Luke chapter 8 is our text this morning. We're looking at verses 16 through 21. And the text this morning is going to address the burden of the preceding parable, the parable of the soils. and it's going to continue to drive home the point that the Word bears fruit in people who both hear and obey. So again, the text is Luke 8, beginning in verse 16. And Luke writes this, no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container or puts it under a bed, but he puts it on a lamp stand so that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not become evident nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So take care how you listen. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has, shall be taken away from him. And his mother and brothers came to him, and they were unable to get to him because of the crowd. And it was reported to him, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. But He answered and said to them, My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it." Let's ask for God's blessing on the preaching of His word this morning. Our Father in heaven, we acknowledge that it is Your hands who have made and who have fashioned us. And so we ask of you, Father, now that you would grant us understanding so that we may learn and that we may obey your commandments. Help us now, Father, by your spirit to not just hear, but also, Father, to be changed and to be moved and to act in obedience. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Good listening is always followed by right actions. Not only are we called to hear God's word, we are called to obey God's word. The root of our salvation is always found in Christ alone. It's never by our obedience. So what we could say is the root is always Christ, but the fruit of salvation is always obedience. What comes out of being in union with Christ is an obedient life. I recall looking across my desk at a man who had tears in his eyes and anguish painted across his face. And he said to me, I know what the Bible says I should do. I know what God's word tells me to do, but God hasn't given me the faith to do it. When he said that, I asked him how much faith he thought he had. He said, well, I have very little, very little faith to do this. And so I had him turn in a Bible to Luke chapter 17, which I'll ask you to do just briefly here this morning. A few pages over to Luke 17 and beginning in verse 3, Jesus has something to say to us. He says, be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day and returns to you seven times saying, I repent, forgive him. The apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said, if you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea and it would obey you. Which of you having a slave plowing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from the field, come immediately and sit down to eat. Will he not say to him, prepare something for me to eat, and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you may eat and drink? He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too. When you do all the things which are commanded, you say, we are unworthy slaves. We have done only that which we ought to have done. Jesus' point here is that obedience is never an issue of faith. When we say, I don't have enough faith to do that, Jesus' response is, a mustard seed worth of faith is enough to say to trees, be uprooted and planted in the tree or in the sea and it will go. You can move mountains with a mustard seed of faith. The issue in your obedience isn't one of not having enough faith. It simply comes down to the end of what Jesus says. Will you obey your master or not? Will you do what God says to do or not? And faith is not part of the equation. Faith doesn't come into it. The issue here is simply obedience. And so when you go back to Luke chapter 8, in verses 4 through 15, we have this parable of the soils. Jesus talks there about good listening. While many hear the things or heard the things that Jesus was saying, not all of them received the word by faith in order to bear fruit. Some were hardened, right? Some were shallow, some were too distracted by the things of the world. And so God had to come and prepare the soil to receive the word so that it will bear fruit and persevere. If you are prepared soil, you have at a minimum, a mustard seed worth of faith. You have enough faith to uproot trees and have them planted in the sea. You have enough faith to move mountains. Now you are called upon, as one with faith, to continue learning and obeying God's Word, to continue hearing and responding in righteousness. you are called upon to bear fruit. And the key to this is one of the great themes of Jesus' teaching throughout the book of Luke. Because the true fruit of conversion is seen and hearing and obeying the word of God, we should seek to live in obedience to all of God's commandments without excuses. Right, we have no excuse for our disobedience. Now, why is this so necessary? Now, Jesus is gonna point out for us why it is so necessary to both hear and to obey. And we have three reasons. We should seek to hear and obey because God will expose all false professions. Yeah, that's his first point. Secondly, we should seek to hear and obey because God takes away the word from the disobedient. And then finally, we should seek to hear and obey because obedience is the marker of our adoption into God's family. It is the fruit of being adopted into the family of God. So let's begin with that first point, verses 16 through 17. that we should seek to hear and obey because God will expose all false professors. No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container or puts it under a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see the light. for nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. We were reminded in the previous parable that spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, right? Here we need to see this parable of the lamp in that spiritual sense. The overall idea that's being presented here is that when you have something useful like a lamp, you put it to good use, right? You don't light a lamp in order to cover it up. You don't light a lamp and put it under a bed. You don't light a lamp and do something silly with it. Now, you may think that's like overly simplistic, but as I was considering this, I remember as a child taking flashlights at night. I would turn them on and then I would put them under my pillow. And in my childish mind, I thought if I ever needed to pull it out in the night, I wouldn't have to fiddle around with the button. I could just pull it out and there it would be, on and ready for anything I needed it for. But what happens after about three hours? The batteries die, right? And you waste, the flashlight becomes useless. and the light was hidden, it did nothing. It was pointless, it was a waste. And so what Jesus is saying, again, if you have something useful, you use it, and you use it appropriately. Now, in Matthew 5, 16, Jesus gives a similar idea to speak of letting our light shine before men in order that they would see our good works and give glory to God. This is the same idea here, But now the focus is on utility. It's not just the idea of God getting glory for our good works. It's the idea of utility. He's saying you have the truth of God's Word. You have it in your possession. It's telling you how to live. Now do what it says. Obey what it says. Another way to put that is, why after receiving truth, why after receiving the instruction of the Word, would you not do it? Why would you dismiss it? Now, the parable calls on us not only to hear the Word, but to obey the Word. And I think this is the distinction that we have to grasp. J.C. Ryle commenting on this says, when covered with a container or put under a bed. It is only useful when set upon a lampstand and placed where it can be made serviceable to the needs of men. Now, what is your need with the word? In this regard, Jesus is talking about all aspects of law and gospel. And what you need is to take all the aspects of law and gospel and what it calls us to do and obey them. That is the light that gives you a path to walk. That is guiding your footsteps. It's telling you how to live. Now, what does this look like? Five things that I want to point out here. Now, there's probably 500 things that we could do, but we're going to be very general just to give some application about what does it mean to receive the word and make it serviceable to my life. Here's things you do constantly. Number one, The Word is instructing you to confess your sin. I can't reiterate how important and how vital this is in our lives. From the very beginning of our Christian walk to the very end of our Christian walk, the confession of sin, God's Word is what defines sin for us. Not cultural things, Not things that we kind of nitpick about or have opinions about, but God's word. Now God's word defines sin, and then it comes in and it exposes our sin. As you read God's word, as you hear God's word, it is exposing your sin. And then it's calling upon you to confess your sin. Now what does that mean? It means simply this, that you agree with God's assessment of your sinful life. So when the Word shows you your sin, instead of trying to cover up that sin or that shame with fig leaves, you agree. You just simply agree. Yep, God's right. I'm wrong. I'm in sin. I confess. And so the first step of hearing and obeying is right there. Confess your sin. It's not only the first step. It's every step of your Christian life until Jesus comes or you die and you go to heaven to be with God forever. The words exposure and condemnation of sin is useful to us when we agree with God's assessment. That's the first step. Number two, Confession of sin is followed by a trusting in Jesus. So after you agree with God, okay, God, you're right, I'm wrong, I'm sinful, now what do I do? Well, now the Word is pointing us to Jesus. Now you turn to Him. You trust in Him for the forgiveness of your sins. You recognize that Jesus is mighty to save anyone who will come to Him in recognition of their sins and just say simply, Jesus, save me. Save me from my sins, take away my sins, wash me of my iniquity, make me clean so that God will look upon me with favorable eyes. And Jesus is the only place we can go, right? The word is very clear about this. There is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. And so vital importance here, you must make good use of the word and turn to Jesus continually for the forgiveness of your sins. Number three, this moves us on to what we could call living in the humility of grace. This, again, is so important because the Word humbles us. The good use of the Word humbles us, I should say. When the Word is exposing our sin and driving us to Christ to receive salvation, we see our need, we see the greatness of our salvation, and we live every day in the knowledge and gratitude of the humility of grace. God has given us much grace in our lives, and we don't deserve any of it, and that humbles us. That makes us treat our neighbors with kindness and respect and mercy. That makes us think high and good lofty thoughts of God and His goodness and love towards His people. It keeps us from spiritual pride that we may think, oh, if I get enough knowledge of the Bible, I'll be better than the person sitting next to me. we become equals at the foot of the cross when we live in the humility of grace. So make good use of the word by allowing the testimony of God's grace to sinners to humble your pride and make you a grateful beggar who knows where to get the bread. Number four, the word, when we make good use of it, causes us to grow in holiness. Making good use of the Word is that continual application of the Word to your life. You are to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are to grow in conformity to Jesus Himself. You are to be made more like Him as you see more of Him as He is exposed to us by the Spirit in His Word. And this is the burden of the text, so I won't go on long here. If we're not bearing fruit in our lives, the indication that's very clear is that we are disconnected from the root, which is Christ. So we are to grow in holiness. Finally, perseverance. We have to keep going. We have to keep confessing sin when the word exposes it. We can't get our backs up against the wall. We can't get all offended when a brother comes to us and rebukes us. We need to ask for forgiveness. We need to repent and turn from sin. We need to keep turning back to Jesus every day for salvation. You know, there's a false notion in much of American evangelicalism that you just kind of come to Jesus once, and then that's the end of the story. Well, perseverance is this. We continually return to Jesus daily. We're always going back to Him and looking to Him and receiving from Him the benefits of forgiveness and righteousness. We keep living and growing in the humility of grace. We keep on growing in holiness and we persevere and we finish our race. The point is, and the point is we are to know the truth. and we are called to live by the truth. Not just a one-time, yep, I got it, I'm in, and that's the end of the story. But this word of God is to direct every aspect of our lives. Now, what happens? What happens to people who do not hear and obey? Notice in verse 17, for nothing is hidden that will not become evident. nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Now, what's what's he doing here? He's making a little bit of a switch. And what Jesus is saying is that those who make a false profession of faith, Those who have a supposed vast reservoir of biblical knowledge, those who talk the big spiritual game in their lives, those who boast in their works or boast in how close to God they are, yet they do not obey God's Word. These are the ones who will be exposed. God will bring this to light. In other words, you can only get away with not hearing and obeying the word of God for so long. One day, God brings it to light. One day, hypocrisy is made evident to everyone. Now, there's a question here. Is Jesus addressing just false professors, or is he addressing Christians who are not hearing and obeying as well? And I think it's both. I think even Christians who are not hearing and obeying, and they're kind of building themselves up as being much more spiritual than they are, they're being addressed. God's going to bring to light your sin if you're not doing those things that God has commanded in his word. But also, I think more so, Jesus is pointing out the idea of people who make a false profession of faith. One commentator said, it is impossible to permanently hide where one stands in relation to the gospel. What is hidden will come out sooner or later. He says the danger is that the person who thinks they have received the gospel and keeps it hidden and never lets the facts be known through their obedience may find one of these days when they come to look for the reality of the gospel within them that it is in fact not there and never was. God will bring every act to judgment. Everything which is hidden, whether good or evil, will be brought to light. All the false professors will be exposed. All those who will not confess their sin will be exposed. God will bring it to light. And I think for us as Christians, there's a great mercy in this, right? We just read from Luke 17 about going to your brother when they're in sin and the way we're to receive their repentance. But there's another lesson there. Be quick to repent, because as you move through the steps of discipline, it gets brought more and more to light. The sin gets exposed more and more. God is so gracious to us in that He gives us the chance to quietly confess our sins, to quietly turn away from our sins and avoid all that catastrophe of our sin being brought to a public exposure. All false professions are exposed. All hidden sin is exposed. We should receive the word in a good and honest heart. We should seek to hear and obey God's word because God will expose sin that is not addressed and confessed to him. OK, second point, we should seek to hear and obey because God takes away from the disobedient. Notice verse 18. So take care how you listen, for whoever has, to him more shall be given. And whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has, shall be taken away from him." Okay, we have a principle here. It's found throughout the Bible in all kinds of places that if we don't use the word, we will lose the word, okay? from Jesus' instructions to his disciples who were to take the gospel to all the different cities. And he says, if they don't listen to you, shake the dust off your feet and walk away. Like the city just condemned itself. And it's condemned itself because they would not hear and obey the word of God. To even us in our own lives. If you don't use the word in your life, God will take it away from you. He will not let it just sit on a hard heart. Satan will come and snatch it up. God will allow the sun to come out in persecution, and with no deep root, it'll burn up and go away. Things will happen in your life where there's all kinds of distractions, and God will take you away from the Word. and allow that to happen because you didn't use it. I think this is true both for unbelievers as well as for Christians. If we don't use the word as Christians, God's discipline of us is often to take the word away. Now notice first here, Jesus says, so take care how you listen, right? He's building off of the first thing He said there, that everything's gonna be brought to light anyway, so you need to listen well. Now His statement has these massive implications in our life. How do you respond to God's Word? How do you respond to the commandments that God has given to you? What do you do when God's word says, obey this? Do you obey it? Or do you just kind of dig down into sin? Do you not listen? How do you listen? What are you doing with the truth? And these are questions you have to ask yourself. You have to really wrestle in your life with what are you doing with the truth of God's word? If you do not, Hear and obey, or maybe you just hear, but you don't obey, and you kind of ignore it. If you're not applying it to yourself, here's the danger. God may take the word away from you. What a terrible thought that is. Just take it away and let you drift off into some world of unbelief. It says, for whoever has, to him more will be given. Notice that principle. We have a principle here. And it refers to the people back in verse 15, if you remember verse 15, but the seed and the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and bear fruit with perseverance, right? They're the ones who have a crop that's a hundredfold. Whoever has, to him more will be given. The principle is that the word bears fruit. God gives the one who hears and obeys the word more and more and more truth, and they bear more and more fruit." Now, this isn't something new. In fact, the Proverbs are full of statements like this. My favorites in Proverbs 9, verse 7, and I'm gonna read both principles. Proverbs 9, 7 says, he who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself. Okay, so you correct a scoffer and they dishonor you, okay? And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instructions to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning. And so you have a difference in how people respond to the word. Wise people accept instruction. They accept the rebuke and they get wiser. Proverbs 1.7 says, fools despise wisdom and instruction. So how you listen matters. So what Jesus' principle is this, if you start out accepting the Word of God, you'll get better. You're going to grow. You're going to get wiser, more righteous, bear more fruit. Dumb people, as the Proverbs puts it, stupid people are the ones who reject wisdom and instruction. They reject godly understanding and direction, and they get stupider. They get dumber. They get less wise. And so the principle's important here. When you hear and obey, you gain. God gives more. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Whoever does not have even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him." So these are the people who hear the word, but don't obey it. They get the knowledge of the word. Maybe they accept it for a time, as some of the people in the earlier parable did. Maybe they accept it in part. Maybe they know it and they can apply it to everyone else's life, but they never apply it to themselves. They're really good at pointing out everybody else's fault, but they've never thought about how that speaks to me. Even what they thought they had, which is a perceived wisdom, a perceived spirituality, a perceived sense of moral superiority over others, even spiritual maturity, all of that is taken away. God will rob them of what they thought they had. Thomas Schreiner writes, as disciples obey, this is a great statement, as disciples obey, they grow in knowledge and understanding. But those who do not hear rightly, those who reject the revelation will find that even what they have is removed from them. Their understanding of truth and reality will become even dimmer. Very often, spiritual pride can creep into our hearts, and we begin to think that we're better than other people. And when you begin to think in that way, that somehow at a base level, now that's not to say that we can't notice other people's sin. We notice other people's sin, and we're very good at that, in fact, and that doesn't necessarily mean we have spiritual pride. Spiritual pride comes in where we think we're superior to them and what applies to them doesn't apply to us. Somehow we beat them out. I can do that, but they can't. And we think we can get away with sin in one area because in another area we're doing well. And spiritual pride is such that it treats God's word only as a means to point out what others are doing wrong, and it's never used as the mirror that exposes ourselves. For every time you're pointing, you know, you point one finger, all the fingers pointing back. Every time you point at somebody else, you really need to think first, what kind of massive log do I have in my own eye? You have to discern that before you discern anything else. God humbles the proud. God humbles the proud. He takes even what they thought they had away, and they're left with nothing. Here's a funny story that's been told of a young lady who came in to talk to her pastor, made this appointment, thought it was all serious. She was worried about a besetting sin. She meets with him. She says, listen, pastor, I've become aware of a sin in my life that's just gotten out of control. And he's sitting there thinking this has got to be the worst thing in the world. What's happening? She says, Every time I come into the church, I begin to look around at the other women and I realize I'm far more beautiful than any of them. And none of them even they can't even compare with me and my beauty. What do I do about this sin? And the pastor very sagely looked at her and said, Oh, dear, that's not a sin. That's just a mistake. And this is where even what you thought you had can be taken away, right? We have to be those who hear and obey. God will humble us. If we persist in thinking we're better than everyone else, if we persist in thinking that somehow we're superior and that the word no longer applies to us. You all know this series of verses in James 1.22, but prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. We should be hearers and doers. And if we don't hear and do, we risk God taking away even that little part that we thought we had. Number three, we should seek to hear and obey because obedience is the marker of our adoption into God's family. I want you to notice this, verses 19 through 21. And his mother and brothers came to him, and they were unable to get to him because of the crowd. And it was reported to him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. But he answered and said to them, my mother, It's kind of an interesting event that follows the parable here. And unless that last sentence was there, you'd wonder why it even made it in. And it's Jesus' point. God's children hear and obey, right? This is the point to sum up all the points. God's children, if you wanna be in God's family and you wonder if you're in God's family, you need to ask the question, do you hear and do you obey? Now, notice just a little background. I want you to think about this. How often Jesus' family seem to be against him in the New Testament? And Luke 2, right? We're getting there in our reading. Jesus is a boy. They go to Jerusalem for the Passover. He's 12 years old. While his parents head home, they thought he was in the caravan. He wasn't there. They go back. They look for him for three days. They find him. They get mad, clearly and probably naturally. They're like, where have you been? Why would you ever do this to us? And isn't it interesting that Jesus rebukes him? rebukes his own mom at 12. He says, do you not know that I had to be in my father's house? What's wrong with you, mom? How would you not know this? Later, In Cana of Galilee, quite later in life, they're at a wedding. Mary comes to Jesus, says, they're out of wine. Jesus looks at his mom and says, woman, what does that have to do with us? My time has not yet come. And then he goes on and does the miracle that his mom told him to do, right? The escalation of tension continues to rise. It reaches its peak in Mark 3, when it says, when his own people or family heard of this, they went out to take custody of him, for they were saying, he has lost his senses. Now, the family of Jesus is not always on board with what Jesus is doing in his ministry. In fact, they come to basically kidnap him at some point. Could be this situation in Luke, that could be a parallel passage. But the point here is very simple. Even when faced with opposition from his own family, Jesus always listened to and obeyed his father in heaven. Notice verse 20, and it was reported to him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. So they think, they think, hey, we're his family. We have some kind of exclusive access to Jesus, even though there's a big crowd here and it's hard to get to him. Jesus needs to drop what he's doing and he needs to come talk to his family. He needs to pay attention to us. You know, last week I talked to a friend, very, very dear friend, who I hadn't spoken to in 14 years. We didn't have a falling out or anything. We grew up together. I've had more outdoor adventures with this guy than any other guy I know. We were very close to each other. As we're talking, he brings up us not speaking for so long, and he says, I asked some people, I was like, man, what happened to Matt? What happened to this guy? Some of the people he asked said, yeah, Matt, he's got a whole new life now. He said, yeah, man, you just dropped off the face of the earth when you got onto the whole Christian thing. I said, yeah, I have a totally new life, whole different life. And that's what happens when God calls us and we hear and we obey, okay? People don't understand where you went. They don't understand. You have these entirely new and different dedications to life that you didn't have before. And they feel like maybe you didn't like them. You stopped loving them or caring for them, but that wasn't it at all. Think of where Jesus is standing here as he says this. Think of how hurtful this could be to his mother and his family as he says, guess what? Doesn't matter. My family, my mother, my brothers, those are the ones who hear the word of God and do it. And in that moment, his brothers were definitely not following him. Mary, I think, was, but she was very concerned about his ministry. God calls and we're to listen and to obey. And in all of our weakness, we need to do our best to obey that calling. We won't do it as well as Jesus did, but when God tells us to do something, we hear and obey. We do it with the focus and diligence of a son who is obedient to his father. And by this, It's by this that we demonstrate we are the children of God. He says, but he answered and said to them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. We learn two things. There's two things I want to point out about hearing and obeying. There's a minor point here and then there's a major point. The minor point is this. God's will has precedent over all of our other obligations. You could take this text, that could be a whole sermon. We're going to make it a minor point today. Family, friends, jobs, I don't care what it is, all of it is subservient to the primary call of God's kingdom. That's hearing and obeying. If you're not making the call of the kingdom, the primary goal and objective of your life, you are not hearing and you're not obeying, and you have cause to question whether you're in God's family. That's what Jesus wants us to hear from this. All those other obligations have to be subjected to that primary obligation that we have to God's kingdom. That's the minor point. The major point is this. true members of God's family will obey God's call to His kingdom. My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. When we're called to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, that puts everything else in subjection to that command. And the mark of obedience is, are we doing that? Is that the goal? And you're not gonna do it perfectly. I don't do it perfectly. But the mark of a true brother or sister, or isn't this great, ladies? A mother of Jesus. And I want you to ponder that for a second. It's great, brothers, we get it, like what being a brother with Jesus is all about. Like we get to fist bump with Jesus, and we get to like joke around. There's gonna be some great relational stuff there with due respect and all that, don't make it trivial. But there will be a brotherly relationship there. But yet Jesus doesn't say sisters here, he says mothers. And I think what Jesus is kind of saying is like as his the elder sister, you get to kind of take care of Jesus, like hang out with him, you know, I don't know, wipe something off his beard. I don't know what he's getting at here, but it's really, really incredible. Jesus will look upon you as like mothers to him. And I think that's fantastic. Who has access to Jesus like this? Like who gets to treat Jesus in these familial ways, these family-like relations? Well, Those who obey the call to confess their sins. Those who turn to Jesus for salvation from their sins. Those who now walk in the humility of grace. Those who are growing in holiness. Those who persevere to the very end. He is our brother. He is close to us in ways that he is close to no one else. And we demonstrate that we are of his family when we hear and obey the word of God. You see the lamp in this passage makes our reception of God's word. It speaks of that. We accept God's word. It's a light shining in us. We don't cover it up. We don't ignore it. We don't put it under the bed and forget about it. We hear it and we obey it. False professors are exposed by their rejection and their disobedience. Christians living in perpetual sin will be exposed and it will be brought to light and God will save them from destruction by great embarrassment. When we respond in obedience to God's word, we're given more truth. We bear more fruit. We grow in spiritual knowledge. When truth is rejected, we go the other way. God actually begins to take away the truth from us. He hands us over to the ignorance and folly of our hearts and the mark The mark of true conversion, the mark of being a member of God's family is that we hear and obey. Hearing without doing. is the greatest danger that we face as reformed Christians. I had a conversation yesterday with a gentleman who's looking at going into academics. I was hugely encouraged. He had just got interviewed to do some teaching at a seminary. And the guy said, how much do we have to pay you to get you to move down here to do this? And he laughed. He said, I'll die in my church because I believe that pastors who are in churches need to be training pastors to pastor churches, not academics. Guys who just think about things all day long, have one thought once in a while, and they think they need to get paid to write a book about the thought, and then they go out and try to train pastors how to shepherd people's souls. I was hugely encouraged by that kind of thinking, right? It's not about just hearing and knowing things. It's about putting God's Word into practice. It's about doing something with God's Word. What does God tell you to do? And are you doing it? Are you confessing sin? Are you forgiving the person who has sinned against you? Are you speaking the truth and love to your neighbor? Are you putting to death and ceasing from that persistent sin that keeps tangling you up and causing you to trip? Are you loving? the ones that God has called you to love? Are you serving the ones that God has called you to serve? And most of all, are you looking to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and for the righteousness apart from which you may not enter the kingdom of heaven? Will you hear the call of the gospel and will you believe it? And will you then turn and hear God's Word and obey it as the marker and the fruit and the evidence of a real faith? That's what the text is about. Let's pray.