The Seed and the Soils (Luke 8:4–15) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 57)

Transcript

JRNT 108
05/03/26
The Gospel of Luke: The Seed and the Soils
Luke 8:4-15
Jesse Randolph


This Sunday we are back in our normal flow of things as we turn our attention back to the Gospel of Luke. It's one of the most well recognized sections of Luke's Gospel and one of the most well-known parables that the Lord Jesus Christ ever gave, that being the parable of the Sower or as I think it's more appropriately phrased, the parable of the soils. That's what we're going to look at this morning, this parable of the soils, in a sermon that I'm titling The Seed and the Soils. As we consider some really critical words from the lips of our Lord as they landed on the ears of His Disciples, and then eventually made their way into apostolic teaching and doctrine and then made their way into the canon of Scripture and now into our laps where we are going to see these words in Luke 8:4-15.

That's our text for this morning, Luke 8:4-15. God's Word reads, “Now when a large crowd was coming together and those from the various cities were journeying to Him, He spoke by way of a parable. The Sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed some fell beside the road and it was trampled underfoot and the birds of the air ate it up. And other seed fell on rock and as soon as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture. And other seed fell among the thorns and when the thorns grew up with it, they choked it out. And other seed fell into the good soil and growing up it produced a crop one hundred times as great. As He said these things He would call out, He who has ears to ear, let him hear. And His Disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. And He said, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but to the rest it is 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 and those beside the road are those that have heard and the devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts so that they will not believe and be saved. And those on the rock are those who when they hear receive the Word with joy and these have no root. They believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. And the seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard and as they go on their way, they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of life and do not bear ripe fruit. But the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the Word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and bear fruit with perseverance.”

So, there it is, the parable of the soils. I have seven points for us this morning as we work our way through this text. First with verse 4 is The Setting of the Story. Second in verses 5-8 we'll look at The Sowing of the Seed. Verses 9-10 will be The Shrouding of the Secret. And then we'll get into the four soils—The Soil of the Stolen, The Soil of the Shallow, The Soil of the Suffocated and then The Soil of the Saved.

Let's get into it with our first point, The Setting of the Story. Look at verse 4 again where we're told this. “Now when a large crowd was coming together and those from the various cities were journeying to Him, He spoke by way of a parable.” Now we saw last Sunday morning as we worked our way through the first three verses of Luke 8 that Jesus was, Luke 8:1 tells us, “Going around from one city and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.” In other words, Jesus was making His way through and to various cities and villages all throughout Galilee. This would have included cities and towns like Tiberias, and Chorazin and Magdala where Mary Magdalene came from in Capernaum. As He went from town to town and as He went from village to village, Luke tells us that He was “proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.” And we've seen throughout Luke's Gospel Jesus accompanied His message of the coming Kingdom with various signs; healings and exorcisms and resuscitations and other wonders and miracles. No different than our day when somebody catches wind that someone somewhere is doing something out of the ordinary, it draws a crowd and that's what happened. As Jesus was proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God, as He was preaching and teaching and healing all throughout Galilee, demonstrating that He was in fact the Messiah who had been promised to Israel, people started showing up. Verse 4 again, Luke tells us that a large crowd, not of followers necessarily but of curious onlookers, “lookie loos” were starting to come together and they were coming from all over, we're told. We're told in verse 4 that they were coming from various cities, largely in Galilee but probably from surrounding districts as well—Judea and Samaria for instance. The point is this was a very large crowd, and they were going out of their way, they were journeying to Him, as Luke tells us, to hear what He had to say and to see what He was up to. That's our first point, The Setting of the Story. The crowds were full of curious onlookers as they were wondering what this man from Nazareth might do next.

Well, what He did next was open His mouth as He delivered the words of this now very famous parable. Look at the end of verse 4 where we're told that He “spoke by way of a parable.” Now when we get to verses 9-10, we're going to dig in a bit more as to why Jesus chose this type of teaching device, the parable, for this crowd at this moment. But for now, let's just say it's sufficient to say the point of a parable is to convey a spiritual lesson by drawing upon some principle from everyday life. The word parable in Greek is parabole and it joins together a Greek verb, ballo, which means to throw or to cast or even to put, and then it attaches that verb, ballo, to a preposition, para, which means to place beside or alongside. So, it's parabole. It's a relatable, understandable story that's born of real-life circumstances to which the average person can relate, like the sowing of seed in first century agrarian society. Then you take that relatable, understandable story and you place it alongside a principle, a spiritual principle, which is what you are really trying to convey. That's the parable, placing the story alongside the principle to highlight the principle that you want to teach.

That is what Jesus does here in verses 5-8 where He gives this parable. He says, “The sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell beside the road, and it was trampled underfoot and the birds of the air ate it up. And other seed fell on rock and as soon as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture. And other seed fell among the thorns and when the thorns grew up with it, they choked it out. And other seed fell onto the good soil and growing up it produced a crop one hundred times as great.”

So, this famous parable starts with this very simple statement, “The sower went out to sow his seed.” You know I came upon that sentence in my study this week, a sentence I'm sure I've read hundreds of times at this point and I thought, how appropriate. Here we are in our state's capital and just six miles directly west of where I stand today and where you all sit today is this tower, this building that has on top of it a twenty-foot-tall image of a man encased in bronze known as “The Sower.” That's what he is called. I remember when I first visited Lincoln here with my wife Jenna as we were candidating over four years ago now. I remember I first laid eyes on that capitol building and I saw that image of the sower and I was thinking to myself if the Lord calls us here, we'll be leaving California for God's country. This will be great because this quaint little town of Lincoln really seems to get it. This is clearly a conservative Christian city because here it has this capitol building with this sower sitting on top of it and oh so clearly that sower is scattering all over Lincoln and all over the state the Word of God. That's how I thought of it. It turns out I was wrong. In fact, when you trace back through the history of our state's capitol building you quickly learn that when that sower was placed upon that gilded dome, it will be nearly a hundred years ago, in a few years here, the words that went along with it were this. It is being placed there to “represent agriculture.” It is being placed there “to highlight the development of civilization.” It's being placed there “to highlight man's chief purpose in forming society which is to sow nobler ideas of living.” Now I have to say when I read those words this week, I was pretty disappointed. Those words were written nearly a hundred years ago as that beautiful structure went up, penetrating our very low-rise skyline here in Lincoln. Even then a hundred years ago there was no mention of Jesus's parable, there was no mention of the Word of God. So, notwithstanding my rose-colored vision of four years ago of what this sower on top of the state capitol building I thought represented, it actually does not represent the Word of God being strewn or cast all over this state, sad as it is to report on that. But that doesn't mean that we here, six miles east of that building, can't proclaim and live in light of the Word of God today. Amen? All right, we're going to keep going, keep marching along.

Verse 5, Jesus begins this parable, the parable of the soils by saying, “The sower went out to sow his seed.” Now I did more homework on this topic of sowing and seed and farming and the like. I had to do homework to catch up on this, this past week. I learned that John Deere was not born until the year 1804 and that means that his agricultural innovations and inventions were not available to the first century sower mentioned here in Jesus's parable. The sower didn't have an electric drive row unit to get his seed into the ground, and the sower didn't have tanks for liquid fertilizer to inject the nutrients for those seeds into the ground. No, what he had was a bag with some seed and he had his hand and a wrist and an elbow which allowed him to cast his seed in every which way across his land. And that's all he would do, he would reach into this bag that was slung across his chest, he would grab the seed, and he would fling it out onto the land so it would grow. That's what Jesus is relating in this parable, He's painting a verbal picture which would have been very commonplace in first century agrarian society, one that would have been easy for His audience to envision in their minds.

So again verse 5, “The sower went out to sow his seed,” and now we get into the first of these four soils. Still in verse 5, “and as he sowed,” meaning as his hand, his wrist was flinging that seed upon the earth, it says “some fell beside the road.” Now that word road is not describing a paved road like 84th or Van Dorn or Pine Lake. It's not even describing a gravel road like we have out in the country. It's describing a dirt path; a dirt path which separated one landowner's unfenced patch of land from another landowner's unfenced patch of land. This path would have been hardened over time; this dirt path would have been pressed down over time as human footsteps went over it and as the hooves of mules and oxen trod along it. So, the sower here is pictured as scattering seed, he's aiming at, of course, staying between the lines so that the seed falls on his actual soil and the crop is increasing. But inevitably some of that seed as it was thrown would overshoot the mark and it would land out on that dirt path which surrounded the field. When that happened, end of verse 5, it was “trampled underfoot and the birds of the air ate it up.” So, the seed in this case was either ground down further into that dirt path as people walked all over it, I think of bubblegum turning black on a city sidewalk somewhere, or in some cases birds would capitalize and they would dive bomb their way to a small snack. Or in this first example we have this seed being scattered onto this first soil which is really a path and then it doesn't have chance to take root or grow.

Well, He continues, verse 6, by describing another type of soil. He says, “And other seed fell on rock and as soon as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture.” Now Jesus's words here line up directly with what we know about the landscape in this part of the world. Very much the tillable soil in this part of the world in Jesus's day would have been sitting on top of layers of rock, layers of limestone typically. Sometimes what would happen is one of those rock layers beneath the surface would be so far up that it would actually come to ground level and there was very little soil between that limestone layer and the surface, the air. So, there was no depth. Jesus here is describing a field not necessarily with individual rocks and pebbles and stones strewn throughout the land, instead He is describing a field with this base layer of rock, of limestone, lying right under the surface. In that situation in those conditions when that seed is cast out on that type of soil, shallow rocky soil, instead of that seed going downward into the ground, that would be the normal process. When a seed is planted it goes down first, it gets firmly rooted before it pops back up and penetrates the surface. Instead of that on rocky soil that seed would immediately spring up, it would spring up immediately. And because it had no roots drawing water or nutrients from the soil that little seedling would pop up, be exposed to the sun, no nutrients, no water and it would wither. That's exactly how He describes it in verse 6. “And other seed fell on rock and as soon as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture.” On first glance the land looked fine, the ground looked fine, but all wasn't fine. The plant eventually withered, the seed was unproductive and it couldn't be productive because there was no depth of soil.

Well as we turn to verse 7, Jesus describes a third type of soil. He says, “And other seed fell among the thorns and when the thorns grew up with it, they choked it out.” You know a clever contributor to the Readers' Digest back when that was a thing many years ago said, “Roses are red, violets are blue, but they don't get around like the dandelions do.” I don't know if I would have found that as funny as I do now that I live in Nebraska. A few years ago, I don't think I had ever been exposed to as many dandelions as we have here about this time of year. It was only after moving to Nebraska that we were introduced to all sorts of new species of weeds and thorns and such. Tall weeds and short weeds and big weeds and small weeds and weeds that grow in grass and weeds that grow in the tiniest little crevice on a concrete sidewalk. Of course every weed has this amazing ability,{have you noticed?}, that no matter how hard you pull it, how much sweat is pouring down your face or how hard you yank or pull or tug as you are fighting that thing like it's the sword in the stone, it eventually just snaps right in half. Right? Well here in verse 7 Jesus is describing a specific type of weed, He's describing a thorn bush which would have been prevalent in this part of the world. There are a lot of different weeds which plague the soil in first century Galilee and some we read were actually quite beautiful. There were weeds that were tall and they produced these flowers of all different colors—red and yellow and sometimes even blue. But there are also these pesky thorn bushes which is a type of weed that is described here.

Well, no matter what type of weed in Jesus's day, like the weeds of ours, they were loathed and they were a concern because what they did was they stole the nourishment from the ground that was meant for the other plants, plants that actually sustained human beings. What would happen is during plowing season and tilling season those plows and those tills were the first century implements that people used, and they wouldn't be able to pull up all the weeds from the previous season by their roots so the roots from those weeds and the thorns from those thorn bushes would be left in the ground and they would hide out under the surface and so when a sower would eventually toss out his seed, a seed of barley or wheat or whatever the case may be, he wouldn't necessarily know that he was throwing that seed into thorn infested soil. Then when that seed landed in that soil where those thorns and weeds had been lying in wait all season long, those thorns would eventually choke out the nutrients from the other plants. They would compete with the other plants for the nutrients in the soil and they would eventually win out, preventing those plants from taking root and growing and thriving and producing.

That takes us to verse 8 and this fourth type of soil where Jesus says, “And other seed fell into the good soil and growing up it produced a crop one hundred times as great.” So, when we take these four soils as a whole here, we see that Jesus is not giving some sort of fatalistic parable with no positive outcome. There is a positive outcome. All is not lost. Rather, some of the seeds in His parable here actually fall onto good soil. So, there was soil in this parable which was good and fruitful and profitable, and a substantial amount apparently, considerable amount. Soil which hadn't been hardened by human footsteps or the clip-clop of animal hooves or soil which wasn't lacking in depth, soil which hadn't been choked out by thorns and weeds. Soil, rather, was suitable for healthy plant growth and when the seed fell into that good soil, the non-trampled, the non-rocky, non-thorn infested soil, look at what happened.

Look at verse 8, “Growing up it produced a crop one hundred times as great.” Matthew in his account of the parable of the soils in Matthew 13:8 quotes Jesus as saying that “the good soil yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.” In Mark's Gospel he gives that same breakdown, “some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” That's in Mark 4:8, Luke goes straight to the heart of it and cuts to the chase. He bypasses the smaller results, the thirty and sixty, and he goes straight to the maximum yield. He is highlighting the fact that with one grain of seed cast upon good soil it produces this maximum gain. A hundred grains come out of it once that single seed is placed on the good soil. It yields an abundant crop.

Then second half of verse 8 it is Luke narrating again and he says, “As He,” meaning Jesus, “said these things He would call out, He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Now note how that is phrased. That's actually a really excellent translation of what is going on in the Greek language here, which seems to be indicating that Jesus was repeating this expression over and over as He delivered this parable. The sense here is not that Jesus ran quickly through the four soils like I just did and then at the very end of it as though to accentuate the fact that He was now done explaining these four soils said, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Rather what is happening is after each one of these soils is explained by Jesus or communicated by Jesus, He pauses after each and says, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” So, He explains that there is this one type of soil, the path that encloses the land, the dirt path. Pause. “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” And then He explains the soil that is rocky with that layer of limestone laying right beneath the surface. Pause. “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Then He gets to the thorn infested or the weed infested soil, the soil that has been choked out by thorns, then He pauses and says, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” Then He gets finally, we just saw, to the good soil and again He pauses and says, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” See Jesus, after He laid out the descriptions of each of these soils, He wanted those who were within earshot and taking in this parable to really think upon and reflect upon these words and each of these four soils He was describing. He wanted to make sure that they were really hearing Him and really listening, and that the information He was communicating to them as He taught them was not going in one ear and out the other.

Keeping our bearings here this is the parable that Jesus is delivering to this large crowd, back to verse 4, that's been journeying to see Him, and they are gathering around Him. They've come from these various other cities outside the region and then once Jesus had finished delivering the contents of the parable, laying out these four soils, His Disciples, His followers, wasted no time in asking what He meant. Look at verse 9, “And His Disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant. And He said,” verse 10, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but to the rest it is in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.”

We have seen The Setting of the Story, that was verse 4. We've seen The Sowing of the Seed, that was verses 5-8. Now in verses 9-10 we're going to look at The Shrouding of the Secret. That's our third point, The Shrouding of the Secret. Recalling our definition of a parable. A parable is a story which is placed alongside a principle for the purpose of illustrating that principle. Well, up to this point in the account Jesus has delivered the story, He's given the story of the Sower and the seed and the four types of soil that the seed lands upon, but He hasn't yet delivered the principle. He hasn't yet connected the story He has just told to the principle He is aiming to teach. And so, His Disciples, His followers, they ask Him to explain. Again verse 9, “And His Disciples began questioning Him as to what this parable meant.” As we're about to see Jesus obliged, He gave them the meaning, He gave them the interpretation, but not before saying what He said here in verse 10. He said, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but to the rest in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.”

Now you'll note that those last few words I just read there out of verse 10 are capitalized, meaning Jesus as He is saying that is drawing from the Old Testament. Where in the Old Testament is He getting that? That's so kind of you to ask, it is in Isaiah 6. Turn back with me to Isaiah 6 where we're going to see what Jesus was drawing from here in verse 10. Isaiah 6, many of us are familiar with the first seven verses of Isaiah 6 where the prophet Isaiah has this amazing, incredible, awe-inspiring vision of the Lord. That scene where the Lord is sitting on His throne and the train of His robe is filling the temple and the seraphim, the angels, are all around Him and they are saying, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of Hosts, and the whole earth is full of His glory.” Then one of those angels touches Isaiah's lips with a burning coal and tells Isaiah his iniquity has been taken away and his sin atoned for. And then Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord in Isaiah 6:8 where He says, “Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?” To which Isaiah replies, “Here I am, send me.” Well, what comes next is Isaiah 6:9-10. It says, “He said,” that's God speaking to Isaiah, “Go and tell this people, keep on hearing but do not understand; keep on seeing but do not know. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and return and be healed.” What we have here in Isaiah 6:9-10 is a heavy Old Testament judgment prophecy where God was saying to Isaiah and through Isaiah that someday his people, the Jews, would be rendered spiritually deaf and blind. They would be able to hear in the way that you and I are able to hear but they would not be able to understand what it was they were hearing. They would be able to see the way that you are all able to see and I can see you, but they could not understand what they were seeing. This would include what their Messiah would teach when He came to proclaim the Kingdom of God, and when He came to offer them the Kingdom of God.

Now back to Luke 8. In our text, Luke 8:10, as was predicted all the way back in Isaiah's day, the people of Israel in Jesus's day, the people to whom the Kingdom was offered, they were spiritually blind as had been prophesied, they were spiritually deaf as had been prophesied. And for that matter, so were all of those who on this occasion had come to see Jesus, all of those who were part of this large crowd. They were all hard of heart and they were all deceived and they were all ill-prepared to hear the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, meaning the qualities and the traits and the features of Messiah's coming Kingdom. Christ came testifying to that Kingdom, Christ came to offer that Kingdom, Christ came even proclaiming the mysteries of that Kingdom as we're told here in verse 10, which simply means that He was giving new revelation about the Kingdom which certain Old Testament prophets hadn't fully been brought up to speed on. But only one group was going to hear about those mysteries of the Kingdom, namely Jesus's followers, those who had answered His call to follow Him. “To you,” He says in verse 10, “it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. But to the rest,” He says, “it is in parables so that,” and this is in fulfillment now of Isaiah 6:9-10, “seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.” His parable then, like many of His parables would have been like one-way glass. You have ever seen one of those old interrogation scenes at the police station—you can look in but you can't look out? If you are from one direction it's an obstruction, you can't look in, it's just like a wall. But for others it is actually transparent and clear as you look upon it.

Well, as we turn to verse 11, we see that Jesus now proceeded to explain the parable. Remember the definition of a parable. A parable is a story that's placed alongside a principle and the story is given for the purpose of illustrating that principle. That is a parable. That's exactly what Jesus did here, He's given the story, the story of the sower and the seed and the soils to illustrate a principle and now comes the principle itself. Now comes the entire point of this parable. Verse 11, He says, “Now the parable is this. The seed is the Word of God.” That language is the key, the hinge, the focus, the fulcrum. It is the point of this entire parable. The seed is the Word of God. By the way this is not the only time in Scripture where the Word of God is referred to as seed. If you would, go back with me to Isaiah 55 this time. So, we looked at Isaiah 6 a bit ago, let's look at Isaiah 55, this is Yahweh, God, speaking to Israel. We will pick it up in verse 6, this will be Isaiah 55:6. It says, “Seek Yahweh while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh. And He will have compassion on him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways My ways declares Yahweh. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Now look at verses 10-11, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth. It will not return to Me empty without accomplishing what pleases Me and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

So, there we have it. Going back to the days of Isaiah some 700 years before the birth of Christ, God's Word, right before us here, is likened to seed, seed which goes out as it is scattered by God through His agents, and this time it would have been the Old Testament Prophet. Then when we come over to the New Testament, we again see this connection between the Word of God being likened to seed. You're welcome to turn there if you like but in I Peter 1 the seed is likened to and linked with the good news message of the Gospel. This seed is linked with, in I Peter 1, the ability to save one's soul. Here is I Peter 1:22, he says, “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a love of the brothers without hypocrisy, fervently love one another from the heart for you have been born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, that is through the living and enduring Word of God.” Peter goes on to quote Isaiah 40 and he says, “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flower falls off but the Word of our Lord endures forever. And this is the word which was proclaimed to you as good news.”

We have now Old and New Testament examples of the Word of the Lord being likened to seed, just as we have here in the parable of the soils and like any seed we know that God's Word contains life, it's life giving, it produces life, it sustains life in the believer. Hebrews 4:12 says “The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit and joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.” It is alive and living as any seed would be.

Back to our text, Luke 8:11. Jesus said, “Now the parable is this. The seed is the Word of God,” that is, it is the living and active Word of God. Now I believe in the immediate context here Jesus is referring to His own words. Remember He is God in the flesh, and He is out there in front of these crowds delivering as God, God's Word to these crowds, to His Disciples, to those to whom He is ministering face to face. But we do also know that God would later, after Jesus ascended to the Father, as the Spirit was sent to the earth at Pentecost, we do know that Jesus would entrust the teaching of the Word to Apostles and Prophets initially, and then later to Pastors and to Teachers. That's Ephesians 4:11, “And He Himself gave some as Apostles and some as Prophets and some as Evangelists and some as Pastors and Teachers for the equipping of the Saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the Body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” That is all the fruit and the product of the Word of God going out.

The seed of the Word, in other words, was not only being scattered in Jesus's day, but it also wasn’t only being scattered in the days of the apostles or the days of the early church or the days of the Reformation or the days of the Great Awakening or the days of the Jesus movement. No, the seed of the Word is being scattered today from pulpits and podiums and on the radio and in podcasts and in Bible studies and in coffee shops and at dinner tables and in devotional personal Bible reading. In every one of those the seed of the Word is going out; the seed of the Word is being scattered. The question is, and this really gets to the heart of what Jesus was driving at with this parable is; what are we as hearers of the Word going to do with it? The real heart of this is what are we as hearers of the Word, how are we going to live in light of it?

That takes us to verse 12. Jesus said in verse 11 that the seed is the Word of God. Now starting in verse 12 Jesus is going to go on to explain the meaning of each of these soils into which the seed was cast—the trodden path, the rocky soil, the thorn infested soil and then finally the good soil. That's going to take us now to our fourth point this morning as we look at the Lord's explanation of the first soil. Point four if you are taking notes is The Soil of the Stolen. On Sunday nights of late we have been in the book of Revelation and we've been in Revelation chapters 12 & 13 and as we've been studying Revelation 12 &13 we have been looking into how furious a force and a fighter Satan is going to be when at this point in the Tribulation he is finally cast down out of heaven forever and then in concert with the Antichrist and the False Prophet he really ramps up his persecution of true Believers in the back half of the Tribulation. Well, it would be wrong to think that Satan is going to save all of that fury and all of that viciousness for the second half of the Tribulation. He still acts that way today. Satan right now is described as “prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for somebody to devour.” That's I Peter 5:8. Jesus said of Satan that he has been, John 8:44, “a murderer from the beginning.” Satan. Satan also in that same passage, John 8:44, is described as “a liar and the father of lies.” So, Satan is a liar, he's a murderer and he's a lion-like devourer. We're also going to see here in verse 12 that he is a plucker.

Luke 8:12, this is Jesus's explanation of what He had said back in verse 5 when He was describing that seed that ends up on the path that encloses the land or the earth, that path on which the seed gets stomped on or clip-clopped on by hooves or where birds with their beaks pluck that seed from that path. With that picture of verse 5 in view look at what Jesus says in verse 12. “And those beside the road are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the Word from their heart so that they will not believe and be saved.” God's Word is clear, there is a spiritual battle going on between God and the devil, one which goes back all the way to the Garden and one which continues up until the days in which we live. As Paul would say in Ephesians 6:12, there are world forces of darkness out there, there are “spiritual forces of wickedness” and they are at war with God. They are at war with His people, they are at war with God's Truth, they are at war with God's Word and God's Word is the place that we find the message of the Gospel, the message of hope and reconciliation for wretched sinners who need to be restored to God. Well, those dark spiritual forces are always actively at work in blinding the minds of the unbeliever, clouding their vision, distracting them from the message they most need to hear, that being the message of the Gospel. In II Corinthians 4:4 we are told that the Gospel, the message of salvation found through Jesus Christ and Him alone is veiled to those who are perishing “in whose case,” it says, “the god of this age,” that's referring to Satan, the devil, “has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they may not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”

Well tying that back to our text and Jesus's explanation of this first soil, that's exactly what Satan does. When the Word of God goes out in a place like this an intense skirmish that's part of this broader cosmic battle starts to break out. This battle for hearts and minds that's always been going on, it breaks out in a setting like this. You know as I have been proclaiming the Word of God here this morning what Satan has been actively trying to do this entire time, for those here this morning who are unbelievers, is to stop up your ears. That's been his goal, that's been his aim for the first “x” number of minutes that I've been up here. You know words of life are being proclaimed to you, but the devil wants you dead. Not just physically dead, he wants you spiritually dead and so he crowds out your mind, he crowds out your mind, and he corrupts your mind with countless distractions and questions and objections as God's Word is being proclaimed. And he does so, so that you will not hear or receive or accept the words that you are hearing. He'll get you wondering and doubting if Jesus is the only way. He'll get you wondering and doubting if the Bible really is a divine book, a book from above. He'll get you wondering and doubting if science has better answers for the world in which we live. He'll get you wondering and doubting whether sin is some antiquated, outdated concept that we all need to ditch. He'll fill your minds with thoughts like, this church is full of hypocrites, or that guy in the suit up on stage is just pontificating. He's kind of a blowhard, I wish he would stop. He'll get you to think about things like I'm never coming back here again. He'll get you thinking even more innocent sounding thoughts like I wonder if I left the garage door open, I wonder if I left that slider on the back patio open or I'm hungry, or I must use the restroom. Will he stop talking already? He distracts you, he distorts, he lies, he does anything he can to run interference on the proclamation of the Scriptures and he does so in the hopes that the Spirit won't grab hold of your unbelieving heart. See, unbelievers show up at church every single Sunday, churches and our church. They'll sit in church, they'll attend church, they'll tell others they go to church, they'll post about going to church, they'll be polite as they listen to what's happening at church, they'll clap after the musicians sing, they'll shake the pastor's hand, they'll take communion despite being warned not to. They'll play church but not because they've been converted, but they have not been. They are unrepentant, they haven't trusted in Christ, they are deceived, and if they die in their sins the reality is they are going to go to hell.

Back to Jesus's words here, those I've just described, they are like this seed beside the road where the Word never took root in their heart. Look at verse 12 again, “Those beside the road are those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart so that they will not believe and be saved.” If you are a mere roadside recipient of the Word of God you ought to have great concern about your future, about your future destination and about the current state of your soul. Yes, you are in church this morning and that is terrific, there is no better place for you to be. But God never saved anybody simply because they went to church. No, God saves sinners, God saves those who recognize their desperate need for salvation and God saves those who recognize that Jesus is their only hope. Trusting in His death and resurrection is their only hope to have their sins forgiven and the hope of eternal life secured.

So that was the first soil, The Soil of the Stolen. Now as we turn to verse 13, we're going to consider what Jesus said about the meaning of the parable of the rocky soil. This would be point five if you are taking notes, this is The Soil of the Shallow. Verse 13, “And those on the rock are those who when they hear receive the Word with joy and these have no root. They believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.” We've all met the person or known the friend or grieved the family member or maybe you are this person who Jesus is describing here. At one time they were on fire for Christ, at one time they really seemed to love the Lord but then they seemed to hit some sort of bump in the road and some sort of significant snag and then they are gone, they're out, they desert Christ, they desert the cause of Christ. Well, when someone does that, when someone like it says here in verse 13 where Jesus says, “they receive the Word with joy,” they believe for a while He says, but then in time of temptation they fall away. What it demonstrates, what Jesus is saying here is that they ultimately have no root, in fact they never had a root. Rather, when times got hard and when the sledding got tough and temptations arose what happened is they ended up showing that notwithstanding their initial joyful reception of Jesus and His Word; they were actually shallow and rootless. They were overwhelmed with joy and tears and emotion when they first heard the words of grace, when they first walked that aisle or they prayed that prayer. They were full of joy and emotion and excitement when they told that preacher, that it was a convicting message, that was the best sermon ever heard. They were full of joy and emotion when they stocked up their closet or their drawers or their cupboards with all sorts of cheap Jesus’ junk—t-shirts and mugs and the like. But it was all shallow and superficial. None of it was based in any deep-seated convictions, so when they lost their job or their child came out as gay or their spouse said they didn't love them anymore they were done, they are out. James says in James 1:12, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” James is describing the opposite of the rocky soil. The one in the rocky soil, when the honeymoon phase of their so-called faith is over, when they declare that Jesus isn't blessing them anymore or they decide that He is not worth following anymore and so they stop following Him. Well in reality folks like that never had faith to begin with. That is not my opinion, that is the truth, that is the truth of God's Word. I John 2:19 he says, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they were of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be manifested that they all are not of us.” Rocky soiled recipients of the Word of God, they don't lose their salvation, that's impossible to do. In John 10:28, Jesus says of His true followers, “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, ever, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” You can't lose your salvation if you are a true believer. So, the rocky soiled recipient doesn't lose their salvation, the reality is they never had a relationship with Christ to begin with. They were deceived.

That takes us to soil number four and Jesus's interpretation of soil number 3. Verse 14, he says, “And the seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard and as they go on their way, they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of life and do not bear ripe fruit.” Point number six, as we look at this third soil is The Soil of the Suffocated. Soils two and three are very similar, but they ultimately produce the same result. Those who are defined here as weed choked soil or thorn infested soil, their lack of genuine faith is not revealed so much by the jolt of a major trial or some major temptation to sin, but instead their lack of true faith is revealed when the cares and the riches and the worries of this world gradually choke out the faith they said they had. What that reveals and proves is that the faith that they said they had was not faith at all.

So, to review these first three soils you have the first soil, the soil that ends up on the path. Those are individuals who really don't respond in any way to the Word. Satan plucks it and they remain calloused and insensitive to it. Soil number two would be those who respond quickly and enthusiastically to the Word but then just as quickly they drop off the scene and they fall away, proving they were unbelievers all along. The third soil, this one, verse 14, these individuals also fall away and perish, but they do so more gradually. For those in this group they begin by showing signs of faith, they show those initial signs of growth in the Lord, they have that initial desire to pray to the Lord and to read His Word, they have that initial desire to be in fellowship with other Believers, they have that initial desire to share their faith, but then those desires start getting choked out. I can't read my Bible in the morning anymore because I need to work those few extra hours to get that bonus or to work on the six-pack or the quads or the whatever. I can't go to church on Sundays anymore because my kids are involved in travel sports and this is only a season. I can't join that mid-week service to be encouraged or challenged in my faith, but alas I do have time to be on my phone for hours on hours every evening watching reels and clips and shorts and the like; showing that I'm really just kind of into myself. Well, those folks eventually fade, too, and they fade not only from church life but a life of faith altogether. They'll say they are Believers, but what they spend their time and their treasure on tells a much different story. The world ends up becoming like that thorn bush choking out their souls as they let more and more of the world into their hearts and into their lives. They ignore the warnings of Solomon in Ecclesiastes about the vanity of the various passing pleasures of the world. They ignore the warnings of Paul in I Timothy 6:10 where he says, “the love of money is the root of all sorts of evils and some by aspiring to it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” They ignore the command given in I John 2:15 which couldn't be stated any more clearly, “Do not love the world.” They ignore the negative example of Demas in II Timothy 4:10 who “loves this present world.” The appeal of boats or the board room or nightlife or travel or living for the weekend or all of life is like Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville or the worry of working three jobs, not just to keep up with the Joneses but to lap the Joneses, it all proves to be too much and Christ proves to be to them not enough. And so, they abandon Him, showing again that they never knew Him.

Last verse 15, where Jesus said this, “But the seed and the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the Word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and bear fruit with perseverance.” Point seven, which connects to soil point four is The Soil of the Saved. Some never let the Word in, soil point one; some never let it take root, soil two; some never let it grow up, soil three; but for those in this group, soil four represented by the good soil, we see that they have heard the Word so they've taken it in, but the difference is they receive it. Jesus says, “with an honest and good heart,” a receptive heart, a heart which seeks to obey, a heart which James 1:21 says is committed to “laying aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness so that in gentleness they may receive the implanted Word.” And those in this fourth soil category, they not only receive the Word with an honest and good heart, to use our Lord's words here, but they hold it fast, they cling to it, they abide in it. Note these last words, “they bear fruit with perseverance,” they endure, they persevere. We also note that they produce, they bear fruit. Remember back to verse 8, they produce a crop of one hundred times as great. Reminds me of Jesus's words in Matthew 7:16 that you shall know them by what? Their fruit.

This parable is meant to leave the reader or in this case, Jesus's audience, the listener, to ask a single question and that question is simple and it is straightforward and it hits you right between the eyes. Which kind of soil am I? That's the question. Has Satan snatched the seed of the Word right out of my heart the way that a bird will snatch the seed off the path? Is my heart so rocky and shallow that the Word never really took root in it? Have the cares and the worries and the pleasures of the world choked out what God has shown me and revealed to me in His Word? Or have I received the implanted Word, to use James's language, in an honest and good heart, meaning a regenerate heart, a believing heart? And have I held fast to the Word? Am I bearing fruit with perseverance through the Word? Only that last group, the fourth group, soil number four can confidently say not only that they are sound listeners but truly saved, glory bound followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Which soil are you?

Father, we thank You for the chance this morning to encounter a familiar passage of Scripture, the parable of the soils. It's one that really illustrates itself and teaches itself because Jesus gives the interpretive key at the end. But what it does do is force each one of us as those Disciples had to do as they heard these words fresh grapple with and contend with that question; which soil am I? God, I pray this morning if there are any who have had the Word of God plucked from their hearts by Satan, if there are any here who have been choked by the worries of the world, if there are any here who have competing interests, divided hearts, unsound hearts and unsound minds, deceived individuals who think they are in the faith but are really not because the Word has not taken root, the truth of the Gospel has not taken root, I pray you would help them be very honest with themselves as the Spirit brings conviction and they would see that what they need is not to simply attend church but to be saved. I pray that they would rejoice and trust in the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and find their hope there. And for us who have put our faith in Christ, we who have those honest and good hearts all because of Your grace and have received the Word with gladness and it is implanted deeply within us, I pray that it would motivate us to bear fruit with perseverance as Jesus commands us to here. Help us to be those abiding Believers, those fruit-bearing Believers understanding that it is all of Your grace and it's all ultimately Your work. God, thank You for the truth of Your Word, thank You for the power within it. May we be found faithful, all for Your glory. In Jesus name, amen.