I'd like to begin reading in verse 4 of Luke chapter 8. When a great crowd was gathering, and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. And he said these things. As he said these things, he called out, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. But for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root. They believe for a while, and in time of testing, fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, They are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. Well, let's pray together and seek the Lord's help. Father, we ask this morning as we've entered into this time where we have gathered to worship you, we surely have enjoyed all that you've done. We've enjoyed singing together and praying and this baptism. Lord, it has been good already. It's been good for my soul to gather with Your people. And we just open our hearts now as we proclaim the gospel, as we preach Your Word. We ask, Father, that You might anoint me with power so that it is not my word but that I'm merely a messenger and that your spirit might send home the message from this text to the hearts of the hearers and might accomplish that work which only you can do. And so we pray, Father, if there's those that are lost in our midst who have never been saved, that you might open their eyes, you might open their hearts, and they would turn from their sin and trust in Christ to save them. And we pray for the church also, Father, as we read this passage, we pray that we might hear what we've heard so many times, that we ought to pay the most close attention to all these things that we've heard, lest we might let them slip or forget them, not apply them. So we ask for your grace. You open our ears and open our hearts and cause us to be a people who search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. And then we apply them to our lives. We live the Christian life in the light of what you've taught us. We don't go on our way like one who's looked in a mirror and has forgotten what he's seen. So we do ask you, Holy Spirit, would you focus our attention, would you rivet our attention on what you're saying through this passage, and cause us not to be distracted and think of other things, but that we might set our heart for this time on your word, and that we might submit ourselves to it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this whole thing of Jesus speaking in parables says a lot. Hints here in Matthew 13 that Jesus spoke in parables for one reason, that some would not be saved. That he would hide this word, this mystery in parables so that some would not hear was amazing to me. I remember Scott preaching this a number of years ago and thinking about these words as he was asked by the disciples and he says in Mark, so that they may indeed see but not perceive. He's speaking parables that they may indeed hear but not understand lest they should turn and be forgiven. In the light of that, I'm thinking what a searching discourse, a beginning to these parables and how we ought to just take this to heart. And again, it's been repeated throughout the scriptures that we're responsible for what we hear. And that if we don't pay close attention to the Word of God, We're in danger. This is so important for you to grasp. We're in danger of a hardened heart. Oh, we need to pay attention to the Word of God. I think he's speaking in particularly of when there is a sower sowing the seed. This is practical for us as we hear the preaching of the Word of God. And so I just want to examine this passage and try to understand. I do see a lot of application, not just for the unbeliever. We know that the unbeliever is here. We know that the unbeliever has not heard. He's not correctly understood. He's not applied it to himself. He's blinded. He can't see. He don't understand. But we're also encouraged many times throughout the scriptures to be attentive hearers, to open our ears, to be sensitive to the Spirit of God as His Word is preached, to discipline ourselves, to focus on the Word, to let it find a place in our lives that we might grow. We're to desire the sincere milk of the Word so that we might grow. And unless the Word finds a root in our heart, there'll be no growth in grace. This is elementary Christianity 101. Unless you're much in the Word, you will not grow in grace. You cannot grow. You will be a stunted believer. Your growth will be hindered. So let's just examine something that Jesus made very clear. But I want to kind of look at how some of these things happen. First of all, He mentioned these hearers who are like the wayside soil or the pathway type of ground. Jesus makes it clear in Luke there that he's really talking about our hearts, the condition of our hearts. And are our hearts ready for the Word of God? So this first person that he talks about, and then explains, is a careless hearer of the Word. And his heart is hardened to the Word of God. This person came to the place where the Word of God was preached, maybe because of duty, or because he would have felt uneasy if he had stayed away, but he didn't come in a spirit of prayer. He didn't come for the good of his soul. He didn't come to hear the message of God's Word to him. He didn't come hungering and thirsting after righteousness, desiring the sincere milk of the Word. He listens, but he doesn't care for what he hears. His method is simply to judge the messenger or his delivery, but he doesn't apply the Word to himself. It's easy to judge others and talk about how this Word fits someone else. It's easy to let the mind wander to other subjects without even an effort to focus on the Word and listen for God. That's what we ought to be doing really, is listening for God to speak through His living Word. So maybe one of the most solemn subjects are being spoken of he's thinking about the most trivial things or just longing for the sermon to be over he wants to go home after all his his belly has scheduled a lunchtime directly after the meeting this is a wayside hearer and there are many even when the Lord himself was the sower one out of four were wayside hearers They were careless, and it was a hardened heart where the seed merely fell on the ground. They were exposed to the preaching of the Word, but they were not changed at all. This morning, early, I went out into my garden. A disastrous scene after this drought this year, and there was just some little bit of survival, but I did look at the corn. And I just wanted to examine a little bit. And I did find one and I remembered that there were some vines that were growing by the edge where the tomatoes and I thought, well, I'll plant a little more corn out here. And that's kind of what this parable is talking about. Seed was being scattered everywhere. I did that in my front yard this spring. What a terrible time to try to plant grass seed when a drought's on the way. And so much of it began to spring up. And boy, the drought came, the sun beat down, and hardly any of it survived. But I looked at this one stalk of corn that I had some hope for. But I noticed this vine had begun to tie itself around it and throughout the year I thought, I'll just wait and see what happens. Wait and see who wins out here in this little battle. We did have some corn. Most of my corn was like cow corn because it was just hardened through the drought. And we began to eat it one night and I thought either I got the wrong corn or the drought made all the kernels hard. But there was some fruit. It served some purpose. There was another little one that they had a fence, I guess, through the property. There used to be a farm there. And if you go down very far at all this place, you meet these fence posts. And there was a stalk of corn there. I was going to bring it along just to show you, but it was just a just a measly little stalk about that tall. The others were six feet tall, but it it didn't give any fruit. It just it was just barely there. And then this one was was all tangled up by the vines and and that I noticed that, you know, there were there were there was no fruit whatsoever where where I had walked. And although I had put much corn down, and even the okra sometimes would be scattered here and there, and after the drought I thought, well there's an okra, and there's one over there. But where I had walked, there's a number of lessons there. First of all, for the believer, in order that the Lord might obtain fruit in your life, the most effective thing is The most effective thing is for the gardener to make his way into the garden much and wear a path there and tend to the garden. And if you neglect it, well then weeds will begin to grow. And so I'm just saying this daily relationship with the Lord, being in His Word daily and the Lord coming into your life and speaking to you and convicting you. Back to this thing about the pathway soil, it's where people have traveled in other words. I read up a little bit about oriental customs and apparently there were customs where there was much public land and a guy might have a piece of ground where he would sow seed but there were pathways where people travel and as he's as he spread the seed you know it's it's difficult just to drop it down and into certain places you basically broadcast the seed And that's what we ought to do. We ought to broadcast the seed everywhere. But there are certainly some who don't hear. And in this case, he's teaching that this pathway soil will not yield any fruit. So there's nothing to show. The seed just lies there. And then what happens is he teaches that the illustration of birds coming and taking away the seed pictures Satan plucking that seed away. This is something that Satan is wont to do. He is intent on that you do not receive the word that somehow you are distracted or resistant or your heart is hardened and so he'll send as many travelers through your life as you allow. Now I think that there's a good application here. First of all, for the unbeliever whose heart is hardened towards God is becoming more hardened because there's so much other influence in his life. There's so much entertainment and things and people and philosophy and opinions and ideas that the Word of God just amounts to little when you hear it. You disregard it easily and you'll easily just walk away and forget what you heard. But the continual influence, even in the life of a believer, think about it. The continual travel of persons and ideas and people, of their advice and their perceptions and their assumptions and their reasonings, all serve but to harden your heart against the reception of the Word of God. Therefore, we ought to be careful, brethren, who we allow into our lives. We've talked much about profitable conversation. First of all, the hearer needs to be careful, lest the careless words of others who come into his life often and speak words that are not edifying, and carelessly traverse his heart and his mind with their own ideas, their own assumptions, their own perceptions, and all that might not be true or spiritually beneficial at all, and then not to behoove us, brethren, to be careful what we say. lest we adversely affect our brethren whom we're speaking to by way of tearing down or gossip or slander or just simply misinformation, anything. I need to be careful that I give the Word of God, that I share the Word of God, that we profit from the Word of God. It's important. Set your heart on God's Word when you fellowship and when you socialize. So be careful for the careless hearer. The Word lies there ready for Satan. It's all on the surface. There's no root. If the conscience might have been touched at all, if he had been moved somewhat at all by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit using his Word, Satan's work would not have been so easy, perhaps. But the same words are heard by another hearer and the ground is so different. The careless hearer might be sitting right next to the one who is eagerly drinking in every word. It might have been precious soul-satisfying food for the careless hearer, but he's more interested in earthly things. He's more interested in trivial things. He values his own opinions and ideas higher than the Word of God. The careless hearer has often heard sermon after sermon on any given subject, yet there's no fruit in his life to testify of. There might be young people here this morning who you've heard the gospel time and time again. The seed has been scattered again and again, and yet you're thinking of video games and things that you like to do and playing at the church and perhaps eating or maybe going home and watching the television or whatever, but your heart is just not interested in receiving the Word of God. And young people, that same word will rise up in condemnation against everyone who has heard. We're accountable for every word that we've heard. There are heathen in the foreign lands who have never heard this word. They lived and died in darkness and sin, and they'll have far less of an account to give than those who have heard the word over and over, and they live their lives as if they're indifferent to what the gospel requires. The careless hearer has often been glad when the tedious hour of listening is over and he can go on with his life unchallenged and unchanged with not one thought to what he has just heard because the scene has been snatched away from his well-traveled heart. And now he'd like to hear again. He wouldn't be a careless hearer now on the day of judgment. He'd pay close attention to every word, but it's too late. The day of grace has passed. The day of judgment has come. So beware of careless hearing. Beware of the wiles of Satan. Beware of the continual traveler, come to hear the word with preparation of your heart. Come to hear the word seriously, earnestly, prayerfully, watchfully. It's one of the greatest blessings in life to hear God's Word. Blessed are they who hear and do. So let me encourage you to watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. Guard the garden of your heart from unwelcome guests. Be very careful concerning who and what you listen to because the seed of the Word of God cannot take root on hardened soil. Then Jesus mentions the rocky soil. This person is the shallow here. There's not much depth there. And I think he's talking mostly about not just a rock or two here in the garden, but basically you've seen these fields and sometimes they'll have a ridge of rock and there's just a little bit of soil on them. I mean, even in the cracks of my sidewalk, I can get things to grow. But Anything that's valuable, you can't get to grow there. You'll never grow corn in the sidewalks of the front yard. It's because there's no depth there. And I think what he's talking about here is there's no deep work of the Spirit in the heart of this person. Now his feelings might be easily moved, and it seems like there's a little sprout perhaps, it's like that little dwarf that I pulled out of the garden. There seems to be some effect of the Word, but it never goes anywhere. You've known this person for years, and after a while you ask him about some doctrine he's heard over and over and over. It seems to have no effect on his life. It seems like this person is taught Christian principles of how Jesus lived, and his holy example, and how we ought to pattern our lives after the Lord Jesus, and how we ought to live the Christian life, and yet he has hidden sins of all kinds that he seems oblivious to. These shallow heart hearers endure for a time. is what Jesus said. They endure for a little while, until the sun comes out, until the heat is brought on. I think what he's picturing there, until someone laughs at them, or until they're disliked, or even persecuted. These type of people are easily offended at something, and they can't get over it. They held on for a while, but they've now given up. They had no root. The Word took no effect, and there's no fruit of long-suffering, and patience, and holiness, and Godliness. This is just basically a shallow heart that has eagerly received the Word because they think they'll get some blessings, but they're not so interested in God Himself and His call to holiness. This is, again, often the case with young people. I'm not picking on you young people, but there's often an eagerness in your feelings, you're often easily moved, but there's no deep work of the Spirit in the heart. There's no true change within, and that's the only way that we really get the depth that is needed, that deep work of the Spirit. It's not enough just to hear gladly, but we must hear gladly and have a depth and a rudeness of the deep work of the Holy Spirit. So pray, pray that your heart won't stay hardened and that you might receive the word with gladness in the deep faith of a believing heart. And then there's the thorny ground hearer. There's In this parable, no real mention of this hearer receiving the word with gladness. I think maybe he's talking about older hearers. Maybe they're not so easily moved now. The word at one time made a strong impression on them. But on Monday morning, they give their whole heart to the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, the lust of other things, and they're busy from morning to evening. They have no time for God, and the Word is choked out, and there's no fruit. As the years go by, they become more and more entangled with the cares of this world. It's like that stalk of corn that was by the edge of the garden, and I thought, I'll just leave it alone. The thorns and the thistles always went out. There was an appearance of life there, but as I went to my own garden, and I'm a demanding taskmaster, I demand that there's fruit in my garden. If I'm going to go to all the trouble to pull the weeds and till it and labor and plant and spend my money for the high price of Crystal City water and water that thing over and over, there should be some fruit out there. and to go out there and to look and think, you know, I labored here, I dug around there, I planted you, I cared for you, I watered you, but there's just these thorns and thistles. And you might think, well, isn't it a gardener's responsibility to pull those up? Well, Jesus told this parable, I didn't. He is a good and a perfect gardener, but he's talking about the influences that we, as God's people, allow into our lives, or perhaps the unbeliever. just allows these things, because the fact is, all these three, that seed sown on hardened soil, pathway soil, that seed that's sown where there's not much depth, that seed that's sown where there's thorns and thistles, all of these are unbelievers. There's no fruit in their lives. There's no evidence that they're Christians. They might profess that they know Him, but in works they deny Him. I think Paul said that being abominable and reprehensible And so they're not at all like a Christian. They have a form of godliness. They talk like Christians, but there's no real holiness. There's no pursuit of holiness. There's no hungering and thirsting after righteousness. There's no panting after God as the deer pants after the water brook. They're choked, they're entangled, and the continual growth of these cares and riches and the lusts of other things choke the Word, and this person is unfruitful. He might have showed promise at one time, but alas, he has no time for God. Against his own conscience, he continually neglects the garden of his heart until it is completely involved and unfruitful. I was ashamed last year when my garden was over. And I did not take the time to go out there and weed it and plow the ground up. And I thought surely the city of Crystal City ought to arrest anybody like this. And they'd come by and all the neighbor's yards were cut, but my whole backyard I turned into a garden. It's common sense. It's better than growing grass. You get to eat from your garden if you use your backyard for that. But anyway, so I let it grow up and it just looked a horrid mess. It had all these vines and everything. And I thought, you know, God help me that my life is not like that garden. That I so neglect the spiritual state of my soul that you cannot even tell that I am the Lord's garden. And the Lord comes into His own garden and He looks for fruit and behold, barrenness. Nothing but thorns and thistles and hardened ground and shallow earth. We certainly ought to be a fruitful people. No fruit. If there's no fruit, If there's no evidence that I'm a believer, then there's no comfort, there's no peace, there's no happiness, there's no salvation, and there's no eternal life. Jesus didn't say it, but basically 75% of his crowd And according to some commentators, reading Mark, it might have been more because of the simple fact that there was some good ground and some brought forth thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some a hundredfold. And Jesus did say in John 15, here it is my father glorified that you bear much fruit. Aren't we so often satisfied with just a little bit of fruit? Oh, we're so pleased with ourselves when there's just a little bit of growth. And God is a gracious God. You know, thank God that He's gracious. He does this work, but ought not it to... This is not conviction. The conviction of the Spirit of God, is not that a work of grace? Certainly it is. If the Spirit of God had not convicted us of His Word, how would we be able to be plowed up through repentance? First the Spirit of God works conviction, and we repent and forsake our sin. Then the ground is ready for the seed of the Word of God. So this good ground, all these that bore different amounts of fruit, Luke says, a good and honest heart, having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience. That could be translated perseverance. Matthew says, these are they which understand. So they have understood, they have come to the right conclusion that this is talking about me. about my response to the Word of God. And so I leave the place of worship and my own place of private devotion and I meditate on these things and I contemplate them and I speak to others along the way of what God has said and what God is doing in my life. Ought not that to be common for God's people? To be able to testify of the work of God? That's what a testimony is. A testimony is not, I've done this and I've done that. A testimony is, here's what God is doing in my life. So in the good soil, the seed was the same. The difference is in the hearers. The difference is in the condition of their hearts. sincere and earnest in heart, humble, teachable, hearts renewed by grace, a heart which the Holy Spirit has prepared to receive the Word. There's no natural sincerity that will result in bringing forth fruit. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to make us ready to receive the Word. The fruit is that this man lives as a Christian and not as a natural man. We're not to live... Paul rebuked those in court, telling them when they were choosing Paul and Apollos and these different allegiances. And Paul said, you're living as mere men. I mean, isn't that insightful? Isn't that wonderful? Brethren, we're not mere men. We're spiritual beings. We're children of the King. And the Word of God ought to bear much fruit in our lives. We ought not to be content with a low standard of holiness. We ought not to be content with a rare offering of ourselves to God. Paul said to the Romans, we're going to be living sacrifices. The Bible says, straight is the gate, narrows the way that leads to eternal life and few that there be that find it. These are searching words in these parables. What kind of hearers are we? What fruit is there in my life? Has it humbled our pride? Has it brought us to repentance? Has it led to faith in Christ? Are we bringing forth fruit? Are we desiring to bring forth more fruit? Are we pressing toward the mark? Are we growing in grace? He who has ears to hear, let him hear. What is the condition? of your heart. Has it been thoroughly plowed with conviction and repentance and forsaking all known sin? So pray. Pray that the Lord would do a deep work in your heart. That the Holy Spirit would reveal all known sin. And you would quickly repent of it. And there would be evidence of the grace of God, the work of the Spirit in your life as you live by the grace of God, as you live out the Christian life. Let's pray together. Our Father, we are grateful just to have this unbelievable privilege to hear God's Word. We have had it revealed to us like no time in human history. In these last days, God has spoken to us by His Son. We've heard about You with the hearing of our ear. We've been brought to life by Your Spirit. I pray, Father, that If there's one here who has heard the Word of God, who's heard the Gospel, and yet they've neglected it, they've never responded, they've never repented, they've made light of it and went on their way. Would you please open the eyes of that person, open the eyes of those young people? To see that your word teaches now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the day of salvation. This life is like a vapor. We ought not to boast of tomorrow. We don't know what a day may bring forth. Pray, Father, that you would convict those who are lost. And then for us Christians, that we would be a meek and a humble people who are quick to hear and slow to speak. We open our ears quickly to your word and we seek constantly to be submissive and obedient to the Holy Spirit. We desire to not just be religious, but to live every day as Christians, to speak as Christians, to live out in the work world as light, as Dave testified earlier, that we would shine, that we would be the salt of the earth. Lord, that there would just be fruit that you could receive glory from in our lives and we'll forever praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.