Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's go to Luke chapter eight. Luke chapter eight.
[00:00:06] And we want to continue with what we call the harvest analogy as it relates to giving the gospel out.
[00:00:14] We have talked about so far. We've talked about the last week. We were talking about the seed, and that is the Word of God. Luke 8, verse number 11. Now the parable is this. The seed is the Word of God. And so we were examining that. What does it mean that the seed is the word of God? Of course, the seed is the thing that is sown.
[00:00:41] And we talked about that. And then we also saw how that the seed, being the Word of God, has life in itself.
[00:00:50] Nothing else is needed for it to for life to be produced.
[00:00:55] And that is the way the Word of God is. And we looked at several verses, primarily Hebrews 4:12.
[00:01:02] But we also saw other verses that describe the efficacy and power of God's Word because God himself is the author and because God is alive, so his Word is alive.
[00:01:16] And so we talked about that as well, and how it's important that we sow God's word. We actually give people what the Lord says. So what I want to do today is I want to look at actually two more points in this matter. In Luke 8.
[00:01:34] I want to look at the idea of sowing, and then I also want to look at some hindrances that occur in this chapter. So let's pray first, and then we will look at Luke chapter eight. Our Father, thank you for the chance to be here today. Thank you, Lord, for your goodness to us. Thank you for the Gospel, for the Word of God. Lord, we are living proof that the Word of God has power. Lord, we are what we are by the grace of God because of the work of your Word in us. Lord, the things that we've heard, the teaching and the instructions that you've given to us from your Word, the way that you have admonished us and corrected us by your word, Lord, have made us what we are. And Lord, we give you thanks for that. Lord, we know that we're unfinished and we have we have more, more things in our lives that need to be improved. But thank you for what you've done in us. Thank you for what you've done in your people that are here. Lord, I pray especially as we look in your Word today in our Sunday school class that you would bless it and help our hearts to be focused and in tune with what your Word says. But I pray especially that you would help us to see the practical value of these things as we think about real living souls that need to be saved, who are right now, on the broad way that leads to destruction. Lord, please help us to be faithful. Help us, Lord, to sow the Word in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:03:18] All right, so we want to look at sowing. Notice verse number five. Verse number five.
[00:03:27] And this is a. We'll look at the first sentence here.
[00:03:32] Verse 5 says, A sower went out to sow his seed. Notice that he went out to sow his seed. Now, I'll just give you a few kind of bullet points before we move on to the next thing, but I want you to see this. That as the sower goes out with his seed, he has on himself. He has a pouch full of seed. It says in verse number five, his seed. So the sower already has the seed. That's the key. The sower already has the seed. In other words, he is going out to take the seed and put it in a place where it is not yet. It is not yet brought forth fruit. It has not yet been sown. But before he can do that, he himself has the seed. Now, here's the question.
[00:04:24] Where did the seed come from?
[00:04:27] The seed, you know, you think of wheat or barley, some sort of grain, rice. Where does the seed that this sower is carrying come from?
[00:04:36] What original plant? Exactly. So here's what you see here. The sower then represents a person.
[00:04:46] I know. If you look at the parable of the wheat and the tares, I think it's in this chapter as well.
[00:04:54] No, I'm thinking Matthew 13. I think it's in Matthew 13, the parallel passage. But in the parable of the wheat and tares, the sower is identified as the son of man, who is Jesus. But in this case, you could say that this is a reference to Jesus in the sense that the Lord is the one ultimately who is directing the harvest and sowing the seed and all that. But specifically, as it relates to us, we are the sowers, but we already have the seed. And just as the sower, he has his seed from the prior harvest. That's the way they do. They reserve part of the seed so that they can use it for a later period of cultivation. Right. Is that how it works? So he has already had an experience and benefited from the harvest in his life, and now he has extra.
[00:05:47] And now he has seed remaining, which is an outgrowth of the fruitfulness that has already been shown in his own life as a beautiful picture of our. In fact, not just in the subject of evangelism, but in all Christian Virtues and disciplines that we exhibit, they are all outworkings of God's work in our life. Every bit of service that we do, assuming, you know, assuming we do it for the Lord, you know, for God's glory and no other mixed motive. But all the service that we do is an outgrowth of God's. The fruitfulness in our own life. But specifically in this particular matter, the seed that we have, that we give to other people is seed that we that has already borne fruit in our lives prior.
[00:06:38] So the word we give to people, even our very understanding of the gospel, you know, one thing that I think is very important, and we talked about this when we talked about the seed, it is not enough to just, you know, we all. We all should be adept at actually being able to sit down and explain the truths of the gospel, of sin and of eternal life, eternal death, the gospel, the cross, the resurrection, you know, faith in Christ, all of the. We should all have the ability to explain that. But as we grow, we ought to get better and better at that, at explaining that. Right? The truths ought to get more firm and more clear, and we ought to be better at doing that because giving the gospel is an outgrowth of our own understanding of the gospel.
[00:07:32] You see, here's the thing, and this is, you know, when Charles Spurgeon, as an example, one of the things that he would constantly remind his students about is that every message, no matter what it's about, should come back to Christ and should come back to the gospel. And sometimes, and I'll just be honest with you, as we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount, some of that is it's kind of hard to find the connection and the relationship. It's not always obvious.
[00:08:02] But here's the point. As we grow our own understanding of the gospel truths, it's not just something we hear and understand when we get saved, but as we grow, those truths become more rich and full in our own heart. Again, we're just sowing seed that has already borne fruit in our own lives.
[00:08:22] That's what it's all about.
[00:08:24] The Lord has chosen to use our life and the fruitfulness in our life to get the seed to other people. The seed. You could say it like this. The seed itself is the result of fruit bearing.
[00:08:41] All right, let's look at the second thing. Verse number five. A sower went out to sow his seed.
[00:08:50] What good would it be if he stayed at home to sow his seed? Can't happen.
[00:08:56] In order for the sower to provide any benefit or fruitfulness. He has to leave his home, he has to leave his place, and he has to go to another place where the seed is needed. He has to go to where the ground does not have seed. He has to go to a place where the seed is necessary. So there's this idea of going. The sower went out, he left. He went to the place where it was needed, to the barren ground, to the place where there was no fruit. And that's actually what we're doing now. You might. Here's the thing. Here's what I fear. That living in the south, we.
[00:09:36] And it's less and less like this, I admit. But living in the south, we live in a Southern, you know, a pretty religious culture. Would you agree? It's fairly religious.
[00:09:47] And sometimes we mistake that and confuse that with the gospel.
[00:09:55] I want to tell you something. Some of the most religious people that you might meet in public in the general society do not know God.
[00:10:05] That's just the truth. They do not. They know religion, they know church. They know Bible verses sometimes, you know, they know religious acts and activities and all of that. But a direct relationship to God is something that is really foreign to a lot of religious people around here.
[00:10:23] So we shouldn't get the idea that. Well, I mean, everybody around here knows about Jesus.
[00:10:30] They know the words, they know the lingo, they know the, you know, the jargon. They know the religion. Yes, but we're not going out. We're not going out to ground. That is like a ground, a field of standing wheat. Like that is not what we're doing when we go out outside of these doors in Greenville. We're going out to ground. That needs seed, notwithstanding the fact that religion and churches are everywhere. And I'll tell you something, that's changing. That is changing the society in which we live. Forget about everywhere else but the place, the locality in which we live is becoming more and more, you know, kind of averse and gospel ignorant. So when the Bible says the sower went out to sow a seed, go ye therefore, and teach all nations. He's telling us to go to where they are and not let anything dissuade you. Dissuade me? Well, they have already heard it. They know it. They go to church. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Because the people of God. Now, we do meet them when we do our evangelism and things, we do meet people who are saved, you know, and they have a clear testimony of salvation. And we rejoice in that. But that's not common. That's not common. And besides that, we still have to go to where they are. There's no, you know, even the idea of. And I know in church, you know, especially, again, this is a cultural thing, a Christian cultural thing. But the idea that we bring people into the church to preach the gospel to them, that's fine and good if that happens incidentally. And we do want people to be introduced to the gospel and those kinds of things. But the primary way that the gospel is supposed to be spread by what the Lord says is for us to go to them, not to bring them to us. And I know this is like, you know, to some people, this is anathema to our ears, you know, you don't invite people to church. Well, yeah, that's fine and good, you know, all things being right. But really, is it not a lot easier to just say, hey, we come to our church instead of, hey, are you going to heaven or hell? Right. Sometimes. Sometimes, I'm afraid we use it as kind of a cop out, right?
[00:12:54] As kind of. We don't explain the gospel. It's a lot easier to invite them to our church. And again, we rejoice when people come and we hear the gospel, but they hear the gospel rather. But really biblically, the sower went out to sow, right?
[00:13:11] Because that's where people are. There is a segment of people that will come to church, but, you know, there's a huge segment of our society that will never come to our church no matter what.
[00:13:22] So, I mean, we got to reach those people, right? We got to try.
[00:13:27] So, okay, look at verses 12.
[00:13:39] We're talking about sowing now, sowing, which is our duty, our responsibility. Verse 12 says, those by the wayside are they that hear verse 13, they on the rock, verse 14, and that which fell among thorns, and 15 and that on the good ground. So in each case, what do you see? In each case, you see the word of God found on the ground, the seed found on the ground. So the sower went out and he put the seed on the ground. I know this is a very simple point, but often the breakdown in evangelism is that we don't do it, right? That we just don't. We don't engage in it. We just don't do it. We don't go to where people are.
[00:14:23] And so the seed does not end up on the ground. And of course, if it's not found on the ground, it certainly can't bring forth fruit. Now, notice in this case, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, this is referring this particular type of cultivation is sowing. This is different than planting, like what we would think of as planting in our garden. This is broad, random scattering of seed. This is not the planting of individual plants. And so this talks about the manner of sowing. Now here's the thing.
[00:15:00] The Bible does refer to planting in First Corinthians, it refers to planting. Paul said, I have planted, right? I've planted. Now there's, there's probably not a lot of difference between the two, but I just want to draw. The method matters. Just like when we talked about the idea of fishing for men, right? Fishing for men. The method used is not necessarily hook fishing, angling as they call it, but it's net fishing, net fishing. Well, in this case, the truth is similar.
[00:15:32] What the manner of sowing that's used here is this kind of broad sowing to all people without discrimination.
[00:15:42] So although private individual conversations are perfectly valid and right and good and a good way to give the gospel to people, in fact, that's usually, that's often, those private conversations are usually kind of the, kind of the second step, right, once you meet someone, you know, is to maintain that connection and then, and then meet with them later. But what's being described here is the general public dissemination of God's word, the general public dissemination of God's word. This is the intentional going out to where people are telling them in mass about Jesus. And this, listen, this is why, this is why we have a ministry to be engaged in that kind of thing. That kind of thing, whether it be our door to door evangelism or evangelism in downtown Greenville or whatever, you know, the fall for Greenville or in other cases, whatever the case might be, the idea is that we're spreading the seed without discrimination. You have no idea, I have no idea where all that will go. Even when we went to, when we went to fall for Greenville, recently passed out, you know, lots hundreds and hundreds of gospel tracts. We have no idea what the effect of that will be. Just like the sower. He has no idea. Truth is the sower is going to sow his seed and he's going to go on his way. And he's never going to, he's probably never going to see that again, right?
[00:17:15] So the sowing is itself an act of faith. You just sow it and leave the results to God. You sow it and leave the results to God. You sow it and leave the results to God. You keep going, Keep going.
[00:17:27] Okay, let's look at a couple other things here. Look at Second Corinthians, chapter nine.
[00:17:33] We'll come back to Luke 8 in a minute. Second Corinthians, chapter nine, verse number.
[00:17:56] Verse number six. Now, the context of this passage is offerings, right? Specifically, offerings to the poor saints in Jerusalem. But the principle is true and it spans the subject. All right, Verse number six. But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly. And he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. So the simple truth and principle that is here is that there is a relationship between sowing and fruit bearing.
[00:18:36] The amount that you sow and the amount of fruit that is born is directly related. It's proportionate, proportional, right? So if you sow more often, there will be more fruit. If you sow less often or less seed, there will be less fruit. And this speaks directly to our job as the sowers of the Word.
[00:18:59] The more we sow, the more fruit can be born.
[00:19:05] So, you know, it involves work, it involves prayer, it involves our own involvement in ensuring that the seed gets out.
[00:19:19] Because if we. If we, you know, to that, you know, for instance, if we did our evangelism, and I know evangelism is both personal and corporate, but as an example, if we did our evangelism just once a year, that's not that. That's bad. It's not bad, but it's proportional.
[00:19:39] If you go out one day and you go out to one field and just for an hour, you sow seed, that seed could bear fruit, but it's not going to bear the same amount of fruit as if you went out every week or every day sowing your seed in the field. That's just. You cover more ground.
[00:19:58] And really, that's kind of what my heart's desire for our church is that as we sow the seed, let's do our best to cover the ground. This area where the Lord has established this church. Let's do our best to cover all the corners of this field, right? To get the gospel to as many people around here and not leave any place unturned.
[00:20:26] And sometimes that leads us down some pretty shady looking places. That's okay.
[00:20:32] Sometimes it leads us to places where people don't speak English. All right, Brother Jim, that's okay, too. But the point is, it is our job as sowers.
[00:20:44] I'll be honest with you.
[00:20:47] Brother David's observed this. I've observed this.
[00:20:51] Churches. The number of churches that are involved in active, intentional corporate evangelism is very, very few. Very, very Few. And often the ones that are, it's a very few within that number, within that church. And. But you think, you know, if there's 200 churches, as an example, and I'm just of whatever shape and size and sort, but if there's 200 churches, how many of them, what percentage of them are going to have an active, intentional effort to get the gospel to other people? Right? I mean, 10%.
[00:21:33] So, I mean, when you talking about a large area, that's a lot of work to do. You know, on our evangelism, we, you know, I have a map on Google Earth and I have the various neighborhoods highlighted and all that, you know, for this purpose.
[00:21:49] And when I zoom out, it's like, wow, there is a lot to do. There are a lot of people to cover. There's a lot, you know, And I know those of you that have gone out with us know that sometimes when you give the gospel, give the gospel and you try to share the gospel, you know, people are closed. They are not interested, generally speaking. They're just. It's not a thing they want to engage in, engage with, irrelevant.
[00:22:19] That's God's business. We'll see in a minute.
[00:22:23] But it's our duty to go out and sow, right? Go out and sow. Go out and so do our best.
[00:22:31] Now, a couple of the things to tie this up about the sower, the sowing is I just want to remind everyone that, you know, when you meditate upon the way this is done, and I hinted at this earlier, that the sower is often not the same person who sees the fruit.
[00:22:49] Behind him will come people later who will harvest the fruit. And he will never know anything about that. Right? Especially in a large field where different people are given different jobs.
[00:23:00] And so he does it by faith. He does it by faith. And often the fruit that we see is not fruit. That's directly a result of what we do, but a result of what others have done. Look at John 4, if you would.
[00:23:18] John 4.
[00:23:27] Of course, verse number 35 is a verse a lot of people know.
[00:23:34] Verse 35 says this. Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal. Notice it says, he that reapeth. That's at the end, right? That's when you get the fruit that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice. Together.
[00:24:03] All right, we'll see that later. But verse number 37, and herein is that saying true, one soweth and another reapeth. See, you see what I'm saying? The sower doesn't usually see the fruit. Somebody else does. But it says in verse 38, I sent you. Jesus said, I sent you to reap on that wherein ye bestowed no labor.
[00:24:26] Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors. See that? So the fruit, like I said, the fruit that we see, whatever fruit we see with people getting saved or people responding to the gospel is fruit that we probably didn't sow the seed for that person.
[00:24:46] Right? Other people did, and we just got to get in on the tail end of it.
[00:24:51] But the reverse of that is true as well. What we sow will often be seen by others, even though it's not seen by ourselves.
[00:25:00] This is a big work the Lord is doing in this harvest of His. It's not just about us and ours and our number and our church. That's. You know, we pray for all that and we want that to be blessed on it. But that's. It's a big picture. It's a big picture. The Lord's doing something on a big scale, and we have a job to do in it. All right, go back to Luke chapter number eight, if you would, back to the parable.
[00:25:34] I want to look at what I call the Gospel hindrances. So we've seen the word, we've seen the ground, we've seen the sowing, we've seen the harvest as a whole. We've seen all of these things. But within this passage, you also see hindrances, things that stand in the way of fruitfulness. Now, what is the whole purpose? The whole purpose, when a seed is sown, the whole purpose is not to have a beautiful plant to look at. Do any of you grow a garden just to look at it?
[00:26:10] How many of you? Does anybody have a garden?
[00:26:12] Gardens are a thing. It seems like a thing of the past, but I know my grandfather had a garden growing up. I don't have any real room to have a garden, although my wife's been trying to get me to make one, but we don't have one. But you do not grow a garden for the beauty of the plants. In fact, most of those plants are ugly that bear fruit.
[00:26:33] You grow a garden for one reason and one reason only, and that is the fruit, that is the vegetables, that is the product, right? So there are things that get in the way of the end goal.
[00:26:52] There Are things that get in the way in the end goal. At each step in the cultivating process, there are hindrances. In fact, it almost seems like everything is set against fruitfulness.
[00:27:08] You know, it's a lot of work when you garden because it's not just you, you know, you gotta. You gotta plow the ground, right? You gotta till it and you gotta get it loose. And then you have to, you know, you have to fertilize it, right? You have to plant the seed. And then you think, oh, well, I plant the seed. You know, my job is done. Forget that.
[00:27:27] If you leave that thing alone, you know what will happen? It'll be overgrown, it'll get choked. All the nutrients will be sucked out by plants that you don't want to be there. And before you know it, you will not have any fruit at the end. You know why? You know, it's a perfect. You know, why does that happen? You know, theologically. Theologically, why does that happen? It's sin. Sin entered into the world. The ground is cursed. That's why. Thorns and thistles and all that, right? But think about. Think about that, and I'll apply it to what we're talking about here. The same is true. At every step, there's something that's going to hinder the word of God from bearing fruit at every step.
[00:28:02] That's what I want to look at. The first thing I want you to look at is in verse number.
[00:28:07] Verse number five. The sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. Now go to the interpretation in verse number 12.
[00:28:21] Those by the wayside are they that hear.
[00:28:24] Then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. So this seed, it was faithfully sown on the ground. It was faithfully sown. So the process was not hindered at that moment in that step.
[00:28:48] The sower was faithful, okay? But once he's faithful. Now you have the seed in the ground. But now you have a bird. The devil, you say the devil. How does the devil take seed? Take the word of God out of people's hearts? He is there because the devil, he knows that the seed has life in itself, and he knows that the seed has power to produce fruit. So what he does is he seeks to snatch it out of the ground before it can even sprout, before it has a chance to sprout, much less take root much less grow, much less bear fruit. At the very beginning of the process, he has designed, he has designed strategies to nullify the word of God. As soon as a person hears it, you understand what I'm saying? As soon as it falls on their ears, they reject it.
[00:29:46] That's what we're looking at here. You say, well, how does the devil do that? You gotta realize the devil is doing his work in the background and he's not telling people what he's doing. He's doing his work in the background. And it is subtle and he's using means to do it.
[00:30:03] So let me give you kind of a definition of what this means.
[00:30:07] The files of the air, snatching it out here it is. Anything that nullifies the word of God, the heart falls in this category. Anything that causes an immediate rejection of God's word out of hand. That is what this is talking about.
[00:30:25] Now think to yourself, what kinds of things do that? As soon as someone hears the word, they immediately reject it.
[00:30:35] First of all, we got to see that that is satanic in origin. That is a the work of the devil.
[00:30:44] It is designed to keep the seed from a single moment on the ground.
[00:30:48] And notice that this all occurs. Notice verse number 12. Then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their what? Out of their hearts. So this all happens in the heart. This is not really an outward thing. This is an inward thing. And that person who heard the word of God, they heard it, and as soon as they heard it, rejected it.
[00:31:10] Why?
[00:31:12] I'll submit three causes.
[00:31:18] And all three of these are associated with Satan in the scripture, right? With Satan himself. Not the world, not the flesh. And those things are involved later. But three things that are primarily associated with the work of Satan in scripture, that directly steal the word of God out of somebody's heart. False doctrine, false religion, and false brethren or false teachers.
[00:31:45] First Timothy 4:1 refers to doctrines of devils. What is that? What is a doctrine of a devil? That is a doctrine, a teaching that the devil has established and founded. And here's what it does. When that doctrine gets into somebody's mind and heart, when that doctrine gets into their mind and heart, when they hear something contrary to that doctrine, it snuffs the word of God and the truth that the word has. As soon as they hear it, like you have to be a good person to go to heaven.
[00:32:22] That is a doctrine of devils.
[00:32:25] That's a doctrine of devils. And yet somebody, you come along and say, you can never do enough good to get to heaven, you Know, you say something like that, Brother Jim, and it's immediately, immediately rejected.
[00:32:37] Why? You say, well, that. That's what most everybody believes. That should tell you something, right?
[00:32:46] But it's not just that.
[00:32:49] Any, any. Any kind of doctrine, you know, you think of. You think of especially like Jehovah's Witnesses, they have doctrines of devils, doctrines that are founded by the devil. They will not. Those of you that have gone downtown and see them standing, waiting on people to talk to them, when you see them, you try to talk to them, it's shut down immediately because of the doctrines they've embraced. So that's one. The second one is false religion. Revelation 2, 9 refers to the synagogue of Satan. And we can go to other passages, but I just use that as kind of an example. The synagogue, that's the Jewish religion where they met, the synagogue of Satan is the devil's church. The devil's church. False religion blinds people's heart and it fills their mind and heart with pride to the degree that they are unwilling to even give the slightest ear to anything that does not come out of the religious source that they think is right, that their family has held to, that Grandma and Grandpa believed or held to. You see what I'm saying? The word of God hasn't even had a chance to go down. Here's what often. And those of you that know that were saved out of religious backgrounds that weren't Christian, right? Biblical. Biblically Christian.
[00:34:14] You know, most people like that initially say, I didn't want to hear it. I was raised whatever. I was raised Muslim, I was raised Catholic, I was raised Episcopalian. I was raised whatever. I didn't want to hear it. But what happened is, you know, that's the devil snatching it out of people's heart. But what happened is later, and this is a cool fact, because, you know, if you sow seed right here and then the crow, crow, sparrow, I don't. What eats. What eats seed. You know, I thought crow eats carrion. Anyway, so a bird's sitting there waiting, and it sees the seed fall on the ground and it swoops down as soon as he sees it, because he sees seed and he swoops it and takes it away. You know, another day you might come and you might sow, and the bird's not there.
[00:34:58] You know what happens? That seed goes into the ground and is not snatched away. And that's the danger. Because that person who's involved in that religion, who initially, out of pride, right, and identity of their religion, rejected it, but somehow it got in.
[00:35:15] And once it gets in, Katie, bar the door. You can't control what it might do, you know, even in. Even in the narrowest cracks on table rock, seed gets in there and it'll split that rock down the middle. Because there's power in the Word. And a lot of those people that actually end up getting saved will give test that something stuck, a truth of the scripture stuck in their mind, and it brought forth fruit eventually.
[00:35:43] And the last one is false brethren, false teachers. Second Corinthians 11, 13, and 14 describes false apostles who were transformed into an angel of light, Right? And this. Listen, did you know there are people that have been harmed by people that profess to know Jesus?
[00:36:07] And as a result of that harm by those people immediately reject God's word, Right? False brethren, people, wolves in sheep's clothing, parading around like Christians, like preachers, like pastors, like missionaries, doing harm to people, doing active harm to people, the result of which is later the seed is sown, snatched away.
[00:36:39] Those people exist. Those people exist doesn't mean the truth isn't the truth. The Word is not. Isn't the Word, The Word is the Word.
[00:36:47] But false brethren have. The devil has so designed it to snatch the Word as soon as they hear it.
[00:36:55] That's what it's all about. That's the whole thing. Stop the word of God from getting to the ground.
[00:37:04] But as I said, the good news is, even though the fowls of the air are in the trees nearby, it's not final.
[00:37:11] It might be at a later time. The birds aren't around, and the Word can be sown and can bear fruit. Let's pray.
