character study of ladies in the gospels, which we will do on a different day. We move on to the parable that these women and the 12 are gonna end up being an example of. That's what we'll see at the end. So let's get to the parable. In verse four, a great crowd was gathering, and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable. So picture what the scene is. Matthew says Jesus is crowded out yet again, and he's getting in a boat and teaching the people from the water up on the shore, so this reverb effect can happen on the hill behind and the water beneath, and he teaches them in a parable. People in town after town, massive crowd, yet again, And he lays out the parable. A sower went out to sow a seed. And as he sowed, some fell among the path and were trampled on their foot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Did you notice the manner of this parable? First of all, a parable, it is a heavenly, or it is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, but a parable also, what it means, that word parable, what it really means is to put one thing alongside another for comparison. That's what a parable is. But Luke says it's a parable. Jesus doesn't say this is a parable. Now we have to unwind a bit of just our cultural Christianity in the state of Texas. We all know this parable. We've heard it before. It's not new. It's not shocking to us. But did you notice that there's a great crowd there and Jesus doesn't say, I'm gonna do something new with you guys today. You've been here for a little while. I've been going for a little while. I'm gonna give you a parable. And he had no intro to this, no explanation. He doesn't even say in this one like he does in other ones, the kingdom of heaven is like, so you know how to connect the parable. Oh, what he's talking about here is really a picture of the kingdom of heaven. He doesn't say anything. Notice, it just says, a sower went out to sow a seed. That's it, this massive crowds here, and that's what he does. He doesn't give a preamble, and he'll explain why in verse 10 that he doesn't give a preamble in any way. But what is he doing? He's intentionally dividing the crowd between those who care and those who don't. He's dividing the crowd between disciples and fans, between spectators of a spectacle and people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. He's intentionally doing that. Otherwise, this is a awful introduction to a sermon. You get a zero at seminary for that. Trust me, I know. Now, look at the simplicity of it. As we read it, that's not hard to understand. We don't farm here. Some of y'all have gardens, but if it all goes to pot and nothing grows, guess what? H-E-B's still there. So you're good to go. But we, even being removed, still get this. We know what he's talking about. It's not hard to understand. Maybe a more appropriate simile for our day would be four people went to the DFW airport. One person slept through their alarm, missed it, missed their flight. One person got there but forgot their ticket, didn't get in. One person got there but didn't allow enough time to get through security and missed their flight. But one person woke up on time, had their ticket, got there with enough leeway to get through security and made it on their flight. you would all be like, yeah, that's how planes and airports work. If you don't get there, you missed your flight, that's how it is. Like we would get that, right? It's a simplicity thing that everybody would understand as Jesus is teaching. But only those who are hanging on Jesus's every word are going to demand a meaning. What is the significance? They're dying to know, what did you mean by that? That is true, that's what happens to plants and seeds. But what does that mean? What is the context of that? We read that assuming the explanation. But when you read that, people would hear it and go, yeah, that's true. That's what happens to plants. Nobody's shocked by that. But what do you mean by that? Those true disciples who are craving understanding, they're hanging on every word, they're gonna say, you gotta tell us what that means. A true disciple does indeed crave to know every word that God has spoken. Job, in the midst of his trials, Job 23, 12, he says, your word I have desired more than my portion of food. The psalmist says, Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the entirety of the Bible of 176 verses is entirely dedicated to one thing, the Word of God. And it says, I'm gonna just read you a few of these to show you what a true disciple does and craves. Psalm 119.97, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. And verse 111, your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. The word of the Lord is the joy of my heart, my heritage forever, that's all I want. That's who Jesus, by telling this parable, is calling out. That's who's coming forward. Now, the purpose of parables, Jesus gives in verse nine and 10. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, do you notice that? Verse four, a great crowd was gathering. Verse nine, his disciples ask, who was available? Who was there? Everybody was there. Who are the only ones that care to know? The disciples ask. They come forward and they ask, and he said, to you, it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others, they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see and hearing, they may not understand the purpose of parables. First, he says, to you, it has been given, given and to a specific group. To you it has been given, twofold purpose of parables, hardens and turns off antagonists, casual observers and mere fans. That's what it does. None of them, they all heard the same story and they all could have come and asked, but they didn't. Only disciples came because what is happening to them is they're being softened. Their hunger is being piqued. What Jesus did to the disciples was he just carried a cooked T-bone steak in front of the nose of a Rottweiler. And he said, I got to, I gotta have that. Whatever that is, I gotta know more of that. That smell is not enough. I can't live off that. So they come, the twofold purpose of a parable. But you have to ask, what makes one hungry for the truth of Christ? This whole massive crowd, the disciples, the women, and those who have come from town to town, they're all there for the same Jesus in the same setting at the same time. What made the 12 and the women come forward to wanna know, and the rest of the people are like, cool story, and leave? What makes them like that? How are their desires changed? Jesus told his disciples in John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you. That is gonna be a connecting reality. and when we get to the meaning of the four soils. But he says, to you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. The secrets of the kingdom of God, that word secret, depending on your Bible translation, it might say mysteries. Mysteries is actually a straight up transliteration, because the Greek word is musterion, where we get the word mystery. Now what that word musterion means is something that could not be known unless it was revealed by God. It couldn't be known unless it was revealed by God. Think about it like this, when you go see an illusionist, don't call them magicians anymore, you call them illusionists. When I worked at camp, a camp out in East Texas called Frontier Camp all through high school and college, one time they brought in for the teenagers, they would bring in like a musician or something like that, they brought an illusionist. And I was like, man, this guy's really good. I'm watching it from the floor and I'm like amazed by this thing. But my friend, he worked in the AV part of it and he was filming the act from the crow's nest way up high. And he was like, yeah, that trick where he pops up out of the locked, a treasure chest that kind of got ruined for me. I was like, what do you mean? He showed me the video and there's a trap door in the top of that box. And he just jumps out of it. And when you see it, you're like, this is the lamest thing I have ever, why do we watch this at all? because the secret had been revealed, but I can't know it. It looks like a real box. I can't know it unless my friend Sean's in the crow's nest and shows me the footage. The secrets of the kingdom of God, you can't know it unless God reveals it to you, unless he shows you the viewpoint from the crow's nest. That's what the musterion is. That's what a mystery is. To you, it has been known. Without explanation, a parable can mean anything or nothing. Just take the practical home and do this for a fun family exercise and come up with different meanings for those four soils. You could do that. It could mean anything you want it to mean. It could also mean nothing. They're like, great Jesus, that's farming 101. Three-year-olds know that. that means nothing or anything without an explaining. It could just be a riddle, a colloquial saying, a quaint statement without a meaning attributed to it. And if he's about the gospel, the gospel is good news, but it's neither good nor news unless it's told and then explained. It's not good because you can't define it in any way, but it's not news unless you hear it. The gospel is good news. God is holy. You are a sinner separated from him by an eternal, immense, infinite gap. Your deeds to cross that gap are worthless and they get you nowhere. But Christ comes in as a substitute. He bridges that gap. And if you don't have faith in him, you are not connected to God. You are not right with God. He does not declare you righteous. He does not call you son or daughter. It's good because you're evil, but Christ overcomes that. And it's news because you can hear it, know it, and believe it. It has to be explained, otherwise it's nothing. Jesus is just being consistent with the difficulty that is latent in becoming a Christian. He says in Mark 10, 24, after the interaction with the rich young ruler, he says, it's difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven. What does he say in Matthew 7, 13 and 14? The way is narrow and hard and few find it. So this is not inconsistent with even just Jesus's statements. But he goes on further and says, for I'm giving them in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand. That's why we had Paul read Isaiah 6. And sometimes in Isaiah 6 we stop at the glorious passage of the holiness of God and Isaiah in the throne room in verses one through seven, but eight through 10 is what he's supposed to be doing. And he's gonna go, he tells Isaiah, go preach, and they're not gonna see, they're not gonna hear, they're not gonna care. That's what he tells them to do. I'm sending you out on a mission that is not going to succeed. Though they see you, they're not gonna comprehend it. Though they hear you, they're not gonna get it. And it's gonna happen over and over and over again. Jesus quotes that in this verse. Obviously, what Jesus is saying, the day in which Isaiah experienced is very similar to the day in which we're living in right now. In AD 30, whenever this was happening. It's a somber reality, though, that Jesus chose to speak in a way that would turn some people off and draw some people there. Jesus is clearly making a statement, I'm after disciples and not masses of numbers. Jesus is not willing to do anything short of sin to get you to come to Christ. We hear so many megachurches say that, well, do anything short of sin to get you to come to Christ. Jesus is seemingly functioning in the opposite way. I'm gonna be more veiled. So you have to come and ask further. I'm gonna give sermons that are confusing. So you have to stick around and talk to me afterwards. Do you really come to really know? That's what Jesus is after. Not a church of fans, but a church of disciples. Now Jesus was a known national entity in Israel, and the majority of Israel doesn't care. They've rejected him. We saw that, you see the juxtaposition with Simon, remember chapter seven, he's a Pharisee, and he's like, why would he let this disgusting, sinful woman anywhere near Jesus? This is ridiculous. He's turned off. You've heard the message, you even invited him into your house, and you don't get it. You don't wanna get it. You despise the gospel. You don't think that you need to be forgiven. Your pride is so granite hard that you're just gonna sit behind it. That's where they are. Though Jesus is a national phenomenon, but he's bringing judgment and blessing through his word. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. That means that some people don't have those ears to hear. Now look at the explanation of the parable. This is where we'll spend some time. Second half of our time. Starts in verse 11, soil number one. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard when the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart so that they may not believe and be saved. So number one is the path or it's the devil and disinterest. The path is the way that farming works in first century Israel is that the plots of land that you would actually till up wouldn't be uniform shape. Like when you fly in an airplane today and you go over the heartland of the United States, you see those circles because those watering systems can go like this, or you see perfect squares. That's not how it happens in first century Israel. They're all kind of all over the place, but the paths go through them, sometimes serpentine, sometimes straight, so that they can walk through and get to them plants without trampling on them. Also, people who are just passing through, just walking by on foot can walk through. So that path would get packed down as hard as concrete. So that's why the trampled under foot thing is happening, and then the birds, they can see it. It's not sinking into tilled up rich, dark, moist soil. It's like hard pack concrete. Those people are those who hear the gospel and reject it immediately because of dual action of the hardness of their heart and the activity of Satan. See, the hard-hearted and the stubbornly resolute against the gospel person is actively saying, I don't want anything to do with that, and Satan is also acting upon him. doubly blinded, says the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 4.4 says, the God of this world, a euphemism for Satan, has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. So not only is it bouncing off of that hard pack, birds are snatching it and making sure nothing ever happens close. And Jesus says that's what's happening to some people as they hear the gospel. This person hears the gospel, but it never penetrates below the surface. And you know people like that. You pray for people like that, that no matter how much you talk to them, it's like you're talking to a concrete wall. Maybe that was you before you were saved. Like, I know I grew up in a good church. I know that I heard the gospel over and over again, but it was like I heard it for the first time when I got saved. I'd never heard it before, I thought, but it was just bouncing off. That's this person. Soil number two, the rock. Verse 13, and the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy, but these have no root. They believe for a while, and in time of testing, fall away. Israel is a very rocky place. Now, in the majority of the places that you would plow, you would dig up those rocks and get them out, but that's not talking about that. This isn't like hill country soil where you had that dark black clay with those white rocks, like San Marcos, Austin, that kind of area. It's not like that. What you're talking about is a bedrock of limestone underneath. So you got like this much soil, and then it's just rock. So that happens. I took the best grade I got in college was in Turf Management 202. all how to mow your grass. I could have majored in that and that would have been enough for me. But what you learn real quick in that class is if you have a sand-based root zone, then that means things are gonna grow real quick because water can get in and get to those roots. But there's nothing deeper and thicker under there like clay, then that water just goes right out and the plants just burn up and die real fast. But what's happening here is you got sand on top and then rock hard. So the water comes through and it immediately shocks the soil or the roots and they grow, but then the water hits that rock and then runs off. So it's not staying there with those plants. So it looks like an initial spring of growth, but there's nothing actually substantial for it to hold the water there so the roots can keep sinking down deeper and deeper and deeper to get to the table water. That's what's happening, that's this kind of scene here. This rejection of the gospel represents a person who, after a period of time, abruptly turns and rejects the gospel. They seem to embrace it, but after a period of time goes by, they reject abruptly. This is what you could call, or rather what the Puritans used to call an almost Christian. You played the game for a little while, but you were never really born again. This is pliable in Pilgrim's Progress. Christian's leaving, running like a crazy person out of the city of destruction, and then pliable, one of his neighbors, sees him and goes with him, because Christian tells him, our city is going to be destroyed, but there's a celestial city that's golden, and the king of that city is glorious and loving, and you'll never have pain or sorrow, anything. And pliable says, I'm in. And he runs with him until they both fall headlong into a swamp. called the slough of despond. And then pliables like, I am out of here. You told me it was gonna be awesome, this stinks, I'm going back. That's who's being represented here in this soil. This soil is the one who has heard with joy, but didn't count the cost of discipleship. We give too much of an emphasis on emotional response. On the other hand, us stodgy, crusty reformed people can put too much emphasis on no emotion. That that makes you holy too? That's both are wrong. this emphasis, there should be some kind of emotion. Like if you said, well, I love my wife, but I just never get excited about her. Like, well, that's okay. But I dutifully love her, I serve her, I pay the bills, I show up, I clean the house, I do that. But if there's no actual love, then that's not okay. But just being like, I love you, it's amazing, but then you never get off the couch, you never actually help, then that's the opposite too. So we don't put any stock in this joy. It's there and we see it and we note it, but it's not enough to hold you in Christ. Thorns burn real fast and real hot, but then they're gone and it's over. That's what Ecclesiastes calls the crackling of thorns under the pot. That's who is pictured here. They didn't count the cost of discipleship. They were in for the exciting things, but then it got hard. 2 Timothy 3.12, they never learned that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. They never heard Jesus say, they didn't stick around long enough to hear John 15.20, if they hated me, they will hate you. They weren't around for Acts 14.22, through many trials and tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of heaven. They didn't hear any of those things. And so then it was to say, they fall away. The Greek word is aphistemi, where we get our word apostasy. This is not a temporary stumbling. This is an outright rejection. So when we see those words believe, it says though, that they believed. Well, so did Simon Magus in Acts chapter eight. It says he believed, then Peter says, you're unconverted, you're gonna die with your money. There is such a thing as unsaving faith. What does James 2, 18 and 19 say? You believe that God is one, you do well. Satan also believes and shudders. There's a thing as of demonic faith, the demons believe that, and they shudder at that, but they're not saved by that. There is such a thing as unsaving faith. What we have here is apostasy. And you want a key text for that, it's 1 John 2.19, where John says, they went out from us because they were not of us. If they had really been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it will be shown that all are not of us. We have a category for apostasy for baptized people who are not ever converted. This is not losing your salvation. This is pretending to be a Christian. Things get hard, trials come, well, God's not actually real or working or doing anything and you bail. That's who this person is. See, this is the lie of the prosperity gospel. It is hard to follow Jesus. Things might get worse for you. if you follow Jesus. And the prosperity churches say, no, things are gonna get better. It's gonna be amazing. You're gonna lose that weight. You're gonna get that car and that promotion and a new spouse. But Jesus is saying, it's gonna get hard. That's what these things are. These trials come and they fall away. These are the apostates. Now, soil number three, the thorns, cares and pleasures. Verse 14, and for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. We understand this to an extent, again, the wisdom I learned from Dr. Dubel at Texas A&M in turf management. The best thing that you can do for your lawn is mow it and make the grass grow, because grass keeps weeds out. The worst thing that you can do is let weeds continue on because then they will dominate and there's no room for the grass to grow. Thorns grow up fast. Have you ever noticed just the curse of creation? Things you don't want to grow, grow overnight. And things you really want to grow, die immediately. No matter what you do, no matter how much Scott's Fertilizer you buy, they die. This is what Jesus is saying. Like if you throw the seed into the soil, there's room there and there's growth happening there. So some kind of plant is being sustained in that soil, but when it grows up, everything else just chokes it out. There's no room to get to the sun. There's no room for roots to spread out and the weeds multiply faster. than the plants you want to grow, than wheat or corn or whatever it is you're trying to grow in a garden like that, and it chokes it out. It has no room. These are those who reject the gospel little by little. We saw immediate, we saw over time, and then abrupt, and now we see little by little. You grow up in and amongst the thorns, because look what it says in verse 14. As they go on their way, They're growing and things are going, they're a part of a church, they seem to be converted, but then they turn out to be just like soil number two, the almost Christian. Not really ever converted, but therefore when everything was great. And what is the thing that little by little eventually kills them? Cares of the world, pleasures of the world. things of this life. This soil is Gehazi in 2 Kings 5, and Demas in 2 Timothy 4.10. Gehazi is Elisha's servant, and after Elisha heals Naaman, or God heals Elisha, heals Naaman through Elisha, Naaman's this pagan warlord, and he's like, I'm gonna give you all these changes of clothes, and all this money, and all this stuff, and Elisha says, no, keep all that, we don't do that for money. "'Just go on your way and proclaim the Lord.'" And Gehazi then is like, what in the world? And as soon as Elisha's back is turned and Naaman's down the road, Gehazi chases down Naaman and says, hey, you know what? Actually, some people just showed up at our house. Can we go ahead and get some of those clothes and some of that money? And then he comes back and Elisha says, where have you been? He goes, nowhere. He goes, no, I heard you go out and my spirit heard you go out and chase that money. and he's pictured as an unbeliever. Demas, he's following Paul, the Apostle Paul, and then Paul says at the end of his life, at the last book that he writes, 2 Timothy 4, he says, now Demas, in love with this present world, has abandoned me. He loved this world too much. In earlier New Testament epistles, he's listed as a gung-ho follower. He's in it, he's there, he's laboring away, but he's in love with this present world, the riches and the things that this world has to have. You can find also here in this third soil, is every deconstructionist that we see in evangelicalism. For those of you who don't know, there's a trend going on, it's kind of dying down now because nobody cares anymore, but deconstructionism, like I grew up as a Christian and it was horrible and mean and terrible, so I'm deconstructing my faith and I was taught all these horrible things and I'm deconstructing it and getting away from it, I'm an exvangelical. What those people are is just good old-fashioned apostates. who want to keep their sin. See, what we think is that there's a moral, upright, stellar person who just looks at the Bible logically and goes, none of this is really that true, but I'm gonna continue on without this and continue on in a moral life that is an upright standing citizen of the country. It's never that. It's, this is keeping me from doing the sin that I wanna do. This is keeping me from the evil that I wanna participate in. This is keeping me from worshiping the idols that my heart actually loves, so I'll say I was taught horrible things as a kid, and it was overbearing and oppressing, so that I can just have my sin. That's this soil. That's what they're doing. This is Eve's sin. She looked at that fruit and saw what it was good for. This is 1 John 2, 15. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. Do not love the world nor anything in the world. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. This is the sins that is being crowned. And this is what Jesus says in Matthew 6, 24. You can't serve two masters. You're either gonna serve stuff in this world or you're gonna serve me, and that's it. Pick one. Luke's gonna get more into this in chapter nine, chapter 12, but this is also the backwardness of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel says the more stuff you give, the more God you want, but it's actually the opposite. The more stuff you get, the less God you want. And that's the majority of 1 2 Kings, 1 2 Chronicles. The more success a king has, the less he needs God, the less he cares about God. The things of this world choke out that faith. Now then you get to verse 15. As for that good soil, that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. This soil is not hardened or unresponsive. This person in this soil is not shallow or impulsive. This person is not someone who is distracted or preoccupied with these things. This soil has been tilled up. There's no weeds here. There's no limestone bedrock underneath. It's not hard packed and easy pickings for birds. Nobody's walking across this. It's obviously plowed ground. That's what this soil is. What you're looking for for this one, this one out of four, 25%, How do you know that someone is saved? Now ultimately to that question, we can't say definitively one way or the other. But how do you have good conscience to treat them as brothers and to say at their funeral, that person is in heaven? How do you have that? You have that because you observed fruitfulness over time. Fruitfulness is not equivalent to leading massive evangelism rallies and thousands of people get saved every month. Fruitfulness is the fruit of the Spirit. Love and joy and peace and patience, kindness and goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. That's visible in their lives. That's the fruit of the Spirit of God. That's what the Spirit of God produces in somebody and that's what this has said. What does it say back in verse eight? Some fell into good soil and it grew and yielded a hundredfold. It yields a massive amount of fruit. Verse 15 says that they hold the word with good and an honest and good heart and they bear fruit with patience. Bearing fruit over time is what we can see in somebody as being born again. See, there's a bit of a wrongheadedness when we have these big events, we don't have them, but when evangelicals, and we would assume the best of our brothers and sisters, they mean the best by these big events, and they call people down front, they wanna see people get saved, and then at the end of the event, the newsletter goes out and it says, 137 teenagers got saved, or 500 people came forward and all got saved and we were given a Bible with their name and the date in it so they'd always remember their spiritual birthday. But we all know people who have gone to those events and gone forward and then walked away. The wrongheadedness is that nobody ever goes back and edits those numbers. We had 137, we're gonna watch them, we're gonna shepherd them, we're gonna love them, we're gonna disciple them, we're gonna have them in our homes, we're gonna take care of them, we're gonna pour the word of God in them, we're gonna point out sin in their lives, and then they're gonna grow to where they can point out sin in my life. It's just, here's the numbers. That's misguided. That gets people to click give on that app on the phone to send more money to the ministry, but that's not faithful according to this text. We don't know if they're saved unless we see it over time. Time and truth walk hand in hand. If you were born again in that moment, you'll still be born again 20 years later. You'll still be born again when something wretched happens in your life or your spouse doesn't get on board. You got saved as an unbeliever that was married and they just abandoned you. You'll still be born again. You'll still be saved. You'll still be bearing fruit through tears, of course. but you'll still be saved then. So we wait when somebody says, I just got born again. What we have to do as believers, we need to come up with a winsome way to say, yes, I'm so excited for your profession, brother, sister, but in your head knowing we'll see. But I'm gonna see, because I'm gonna stick with you. I'm gonna be there. You're gonna be in our church. We're gonna know your name. We're gonna be there. When you start to stray, when it starts looking like you're in the thorns or you're on the rock or you're on the path, we're gonna say something. We're gonna be there for that. We're not just gonna go, yes, and then say, great, go figure it out. This is why discipleship and evangelism have to go hand in hand. They have to absolutely go hand in hand if we're gonna know anything about our people. Now, you look at this soil. And have you ever found soil that tilled itself? Have you ever come across soil and go, phew, that's great. Yesterday I was here and it was all weeds and chunks of rocks, but now it looks nice and black and watered and awesome. No, soil doesn't till itself. Nobody who is born again can read this parable and have a lick of pride. Because if you have the word of God sunken into your heart, it's because God tilled up the soil of your heart. And then he sent a sower to put seed in it. You didn't till it up. You didn't make it happen. You're the heart of that soil in the illustration. So you have God to thank. You have God to praise. You have God to worship. You have Christ to magnify and to exalt. because he tilled that soil up, because there's no such thing as self-tilling soil. We who believe firmly in the sovereignty of God and salvation are the most humble, should be the most humble of all believers, because we know it is by grace alone, sola gratia, because Ezekiel 36 says it's spiritual heart surgery is what you need. Your heart of stone has to be taken out and a heart of flesh has to be put in. You can't do heart surgery on yourself. I don't care how many MacGyvers, you have 24 as you've watched, you can't do it. Somebody else has got to do it. You're gonna be unconscious. Somebody's got to do it for you. So don't miss the obvious here though. There are hearts being properly tilled up by God. Don't miss that. Don't see the percentages. 75% of people are gonna hear the gospel. It's gonna make no difference. It's only 25% woe is me. No, look at that 25% and say, God is active. God is moving. God is working and tilling the hearts of people. So we go forth in that confidence. He does it. All I do is toss the seed out. There's an old guy that I got to meet, I think I told y'all before, his name is Jim Downing. He survived the Pearl Harbor attacks. By God's grace, he wasn't on the boat, he was on the land. He gets saved, or he's saved and converted before that happens, but he's a part of this ministry with the Navigators for a really long time. And I got to meet him at a conference, like 15 years ago, and I was like, Somebody asked him about evangelism, and he's in his 90s, 90s, he's still sharing the gospel, still spending hours in prayer, hours in the word, all of these, I mean, just a godly man. And somebody asked him about evangelism, and he goes, you know what, I don't even call it evangelism anymore. And when you're 96, you get to change the rule, you can say whatever you want. Like once you crest 90, you're like, well, that's fine, you can do that. He said, I don't even call it evangelism anymore, I just call it soil testing. He just says, I throw the seed out, and if it bounces off, I know it's hard pack. If it seems to sink in, but then they quit on me pretty quick, then I know. If it seems to be that it sinks in, they're kind of interested, but then they eventually just go off after careers or girls or whatever it is, then I know. But all I can do is soil test. Spurgeon said, people aren't walking around with labels on their forehead saying rocky, thorny, or hard pack. You don't know. So you go and you just test the soil. Take the gospel there, see if it sinks in. That's what we do. The Bible showed us four types of hearers, but that doesn't discourage us. If you come away from this parable discouraged to stop your evangelism, then you've read it wrong. then sit and pray over it until it clicks. There are people's hearts who are tilled up for the soil. For every time you share the gospel and it bounces off, you keep going because at some point the soil's got to be tilled up. And it may be later on, or you may just go, I'll go talk to them. While that soil is being tilled, I'll go talk to them, share the gospel with them. It should encourage and motivate our evangelism because we've been told what's real. You should expect a 75% difficulty rate, and that's okay. If you hit three out of 10 pitches, you go to the Major League Hall of Fame. So if we're getting 25%, that's unbelievable, and God's doing all the work. We can do that, we can still go out. The variable and evangelism is the heart of the individual. It's the same soil, notice that in the parable, same sower and the same seed, it's different soils. So what we shouldn't be trying to evaluate is, well, it's not working, we need better sowing methods. A better method will make it happen faster. The same sowing happens to all four soils and only sinks in in one. and it's the same seed. Well, the Bible's kinda boring a little bit, so what we'll do is we'll make like a diagram where you draw 14 triangles, and then that'll be like this and this and this, and then they'll get the gospel from that. No, no, no, it's the same seed. It's the same word. So we take the same thing. The problem is not that. The variable is the human heart. The soil is what the difference is, not the method, not the message. That's the variable. That's what we give ourselves to, is praying for God to till the soils of hearts. And then I want you to see this too, just before we close. When you plant seeds, if you were gonna, what you would do is you'd go down to the local feed store or the co-op and you'd buy a sack of feed, whatever you want. When Pastor Raymond was here from Jamaica, we went and he bought a bunch of seeds because he wanted to try to get things to grow. It's just easier to get them here than it is in Jamaica. So he bought like watermelon, lemon, and then like cabbage, beans, things like that. And they're just there, they're just seeds. Cost $1.68. Grab you a whole stack of them and you maybe spent $10. So if you wanna do that, that's what you do. But if this is the first century world, where do you get seeds? You gotta go get them from plants. You're picking them off a plant and you're picking them off the ground when mature plants grow. Do you think that that's easy or hard work? That's hard work. I mean, that's why you have kids, they got small hands. You send them through, go through the fields, kids, and pick up all the seeds. If you don't fill this jar up, then go back again. That's hard work. So if you have the opportunity to go and sow that field again, do you send a blind person out to do that? No. Can you tell if the soil has thorns? Can you tell if it's a path? Can you just step and know that there's bedrock underneath? Why would you even throw those seeds that you worked so hard for on ground you know, or at least have a great suspicion in what's not gonna grow? That is the picture of the free offer of the gospel. We don't share the gospel with people we only we think are gonna respond. We don't share the gospel. We think, well, if God's in control and we're good Calvinists, then what we shouldn't do is give people false hope and share the gospel with them when they can't repent and believe anyway. No, no, no, no. Parable says you throw it everywhere. You throw it absolutely everywhere because God can come in and rip those thorns out in a heartbeat and it ain't nothing for him to move a rock either. So you go and you take that seed and you throw it everywhere. You don't play percentage games in your head. You just give the gospel. That's all you do. No, and you don't try to play the role of God. Flashback to verses one through three. Do you catch that Mary Magdalene, she gets kind of a bad rap. Somebody made up sometime forever ago that she was a prostitute. She's not, she's never mentioned as that at all. She was demon possessed by seven demons. That usually happens at least in Jesus's accounts in the gospels to relatively impoverished or difficult struggling people. So that's Mary having a hard life. Then you have Joanna who has a great life. She's living in, she's inherits orbit. Her husband's got a great job, she's got money. And then you have Susanna, we don't know anything about her. Nothing, that's the only time her name appears in the New Testament. So you have all three of these different kinds of people, and yet they're all following Christ. Would you have played the odds and gone, I don't know if I wanna throw the seed towards Mary. Or, oh man, I mean, Joanna's rich, like she don't have time for me, forget her. Susanna, I don't know anything about her. The seed, just throw it. Let the gospel do its work, and then you get a group of women that are all kind of different. They come together, and they're the ones that support Jesus. Take the gospel to them. And here's the last thing. Can't not say it. What soil are you? I mean, this is what you have to really deal with. It would be a miss of the pulpit to assume everybody in here is soil number four. because you could be in the process of being number two or number three. So my friends, what soil are you? Do you feel yourself getting close to abandoning Christ because things are difficult in your life right now? It's hard to make ends meet. You just got sick. Family member just died. Or are you in soil number three? Do you feel yourself wanting to just abandon Christ, abandon the gospel because you know what? There's just more things to be had out there. I could be making more money. I could be having more things. I could buy more status, more followers on Instagram, all of these things. Do you feel yourself drifting in that way? Then today is your time to face that and know what's coming if you don't. You do not know how long you have. I've never been in a hospital room with a family surrounding the body of their deceased loved one, and they said, you know what? We had enough time. You know what? We were really prepared for this. Every time I'm in that room, and I was in that room yesterday, we didn't have enough time. I wasn't ready for this. And if that's true of the people that are around them, then it has to be true of the person that's now lying on the gurney. So friend, truly friend, do you know what kind of soil you are? Has anybody ever said, I see fruit in your life over time? Do you feel yourself drifting away? Then today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow is too late. Turn to Christ, come to him, cling to him, and he will cling to you with a grasp that can never be broken and will never loosen one moment in your life. That's what you have to hear at the end of this message. Let me pray. Father in heaven, We plead for your mercies. Well, we don't know. We don't know the hearts of people in here. We can't see. That means that we freely offer the gospel, Lord, and we are so ashamed of the times where we've held it back. Forgive us, forgive me. But Lord, you know each heart in this room today. You sovereignly ordered people to be here. At this time, if there is a soil one, two, or three, if there is the path, the rock, and the thorns, Father, please till them up. Please pull the thorns out, rip the rock out, jackhammer that concrete soil, make it rich, make it tilled up so that your good news will go in that they are sinners and there's nothing that they can do about it. Their good works are just filthy rags. and they would know that your son, Jesus, went and accomplished all good works for them. And that if they will repent, turn from that sin, believe in Jesus, he'll take his clean robe of righteousness and wrap it around each person that comes to you. Lord, may it be so today. Lord, may we who have some grounds of confidence in our hearts that we are still on number four, not upon our own doing, but because of your great grace, your great mercy upon us. Would we be encouraged to liberally share the gospel, to throw the seed everywhere? Would we be not discouraged by times we've shared the gospel and people haven't heard, or it's bounced off, or been choked out, or we've gone through the yo-yo of them saying they're a Christian and then saying they're not, and saying they're Christian and saying they're not. Would we not be discouraged? Would we labor long? Would you strengthen us to endure in loving those friends and neighbors and family members Lord, would we be discontent to just count fans and have almost Christians? Lord, would we be a church that is committed to growth, to discipleship, to accountability, to bearing fruit? Lord, would you also on the other end keep us from being judgmental and setting up some crazy standard that we would hold up and measure our brothers as they bore enough fruit or not? Lord, will we not lose charity and grace with each other, knowing that we are great sinners capable of great iniquity? Lord, we cannot do anything that you've commanded us to do as a church unless you do it. We have no strength in our own. Our flesh is weak, imperfect, and backwards. We can't muster it up enough. It will have to be your spirit that does it. So we would plead, Holy Spirit, would you work in our church? Would you hold us together in peace and in purity to the gospel? Would we love one another? Would we bear with one another's burdens and infirmities and even sins against us? Would our love that comes from you cover a multitude of sin? Will we also not be afraid to address Him when it rises to gross levels and the person's salvation is in question? Lord, would we weep with those who weep? And we know that there are many in our congregation weeping today or have just dried their eyes from weeping to come in here today. Will we also rejoice with those who rejoice? We know there's many in the room today, in the gathering of our saints, those who couldn't even be here, who have great cause to rejoice, babies being born, marriages happening, healings from diseases, who we also rejoice with those who rejoice. And we will look all towards that day, that final day, knowing that that's ultimately all that matters. Give us a heavenly vision and keep our eyes from locking in down on the dirt here. where we are pilgrims on a path, make us useful in our context, but make us known that we are bound for a heavenly city whose founder and builder is you, whose foundations have not been built with human hands, but by your very words spoken out. We long to be with you, Lord God. Carry us towards the end, and when it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.