The Harvest Analogy (Part 5)

[00:00:00] We will continue our study in the harvest analogy. This is our fifth lesson. Of course, I did not intend on this subject to go this long on this particular part of the harvest, but hopefully it's been a help to you as we've looked at these things in the context of evangelism, which is what the harvest analogy pictures. [00:00:26] So in Luke chapter eight, we'll just read our text here to pick up the context and refresh our memory a little bit. [00:00:36] Luke 8. 4. The Bible says, and when much people were gathered together and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable. A 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. And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. [00:01:06] And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground and sprang up and bare fruit an hundred fold. And when he had said these things, he cried, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. [00:01:23] And then he interprets it in verse number 11. Now the parable is this. The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear. Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. Then on the rock they on the rock are they which, when they hear, receive the word with joy. And these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. [00:01:54] And that which fell among thorns are they which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. [00:02:06] But that on the good ground are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. All right, let's pray together. [00:02:17] Lord in heaven, thank you once again to be able to meet in our Sunday School class to study the Word, to examine it, to open our heart to what it says. And I pray that you'd help your people as we look at your word, that you would be our instructor and our teacher, and that you would not only teach us new things and remind us of things we already know, but help us to know how to apply these things and. And to use these things to help us to be better evangelists and to have a greater burden for people, and to know how to respond to some of the things we read in the scripture. Thank you for your word, Lord, that the depth of your word is far greater than we understand. And we can always dig for more and draw out more water, and there will always be more. And so we thank you for that. Thank you for your people that are here. Lord, please give mercy and healing to those among us who are unwell. [00:03:12] And please strengthen them and heal them that they might be back with us soon. And we pray for your blessing upon them as well. In Jesus name, Amen. [00:03:22] All right, so what we're looking at now is gospel hindrances. And that's what we see in these four examples. We see gospel hindrances. Now, the hindrances that last week we looked at the first hindrance. From the first example, which is in verse number five, some fell by the wayside and the seed was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And then in verse number 12, the Lord interprets those fowls. He says they by the wayside are they which that hear. Then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. So now I want to kind of float this because it seems like every time the parable of the sower is discussed, there's always a question as to whether the Lord is speaking in reference to salvation or in reference to Christian fruitfulness. In other words, is there is the ones being referred to as saved in this passage? Because he does say in verse 12, lest they should believe and be saved. So that's obviously in this context. Right. But the question is, is only one of the four actually saved, that is the good ground, or are the other like the second and the third, the stony ground and the ground with the thorns? Do those also refer to someone who is a believer but just doesn't bear fruit? So the answer is. I have no idea what the answer is. [00:05:02] There's. I think there's good reason to say both, but I don't know that it's definitive and maybe it's not. Maybe I don't see it. That could be one thing, but maybe it's. Maybe it's both. Sometimes when things are not exactly perfectly clear, it's that way. So it can be both. And so you can draw truths from it and principles from it and lessons in either case. And that's what I hope to do a little bit today. But the first one was the seed that fell by the wayside. And the fowls are a reference to the devil, maybe not Satan himself, but definitely to Those under his power, right, that are seeking to thwart the word of God by snatching the word of God out of the heart in verse 12 before it even has the opportunity to take root, much less grow and much less bear fruit. Right? So we talked about that and how in the Scripture, things that are generally spoken of as Satanic. I know. See, oftentimes we're confused about this because we think. We think Satan. We attribute to Satan that which is often just our own nature, our own flesh. Now, the devil. And one of the reasons we do that, I think, is because the devil uses our nature and he allures it. Right? He uses our own wickedness against us, our own evil nature. We've already. We talked about that before. But if we want to be technical and proper, the things the scripture describes as satanic in origin are often related to counterfeits, often related to false versions of the real thing. Right? So you have first Timothy 4, 1, false doctrine, doctrines of devils, Revelation 2. 9, false religion, the synagogue of Satan. [00:07:03] And then we, second Corinthians 11, 13 and 14, describe false apostles who transformed themselves into angels of light, which are false teachers, false brethren. And so the devil has a counterfeit to everything. But here's the point, and I know we already covered this last week, so I won't spend any time here, is that those counterfeits, whether it be religion, faith, doctrine, even false teachers and people within churches that are put there by the devil. [00:07:35] I mean, that's frightening. That's frightening. Wolves in sheep's clothing. Where are the wolves? They're among the sheep. Right? That's just a truth of Scripture. But those things and those people do harm to the effectiveness of the word of God. It snatches it right out of the heart of a person before they even. In other words, they reject it without hearing it. Yesterday we were. When we were doing our evangelism, I was with Brother Ben. He's a feisty little. He's a feisty little booger Brother Ben is. He doesn't act like it, but he's feisty. So. But we knocked on somebody's door and. [00:08:17] Don't get offended if I called you booger brother. That's the term of endearment. [00:08:25] My wife's probably rolling her eyes right now, listening. He's like, move on, move on. [00:08:31] We knocked on a guy's door and he opened the door and he didn't know what we were there for. He didn't know if we were selling. What do they call those, rainbow vacuums or shoes? I'm Going back in time now, right? We're going way back. Or solar panels, right. He didn't know what we were there for. If we were Jehovah's Witnesses, which we did see. And we had an interesting conversation about the stealthy Jehovah's Witnesses that we run into. [00:09:02] But before we even had a chance to even introduce ourselves, say what we're about at all, he's like, yeah, I think he did the finger. I think Brother Ben point. Oh, he's on the phone too. But that's the kind of. But that happens fairly frequently. In other words, whatever has happened in that person's life, whatever has brought them to the place where the door is not open, they're not listening. You don't have a word. You don't have any opportunity. [00:09:32] The seed is snatched away before it even has a chance to do anything. And that's. Listen, that is what false religion is designed, and it is by design, Satanic design. It is designed to thwart the word of God by means of counterfeiting. That's what it's designed to do. Wolves in sheep's clothing are designed to devour the sheep, right? That's why they're there. [00:09:57] And so this is a great enemy and hindrance to the seed of God's word taking root and then bearing fruit. Because remember, the life is in the seed itself. It's not in us, not in the sower. It's in the seed. [00:10:15] The good news is. And just as a reminder, the good news with this particular example, with the fowls of the air, is that there's always another day where it might be able to be. The seed might be sown and the fowls might not be present, or there might be a substantial change in the ground and fruit can be born. So we can. We can hope and pray to that end. [00:10:39] All right? The second thing is, the second one is in verse number. Verse number six. And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. Now, what's interesting is it mentions moisture for obvious reasons, right? Plants need water. But the fact that moisture is mentioned is related to another aspect of the harvest which we'll. We'll maybe look at later, which is the idea of watering without water. A plant will die without water. [00:11:12] The word of God that has sprouted and grown up. Now, in this case, the lack of moisture comes from the depth of the ground, right? Because it's on stony ground. But what about a plant that has depth but is never watered you know, if you have houseplants like that and have soil, it's deep soil. But if you never water it, it's going to die. So it's interesting that moisture is mentioned here in verse 6. And the interpretation is in verse number 13 says this. They on the rock are they, which when they hear, receive the word with joy. [00:11:46] This is hard, to be honest with you. This is hard when someone on their face and you know, maybe even sincerely responds positively to the gospel because. But the end of that matter is not good for a missionary. And not just a missionary, but a missionary on a mission field. [00:12:11] That's a very discouraging aspect of ministry on a mission field is people who initially respond positively but then wash out for some reason. [00:12:26] But that's what's happening here. But notice, you might call this unprepared ground, maybe, maybe you could call it like that because there are rocks there that have not been removed, you know, so maybe you could call it unprepared ground. But it says in verse 13, when they hear, they receive the word with joy. And these have no root, which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away. Now look at, take a peek at Mark chapter 4, at the parallel passage in verse 16, I want to show you because there's a little bit of a twist in Mark 4 that adds a little bit of information to help us understand what is meant by the word temptation. [00:13:05] Mark 4, verse number 16 says this, Mark 4, 16. And these are they which. Likewise. [00:13:23] These are they likewise which are sown on stony ground, who when they have heard the Word, immediately receive it with gladness. [00:13:32] Now just pause here a second because the word immediately is here. So they hear it immediately and receive it immediately. Let me explain something to you about the way salvation and giving the gospel soul winning evangelism, however you want to put it, how it has always been characterized. It's been, it's. I say always, often salvation has been characterized. And all of you know what I'm talking about when I say you all know what I'm talking about. It's this. We're going to have a church service. The preacher is going to preach, he's going to give an invitation and someone's going to walk down the aisle, right? [00:14:12] Is that bad? Of course not. You know, some of you, is anybody in here that actually got saved in a circumstance like that? [00:14:19] And Brother Vernon, if he was here, that happened with him and Betty. [00:14:25] So it's not that that's bad, obviously, but when you characterize that, you forget that back of that story are a lot of other things that led up to it. It wasn't just a type of thing. But see, songs have been written about that, right? And I know, I'm not trying to impugn the motives because I know people. People write songs and they, you know, they're focusing on that event, and that's fine. But sometimes, I dare say, often the easy come, easy go, the easy come part produces the easy go part. And when someone has not thought through, what are the implications of this offer of salvation, they haven't thought through their own sin. They haven't thought through all of those things. It's just sometimes they immediately receive it because they misunderstand it. [00:15:19] And there's no way for us to know that. I'm just. [00:15:23] I'm just trying to get a biblical understanding of this process of when a person come, how they come to the Lord. [00:15:32] Sometimes it takes time and it's not immediate, even though we see here. But it didn't turn out well as we see here, right? [00:15:38] Verse number 16. And all of us want to see this. We all want to see someone respond immediately when we're out knocking doors. But we can't. We can't just focus. Well, you know, we went out, we talked to a few people, but nobody got saved. [00:15:53] We want people to be saved. But that's not the whole story. That's not the whole story. Okay. Verse 16 of Mark 4 says they have heard the word immediately, receive it with gladness, verse 17, and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time afterward when affliction or persecution ariseth. Now, in Luke 8, the word temptation is used, but this is what is meant by temptation. Affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake. Immediately they are offended. [00:16:28] It's almost like these people heard the gospel and immediately responded and were unaware that with the gospel came affliction. [00:16:42] You say you're not supposed to tell people that. [00:16:45] That's not what Jesus said. Jesus told people to count the cost. [00:16:49] Jesus told people. He told them, you know, you talk about a good evangelist. Here's our Lord's evangelist, our Lord as an evangelist. He said, you need to believe the gospel and be saved. But by the way, when you do, people are going to hate you and persecute you. [00:17:06] That's the part we're told to leave out, right? That's the part we're told not to. And, you know, we could say, well, maybe that's for Christian people. We tell them after the fact. When you look at the Text of scripture, it is not that way. The Lord front loads the information. [00:17:22] He front loads the information. So, so maybe this person, this, this person misunderstood the nature of salvation. Maybe they had false expectations, maybe they had wrong motives. [00:17:35] And I know as a missionary in Cambodia, many, many people, now here's where they interact. Because of false religion had developed and false teachers, primarily Mormons, had developed a false expectation of what it meant to believe the gospel and what would be the result. [00:17:58] And as a result, they expected immediate benefits like physical healing, temporal prosperity, financial well being. [00:18:09] And what it did is it warped their expectations. [00:18:15] And so when real life finally slaps him across the face, which is what Jesus told him the whole time, take up your cross, right? There's affliction, there's persecution, stuff's going to happen, you're going to get sick, you're going to, you know, things might, people might turn against you, Whatever, those people are offended, they're disillusioned, they stumble, there's a negative reaction. [00:18:42] Look at Acts 14, if you would. I want to look at several verses that kind of demonstrate this. Acts 14 Expectations, wrong expectations in regards to the gospel and salvation are very, very common, very common. [00:19:08] Salvation primarily deals with our sin, right being right with God, not temporal things. We'll see more about that in a minute. But Acts 14, verse number 22, Paul, after he's, after he's stoned, he continues his travels. Verse 22 to the churches that they had started. And it says they confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue in the faith and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. This is what Paul told them. [00:19:51] Look at First Thessalonians, chapter 1. [00:20:03] First Thessalonians, chapter one, verse number six says this. And ye became followers of us. Paul speaking to the church at Thessalonica. Here ye became followers of us and of the Lord having received the Word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost. Now understand that received the Word and much affliction. That's not. They got saved and then all these bad things happened. No, at the time that they were hearing and receiving the Word at that time there were, there was affliction. You understand that? That's a, you know, it's. In other words, it is one thing to get saved and to grow a little bit. And then as a result later you're persecuted or mistreated because of your faith. Right, that's one thing. But these people were persecuted from the very moment they were listening to the Gospel. Look at one more look at John, chapter number nine. [00:21:13] This is the story of the blind man, the man who was born blind that Jesus healed. [00:21:20] And so of course, the Pharisees once this, you know, of course the blind man went and had a conversation with the Pharisees, and they were very rude to him and all that. And so they called his parents. Verse 20 says his parents answered them and said, we know that this is our Son and that he was born blind. But by what means he now seeth, we know not. Or who hath opened his eyes, we know not. He is of age. Ask him. He shall speak for himself. [00:21:51] Now remember we've been talking about Matthew, chapter five, right? And in Matthew five, last week we talked about the subject of dishonesty, right? Swearing, falsely making false statements. And listen to this. These words, verse 22, these words spake his parents because they feared the Jews. So was it true? Did they know who healed him? [00:22:14] Yeah, they knew. [00:22:17] Did they know how his eyes were open? Verse 21. Yeah, they knew. They lied. [00:22:25] They lied. [00:22:28] Verse 22. So you see the pressure that's being put upon them. [00:22:32] They're not even believers in Christ. They're just testifying to the facts of the matter regarding their Son's blindness. [00:22:42] But there's. Even before they have believed in Christ, there's pressure already being put upon them. See it here's verse 22. Because they fear the Jews. For the Jews had agreed already that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore, said his parents, he is of age. Ask him. [00:23:05] So what had happened? What had happened is the structure and the method to apply pressure before that person believed was put in place to prevent people from believing. [00:23:23] Okay, now going back to Luke, chapter eight. [00:23:30] Now we can look at this a little bit, maybe a little bit clearer, and see verse 13. [00:23:43] It says, and these have no root, which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away. [00:23:52] So these people are afflicted because of the Gospel and the joy that they had when they received it vaporizes. It withers like the plant does. It withers. [00:24:07] And so now, and this is where the question is, well, were they saved or were they not saved? I don't have any idea. Because what's in focus here is the fruit in the parable. What's being in focus is whether there is fruit or not. [00:24:21] Again, I think you could argue it either way, but. [00:24:26] And as a missionary, this is something I remember seeing. Often I would have a conversation with someone, you know, I would meet out during Our evangelism. And I would have a conversation with them, and I would ask them. I'd go through the initial part, you know, we went, starting in Genesis, that kind of thing. And then after the conversation was finished, I would ask him if I could return and share more with him about the Gospel and study the Bible together, you know, with those kinds of things. Oh, yeah, that's fine. It's great. Yeah. And they were very attentive and all that. And I would leave, and a few days later I'd come back. You know what I'd find? [00:25:06] They disappeared. I'm at their house, right? This is where they live. It's not like, you know, this is where they live. Why are they not here? And it's not like they were out sometimes. People were actually literally hiding from me in their house. Why? [00:25:25] Well, what had happened? And this is over. I'm kind of summarizing it over years of experience. But what would end up happening is, while I was gone, Granny would come out or Auntie would come out. [00:25:38] I'm not just saying that. They would come out and they would say, who is that guy? Oh, he's, you know, a Jesus teacher. You know, that's what they would say it. [00:25:50] And they say, what are you doing talking to him? [00:25:54] Well, I mean, I was just listening. I mean, you don't know if you're talking to him. You're Khmer, you're Buddhist. Our family's Buddhist. You don't have no business talking to him. [00:26:03] And that was all that was required. So when I came back around, so all the joy that I had thought I had seen at the beginning was gone. All the openness, gone. Why? [00:26:16] Persecution, affliction, temptation, oppression. [00:26:21] Put before. Listen before there's even salvation, before we even get there. [00:26:28] And so again, the Lord is just trying to explain to us the way this often happens, right? Lest we be discouraged. Now, let's look at the next one. Verse number eight says seven rather says this, and some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. All right? And then the interpretation says in verse number 14, and that which fell among thorns are they which, when they have heard, go forth and are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. So the problem here is not the heart. [00:27:02] Indeed, the seed has fallen into ground fertile enough to sprout forth. [00:27:09] The plant has grown up. [00:27:13] But what has happened is external forces have been brought to bear on the word of God. And the plant that the word of God produced that prevents it from Bearing fruit. [00:27:26] Those external forces are not necessarily evil. [00:27:32] This is what you see here. Now, when you look at the devil's, you know, the devil's attempts to steal the word of God and snatch it away, that's obviously evil. Oppression and persecution and affliction because of the word, that's evil, right? [00:27:47] This is a case, though, where you have things that on their face are not evil. [00:27:54] I know people think money is evil. Money is not evil. The love of money is evil, right? But money alone, money is used for good all the time. Money is neutral. But it's what money does to people that makes it evil. That's why it's called filthy lucre. You think about cares of this life because it says in verse number 14, it's cares, riches, pleasures. How many of you like to go do something fun? You like to go have a good time, you like to pleasure, you know, whatever. You guys went to Ireland, right? Did you have fun? Was it pleasurable? Is that evil? No. I did hear one preacher, I was telling the guys yesterday, I did hear one preacher that preached against vacations anyway, so these things are not necessarily evil. [00:28:54] You know what? The sower, in this case, the thorns. You think about the thorns. The sower has no power over any of this. [00:29:02] The stony ground. He has no power over what happened. Like in the example I gave with the Cambodian people when I would leave, I had no. I mean, I didn't even know anything was happening. I thought things were good. Come back, it's gone. [00:29:13] The sower sows the seed that comes up looking good. Thorns, thistles, choking the word. The sower has no power over that. Listen, you can't beat yourself up over that. This is not all. It does not all rest on you and on me. Now, we do have a role, which we'll see in a minute, but we need to take heart in knowing that God's got this under control. He has it under control. So the cares of this life, that refers to a burdened state of mind arising from fear, doubt, concern, you know, just normal stuff in your life. [00:29:48] Normal stuff in your life. So here's what's happening. Things that are not necessarily evil in and of themselves are having an effect upon the Word of God and are lowering the priority of God's Word to the degree that it can't be fruitful because it's sucking the nutrition away from the word of God. And again, these things are not necessarily evil. And listen, this principle is true even for a believer, right? [00:30:25] There are things in your life and my life that are not necessarily evil, but become evil when they usurp the word of God and the nutrition the word of God needs to bear fruit. So something that is not evil becomes our enemy. [00:30:47] And in Hebrews, the word uses weights, right? Lay aside every weight. And the sin that so easily beset us. Not necessarily a sin, not necessarily something evil in and of itself, but something that is stealing the nutrition from the Word, causing it to be unfruitful. [00:31:07] And listen, if that happens in your life or my life, you know what we should do? We should turn on that thing like the enemy that it is. What would you do in your garden if it was choking your tomato plant or choking your, you know, your squash? You know what you do? You'd rip that thing out. You wouldn't let it stay. Now, it might be a pretty, you know, a lot of those weeds, as it turns out, have pretty flowers, right? They're not poisonous necessarily. [00:31:30] But the moment they take away from the fruitfulness of God's word in our life, they're our enemy, right? You see what I'm saying? At that moment, even though that thing itself is not bad. [00:31:46] But think about a person who's not saved. [00:31:50] At least you have eternal life, right? [00:31:53] But think about a person who's not saved, who allows cares and worries and anxieties of circumstance or money or pleasure, even pleasure, even something good, who allows that thing to distract the mind away from the word of God and not give his heart's attention to the word of God. Now, that thing is the enemy of his very soul. For he could perish, Listen, he could perish because of it. [00:32:24] You know, those. The things. And that's what it says here in verse 14, this life. [00:32:31] What does that mean? It says cares, riches, pleasures. But I mean, the broader statement is anything that's temporal, anything that's earthly, anything at all. Because those types of things, they come up in our face and they demand all of our attention, even though they themselves might not be evil. They demand all of our attention to where we're just. We're trying to look beyond it, and we can't. [00:32:56] We can't. [00:33:02] I mean, you think about pleasure. [00:33:07] A lot of people do reject the gospel because they know that with the gospel comes unpleasantness in some form, and they just don't want that. [00:33:17] Pleasure is like an idol. [00:33:20] Pleasure is an idol. [00:33:22] Some people won't go to the mission field. You know why? Because it's hard, it's hot, it's cold, it's dirty, it's difficult, whatever. [00:33:32] They won't go to the mission field, pleasure has become almost like a God. [00:33:39] That's true for Christian people. Even in our walk with the Lord like this, right when we should be reading the Bible, we should be giving our heart to eternal things. And again, I mean, looking at stuff on the phone is not by itself bad, but the moment it crosses that line and it's hindering God's word, rip that thing out, right? [00:34:07] The word of God must not be choked. It needs room, it needs nourishment. [00:34:12] We cannot let God's word starve in us now. [00:34:21] So we have seen three basic types of hindrances. We've seen satanic work. We've seen direct affliction, oppression, and we've seen whatsoever allures in this life that allures us away and direct distracts us from God's word. We've seen those three things. [00:34:48] Here's some things I want to remind you of though, about that. [00:34:54] First of all, there are actually real hindrances. When you're sharing the gospel with a co worker, with a family member, with a friend, there are actually real hindrances to the Word of God. [00:35:09] And when it doesn't work out like you've been hoping and praying, that is difficult and discouraging. But listen, that does not mean it is your fault and it does not mean that you're doing anything wrong. It could very well mean, and I would dare say likely means that there are influences in there that are hurting the effectiveness of the Word of God. [00:35:34] That is a real thing. And that, you know, that's just discouraging. It can be discouraging to us who are sowing and want to see fruit, right? Want to see people come to know the Lord, people. We don't want them to perish. We don't want them to go to hell, go to the lake of fire. [00:35:52] So a couple other things to remember is we cannot know where these hindrances exist. [00:36:01] These things deal with the heart of man and really trying to figure it out. We're often wrong. We're wrong as often as we are right. And the second thing is this. It is the job of the sower to sow. [00:36:18] I know we've said that before, but that's the job. [00:36:22] Now what should we do? What is the admonition? Knowing that the gospel will be hindered, Knowing that people we love will reject Christ and will not, you know, there will not be fruit born in their lives. [00:36:37] Look at Second Thessalonians, chapter 3, if you would. [00:36:44] Second Thessalonians, chapter three, verse one. [00:36:54] You can do one thing which is this? At least one thing you can pray. [00:37:01] Here's what the Lord says. [00:37:04] Finally, brethren, verse one. [00:37:07] Pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified even as it is with you, that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith. See this? What does he say? [00:37:22] Brethren, pray for the word of the Lord to not be hindered. [00:37:29] That's the power you have? That's the power I have. So when you got a family member, that's. The gospel is obviously being hindered and they're not receiving it. It's being, you know, they're roadblocks and stumbling stones and all those things. Pray that the Lord would remove those things even if you don't know what they are. Pray that God's word would have free course. [00:37:48] That's the response when you see it not going like you want it to go and people are not as receptive as you hope for them to be. All right, let's pray together.