As they're doing that, you can turn with me to Luke's Gospel. We're going to continue in our series called "Kingdom Come." And we're actually in Luke chapter 8. Now that might come as a surprise to some of you because we actually stopped last week before the end of Luke 7. And the reason we're jumping ahead to Luke 8 is that we're not really jumping ahead. If you remember, a few weeks into the series, we had a sense that we were supposed to jump forward. And so we jumped forward a couple months ago and looked at the passage in Luke 7:36 to the end of the chapter where Jesus forgives the sins of the prostitute in the midst of Simon's household. And remember, it's a place where Jesus shows us the way the Gospel takes our shame away. This woman comes into this environment where Simon is publicly shaming Jesus, right? So He hasn't washed His feet. He's left the dirt and the grime from the road on Jesus' feet. For everybody to see he hasn't welcomed Him with a kiss. He's trying to put Jesus at a disadvantage. And this woman of the city, this prostitute, comes in weeping and crying, and she comes and she washes Jesus' feet with ointment and with her tears and with her hair. And Jesus looks at her and tells her that her sins are forgiven. And He can forgive her sins because on the cross He will carry those sins away. And so Jesus deals with our sin and He deals with our shame. So that's what happened at the end of Luke chapter 7. If you need a refresher, you can go online and you can look at that message. This morning now we're in Luke chapter 8. We're going to look at verses 1 through 15 of Luke chapter 8. So you can turn with me there now.
Hear God's holy and authoritative word. Soon afterward, Jesus went on through cities and villages proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the 12 were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom 7 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 they choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. And He said these things, He called out, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.' And when His disciples asked Him what the 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, and 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 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. The Word of the Lord. May He write its truth upon our hearts.
Well, this is a parable that stands out to me. And the reason for that is because it's just poignantly in my memory from my childhood. My grandpa and grandma, both my grandpas and grandmas lived on farms, and my mom's parents lived on a farm that was only a couple of miles from our house. My uncle actually lives there now. And I can remember we would go to their farms. There's all sorts of things that we would do. They had horses we could ride. We would go and take the pig shockers and get into the pig pens and shock the pigs and do just mischievous stuff. My grandma always had a fridge full of pop cans, and we weren't always the best kids, and so the oldest two cousins, Carlton and myself, we would take the cans and we would go into the grove and we would shake them up. We'd toss them into the air and watch them explode, and then it became like an initiation for the other cousins until my grandpa went into the grove several years later and found like dozens of cans of pop exploded back there. Wasn't a good moment. But one of the things I remember is you've got to get done playing outside, and you'd come inside, and you want to watch TV. And they lived out in the country, and so they had terrible reception. And so there was just hardly anything ever to watch. And so maybe the one channel that came on— my grandma was always watching The Price is Right. That was kind of her show. That and like Kathie Lee Gifford. Regis and Kathie Lee. Which none of us were gonna watch. And then she had this one VHS tape, just one, that she would put in and we could watch. And it was this super cheesy VHS tape of Crossroads cartoon parables. And these are like super minimalist cartoons, but they would go through the parables and they would show the parables. And one that I can distinct— I have probably seen that video 200 times. And there's this little video, I even looked it up on YouTube in preparation and probably watched another 6. It's just like it was so nostalgic watching it. This really cheesy cartoon showing the parable of the sower and showing for children the truth of what Jesus is trying to communicate through these stories.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear. The point is the kingdom of God is going to be inhabited only by those who respond appropriately to the Word of God. The Kingdom is going to have citizens. It has citizens. But the only people who are citizens of the Kingdom are those who have heard the Word of God and who've responded appropriately to God's Word. That's what we were seeing. That's what we see in this parable.
And in my grandma's cheesy parable, the sower is portrayed as kind of this aw shucks farmer. He's got like the bib overalls and like the Johnny Appleseed seed bag and he's just whistling and walking on the path and he's tossing seed out kind of wherever he goes. He's busily just throwing the seed almost indiscriminately, it looks like. It's actually really accurate to the parable. Jesus' point isn't that the sower is careless with his seed. You can read it and almost think like, why is this guy throwing seed on rocks? Why is he throwing it among the thorns? Well, he's not just being careless. He's not being willy-nilly in how he tosses the seed around. What the sower is being is generous with the Word of God. He's doing what Jesus was doing. He's going around proclaiming and bringing the Good News of the Kingdom. Jesus knows not everyone in those crowds is going to believe, is going to be good soil. But because He's a generous King, He sows generously to the crowds that come.
And so that's what the sower's doing. He's throwing seeds all over the place. We had a terrible backyard for a lot of years when we first moved into our house. And this last year, we really put in an effort to get seed and grass to grow. And I remember even being careful with my little, like, hand seeder, trying to, like, on the edges, be really careful so it wouldn't spill over into the mulch. And after about 6 feet, I just realized it was hopeless. And so I just started cranking on it. Because no matter how hard I tried, there was seed falling over the border?
6 · Oswald explains that the sower's generosity flows from the Father's heart and that we are not called to assess hearts before proclaiming the gospel
Well, Jesus shows us the sower is meant to be someone who's generous, sowing the Word of God indiscriminately all over the place. And as Jesus explains the meaning of the parable, it becomes clear why. That seed is the Word of God. That's what it stands for. And the sower is generous because he has the Father's heart. He wants to sow the good news of the kingdom everywhere. He's not concerned with trying to figure out before He shares with someone how they're going to respond. He's going to share. It's not His job to discriminate about the quality of the soil or the softness of someone's heart. His job is to sow. His job is to share. He knows as a farmer that only time will bear out which soil is fruitful and which soil can bear it out, which hearts are truly prepared to respond to the message of the kingdom.
7 · Oswald applies the principle of generous sowing to evangelism, using a concrete example from the congregation (Scott and Dave Kula)
And that's a really helpful object lesson for us. None of us knows another human's heart. None of us knows who God has prepared beforehand, whose heart God has softened to receive the message of the gospel. When Scott shows up to paint Dave Kula's house, Dave doesn't hire Scott beforehand because he knows, hey, this is a heart that's soft and prepared for the gospel. And yet God knows. And so Dave sows generously. And now Scott every week sits with us. We don't know those hearts. It's not our job to be stingy with our seed, with the gospel.
8 · Oswald presses the congregation to identify people in their lives who seem hopelessly far from God—like Mary Magdalene—and challenges the assumption that such people are unreachable
You look at the beginning of the passage and you think, who are the Mary Magdalenes in your life? Possessed by 7 demons. This isn't a classy lady. This isn't a lady who it's easy to share the gospel with. That's not who Mary Magdalene is. Not just demon possessed, possessed by 7 demons. She's like ultra demon-possessed. She's a woman you would never imagine responding to the gospel. And yet she does. Maybe it's your family member totally in the grips of drug abuse. Some acquaintance you know who is a total meth addict and you can't you could ever imagine that person responding to the gospel. Maybe that's your Mary Magdalene.
9 · Oswald illustrates the principle of generous sowing with a concrete example from his own life—TJ from the gym, a profane, rough man who seems an unlikely candidate for the gospel
It makes me think of TJ. He's the guy from the gym. Tyler knows who I'm talking about. You can't have a conversation with TJ without effenheimers and profanity falling all over the place. That's just who he is. This guy is big. I mean, really big. You play with him in the post playing basketball, and he will intentionally shove you all over the place. He told us he used to weigh 400 pounds. Now he's down to a very small and svelte 280. He's covered in tattoos. He's constantly making lewd jokes. The first time I saw TJ, watching TJ play with people, watching him trash talk, watching him almost get in fights on the court, you'd never look at TJ and think, now here's a guy whose heart is ready for the gospel. But I don't know the soil of TJ's heart. And so I'm called to sow generously.
10 · Oswald extends the application to people who are structurally opposed to the gospel—Joanna, married to Herod's steward, and abortionists today
Who's your Joanna? She's literally married to the enemy's right-hand man. Her husband is the main steward in Herod's household. He's like Herod's head butler. That's her husband. And when she heard the good news of the kingdom, She responded. She's going and traveling with Jesus and the disciples, and as she goes, people know who she is. That lady, that lady used to live in Herod's house, and yet her heart was good soil. I was moved yesterday listening to John Piper in the Twin Cities pray at one of the Planned Parenthood protests. And hearing him pray specifically that God would soften the hearts of abortionists. You don't think of an abortionist's heart as being soft soil, do you? But maybe one of those abortionists, or their wives, or their nurses, or their technical assistants, is a Joanna waiting to hear the Gospel.
11 · Oswald surfaces a potential objection to the parable: why sow at all if 75% of the soil fails, and if God Himself hardens hearts against the message? He quotes Isaiah 6:9 to show the difficulty of the task and to surface the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility in evangelism
At first blush, it can be a little discouraging to read the parable. 75% of the soil royally stinks, right? 3/4 of the places where the seed falls, it doesn't bear fruit. There's no harvest. Not to mention the disciples and the crowd can't even figure out what Jesus means. To make matters worse, when Jesus finally explains the meaning, he starts out by quoting from Isaiah 6:9. This is what Isaiah 6:9 says in context. And he said, go and say to this people— this is God speaking to Isaiah— keep on hearing but do not understand, keep on seeing but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and blind their eyes 'lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed.' Okay, let's go sow. Holy cow, Jesus. If you're going to make people dumb and deaf and blind to the message, why are we sharing it?
12 · Oswald resolves the tension by asserting that the parable teaches both divine sovereignty in opening hearts and human responsibility in hearing
But if you look closer, Jesus also tells the disciples that to them it has been given to know and to understand the message. God has removed the scales from their eyes. God's taken the wax out of their ears so that they can hear and they can perceive. The parable is a brilliant display of the total inseparability of God's absolute sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility. They're both sitting there staring us in the face in the passage. Jesus says, listen, there's going to be ears that are closed. There's going to be eyes that don't see and can't perceive and can't understand. And I'm going to open your eyes so you can understand. And then He goes on to talk about how people are responsible for how they hear. God is sovereign in salvation, and yet we are called to go and sow the Gospel because people are also responsible for how they receive the message.
13 · Oswald draws out the evangelistic confidence that flows from divine sovereignty: no heart is beyond God's reach, so we sow without fear of failure
The point being, God can open any heart, from the tax collector like Matthew to the demon-possessed Mary. There's no impediment to evangelism that God can't overcome, and that's the source of our confidence.
14 · Oswald shares a personal story about a belligerent atheist visitor named Kevin who wore a provocative shirt and accosted him after the service
I was convicted of this a couple weeks before my vacation. We had a guest in our midst, and I found out after the fact that his name was Kevin. And I actually saw Kevin before the service and didn't know who he was and saw him kind of walk in and I was going to try to introduce myself. Didn't have the chance. After the service I saw Kevin talking with our Kevin, Kevin Purvis, and they were in a long conversation and I was chatting with someone else and giving some counsel and was about ready to leave at the end of the day and the guest Kevin came up to me and it was the first time I saw his shirt. I don't know if you remember this guy, but on his shirt it says, man created God in his own image. This is a guy who had been coming to the church on a somewhat regular basis and accosting Dave. He was a belligerent atheist. And in the conversation in the doorway of the church and as I walked out to my car, he was trying to enter into debate with me. He was trying to proselytize me to leave the Gospel. And he would be, as I talked with Dave afterwards, I think maybe the definition of a scoffer. He had quoted texts of Scripture and memorized them solely to try and assault me with them. And every time I would try and answer one of his questions, he would cut me off and wouldn't let me finish. It was one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had with an unbeliever. And as I got in my car, as I finally was able to extract myself to get away for the lunch meeting I had to go to, I sat down and I literally thought in my head, he had left it kind of like, well, I'll come by sometime and we'll continue the discussion. And I got in the car and I started it and I literally thought, I hope I never see this guy again in my life. He's hopeless.
15 · Oswald confesses his immediate conviction by the Holy Spirit that no one is hopeless
And immediately the Spirit just convicted me. What do you mean he's hopeless? Hopeless. What kind of God do you serve? Is He more hopeless than Saul holding the cloaks of people as they stone Stephen? It was this just massive conviction that the Lord will save who the Lord wills to save. My arguments weren't going to save him. I was figuring that out really quickly because he wouldn't let me finish a thought. But as I continued driving, I just started praying, "Lord, soften his heart. Take a heart of stone and make it a heart of flesh. Lord, let Your Word take root." The Lord can do that. There is no heart too challenging for the sovereign Spirit of Christ.
16 · Oswald reasserts the human responsibility side of the equation: each person is responsible for how they hear, even as God sovereignly opens or hardens hearts
And yet to each person, the responsibility to hear is theirs. The sower sows indiscriminately. The Good News is proclaimed all the way to the ends of the earth. So Jesus says, "Let him who has ears to hear, hear." The Lord gave that word to the prophet Isaiah so that he'd understand why some repented, but also why so many did not. It still stands for us.
17 · Oswald signals a structural shift from exposition and application about the sower to focused examination of the four soils
In the heart of this passage. The Kingdom of God is inhabited only by those who respond appropriately to the Word of God. We call it the parable of the sower, and that's a really inaccurate name. It's not the parable of the sower. It's the parable of the soil. The soil. The different kinds of soil. That's the main point. That's the thing we're supposed to look at. These different types of soil. So let's spend time now the rest of this morning looking at those types of soil.
18 · Oswald exposits the first soil—the path—where the Word is heard but immediately snatched away by the devil before it can germinate
The first thing we see, the seed falls along the path. Jesus describes it and says, "The path are those who have heard, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved." Each of the three kinds of bad soil is a warning to us this morning. Take care how you hear. The vulnerability of the path is that the Word of God gets trampled on and beaten. It's ultimately eaten by birds. It never has a chance to germinate before Satan attacks and snatches it away.
19 · Oswald recalls the cartoon parable video from his childhood to illustrate how the devil snatches away the seed
In that little video of my grandma's, as they're explaining that part of the parable, a red pitchfork all of a sudden shows up in the ground. Satan's taken away the soil, taken away the seed. It's a scary example if we're honest.
20 · Oswald argues that Western Christians neglect the doctrine of spiritual warfare because it feels culturally embarrassing
But I also think if we're honest, it's maybe the one that our culture— and by our culture, I mean Christian culture, Western Christian culture— doesn't take seriously enough. We have a theology for spiritual warfare, right? We have things we believe about spiritual warfare. But it's usually this dusty part of our theology. It's a book sitting way on the back corner of the shelf. That doesn't get brought down very much. If we're honest, part of the reason we don't take Satan's attacks seriously, I think in part, is because it's a little embarrassing to talk about them. I've felt that with other believers. To attribute, you know, "I think this might be spiritual warfare." It feels almost kooky to say that. And I think you can feel it even more so when you're interacting with unbelievers. There's plenty of people who you can talk about Jesus, or they know you're associated with Jesus, and they kind of view that as, okay, that's your thing, whatever. But you start talking to them about Satan, that you think Satan's real and that he attacks people, that he opposes Christians, that he opposes God, okay, you're weird. That's not safe ground at the water cooler. They might tolerate your Jesus obsession, but there's no place in polite society for thinking Satan is actually attacking you. In fact, Kevin the atheist, after the service, it was one of the Sundays when Dave was out with the Maddens and with Ferris. And the man's had all this crazy stuff happen at their house. And I just said in the service, "I think we need to pray for the Maddens. I think the Lord is intending to do something on this trip. And He is just— I think Satan is attacking them with all these distractions right now." And after the service, the atheist was like, "You actually believe Satan is doing stuff? So Satan controls the weather, huh?" I just immediately felt this embarrassment. Wow, should I not have said that publicly? But when you think that way, you don't take seriously this first warning that Satan can come and he can snatch away the Word of God. Hearing is about more than just embarrassed assent to a doctrine. It's about deep belief that then lives accordingly. And Jesus, Jesus is here telling us Satan is real. I went toe-to-toe with him in the wilderness and I kicked his butt. But he's real and he's coming after you still. One of the things Luke is showing us in this passage is what discipleship looks like. And at this stage in Jesus' ministry, the essence of discipleship is to be with Jesus. That's what He says about the 12 and these women. They're with Jesus. Jesus is proclaiming the kingdom. Jesus is bringing the kingdom to bear. They're just along for the ride. Now in about a chapter, he's going to send them out. But right now, you know what discipleship is? You're on a journey with Jesus. That's what discipleship looks like. It's the essence of discipleship at this point in Jesus' ministry. And yet, think of the classic example of someone whose faith is destroyed by the devil? Judas, right? For all intents and purposes, there's nothing about him at this point that indicates he's not just like all the other disciples. He's on the journey with Jesus. They put him in charge of the funds. They let him watch the money. In the upper room, when Jesus says one of them will betray him, They are all kind of, "Not me, not me!" But there is also this corporate sense of astonishment. "One of us?" Listen to the sobering way John describes what happens in John's Gospel. John 13:2, "During supper, when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him." And then verse 27, "And then after he had taken the morsel," Satan entered into him. And Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly."
21 · Oswald concludes the exposition of the path with Peter's warning about the devil prowling like a lion
Let he who has ears to hear, hear. The devil is real. Peter has seen up close what it looks like when a friend succumbs. Peter has experienced what it's like personally to come right up to the precipice of ending up just like Judas. And he writes to us in 1 Peter 5:8, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith. Resist him. Firm in your faith. That's the path.
22 · Oswald introduces the second soil—rocky ground—and surfaces a potential misunderstanding: that rocky soil means total coldness to the gospel
The next kind of soil is the rocky soil. Jesus warns that the rocky soil are people who fail to hear because their hearts are essentially rocky ground. The Word of God, the seed falls there, and because it's rocky, it can't get anywhere. It can't get down. It can't get to where the moisture is. And like the previous one, this example is scary and just as deceptive. It's deceptive because no one assesses themselves as having a rocky soil for God's Word. Right? The crowds that are gathered there aren't there saying— He's telling this story. Everyone's thinking, "I'm good soil." No one's thinking, "I'm rocky soil. I'm resistant to the Gospel." In fact, if Jesus didn't explain Himself, I think we'd probably assume that what He means by rocky soil is a heart that's totally cold to the message of the Kingdom, right? If He doesn't give the explanation of what the rocky soil is, wouldn't you assume, well, rocky soil is just someone who just keeps the kingdom at arm's length? That's rocky soil. The word, the seed can't get in. That's what I would assume it meant. But that's not what Jesus says it means at all.
23 · Oswald exposits Luke 8:13 and reveals the deceptive nature of rocky soil: these are people who receive the Word joyfully, believe for a time, but fall away under testing because they have no root
Verse 13, "The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, they receive it with joy. But these have no root." They believe for a while, and in time of testing, they fall away. The heart of the rocky soil doesn't belong to God-haters. It's people whose root system is immature so that when trials come, their faith wilts away and dies. It means the second soil are people who think they truly have the word. Who think their faith is genuine. Just look at how joyfully they received the message. Look at how excited they were when they first believed. Wow, their testimony is incredible. Surely that person is saved. Jesus is showing us here though, authentically hearing, the kind of hearing Jesus wants us to do, authentic hearing isn't about some transient emotional high.
24 · Oswald uses rhetorical questions to illustrate the insufficiency of transient emotional experiences for salvation
When we stand before God at the final judgment, He's not going to ask, "Now, who here got a warm and tingly feeling one time at a Chris Tomlin concert?" Won't be one of the questions. He's not going to ask, "Who had a special experience at summer camp at the age of 14?" Anyone get really passionate about Jesus for a brief period of time?
25 · Oswald develops the metaphor of the Christian life as a marathon, not a sprint
Heaven won't be filled with spiritual sprinters. It'll be filled with marathoners. And some of those marathoners are going to be world-class runners like Paul and Luther, like Elizabeth Elliot and Corrie Ten Boom. They're going to be heroes of the faith. The people that run 5-minute miles for 26 miles straight, and we all just think, "I can't do that for 1 mile." There's going to be people in heaven like that. Heroes of the faith. The type that finish the race in inspiring fashion. But I think most of the people are going to be world-class plotters. And that's not an insult. Meet people who run the race, the marathon of faith, and in the end, their time might not be anything to boast about, but they've persevered and they finished. Run the race with the best time ever. No, run the race with endurance. Run the race to finish. Not to have a euphoric mountaintop experience. You don't want to be Usain Bolt and sprint for 100 meters and then collapse exhausted. You want to be one of those marathon walkers that you're wondering why they're even in the Olympics, right? But they're there. World-class lotteries.
26 · Oswald introduces the third soil—thorns—using the memorable cartoon image from childhood
The third type of soil, the last bad type, are the thorns. It's this thorny ground. In that little cartoon my grandma had, the thorns were like— you'd see like this little head of wheat kind of pop up and just sit there and blow in the wind, and all of a sudden like these nasty purple thorns would come up and like wrapped itself around and strangled it. It was like, whoa, violent thorns. That's one of the things like when I think of the video, I think of the thorns like Like that's the noise they make and they grab the wheat and they pull it down. Wow, okay. That stuck with me. Watch out for the thorny ground. The thorny ground, Jesus says, represents the person who hears the Word and appears to believe for a period. But Jesus tells us the seed, it actually has taken root. It looks like it's growing. It looks like it's going to be healthy. This isn't the person who who has the mountaintop experience and appears to be a Christian for 6 months and then walks away. This is a thorn that seems to be doing well. But this is an illustration of competing faiths. One in the Word of God. One faith in the Kingdom, in the message of the Kingdom. And another faith in the worries and the pleasures and the cares of this world. And both grow, but in the end faith gets choked out by stronger competition.
27 · Oswald gives a personal example of a college friend who seemed like the perfect Christian but whose life fell apart due to competing loyalties—specifically, addiction to alcohol
Again, people who think they have the word, people we think are saved, and yet their hearts have competing loyalties. I had a friend, a good friend in college who I would put in this category. I still pray for him, hoping that he can be rescued, that his heart might still be a different kind of soil. But he was everything— he was like the perfect Christian guy. Great family, his dad was a seminary professor, this godly man, like you just come and you'd go to his house and you'd listen to his dad talk. And it's just like, you just— man, I'm being discipled. My buddy was this great guy from a great family. He was gifted, he was funny, he was handsome, he was athletic, he seemed to love the Lord. And a few years after we graduated, his life went completely off track. He has essentially completely destroyed his relationship with his entire family. Because he's obsessed with pursuing empty pleasures found at the bottom of a bottle. You would have never, ever guessed this guy would end up there. But there were competing faiths. There were competing treasures. Luke 16:13: No servant can serve two masters, for either he will either hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. It's the warning of the thorny soil.
28 · Oswald shifts from the bad soils to the good soil, reframing the parable as ultimately optimistic
But the parable ends with the good soil. And even though it looks like three-quarters of the soil is basically rotten and fruitless, in reality it's a parable that expects an abundant response to the gospel, right? You hear all this seed falling in bad soil, but the seed that falls in the good soil, what happens? It bears a hundredfold harvest. This massive harvest takes place. Where the Word of God finds receptive hearts, the result is just totally astounding.
29 · Oswald directly addresses the congregation with a call to be hearers of the Word
The point again is that we should hear this. Those of us sitting here, you're called to be hearers. Take care how you hear.
30 · Oswald exposits the good soil, emphasizing that the Word penetrates deeply, germinates, and produces fruit with patience
Jesus tells us the good soil represents the person who hears the word and then holds fast to the word. The first time, the preposition says the seed actually goes into the soil. It fell alongside the path, it fell upon the rocky ground, it fell in the midst of the thorns. But now in the good soil, it actually penetrates, it fully germinates. And because the word gets into these hearts, Jesus says it bears fruit with patience. There's an inherent enduring and persevering nature to authentic hearing, to true hearing. Satan still attacks, but this faith resists him firmly planted in God's Word. Trials still assault, but this heart holds fast to God's promises. Not with a fleeting joy, but with a deep joy, deep enough to withstand even the darkest of days. The world still tempts with competing indulgences and loyalties, but the Word has gotten into this heart so that it treasures the Kingdom above all else.
31 · Oswald makes a grammatical-theological point about the preposition used for 'into' in Luke 8:15, connecting it to the call to believe 'into' Christ Jesus
It's the same preposition that calls us to believe in Jesus Christ. You can literally translate those passages, "Believe into Christ Jesus." Take up residency with Him. That's what happens in these hearts. The Word of God takes up residence there.
32 · Oswald acknowledges that Luke has already addressed the theme of hearing multiple times in the Gospel, and reflects on the challenge of preaching a repeated theme
This isn't the first time in Luke's Gospel he's driven home this point. In fact, I was trying to think as we prepared, like, how do I preach this? In a fresh way because it's like the third or fourth time Luke has hit on the point of being a true hearer, right? How do you build your house? You build it on God's Word. It's about hearing, multiple places in the Gospel. You can't be tempted to shy away from these texts though. There's a reason why Luke keeps repeating this. We need to be hearers and we need to hear it again.
33 · Oswald diagnoses the human default condition—disengagement from the Word—and cites Phil Ryken's distinction between hearing and heeding
The reason you need to hear it again is our default isn't to consume the Word. That's not your default position. It's not the default position of anyone. Your default isn't to consume the Word. It's not to digest it. It's not to conform your life around it. Your default, because of the fallen nature of your heart, is to let the Bible grow dusty on your bedside table. Table. Your default is to be disengaged and spaced out during the sermon. Your default is to have the Word of God wash over you without ever getting inside of you. Phil Ryken nails the issue. He says this: It is one thing to hear God's word. It is another thing to fear it. Heeding all God's warnings, trusting all God's promises, and obeying all God's commands. The reason why Luke keeps talking about hearing rightly, about authentic hearing, is because we have broken ears. We don't have the luxury of sipping at the Word when we feel thirsty. We don't have the luxury of nibbling at its edges or chewing on the parts that seem enjoyable to our palates but just pushing the rest to the side of the plate. You don't get to be a 4-year-old in how you consume the Word of God. You gotta clean your plate. You have to swallow the Word whole.
34 · Oswald diagnoses the Western problem of over-familiarity with Scripture—too many Bibles, too little urgency—and contrasts it with persecuted believers who cherish a single page
As I was preparing for it, what came to mind was the scene from, from Nehemiah 8. I think part of our problem, part of our struggle culturally, aside from just our common human condition, right, of broken hearts that need to be redeemed and restored by the gospel, part of our problem is we have so much access to the Bible. Think of how many Bibles do you have floating around your house? Lots of them, probably, right? Multiple copies. I got so many ESVs, I don't know what to do with all of them. Part of it is Crossway keeps coming out with different ones, and they all look so compelling. Oh, the journaling ESV, I should get that one too. We got all these Bibles around, and with all these Bibles, there's like a lack of urgency with what to do with them. It was so compelling sitting there at Voice of the Martyrs and boxing those ESV study Bibles to send off to that closed country. And the Voice of Martyrs work is telling us they have no access. Like, that Bible is going to get there, and we're hoping, man, if 25% of these get through customs, we'll be excited. And if that Bible gets there, there's going to be a community that shares this Bible. There's a scene in one of my favorite books. About this community in a persecuted environment, and they have one page of Scripture. It's just this cherished thing. And they pass it around from house to house, and they read this one page, this holy thing, God's Word to them.
35 · Oswald exposits Nehemiah 8, describing the scene of Israel gathered to hear the law read by Ezra after years in exile without access to Scripture
That's what we see happening in Nehemiah 8. The remnant has returned and they're back in the land, but they haven't had access to God's Word and God's law for years. They've forgotten. They're like the total opposite of us. All of Israel gets gathered to hear God's Word, to hear the law read by Ezra. And so they're all there and Ezra stands up in front of them to hear the word. And there's this tangible, palpable anticipation in God's people. They're in the land, and they're going to hear the word. And there's priests that are scattered throughout the people to help them understand and interpret, because nobody has a clue. They haven't heard the word for so long, they don't know what it means. So the priests are in their midst so they can— what does that mean? And the priest can be right there to explain it to them. But it's just so powerful how Nehemiah 8 describes What happens? Nehemiah 8 says in v. 1, "And all the people gathered as one man." The entire nation has gathered with one heart. We are here. We are gathered in this corporate assembly with one heart to be addressed by God. We have longed for this moment. We've prayed for this moment.
36 · Oswald continues expositing Nehemiah 8, emphasizing the attentiveness of the people's ears
V. 3 says, And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. The ears of all the people are leaning in and they're listening.
37 · Oswald continues expositing Nehemiah 8, describing the people standing, blessing the Lord, lifting hands, bowing heads, and worshiping with faces to the ground
Verse 5 says, and as Ezra opened the law, all the people stood. All the people stand because they expect to receive from God. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. I wouldn't be opposed to that happening at Providence on a Sunday morning.
38 · Oswald exposits the climax of Nehemiah 8—the people weeping as they hear the Word
These people come anticipating that as they hear from the law of the Lord. They are hearing from the true and living Lord. And then verse 9 says, "And all the people wept as they heard the words of the Lord." And they weep, we understand from the context, because it had been so long since they'd heard the word. And they weep because as they hear the word for the first time in years, they realize how far away they've drifted from what God's called them to. They realize how far they've gone from being the good soil for the seed of God's Word.
39 · Oswald applies the Nehemiah 8 illustration to the congregation, calling them to gather with the same corporate intensity and anticipation
We should be a people like Nehemiah 8. When we gather on a Sunday morning, there should be a corporate intensity of anticipation that we gather as as one man, as one people, leaning in, leaning forward, because God has ordained that in the preaching of His Word, not because of the skill of the preacher, not because of the funniness or the humor or the jokes or the quality of the illustration, God has ordained because His Word is going to be preached, that the Spirit of the risen Christ is going to address His people in the preaching of the Word. And so we should come Like the people of Nehemiah 8, leaning forward, standing up, falling down, and hearts breaking when we see gaps between God's calling and our lives.
40 · Oswald issues a series of diagnostic questions to help the congregation assess whether they are good soil
So how are you hearing the word? Are you consistently hearing it? Are you privately reading it and meditating on it? How is God's Word challenging you? Is God's Word bearing fruit in your life so that you trust God more, so that you serve others more, so that you love Jesus more? And in loving Jesus more, you love your neighbors more because they don't know Jesus. Is God's Word stirring up affections for Christ in the good soil of your heart?
41 · Oswald signals the final movement of the sermon
Conclude with this:
42 · Oswald concludes with 2 Corinthians 2:15, framing the sermon as both encouragement and warning
in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul talks about how he and his ministry partners have been sowing the Word, and they've been going and casting it indiscriminately, sending it out in all the cities they go to. I say this as an encouragement and as a warning. 2 Corinthians 2:15, Paul says, for we, myself and my ministry partners, we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death, death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Take care how you hear, and let the word be a fragrance, a fragrance, the aroma of Christ from life to life.
43 · Oswald closes the sermon with a pastoral prayer asking God to send His Spirit to soften hearts, bring conviction and comfort, and conform the congregation to the image of Christ through His Word
Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, we want to see your word have its proper effect on our hearts, not just this morning, but every week as we gather, not just on Sundays, but even as we scatter, as we lean over your word in devotions, as we gather as families and as friends to ponder and consider it Lord, we want our hearts to be good soil, and so we call upon You, the sovereign God, and we ask that You would send Your Spirit to soften our hearts. We pray that You would bring conviction, that You would bring comfort, Lord, that You would bring confession. Lord, that You would conform us to the image of Your Son according to the truthfulness the faithfulness, the infallibility of your word. Lord, in your word, help us to see Jesus clearly, and not just see him, but to love him, and through the strength that you provide, to endure and to persevere. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.