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Bible please and turn to Luke
chapter 8. As I said earlier, I'll give
a much more full report this evening, but our Vacation Bible
School Some of you already know, I think I had mentioned some
of this before we left, but our Vacation Bible School theme was
the parables of Jesus. And so we went through various
parables each morning. You may see this evening some
antics involved with some of those parables that the children
greatly enjoyed. But the last parable on Friday
that we dealt with was what we often refer to as the parable
of the sower. Some people call it that. In
my Bible, that's the way it's titled. But as you'll see in
just a moment, I'll challenge that title with another one.
But in Luke chapter eight, we'll begin our reading in verse number
four and read down through to the end of verse number 15, looking
at this particular parable of our Lord. Luke eight and verse
four. 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. 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 bear fruit a hundredfold.
And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to
hear, let him hear. And his disciples asked him,
saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it
is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to
others in parables, that seeing they might not see, and hearing
they might not understand. 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. 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. And
that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have
heard, go forth, and are choked with cares of riches and pleasures
of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 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. Amen. We'll end our Bible reading
there at the end of verse number 15. And let's seek the Lord in
prayer together. Let's ask his help as we have
our Bibles open and consider this parable together. Let's
pray. Our Father, read here from the
scriptures solemn words and actually in a parable words that describe
each one of us. And we pray this morning for
that good soil in our hearts that the word would settle into
and grow up and bring forth fruit with patience. Or as another
parallel version of this is in Matthew, that in our hearts it
would bring forth some 30, some 60, and even some a hundredfold. And so help us as we consider
this passage together in Jesus' name, amen. The title of my message,
if you're one prone to take notes, is The Word of God in the Soul
of Man. The Word of God in the Soul of
Man. Christ in his ministry, he went
back and forth between Capernaum and Galilee, that was kind of
his stomping grounds, if you were, as it were, and he did
most of his preaching in and among those two regions, obviously
other places, but that was where he spent a good portion of his
ministry. And at this particular time,
Christ is in Galilee. And the parallel passage of this,
one found in Matthew and the other one found in Mark, tells
us that when Christ tells this particular parable, he actually
did it from a little ship that had been pushed out into the
sea a bit so that the shoreline would form what amounted to a
natural amphitheater for him to be able to speak to a much
larger crowd. And Christ taught the people.
In Luke, we have it quite condensed and Christ gives the parable
and then it's as if his disciples are just immediately asking,
what does this mean? But you'll see in the other parallel
passages that there was actually a little bit of time between
the parable given and then the disciples later coming to the
Lord and asking them for an interpretation of this. And we see that Christ
tells them that unto you it is given to know these mysterious
things. But Christ spoke in parables
on purpose because there were those that were predestined to
not understand what the Lord was saying. They for the entirety
of their lives would be that wayside stony ground that the
word would never settle into. But he tells his disciples that
unto you it is given to know these things. They, in essence,
we can understand if we complete the metaphor, they had the Holy
Spirit that had done that telling work in their heart and had prepared
them to receive this word. And Christ, the master gardener,
was strategically planting the seeds in their heart and they
were hearing the word and they were coming to understand the
word. Now, it's obvious just from the passage of Scripture
given to us that when the disciples first heard the parable, they
were somewhat confused as to what the Lord meant by what he
said. By speaking in parables, he was speaking to some degree
in cryptic language, though we understand a parable to be an
explanation of a gospel truth. Yet there was some mystery as
to what exactly do you mean by what you're saying, Lord? And
so Christ, very gently and very patiently, and also very forthrightly
and directly, explains to them exactly what he means by what
he says. And so he tells them that this
parable is about a sower that sows not seed that would be a
plant, but seed that is the word of God. and the fowls of the
air, or the devil that would take it up, and the rocks and
the thorns, and those are that which is the pleasures of this
world, the cares and the riches of this life that choke out that
word. And so what we have here is not
so much a parable about a sower, so much as it is a parable about
the different types of soil that the sower, the preacher of the
gospel, is sowing in. I think ultimately, the point
of this parable is for salvation. Hearing the word to the saving
of your soul. And there are those that are
the wayside ground that will never be converted. And there
are those that the Holy Spirit goes before in a work of regeneration
and opens the heart, regenerates the heart, and in that fills
up the soil of the heart. And when the seed goes in, it
is received, and the Word grows and flourishes. And so what we
have here really is the parable of the soils, the parable of
the soils. And while I say ultimately the
point of this parable is receiving the word to the saving of your
soul, I believe that there is a secondary application of this
parable that for us as the Lord's people, we can take to heart
as well. Because while it is true that
there is that one that is tilled, that receives the word and that
person is saved and converted, the other three are either no
professors at all or false professors, as we can look at the individual
types of soil here. I believe also that we can see
the truth of this parable in our own hearts every day. We are, at times, each of these. This morning, you could be converted,
but yet this particular August 18th, 2024, sitting in these
blue chairs, have a wayside heart. Sitting in these blue chairs,
have a rocky heart, or a thorny heart. or a tilled-up receptive
heart. You could be any of these four
this morning or tomorrow as you open your Bible to read. I assume we don't really live
in an agrarian society anymore, but I assume you've all planted
a seed somewhere, somewhere along the way you've planted a seed.
We have one of these walk-behind seed spreaders that you're supposed
to use to, you can do fertilizer in your yard or seed in your
grass or whatever. And you know if you've ever used
one of those things. They're awful and they never
work right. But you push the thing, the thing spins around
and it throws seed wherever it goes. And if you walk too close
to your driveway, then you're not trying to, but inevitably
there is seed on your driveway. And you get too close to the
front road, and you're not trying to, but inevitably, there's seed
on the road. And so you get your blower or
broom or whatever, and you sweep it off the sidewalk, because
it theoretically is not going to grow there, except for in
the cracks, and it grows perfectly good in the cracks. But it's
not supposed to grow there, and so you want to get it on the
dirt, because that's where seed is supposed to go, and that's
where seed is supposed to grow. So nobody on purpose distribute
seed in a place that it's not going to grow. But you understand
the imagery. This makes perfect sense to us.
They didn't have seed spreaders like that, but they would have
had a pouch, a bag, and they would grab a handful of seed,
and they would scatter their seed. Or they would strategically
plant in certain rows their seed. And every farmer wants his seed
to be in the right place, at the right time, under the right
circumstances, the right conditions, and they want that to grow. But
what we have here is a parable that teaches us about our own
hearts. And it's very clear, Christ gives us the points of
the parable are very straightforward. The seed is the Word of God.
The sower is the preacher of the word of God, the preacher,
the evangelist, the person that is seeking to sow this seed,
whether formally a preacher in a pulpit or as our sister Beth,
you know, in the Walmart parking lot giving a gospel tract. You
are a sower of the word. And each one that receives that
is one of your seed. But as you sit here this morning,
you are one of these four soils. And so I wanna preach to you
this morning on the subject of the word of God in the soul of
man. And really two points this morning. The first one is, I want you
to see from this parable, the need for you to pray for understanding
the word. as we zoom out from this parable
and look at it in a big picture type of way, what this parable
teaches us is that each one of us need to pray for understanding
the word. From verse 9 and 10, we can conclude
that not everyone who hears the word understands it. Even the disciples, Christ's
disciples themselves, when they first heard the word, they didn't
understand it. They didn't ignore it. They wanted
to understand it. They had a desire for it to be
plain and clear in their mind. And so they inquired further.
They went to the Lord privately and they said, Lord, what does
this mean? Will you please give us a more
full and further explanation of this word? That is them, in
a sense, praying for understanding of the word. Every time you hear
the word of God, you need to pray for understanding. Every time you open your Bible
and you begin to read, you need to pray for understanding. I'm gonna ask you a question
not to put you on a guilt trip or put you on the spot, but I
will put you on the spot. How many of you, this morning
before you arrived at this address, 3030 Burke Mill Road, and before
you plopped yourself down in this seat, wherever you're sitting,
prayed and said, Lord, please open my heart this morning to
receive the word. I would venture to guess very
few of you. That's human nature. But yet, what are we doing? Why
are we even here? Why are we even here? But to
receive the word. That's the reason we have come
here. We're friends, and we want to know how each other's week
has gone. And that's absolutely vital to the life of a church,
100% vital to the life of the church. And it's necessary that
it goes on, that we have friendly conversations with one another
about life. That's necessary. But that's
not why we're here. We're here to worship the God
of heaven. And we cannot do that. without
the Holy Spirit first opening our hearts to receive that word. And so I would just challenge
you to make that something of a priority, to seek the Lord
even before you arrive, that the Lord would open your heart. It's too often in our modern
day, our modern view of the weekend, our modern view of the fulfillment
of personal pleasures, that the weekend is mine, you work your
nine to five, and the weekend is mine, and I'm so gracious
to carve out an hour for the Lord on Sunday. What more could
he want from me? And so, up all hours on Saturday,
doing all sorts, And Sunday, sleeping in, vegging out, getting
up, rushing out the door, and trying to get to an 11 o'clock
service. And you squeal the tires into
the parking lot, fussing at one another in the car all the way
there. You arrive. You put on a smile
before you get out of the car so that people don't think you're
an absolute heathen, and you rush into church, and you plop
yourself down, and turn in your Bible to Hebrews 11, and now
we're on for church. With no thought, with no thought
whatsoever given to Why in the world am I even here? What's
the point of being here if it's not to receive the Word? We need
to pray for understanding because it's so abundantly clear from
this parable that naturally our hearts are unreceptive to the
Word of God. That's the way we're born. we
are naturally left to ourselves unreceptive to the Word of God. And this is a lesson we clearly
see from the first three types of soil. And I remind you, yes,
there is that evangelistic salvation emphasis of this, that there
are those that cannot be converted, But I say it to those here that
claim to be converted. I know there are some here not
converted, but I say it to you who are here that are converted.
Your heart naturally does not want to receive the word of God.
Look at these grounds. The first three type of ground
is ground that is normal. It's ground the way ground is. The first one is ground that
is described as the wayside. Some of your hearts this morning
are on the wayside. And you are prime candidates
for the devil simply stealing that word. This morning, in five
minutes, you won't know what the sermon was about. You won't
have any idea. You won't have the foggiest notion. what I preached on, because this
is the nature of your heart. It is untouched. Satan steals it away. He is the
enemy of the word of God. What did he do in the garden?
The very first time we see Satan interacting with the word of
God, what did he do? He twisted that word. He perverted
and he corrupted that word because he hates that word. And he does
not want you to receive that word. He doesn't want it to settle
in. And so as quickly as he sees
a seed fall, he will do what is within his power to take it
up. The Bible tells us we're not
ignorant of Satan's devices. Satan is not doing things that
God has not already warned us he would do. He's told us he
is a liar. He's told us he is a thief. He's
told us, he's revealed to us in the scriptures the nature
of the character of Satan. And we know that he is antagonistic
to the word of God. And so, for example, you'll hear
a sermon where perhaps spiritual pride is addressed in a sermon. And Satan will steal that word
by immediately causing you to think about that person that
is worse than you, that is more prideful than you are. And you'll
think the entire sermon, man, I hope so-and-so is paying attention
this morning. They need this. not realizing
that what just happened was just as a bird would fly in and snatch
up a kernel of corn and fly away with it almost before you could
even see it happen, the word's gone. The seed's gone. And your mind's a million miles
on the other side. Satan will steal the word. Man
is unreceptive because by nature, His heart is rocky ground, and
the Word can't take up a full root there. It may sprout, but
it's not gonna take up a root and have anything that's sturdy
about it. It's not gonna be able to receive
nutrients to grow. And so in this sense, Satan can
look at your heart in that way, and he can say, okay, well, I
don't have to bother with this one. because he's got enough
problems all by himself, he doesn't have enough spiritual life to
him to get that Word to grow anyway. This is, if I could put
it in these terms, this is often the plight of the backslider,
that one that is away from the Lord. They hear the Word, maybe
they're excited about it for a season, this might be someone
that if you're not discerning, you would look at them and you
would identify them as... Because every week, they seem
to be so excited about that Word. And next week, they're so excited
about that Word. And next week, they're so excited
about that Word. But nothing ever changed from
three weeks ago when they were so excited about that other word.
Nothing changed. They're still the same. The word
was not fruitful. There was zeal. There was a flash
in the pan. There was nothing lasting to
it at all. But yet, every week, they seemed
to be on fire. It's just always a new, it's
just the next. And what really is going on is
there is a zeal, there is an excitement, but there's no depth. There's nothing to it. Is this not the mega church of
our generation? 100 miles wide. with tentacles and fingers in
ministries of all sorts. But no depth. No substance to
it at all. Tons of zeal. But nothing seems
to ever change. You read your Bible every day,
but nothing ever changes. You're one who is, as the Bible
describes, ever learning but seemingly never able to come
to any knowledge of truth. There's just no depth. It's just
rocky. It looks good, but it's not good. Your personal sin prevents the
Word of God from really taking root and growing. You don't sin because of your
environment or your circumstances, that's not what causes you to
sin. Adam was in the most perfect of circumstances, and yet he
sinned. Daniel found himself in arguably
the worst of circumstances, but yet he purposed in his heart
that he would not sin. So your environment isn't the
thing, it's your heart that really is at issue. Here's the thing,
the Lord is well able to overcome a stony heart. And this is why
I say what we see at the beginning of this parable as we try to
make it applicable to our own lives, what does this mean for
me, is I have to pray that the Lord would do a work to keep
me from being one of these and be that fertile soil. I have
to pray that the Lord would make His Word grow, because naturally,
left to myself, I am unreceptive to the Word of God. I could be
the wayside, I could be the thorny ground, or perhaps this morning
you are, I'm sorry, the rocky ground, or perhaps this morning
you will fall into that third category that we see in verse
number 14, that seed that falls among thorns, the thorny ground.
And here again, this is dirt that is normal under the fall. Sometimes these thorns are things
that are downright sinful, perhaps. Maybe that's you. They're just
downright sinful things that choke out the Word. Or perhaps
they are completely legitimate. The completely legitimate necessities
of life that are disproportionately important in your life. Your
priorities are messed up. Your priorities are out of line. Therefore, They are those things
that grow up and they choke out the Word. You never have any
time to meditate and focus on the Word because you're too busy
with other things. And so these type of believers
are similar to that rocky soil in that they are described as
those that receive the Word favorably at first. And so again, an undiscerning
onlooker could be quite impressed at the momentary growth of the
Word, the short burst of spiritual zeal and gospel energy, but nothing
of any lasting effect. That's the problem. It's nothing
of any lasting effect because there's so many misplaced priorities
that ultimately the word is just choked out and it can't flourish. This is a type of person, you
know, again, like that rocky soil. You could come to church
every single Sunday, be at the Lord's house every time the door
is open, but yet there's no real change of heart. There's no real
substantive change of life. Any plant, again, you've planted
stuff, this makes perfect sense to you, you can understand this.
A plant among thorns, it has to compete for nutrients. The
thorns need nutrients from the soil just as the good plant needs
nutrients from the soil. The weeds get nutrients. And
all the minerals, all the resources of the dirt are sucked up by
the weeds, by the thorns, by the stuff that's not useful or
helpful. And that good plant that you're trying to grow there
is starved and choked out. This is what the Lord describes.
Here. And this is why, and this is
where you and I must pray for understanding. We pray for grace
because naturally we are unreceptive to the word. How do you get wayside
ground? How do you get rocky ground?
How do you get thorny ground? It's easy. You don't have to
have a green thumb to have that kind of dirt in your garden.
That's the dirt that nobody does anything to. It's dirt that's
normal. It's dirt that's natural. Plowed
up grass is unnatural. If you come to a garden and you
see a plowed up row, well, you can be sure somebody has been
there. Somebody has been there and done that work. It doesn't
happen by itself. And so that's why I say we have
to pray for understanding, because naturally we don't receive the
Word, but we pray for understanding, because the Word only can come
by divine intervention. The growth of this Word can only
happen by divine intervention. And that's where we come to at
verse number 15. 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. My mom and dad, I've told you
this story before. My mom and dad had a Troy-built
tiller. It was red. I don't know how
many miles as a boy, I walked behind that Troy-built teller.
We had a garden that was L-shaped and probably was very similar
to the footprint of this building, an L-shaped garden in our backyard,
and we planted all sorts of stuff. And I was the oldest of four
boys, and so I was the one that on Saturdays, my dad was a barber,
and so He always worked on Saturdays, because that's when everybody
else was off. And that's when I was off. And so I was the one
that had to walk behind that Troy-built tiller. If you've
ever used one, you know that when your first pass, when the
ground is still hard, the tines of that tiller will, especially
if you're a little runt of a guy like I was when I was small,
would just kind of skip along the ground. And you just had
to keep up with the thing. And to get it to work, you had
to lean back on it. I just broke the fan. You have
to lean back on it and pull those tines down into the ground. And
it would pull you. But you had to wrestle that thing. to get it to till the ground.
But after you make two or three passes, then oh man, it's beautiful. Sinks down into the ground and
it's tilling the dirt all up. It's a beautiful thing. And then
you put the little attachment on there and it'll cut a row
for you. It's wonderful, it's a great
tool. My parents, I realize now looking back, gypped me. they would pay my brothers and
me 25 cents. Okay, so this was late 80s, early
90s. They would pay us a quarter for
an entire five-gallon bucket of rocks. And so as you till,
you know, it digs up rocks and So we'd go behind with the five-gallon
bucket and put the rocks in there. And we'd bring them a five-gallon
bucket full of rocks. And we got a quarter. It was
slave wages, is really what it was. But it took a lot of work. That's the point. It took a lot
of work to get that ground ready for seed. Now here's the thing. I could go out here in this concrete,
and with enough work, bust the concrete up, get it gone, and
till whatever's underneath it, and plant a stand of corn, rows
of okra, some tomatoes, some cucumbers, and we could have
us a garden out here where it used to be a concrete driveway. We could do that work. But here's
the thing spiritually. No preacher can plow your heart. I can't
do it. Hard as I try, as much as I want
to, no parent can plow the heart of their child. You bully your
kids into reading their Bible. You can fuss and gripe and complain
about them being not spiritual, this, that, and the other thing.
You can't change them. You can't do a lick of nothing
to change their heart. You simply cannot do it. How
does it happen, though? It does happen, but how? It's divine intervention. It's
the work of the Lord's Spirit that opens the heart, that breaks
the ground, that plows it up, that makes it receptive for the
Word. You know, we go down to Jamaica
and we have Vacation Bible School with these children. We can't
plow their heart. We teach them the lesson. We
try to illustrate the lesson. We give them Bible verses to
memorize. We sing Bible songs to help illustrate the story.
And we do everything from our perspective, humanly possible
to do it, but we can't do it. We simply cannot do it. But it
does get done. It gets done by the Spirit. It's not natural. It's not natural
for you to take a word of rebuke. The natural thing for you when
you're confronted with a word of rebuke is to lash out in vengeance
against that word of rebuke. It's not natural for you to take
correction. It's not natural to submit to
the word of God. That doesn't come naturally to
you. But yet many of you, receive rebuke with grace, receive correction
with humility, and submit to the Word. Why do some of you
do that and others of you don't? The only answer is divine intervention
in your heart. That's the only answer. And so
you pray, you pray earnestly that the Lord, Lord's day by
Lord's day, Bible reading by Bible reading, would open your
heart to receive the word. Because if there is not that
divine intervention, nothing will happen. Can I beg your Bible
knowledge of Ezekiel 37? And Ezekiel is told by the Lord
prophesy to these dry bones. And he preaches. And there's
this wind and these bones are gathered up and a bunch of skeletons. And the question is put to Ezekiel
by the Lord. Ezekiel, can these bones live? No. But what's his equals answer? Lord, thou knowest. thou knowest." And Ezekiel prophesied to the
bones, and the Lord by His Spirit brings flesh to the bones. Ezekiel didn't do that. Ezekiel
didn't do it. Ezekiel couldn't do it. Who could
do it? Divine intervention. And so we
pray that the Lord would intervene and that the Lord would give
understanding to the word. And so that's the first thing
that I would put before you. The second thing that this parable
teaches us is the seriousness with which we must receive the
word of God. the seriousness with which we
must receive that word. I want you to turn to Isaiah
55 in your Bible. Isaiah 55. As you read this verse, you might
think I'm a new driver in a manual transmission and grinding gears
in the process of a sermon. I promise we're not grinding
the gears. I hope you'll see a very smooth transition from
first gear to second gear here in just a moment. But I want
to show you Isaiah 55, verse number 11. Isaiah 55, 11. So
shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth.
This is the Lord speaking. So shall my word be that goeth
forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall
prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it. Now, that's not a
new passage of Scripture for you. All of you know that passage
of Scripture. It's a passage of Scripture that
in our prayer meetings we pray, not every Wednesday, but I would
venture to guess at least once a month it comes up. The word
of the Lord is not void. We know that to be the case.
And the teaching of that passage is quite clear. But here's a
question for you. Do you really believe that verse
to be true? My word shall not return unto
me void. Do you really believe that that
is true? Let me explain what I mean. We've
just read a parable about the word of the Lord being sung. And three out of four times, it's voided. Three out of four
times, it's voided. How do we reconcile that? How
do we put that together? That the Lord says, my word is
not going to return unto me void, but three out of four times,
it doesn't bear fruit. Is that not void? How are we
to reconcile this conundrum? So don't be confused. Let me
explain what I mean. The word of the Lord is always
successful. It's always successful. It always accomplishes exactly
what God intends it to accomplish. That should scare you to death.
it should scare you to death. Why do I say that? Because for
unfaithful hearers, the Word of God brings greater
condemnation. The Word of God brings greater
condemnation. 2 Corinthians 2 verse 16 tells
us to the one, we are the saver of death unto death. And to the
other, the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for
these things? You know, we quote that a lot.
Who is sufficient for these things? But understand the context of
where that is. When I preach. When Pastor Kimbrough
preaches. When you talk to your coworker.
When you hand a gospel track. Sometimes. And we pray that it never is
the case. We pray it never to be the case.
But sometimes that word is a saver of death unto death. Sometimes
that word, the purpose that God has for that word is to bring
greater condemnation. God accomplishes his purpose
with his word. And that's why I say, when we
come to the scriptures, there is a great solemnity that we
must have in receiving the word of God. A great solemnity. The same sun that melts the wax
hardens the clay. And you can come to church week
after week after week and get harder and harder and harder
and harder. May I remind you of Pastor Kimbrough's
own personal testimony? When he was 16 years old and
he went out to his car and he sat in his car and he was struck
with the fact That after the invitation was given. At the
Baptist Church he grew up in. He sat in his car as a 16 year
old and realized. I don't feel convicted. Every
Sunday he had felt convicted. He knew he was in sin. The Lord
dealt with him. But he ignored the conviction.
And what scared him to death? was that Sunday sat in his car
and realized, I don't feel convicted. Just become hardened. Just become
hardened. Now, thankfully, to mix metaphors
here, the sun that had been hardening the clay was also the rock, I'm
sorry, the hammer that was able to smash it to pieces. or I mix
my metaphors, I know, but the same word was a sword of the
spirit that cut him asunder. It's seriousness with which we
receive the word. We pray that the Lord's word
is never a saver of death unto death. We fear that, we don't
want that, but we pray that it is a word that brings life. And
so for faithful hearers, that's what the Lord's word is. The purpose that the Lord has
for that word is that it brings life. Maybe not now, but it will. You plant the seed. What can
you do more than plant the seed? What did Paul say he could do
more than plant the seed? Another person watered the seed.
When you evangelize, when you speak to people about the Lord,
you don't know, but you're planting or you are watering. Who brings
the increase? It is the Lord that brings the
increase. And so the word of the Lord always
accomplishes the purpose for which it has been said. And we
pray desperately that it be a saver of life unto life. And so we
plant, we water, and we wait. And the Lord brings it up. We could rehearse stories of
people that have been prayed for for years, 10 years, 20 years,
50 years, before they're ever converted. We do this Vacation Bible School
in Jamaica with hopes that these stories that they learn when
they were seven years old at Let the Bible Speak Church in
Jamaica, when they're 30 and have moved to New York City and
are pushing a hot dog cart down Fifth Avenue, they remember those
weird white people that came to Jamaica and gave them the
gospel. And they're converted. Who knows
when it will happen? Who knows when it will happen? Be a faithful hearer. Pray for the Lord to open your
heart. May the Lord bless His word as we've heard it this morning. Amen. Let's close in prayer. Our Father, it is our desire to be plowed up soil. And we pray that that Word would
settle in, and that it would grow, and that it would bring
forth fruit in the heart. We thank you that your Word does
not return void, even in our frail attempts to sow it, our
feeble attempts to water it. We thank you that you are the
Lord of the Word. And you do with it as you please.
And we pray for that word today to be a saver of life unto life
in the hearts of those gathered in here. Pray that you'll bless
our fellowship to follow. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
Word of God in the Soul of Man
| Sermon ID | 818241632177408 |
| Duration | 50:35 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Luke 8:4-15 |
| Language | English |
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