You can turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 8 as we continue our series in the gospel of Luke. We come to chapter 8 tonight; it can be found on page 864 in the Bibles located in the pew in front of you.
Before Meta was Facebook, it was just a prefix or a Greek preposition. Today, people talk about the Metaverse or the world of virtual reality and I am lost in a hurry! A few months ago, actually, we were on a campus visit to Mississippi State and one of the speakers there was a researcher for Facebook. And she told us that the focus of her research was to help people connect in the Metaverse. And I had no idea what she was talking about. And I realized right then and there that the world of social media had left me far behind and I had no hope of catching up. I am never going to be ready for the Metaverse, whatever that is!
But I can understand more when people talk about a metanarrative or maybe meta-humor. A metanarrative is the big story that helps to make sense of all the little stories. It’s the big picture. It’s the worldview. It provides a framework for how we understand history and current events and how we think about the future. The Gospel is a metanarrative. It’s the big story that helps us make sense of all our lives. Meta-humor or a meta-joke is a joke about a joke. It’s like when a comedian makes a joke about the audience’s reaction to his joke. So for example, one comedian said, “When I told my friends that I was going to be a comedian, they all laughed at me. Well nobody’s laughing now, are they?” Meta can mean something with a sense of “rising above” or “outside of” the little details.
Well in Luke chapter 8, Jesus tells a meta-parable because this parable is a parable about parables. It’s the parable of the sower, or actually it’s better understood as the parable of the four soils. And this parable tells us the purpose of Jesus’ teaching in parables. And we’ve already come to a few parables already in His teaching in the gospel of Luke. We’ve heard the parable of the wineskins; the parable of the blind leading the blind. And you’re probably familiar with the fact that Jesus regularly taught in parables. You’re probably familiar with what a parable is, that it’s a story or an illustration or maybe just a comparison. It helps to provide some clarity or some precision to the point that Jesus was trying to make.
But in the case of Jesus’ teaching parables, there’s also an element of judgment in them because His parables exposed those who did not have ears to hear. It exposed those whose hearts were hard to what He was preaching and teaching and doing. That their hearts were hard to Him in unbelief. So we can say that those who miss the parables miss the kingdom of God. “Take care then, how you hear,” is what Jesus says in Luke chapter 8 verse 18. We’ll read that in just a second. Literally, in the Greek, He is saying, “Watch. Look out. Watch how you hear. Take care how you hear.” Last time we saw that the call to faith, there was a call to faith in light of Jesus’ ministry. Well tonight, these verses are about something closely tied to that call to faith, and that is hearing – hearing the Word of God; hearing with ears to hear. But it’s a hearing that doesn’t stop with merely hearing.
So we’ll see two things in this passage tonight. We’ll see the challenge to hear and the challenge of hearing. The challenge to hear and the challenge of hearing. Let’s pray and ask God to help us hear as we read His Word.
Father, we thank You for Your Word that You have revealed to us tonight. We ask that You would give us ears to hear, that we would see Jesus, and that we would grow in our love for Him and our likeness to Him. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would work in us as we read and study Your Word tonight. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 8, from verse 1 to 21:
“Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve 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 Chuza, 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. And 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 as 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.
No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.’
Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.’ But he answered them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
The Challenge to Hear
Jesus is continuing His ministry in Galilee in these verses. Verse 1 says, “He went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.” Now there’s a map in your bulletin that shows some of these cities; the cities and villages that were in Galilee. There’s Nazareth that you know well. Nazareth was Jesus’ hometown. There’s Capernaum a little to the north along the Sea of Galilee. That was something of Jesus’ homebase during His ministry in this time of His life that took place in Galilee. It’s also the place we read about in chapter 7, the home of the centurion whose servant was healed. You see Na’an back there closer to Nazareth. Na’an was the town where Jesus raised the widow’s son from the dead. And then there’s Magdala along the Sea of Galilee. Magdala is the home of Mary who is mentioned here in verse 2 as one of Jesus’ companions and supporters. This is the section, this is the area where most of Jesus’ ministry is taking place during this time that we are reading about tonight. In fact, we’ll come back next week and see in the rest of chapter 8 where Jesus goes across the Sea of Galilee into the area of Decapolis and there He heals the man who was possessed by demons. So all of this section of Luke’s gospel is taking place in this general area, in the area of Galilee.
And what we see here, what we have seen as we have studied these chapters, is that there is a uniformity and a diversity in Jesus’ ministry. Everywhere He went, He did the same thing. He proclaimed and He brought the good news of the kingdom of God. But He did that to all different sorts of people. He proclaimed and He brought the good news of the kingdom of God to fishermen and to tax collectors and to centurions and to women. Luke’s gospel places a particular emphasis on the role of women in Jesus’ life and ministry. And in these verses we read about Mary and Joanna and Susanna and many others who provided for Jesus and His disciples out of their means. These were women from vastly different backgrounds. There was Mary who had been possessed by seven demons and so she would have been considered an outcast, an untouchable. And then there was Joanna. She was married to Herod’s household manager. She would have come from a place of respectable social status. They were from opposite ends of the social spectrum and yet they had come to follow Jesus and that brought them together.
We’ve seen from this section of Luke’s gospel some of the basics of what it means to follow Jesus, some of the basics of Christian discipleship. It means it is a life that is open and available to sinners. It is a life that is focused on Jesus. It is a life that loves like Jesus loves and values what Jesus values. In this passage tonight, the focus, the emphasis is on hearing. For a disciple of Jesus, how you hear matters. There’s a challenge to hear. “Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ,” Paul writes in Romans chapter 10. “Let me ask you this,” Paul asked to the Galatians in Galatians chapter 3, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing of faith?” The focus is on hearing. And it’s safe to say that Jesus’ top priority in His ministry was in preaching, on preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. In fact, He said back in Luke chapter 4 verse 43, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God, for I was sent for this purpose.” There’s an element even in which all of His healing ministry and the miraculous works that He performed in the various places, they were to confirm and to validate the message that He preached. He came to preach.
And what was the call of His message? What’s the call of the Gospel? The call of the Gospel is to hear. It is to hear and to believe. That’s it. It’s that simple. Charles Spurgeon has said before that, “Faith in itself is or ought to be the easiest thing in the world.” Salvation is entirely by grace. It’s focused on the cross and what Jesus did by His death and His resurrection. There’s nothing more for us to add. There’s nothing that we can do to improve upon the work of Jesus on the cross for us and for our salvation. And so, “Salvation is presented not as a reward for our own endeavors,” Spurgeon says, “but freely upon our accepting it as an act of simple faith or trust in Jesus Christ.” It’s so simple, isn’t it? We can say it so simply as that salvation depends upon hearing. Entering into the kingdom of God depends upon hearing. It depends upon hearing the Word of God and responding in faith and believing what He says. It is that simple. And it’s that foundational for the Christian life that we cannot miss the priority of hearing God’s Word rightly.
And yet there are so many hindrances and there are so many distractions that get in the way of hearing and responding to Jesus as we should, which is why Jesus taught this parable. It’s a parable that, on first glance, is unremarkably ordinary; it’s just by the fact that it’s so basic and commonplace. In fact, one writer says that “Galilee is the most geologically complex region in the Holy Land.” There was a mixture of rocky terrain along with fertile soil. And the setting that Jesus painted here was normal for Galilean agriculture. Some seed was always lost to the road and most of the fields contained bedrock and other stones of various sizes. Thorns and thistles were everywhere within and alongside the fields so that these four scenarios were common to practically every audience, every person in Jesus’ audience. They would have been a common sight to everyone in His audience who, most of them, had fields of their own as well. There’s something very everyday and familiar about this parable that Jesus tells, but the parable itself is a masterpiece. It’s almost a clinical diagnosis of the risk factors associated with hearing the Word of God by faith. This parable, it basically gives a comprehensive survey of the different reactions people have to God’s Word and Jesus does it in such simple language and such a few amount of words.
What are they? What are the barriers to understanding the secrets or the mysteries of the kingdom of God? Well in the first place, it’s a hard heart and the work of the devil. There are plenty of people who hear the Gospel but it doesn’t mean anything to them. They don’t recognize their spiritual need. They’re not interested in what the Bible says. They’re interested more in doing their own things so the Word just bounces off them. It’s in one ear and out the other and the message never penetrates into the heart.
And then there are those whose faith is superficial. It’s not equipped to weather hard times. These people may have been committed, they may have been bold, they may have been outspoken, they may have even been engaged in ministry, and yet when trials come – “How could a good God let such bad things happen? After all I’ve done to serve Him and He lets this happen to me?” And then they fall away. Maybe they become angry with God. Maybe they become hostile to the church. It’s a heartbreaking thing to see, and yet we’ve all seen it happen.
The third group that Jesus talks about are those who gradually give in to the allures of the world. In some sense, this is the opposite of those who are on the rocky soil and who wither by hardships. These are those who give into pleasures. And it’s maybe not as immediate and sudden of a turning away but it’s gradual. It may not even be noticed over the long run until the very end and you see that they have fallen away, turned away just like those who landed on the rocky soil. They looked alive and healthy, and yet in the end they are choked out by the good things the world has to offer.
And then Jesus talks about the good soil. Verse 15 – these are those who “hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart.” These are the ones who hear the Word of God, they respond in faith, and they persevere with patience in living a fruitful life in the kingdom of God. These are the four types of soils in this parable, and we know these exact scenarios, don’t we? You can probably think of names and stories and conversations that you’ve had with people who fall exactly into one of these four categories. So the question for us tonight is, “Which soil are you? Which one of these soils are you?” And Jesus says in verse 8, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Verse 18, “Take care how you hear.” How do you hear? How do you hear?
I remember a lady in the church telling me some years ago that when she first came to the church it was in the time when Dr. Miller was the pastor here and she confessed that when she first was here she didn’t get what it was that her friends so much appreciated about his preaching. And as she thought about it, she realized, she was convicted, that it was the way she was listening. It was the way she was hearing it. It has nothing to do with his preaching. It had nothing to do with the sermons. It was how she was hearing it, and that made all the difference to her.
We can all relate to having conversations with people – they’re not really hearing what you’re saying. And maybe there’s nothing that you can do to convince them of what you’re trying to say. There’s nothing that you can say to change their perspective. In fact, I will admit that I can sometimes be stubborn and I can be stubborn against doing something unless it’s my own idea. Maybe that’s a man thing; maybe it’s a me thing. But sometimes it takes hearing something enough times to where I think that it’s my own idea that then I’ll do it! Again, I’m not condoning that; I’m just confessing that. We have to all admit that we have hearing problems. We have challenges to hear. Did you notice what Jesus said in this parable? He says that each soil represents someone who heard the Word of God. Look back at verse 12. “The ones along the path are those who have heard.” Verse 13, “The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy.” Verse 14, “As for those that fell among the thorns, they are ones who hear.” Verse 15, “The good soil, they are the ones who hearing the Word of God hold it fast.” They all represent people who hear, but only one soil is considered good soil.
The Challenge of Hearing
How do you know what type of soil you are? What’s the difference between the good soil and all the rest? The difference is in hearing the Word of God and doing it. The difference is in paying attention to God’s Word and then putting it into practice. That’s the challenge of hearing. That’s the challenge of hearing the Word of God – to not just hear it but also to do it. It requires something of us. And that’s what Jesus is saying in verse 21 when He says that, “My mother and My brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it.” You see, those who are connected to Jesus, those who are His family, His disciples, those who are members of God’s kingdom, they are those who hear God’s Word and obey what God says. The good soil is that which receives the seed and it yields; it yields a hundred fold. It’s the person who hears the Word of God, who holds it fast with an honest and good heart, and then bears fruit with patience. It’s hearing that doesn’t stop with merely hearing. No, it’s a hearing that perseveres. It’s a hearing that keeps on hearing. It’s a hearing that keeps on applying what he hears. It’s a desire to seek and to know more, to have more faith and more understanding and to bear fruit. To do the things that represent love and joy and patience and kindness. Those are active endeavors that are fruitful in the Christian life.
In fact, it’s the same thing that we heard this morning, isn’t it, from the book of Joshua. And the question that Joshua asked, “How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land?” In other words, how long will you avoid obedience and doing what God has called you to do? And we hear that all over the Bible. In Deuteronomy chapter 5 it’s “You shall be careful to do as the Lord your God commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.” First John 2:3, “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” James says that, “As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” Faith comes from hearing, yes, but faith leads to obedience. And the disciple of Jesus is careful to hear the Word of God and then to do it.
So often, we hear God’s Word, we open our Bibles because that’s what we do. Or maybe we go and we’re looking for some sort of encouragement, something motivational for our day or for our week. Or maybe we’re doing it because we love theology. And there’s nothing wrong with a habit in God’s Word. There’s nothing wrong with the encouragement of God’s Word or with the theology that it teaches to us. But there’s also something for us to put into practice. There’s fruit to be born in our lives and in our relationships. Think about those things that are popular, things that are trendy around us; those things that we oftentimes try to copy ourselves and put into place in our own lives. What do we do there? Whether it’s clothes or accessories or lifestyle or even the way we behave, we pay attention to what others are doing and then we do it. We pay attention and we respond.
Are we as careful to pay attention to God’s Word and then to do what it says? That’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard when it costs us something. It’s hard when it means saying “No” to ourselves. It’s hard when it means saying “No” to our children and when it costs them something. It’s a challenge when it means we are going to miss out. And we live in a culture in which everything is immediate. It’s right now. There’s instant information. There’s instant images. There is instant gratification. And we can be so influenced and guided by social media and what we see on TV. But are we careful with how we hear the Word of God? Do we take time to pause and to think and to pray and to ask ourselves, “What does God’s Word say in this situation?” and “How should I live in obedience to God in this particular situation in my life?” and not be pulled by our emotions and our impulses but being guided and driven by the Word of God and by the work of the Holy Spirit as He speaks through it?
Hearing God’s Word is really important and we need a regular practice of reading the Bible. We need a regular practice of hearing God’s Word preached to be one who listens and hears with ears to hear. In fact, some of our discipleship groups over the past year have studied David Strain’s little book on expository preaching. And in that book there is a section on how we can be prepared, active and fruitful listeners to expository preaching; to hear God’s Word with ears to hear and to put those things into practice. We need to take care how we hear – to hear in order to obey; to hear the Word of God and then to do it. J.C. Ryle says that, “A religion which costs us nothing and consists in nothing but hearing sermons will always prove at last to be a useless thing.” The good soil, they are those who “hearing the Word of God hold it fast in honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.” Let’s pray and ask God to help us do that.
Our Father, we see our lives right before us in this parable and all the things that can be a distraction and a hindrance to us hearing and responding to Your Word as You have called us to do. And so we pray that You would protect us, that You would keep us, that You would cultivate the soil of our hearts, that Your seed, that Your Word would find fertile ground, that You would help us to understand and to apply what Your Word says in every situation in our lives, in our relationships, in our callings, in our responsibilities, in our obligations. And in the challenges and good things in this life, that we would obey and live as Your disciples to do Your Word and to bear fruit for Your glory. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.