Amen.
Luke chapter number eight, the Bible says in verse number one, and it came to pass
afterward that he went throughout every city and village preaching and showing the glad
tidings of the kingdom of God, and the 12 were with him.
Now the theme that I noticed in this chapter is just about how many different places
Jesus went.
It starts out talking about how he went to all the cities and villages, and then we
see him traveling quite a bit in this chapter.
He goes here.
He goes there.
It reminded me of the verse in the book of Acts that says Jesus went about doing good.
This is showing us some of the works that Jesus did where he's traveling to various
places.
He's healing people.
He's preaching the word of God.
It says in verse number one, it came to pass afterward that he went throughout every
city and village preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and
the 12 were with him.
Certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene
out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and
Susanna and many others which ministered unto him of their substance.
This is pretty interesting because this woman Joanna is the wife of Herod's steward.
Now Herod is the king of the land, and so this is his steward, so this is a government
guy.
This is somebody who's in a pretty high position.
He's close with King Herod, and his wife ends up being saved and following Christ and
even donating money because it says that she ministered unto Jesus out of her substance
because Jesus is not working a secular job.
He's not doing carpentry on the side.
All he's doing is preaching.
All he's doing is soul winning.
That's all the apostles are doing, and so people are ministering unto him.
They're giving him of their substance, it says at the end of verse number three there.
I also thought about how in Philippians chapter four, Paul says, all the saints salute you
chiefly they that are of Caesar's household.
So the apostle Paul, when he's in Rome, had been able to win people to Christ in
Caesar's very household.
Now this reminded me a little bit of some of the works that were done recently in Malawi
where they were going in and given the, or I'm sorry, was it Malawi or Botswana?
It was Malawi, right?
Both, right?
They were going into government buildings.
They were going into the legislature and giving the gospel to the government workers.
They're giving out flash drives and CDs and DVDs of preaching unto government workers
in these countries in Botswana and Malawi, and some of them were won to Christ even
in high positions.
I don't know if there's any hope for any of our politicians, but you know, in some
places, amen, people get saved in these positions.
So this just goes to show, I think what we could learn from this is that you never know
sometimes who's going to be receptive to the gospel or who's going to be open to the gospel.
You know, obviously, Herod was a wicked person that was so reprobate that Jesus
wouldn't even tell him the gospel.
I mean, Jesus wouldn't even talk to him and he begs Jesus to talk to him and Jesus
just stands there silently and as a result, Herod and his men of war end up beating
up Jesus, making fun of him, mocking him, putting the purple robe on him because Jesus
wouldn't even talk to him, right?
But that doesn't mean that his steward's wife isn't receptive to the gospel and
she got saved.
So we need to be careful that we don't just assume sometimes that certain people
are not going to be receptive.
We should at least give it a shot when we see people.
And sometimes you'll see people that look pretty rough, maybe some kind of a biker
dude or some kind of a rough gang banger type and you just assume that they don't want to
hear the gospel but then you walk up to them and boldly present the gospel and a lot of times
they're willing to listen and a lot of times they'll get saved.
And sometimes the people that look like they're going to be receptive aren't receptive at all.
So we just need to go out there and preach the gospel to every creature, go into
all the HOA's and all the apartment complexes and everywhere, right?
Amen?
And preach the gospel to every creature because you never know.
Maybe even the assistant manager will get saved.
Maybe even the manager themselves will get saved in these places.
So it says in verse number four, and when much people were gathered together and were
come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable.
Now let me make a key point here.
I told you that a theme in this chapter is the travel.
You know, they're going here, they're going there, they're crossing the Sea of Galilee,
they end up in this place.
They're on their way, he stops and heals somebody else, preaches to somebody else.
Well there's a key point here because in verse number one it says that he went throughout
every city and village preaching and showing the glad tidings or the gospel of the kingdom
of God.
Then in verse number four it says much people were gathered together and were come
to him out of every city.
Now there are a lot of people, they don't follow the program that Christ and his disciples
were on and the program that they were on in the book of Acts which involved taking
the gospel to all the towns and villages, to all the cities and towns and villages.
That's what Jesus did, that's what the apostles did, and that's what they continued
doing in the book of Acts.
I mean even in the back of your Bible you probably have a map of these missionary journeys
where Paul is just hitting town after town, city after city, and preaching the gospel.
Nope, they want to just stick with their little corner of the world and just they've
limited their scope of evangelizing to just their zip code or just their little town
or just their area.
But I believe that God wants us to evangelize all towns and villages.
Now obviously our primary responsibility is to make sure we get the gospel right here
at home, right here in Tempe and in Phoenix and in Mesa and Scottsdale and all these
places where we are.
But what about all the towns and villages out there that don't even have in many cases
even a Baptist church in the town necessarily?
Or if they do it's not a soul winning church, there's no soul winning going on,
there's no evangelism going on.
I mean people in Phoenix are more likely to have had their door knocked at some point
by someone with the gospel than somebody in some one horse town an hour, two hours,
three hours from here.
So our church is also involved in evangelizing the small towns and villages throughout Arizona.
And we've taken ownership of our whole state where we say, you know what, we want
to be responsible to get the gospel to all 21 Indian reservations, just us.
You know, whatever other people are doing, which sometimes seems to be very little,
when we never see any Baptists preaching in these towns, it's just a lot of Mormons
and Jehovah's Witnesses.
You know, we're going to take ownership of it and I hope that other churches will
see our example and that they'll get to all the Indians in New Mexico and in California
and into Nevada and Oregon and Washington.
But then beyond just the Indian reservations, what about just all the little mining towns,
right?
And just all the towns that have 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people, 8,000 people, just little
places, if we follow Christ's example, we're going to get the gospel to those towns.
But as we do this, they're always going to be the naysayers, the critics.
And I've heard this criticism literally hundreds of times.
Well, what about after these people get saved?
I mean, what are you doing to follow up?
You're just leaving them as a sheep without a shepherd.
I even heard somebody compare it to putting a baby in a dumpster.
You know, you gave birth to that spiritual baby and then you put it in a dumpster.
That's false.
Because we see scripture after scripture that shows that we are doing what Jesus
and the apostles did.
They would preach the gospel, they'd be there two days and then they're like, next town.
I mean, I don't even have time to show you all the examples because it would just take
a half hour just to read through them all, let alone expound them to you.
So many examples.
But the real story is that people are just lazy, they're prideful, they're envious,
and so they just want to pick apart someone who's actually getting people saved by saying,
well, you got them saved, but, and you know, should we just let them go to hell?
No.
Look, if we get them saved and do nothing else for them, we've done a lot, amen?
But the real program is that Jesus went through all the towns and villages and then
at that point, you know what they had to do?
They had to come to him now.
That's what the Bible says.
He went to them, brought them the gospel, then they had to come to him out of every city.
And it's the same thing when we go soul winning in Tempe or Phoenix or Mesa, if we give
the gospel to somebody, we're leaving them with more than Jesus left them with, because
we're actually leaving them with a map to the church.
I doubt that Christ was handing out literature before the printing press and computers.
I doubt he was handing out any kind of writable media or anything.
You know, we're giving them a flash drive, we're giving them a preaching CD, we're giving
them a Bible with Genesis to Revelation, all neatly bound.
We're giving them CDs, DVDs.
We're giving them a map.
And you know, all they got to do is hop in the car, get on a bus, call Uber, whatever.
It's the balls in their court, friend.
If we go bring somebody the gospel and get them saved, you know where the discipleship
is?
You know where the follow up is?
It's at 2741 West Southern Avenue, and it's here three times a week.
We got a discipleship class on Sunday mornings at 1030.
We got a discipleship class at 630 on Sunday night, and we got a discipleship class
on Wednesday nights at 7.
You're sitting in it.
Consider yourself followed up on if you're here.
Consider yourself being discipled.
So this idea that criticizes going far away is ridiculous.
We're going to continue to go far away.
And yeah, it's crazy to go soul winning four hours away, five hours away.
We're going to keep doing it because we're crazy like that.
Nobody else is crazy enough to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on the gas and all
the stuff that we hand out and all the Bibles and the CDs and the DVDs.
Nobody is crazy enough to spend thousands and thousands of dollars and hundreds and
hundreds of man hours and church resources to get a bunch of Indian reservations, the
gospel, people who live three, four, five hours away who are probably never going to
darken the door of the church.
But you know what?
We're going to do it, and I'm going to see those people in heaven, and you're going
to see those people in heaven.
And then the naysayers aren't going to matter.
But some of those people will come unto us out of all cities.
I mean, we have a family who drives to our church every Sunday morning from Mammoth,
Arizona.
You know where Mammoth is?
It's about two hours plus away.
And they come here every Sunday to church.
They're faithful church members from hours away.
Okay.
Now, most people aren't going to be that dedicated to make that trip.
But that's not the point.
We're getting them saved.
Plus, many of these people will eventually end up in Phoenix.
Life will take them here.
But even if they never do, I'm still glad that we got them saved.
I'm still glad we got them saved.
And we're doing plenty of discipleship right here.
We're baptizing people.
We're teaching people to observe all things Christ's command.
And with the internet, they can at least tune in and get some growth on the internet,
and they can listen to flash drives and whatever else.
So don't listen to that junk even for one second.
This anti-soul winning talk.
This down on soul winning.
Or down on the home missions.
Down on the small town soul winning marathons.
Of course the devil doesn't like it when we get the gospel into a town where there's
no Bible preaching church or something.
He thought he had those people all sewn up as his children.
And he's like, this town's in the bag.
Right?
I mean, I got all my workers in there.
I got the Mormons in there.
I got the Jehovah's Witnesses in there.
This is done.
And then it's like, whoa, what's this Baptist church coming from four hours away?
Didn't see that one coming.
Or maybe he did.
Maybe there's always been people like us in every generation who love the lost and
actually read the Bible and did what it said.
So anyway, just wanted to point that out because I think that's a pretty important
point.
Then he gets into the preaching and he tells this parable of the sower.
This is probably the number one most famous parable in the whole Bible.
If people would bring up one parable, name a parable, this is probably the parable
that would be number one.
The parable of the sower.
Right?
Everybody's heard of it.
And it's a pretty controversial parable.
You'll hear different preachers give totally different interpretations of it.
And Christ interprets it but then they interpret the interpretation and people are mixed up.
I think it's pretty clear and I think most people are kind of just out to lunch
on it and that's why they have a wrong interpretation.
I think it's pretty clear what the right interpretation is.
And let me just explain to you, first of all, the reason why I think a lot of people
get this parable wrong.
I think a lot of people get this parable wrong because they go into it with the idea
that the four types of ground mentioned, the four types of people represent every person
who hears the gospel.
Like everybody's going to fit into one of these four categories.
That is not what this parable is teaching and that's the mistake that they're making.
Now here, let me just show you why that's kind of a silly interpretation.
And first of all, let me just read you the parable and we'll get into it.
It says, when much people were gathered together and were come to him out of every city,
he spoke by a parable.
A sower went out to sow his seed, verse five, 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 thorns sprang up with it and choked it.
And other fell on good ground, and sprang up and bare fruit a hundredfold.
And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Then his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be?
And he said unto you, It is given unto 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, and 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.
And then he gets right into no man, when he had lighted a candle, covered it with
a vessel.
He's saying, you know, don't put the light under a bushel, let the light shine, the
glorious light of the gospel.
But let's talk about this parable here.
Now keep your finger here, go to Matthew 13, and let's look at the parallel passage
in Matthew 13, just to make sure that we fully understand this parable.
This is probably all I'm going to get to tonight, just because there's not enough
time to go through this whole long chapter, and to give it the treatment that it deserves.
So I'll probably finish it on Sunday night, and then do a sermon on the other
aspects of the chapter.
But in Matthew 13, it gives us the interpretation of the parable, starting in verse 18.
Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower, when anyone heareth the word of the kingdom
and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which
was sown in his heart, this is he which received seed by the wayside.
So let's just learn this parable tonight.
I want you to walk out of here tonight, and I want you to know this parable.
I want you to be able to explain somebody this parable, and to just be able to know
it from memory, without even having to look at the Bible.
You just understand, and internalize this parable, and understand it.
The parable talks about four different types of ground where the seed was sown, right?
One type of ground is the good ground.
That's pretty easy to understand.
Somebody's got a good, honest, and true heart.
They hear the word of God.
They get saved.
They also bring forth fruit, some 30, some 60, some 100.
So there's really no question about the good ground, right?
What about the seed that's cast by the wayside?
So this is the one that lands in the path, as it were.
So therefore it's just exposed, you know, because paths are kind of hard dirt, and
so it's just kind of laying there on top of the dirt, right?
So what happens?
The owls come and eat it, and that represents, the Bible says, a person who hears the word
of God, and they don't understand it.
Isn't that what it says right there?
When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, verse 19, then
cometh the wicked one, and catcheth the way that which was sown in his heart.
This is he which received seed by the wayside.
So the bird represents the devil taking it out of their heart.
So they hear the word of God.
Do they understand it?
They did not understand it.
Just went right over their head.
So there shouldn't be any controversy here that the person who received the seed by
the wayside did not understand the gospel.
It went right over there.
Did that person get saved?
No, because it says that the seed was removed, lest they should believe and be saved.
They did not have a chance to believe and be saved, because they didn't even comprehend
the message.
So when we go out soul winning, we should expect that sometimes we're going to give
the gospel to people, and they're not going to understand it.
Well, I can't even count how many times that has happened.
You go through the whole plan of salvation with somebody, and they just don't get it.
So now what do you believe you have to do to go to church, live a good life?
In one ear and out the other.
We've all had that happen hundreds of times.
So the wayside is pretty common.
And Jesus has given some common situations here.
He's given four things that happen a lot for us to learn from.
So everybody understand the wayside?
Pretty simple, right?
The devil comes and takes out...
What does that mean?
It means that they heard the gospel, didn't understand it, and then they end up forgetting
the gospel.
It's gone.
They heard it.
They didn't get it.
A year later, they have no clue.
It's gone.
Completely gone.
Totally forgot about it.
So that's pretty simple.
All right?
So the stony places.
Now because of the stony places, the seed is able to germinate, and a plant is there.
But there's no root.
Why?
Because the rocks are in the way to where it can't really have a root system.
And sometimes you'll see this where there's a rocky area, and there'll be some dirt
between the rocks.
And something can grow in that dirt, but you just wipe it away because there's no
depth of roots.
Because it tries to put its root down, and it just hits a rock immediately.
It's going nowhere, right?
So Jesus interprets that person as the one who hears the word of God, and let's look
at it in Matthew 13, and we're going to look at it in Luke 8.
It says in Luke 13, anon with joy receiveth it, at the end of verse 20 there.
So the guy who got the seed and the stony places, he hears the word, and anon, anon
means immediately, with joy, he receives it.
So I mean, he hears the gospel, and just, he's happy about it.
He loves it.
Now this makes sense that he loves getting a free gift, right?
He loves knowing he's going to heaven.
He loves it.
He's like, great.
He puts his faith and trust in Christ, and he's happy about it.
He's excited about it.
And in fact, because he's excited about it, he even endures for a while, meaning that
he doesn't just get saved, but he actually begins to serve God.
He goes to church.
He starts to grow a little bit.
But because he has no root in himself, it says he doeth for a while, for when tribulation
or persecution arises because of the word, by and by, he's offended, right?
So the first time the policeman comes up and says, hey, you can't go soul winning
here, he's gone.
The first time a family member calls him up and says, you know, what do you think
you're doing?
You know, we're Catholic, but you know, he's going to quit the church or whatever.
The first person that goes and protests the church with a sign that says LGBTQXYZ,
you know, he's offended.
I don't want to be, you know, in any kind of a battle, right?
As soon as old friends are mocking him for going to church, you know, when there's
any kind of persecution, he folds like a deck of cards.
That's the Stony Places guy, right?
He adores for a while, but when times get tough, and it might not even be persecution,
it could be other types of just tribulation.
Tribulation means trouble, trials, trouble, just his finances go south, his relationships
go south, you know, whatever.
His health goes south, he's offended.
He's just easily offended, easily quits.
He's not rooted.
He's not grounded.
He's not firm.
He's not hanging on, right?
Got it?
Okay.
So let's go over to Luke 8 and look at that in Luke 8.
It says in Luke chapter 8, on the interpretation of the Stony Places, it says,
They on the rock, verse 13, 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.
Now I'm gonna come back to the for a while believe.
We're gonna come back to that in a moment.
But what I want you to see right now is that it's the same thing.
In a time of temptation, or testing, or tribulation, or persecution, when things
get rough, they're not rooted, they fall away.
Same thing as in Matthew 13, okay?
Then we have those who fell among the thorns.
What are the thorns?
It says in verse 14 of Luke 8, And that which fell among thorns are they which when
they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares, and riches, and pleasures of
this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.
Now look very carefully at that wording.
They don't bring any fruit to perfection.
That is saying that they start to produce fruit, but they never bring any to perfection.
Right?
So you could picture a plant with some fruit starting to grow on it, maybe there's some
flowers, and that pistol is starting to swell up, and turn green, and, and something's
happening, right?
But they don't bring any fruit to perfection, meaning that before they have a finished
product, a right piece of fruit there, what happens?
They end up getting choked by the thorns so that they don't bring any fruit to perfection.
So they're like on their way to bringing forth fruit, but they don't make it to the
finish line, right?
And then the good ground, they do bring forth fruit.
So what does this mean, the cares of this life?
It says in verse 14, cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life.
This is the love of money.
This is where they're excited about church, they're serving God, but next thing you know
they start a business, nothing wrong with starting a business, but they start a business
and that business becomes more important to them than church.
Or they start to just look at their house, and look at their car, and look at their
clothes and say, you know what, I want more, this isn't enough for me, I want more.
I want to have that big fancy house, I want to have the two story, I want to have the
fancy driveway, and I want to have a three car garage, I'd like to have a boat, I'd
like to have an RV, I'd like to have a four wheel drive, and you know, I'd like to
have all these.
Now look, I'm not saying it's wrong to have any of these things, but I'm saying
this becomes a desire where they're willing to put church on the back burner, they're
willing to put the things of God on the back burner, and they're just going to
focus on money, and not about paying their bills.
Look, if you're not able to just pay your basic bills and feed your family, you
better get focused on money and get out there and get a job and work.
I'm talking about people, they're not just trying to feed their family, but they
want more.
They want the pleasures of this life.
They want the riches, I mean they use the word riches.
They want that nice car.
They want the convertible, you know, they want more.
They're covetous.
And look, there are tons of examples of this that you're going to see if you stick
around in church long enough, people who get into money.
And you'll see the signs of it when they just start talking about money all the time,
and the next thing you know they're missing a lot of church, missing soul winning, fading
away.
Next thing you know they're gone, they're history, and you wonder what happened?
Well, you know, he got backslid and he's out of church.
He's into the...
And look, it might not even just be riches, it could just be pleasures of this life.
Maybe just the football game becomes more important than church.
Maybe just going camping and going to the lake and everything, you know, instead of
doing those things in their proper place and in their proper timing, that becomes
the big thing.
And they quit coming to church.
So they don't end up bringing forth fruit to perfection because they're choked out,
getting busy with everything else.
They just get too busy with the wrong things.
Does everybody understand?
Okay, back over in Matthew 13.
We'll glance at that in Matthew 13 just to make sure, and look, I'm just trying
to cover all the bases here and see this from a couple of different angles.
It says in verse 22, he also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth
the word and the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, why?
Because those riches are not going to bring you the happiness that you think they're
going to bring you.
That boat is going to get boring and you're going to wonder why it's taken up so much
room in your yard and why you spend so much money for something that you don't
even take out that often.
And it's going to get old and you're going to get bored of the four-wheel drive and the
motorcycle and the RV and you're going to get bored of the fancy house because there's
just more cleaning to do.
It's too big.
It's all going to get boring.
And then your expensive car, the parts are expensive and your job is going to eat up
your time.
Look, it's not what it's cracked up to be.
The joy is found in serving God, right?
So it's the deceitfulness of riches, the trick where you think that it's going to
bring happiness.
Choke the word and he becometh unfruitful.
You know what this goes to show is that this guy, because remember the other scripture
said he doesn't bring any fruit to perfection.
So it's like he's on his way to bringing forth fruit and doesn't get there.
You know, becoming unfruitful could even be interpreted as maybe this guy even brought
forth some fruit at one point, but then he gets choked out and he becomes unfruitful.
So it's a little different wording there in Matthew 13 versus Luke 8.
Jesus gives variations on these parables.
Now let's just stop and use common sense for a second here.
We've discussed the four groups briefly, right?
One guy didn't understand the gospel.
Another guy did understand it, believed it, but he's thin-skinned.
So as soon as something goes wrong, he folds like a deck of cards.
He's a weakling.
He has no root.
The other guy starts to grow in the Lord, but then he gets all caught up and busy
in the things of this world.
And then the fourth guy gets saved and brings forth fruit, some 30, some 60, some 100.
How can this represent everybody who hears the gospel?
Let me give you some scenarios that are not mentioned in this parable.
What about the person who, we sow the seed, meaning they hear the word of God, they understand
it and reject it?
Where's that?
Is it in this parable?
No.
The only person, there's only one person in this parable that rejected the gospel.
And it was the one where they didn't understand it.
So what about all the people who do understand it and yet choose to reject it?
They're not even represented here, right?
What about the guy who receives the gospel, never even comes to church once?
Never even gets baptized.
That's not even represented.
So there are tons of scenarios you could think of that are not represented in this
parable.
These are just four scenarios that Christ is highlighting.
They're four common scenarios.
So the problem that people have is thinking it represents everybody.
So here's the interpretation they walk away with.
They say everybody's unsaved except the good ground.
That's an interpretation that's out there.
Everybody's unsaved when the true interpretation is that the only guy who's unsaved is the
wayside.
Because everybody else received the gospel and believed it and therefore got saved.
But people will say, no, no, no, only the good ground is saved.
And then you get into a false doctrine that if you don't have all these works and if
you're not bringing forth fruit, you're not even saved.
And in reality, the guy is saved.
He just wants a boat and an RV.
It's obvious.
Yeah, the guy's saved.
Look, there are plenty of people who are saved and immediately when tribulation comes,
they're offended.
You're going to tell me that's not a common situation?
These guys are saved, but they're not fruitful.
Are you going to tell me every Christian's fruitful?
No way.
And by the way, 30, 60, or 100, those are real numbers.
Those are numbers.
It's not just saying, oh, oh, they did stuff.
They did good stuff.
No, no, they brought forth fruit.
Bringing forth fruit is reproduction.
It's duplicating yourself.
If my wife and I are fruitful, it means we bring forth more humans.
And if a dog is fruitful, it brings forth dogs.
And if an apple is fruitful, it brings forth more apples, right?
So the Christian brings forth more Christians by being fruitful.
And the reason it says some 30, some 60, some 100, I wondered about that for a long
time because I thought to myself, that's setting the bar pretty low.
Like you're only going to win 30 people to the Lord your whole life?
You're only going to win 100 people to the Lord your whole life?
But then it dawned on me how foolish I've been for the last 30 years of reading this.
It's just funny how you can read something for 30 years and then it finally clicks
with you.
I remember reading this as a kid and thinking, so the most, the greatest example is a guy
who wins 100 people to the Lord?
Like what about in the Bible?
They're winning more than that.
You know, what's going on here?
That doesn't, you know, and I actually, I didn't understand that till like less
than a year ago, which just shows how deep the Bible is.
You can read it, memorize it, study it for decades and you're constantly learning
new things.
Finally it dawned on me that plants bring forth fruit every year.
It's not just a one time thing.
Then the numbers make sense because let's say you're a dedicated, faithful, godly Christian.
You're not into getting rich.
You're not a spineless weakling that can't handle any persecution.
You're a godly Christian.
And let's say you're getting out soul winning once a week for an hour or two hours, right?
You know what?
In a year's time, if you're going to a fairly receptive area, it's pretty realistic
that in an hour or two of soul winning, you could get 30 people saved that year.
Now some weeks you're not going to get anybody saved.
Other weeks you might talk to a group of three or two people that will both get
saved or whatever.
So it makes sense that a person who's a good godly Christian, who's serving in their
local church, winning 30 people to the Lord a year is great.
That makes sense, right?
But you know what?
There are a lot of people that are going to win a lot more than 30 people to the Lord
a year.
There are people who aren't just putting in an hour or two a week of soul winning.
They're not just putting in 50 to 100 hours a year or 120 hours a year.
There are people who are going out soul winning for more like three or four hours a week,
right?
So if they're spending twice as much time out soul winning, guess what's going to happen?
They're probably going to win twice as many people to the Lord.
Because you're a 60-fold soul winner, right?
And then there are going to be people who are doing just a ton of soul winning and they
are winning 100 people to the Lord a year.
That makes sense because that's a lot of dedication to get up to that number of 100
people saved in a year.
I mean, you're going to be putting in a lot of hours.
You're super dedicated.
So look, some 30, some 60, some 100.
It's not that the 100 guy is better than the 30.
They're both the good ground.
It's just different situations in life.
Different people have different resources and different, you know, winning 30 people
Lord in a year is great.
I mean, do that every year for 10 years.
That's 300 people.
Do that for 30 years.
That's 900 people.
Look, do that for life.
And it's a thousand people or more.
So that's, that's great that now that makes more sense, doesn't it?
A yearly fruit increase.
So that's what the Bible is teaching here.
Well, guess what?
That's not the only people that are saved.
There are plenty of saved people doing nothing or next to another.
Why?
Because of the thorns in their life, choking them out or because of their lack of root
and it's causing them to be unfruitful for whatever reason.
And look, there are other people in other situations as well who are saved and in church.
Maybe they go to church every week.
They're not offended by the persecution.
They're not into getting rich, but they're not bringing forth fruit for other reasons.
I mean, there's other reasons why plants would fail are these, I mean, anybody who's
into gardening knows there's a lot more ways to fail than just rocks and thorns.
There are other issues.
There are other problems that could happen.
So let's talk about this issue of Luke chapter eight.
If you turn there where it says they believe for a while.
Some people have tried to use this as a proof text of, hey, you can stop believing in Christ
or that you could lose your salvation or something like that.
And I've heard interpretations like that.
First of all, you never want to base a doctrine on a parable.
Based it on clear statements from the Bible that tell us that we have eternal life,
we'll never perish, we're passed from death unto life.
There's plenty of clear scriptures that tell us what the gospel is, what believing is,
how long we're saved, that Christ will never leave us or forsake us, and that nothing
can separate us from the love of God.
So when we see a verse like this, you don't want to just panic because you might just
not understand what it's saying.
So it says here that for a while they believe and in time of temptation, fall away.
Now the Bible already explained to us why they fall away in Matthew 13.
Because of the fact that they have no root, so any persecution, any tribulation, they fall away.
So why does it say that they believe for a while?
They believe for a while.
First of all, the fact that they believe makes them saved, period.
Period.
End of story.
Why?
Because John 3 18 says this, he that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth
not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God.
So those that are not saved, they have not believed.
They've never believed on Christ.
Because Christ will say to them one day, depart from me, I never knew you, not I
used to know you.
They have, John 3 18 is key there.
There's those who believe and there's those who have not believed.
Those are the two groups of people.
So especially when you look at it in context, that the first group, it says, lest they should
believe and be saved, making it clear that those who believe are saved, okay?
And there's hundreds of other verses for that in other parts of the Bible.
But then right there in the context we see that.
And then he talks about these people who for a while believed and in time of temptation
fall away.
First of all, what this verse does not say is it does not say they stop believing.
That statement is not here.
Now you could see that implication of they believe for a while, so the implication would
be that they only believe for a while.
I get that.
But what I'm saying is that there's not an outright statement that says they believe
for a while and then they stop believing.
It says they believe for a while and in time of temptation they fall away, which I believe
is referring to the fact that they're falling away from church, falling away from serving
the Lord, falling away from any chance of bringing forth any fruit because they
don't want the persecution, they don't want the tribulation, they can't make it
through the testing.
Well stop and think about this.
Believing is in degrees.
There are degrees of believing.
And if you don't believe me, then explain this.
The disciples said increase our faith.
The Bible says we go from faith to faith.
The Bible says that we would increase and abound in our faith.
Jesus said, well if you had faith as a grain of a mustard seed, you'd do all these
great works.
So what we have to understand is that faith to get you saved is not the only faith that
you have in your whole life ever again.
You see, the faith that you have when you get saved is just believing in Christ, putting
your faith on him.
It's not necessarily a lot of faith.
I don't think it takes a lot of faith to be saved.
I just think it takes all of your faith on Christ.
You gotta believe with all your heart, meaning that you can't be trusting something else
in addition.
You gotta put all your faith on Jesus.
But I don't think you have to be this great person of mountain moving faith to get
into heaven.
Jesus told a guy, if you believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
And he said, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, and he did the miracle.
Proving that when the guy said, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, Jesus accepted
that faith as enough.
So you don't have to have tons of faith to be saved.
We preach all the time about how we need to have faith as Christians.
Do we just say, well duh, we're saved.
Of course we have faith.
No.
Because what are we saying?
Have more faith.
Grow in faith.
Have faith on other things.
Have faith in other areas of life.
I mean, look, somebody who has the faith to confess Christ as their savior, right,
and believe that he's the son of God and ask him to save him, it doesn't necessarily
mean that they have the faith to sell everything that they have and move across the country
to go follow the will of God for their life or something.
I mean, look, Abraham had the faith where he goes out into a country that he should
have to receive for an inheritance.
He went out not knowing where he was going.
I mean, that's a lot of faith.
Not everybody who gets saved has that much faith.
They might not have the faith to pay their tithe.
They might not have the faith to stand up for what's right.
They might not have the faith to believe that God's going to come through for them
when they need him to come through.
And so they might feel like they have to take things into their own hands and everything like that.
Look, we all have lapses in faith all the time, all the time.
I mean, if we all had ultimate faith, we'd be better Christians.
We'd be doing more.
We wouldn't even begin to have any kind of doubt or worry because we would just know,
hey, God's going to take care of us.
But don't we all worry sometimes and doubt and have lapses in faith?
Man, I don't know if God's going to come through.
Is this going to work out?
I mean, look, it takes faith to have a lot of kids because that's a lot of mouths to feed.
A lot of Christians don't have that faith.
If they're saved, they have enough faith to believe in Christ.
But do they have the faith to excel in these other areas in the Christian life?
Not necessarily.
So I believe that what the Bible's saying here is that when it says, hey, these people,
they hear the word of God and for a while believe and in time of temptation
to fall away.
I think what it's referring to is that these people's faith that they had to get saved
because when they got saved, they believe what the Bible told them.
Their faith takes a nosedive when tribulation and persecution comes.
Now they have no faith that he's going to come through and protect them.
He promised to protect us.
He promised to take care of us.
He promised to bring us through all the trials.
But their faith, I mean, when they got saved, they had the faith to confess Christ
and they're excited and they're believing the Bible.
But then when it comes to believing the promises of God, when it comes to temptations,
persecutions, and tribulation, what about the promise where God said he'll not
tempt you?
Above that you're able.
They don't believe that apparently because if they believe that, wouldn't they be here
through the hard times, through the storm, through the battle?
They'd be here.
So I think what he says, which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away,
I think that the not believing there, it's not saying that they stopped believing that
Jesus is the son of God.
I think it would make more sense in the context of they're going through temptations,
trials, and tribulations that they stop believing the promises of God.
And you know, there are plenty of people who believe God's promise of God to get
them saved, but then you show them other promises of God, they don't have the faith
to claim those promises.
I mean, that's just a fact.
And well, you believe the whole Bible, don't you?
Yeah, we all believe the whole Bible, right?
Everybody believe the whole Bible?
Yeah.
Okay.
But if you looked at our lives, wouldn't you see some lapses in faith where there's
certain things in the Bible where it appears that we don't believe because we're
not living by it because we're, you know what I'm saying?
So that, that's the point here.
I think it's silly to just read into this, Hey, these people just stop believing that
Jesus is the son of God.
I think that's a little bit of a stretch.
Okay.
I don't believe that for one second.
I think that's a false interpretation, but let's just for argument's sake, let's just
for argument's sake say that that's what this does mean.
Like I said, that's a wrong interpretation.
I don't believe in it, but let's just for argument's sake say for a moment that
they really did stop believing.
I mean, these people just stop believing in Christ.
Well, here's the thing.
They'd still be saved theoretically.
Now I personally do not believe that it's possible for a saved Christian to just utterly
stop believing in Christ.
I don't believe that's possible because once you're saved, you're enlightened, the Holy
Ghost moves in.
So I don't want you to misunderstand me that I'm saying that I believe this.
I'm just throwing this out there as an alternative interpretation that I think is wrong, but
I'm throwing it out there just to show you that even if that were what this we're
saying, the people are still saved because they believed theoretically.
If we stopped believing, we'd still be saved because if we do anything, we're still
saved because God will not break his promise of eternal life.
Once we're his children, we're his children.
That spiritual DNA is in our bodies and in our soul and spirit.
Just as much as our dad and mom gave us DNA, our spiritual DNA is that ingrained.
We're a new creature in Christ.
I mean, you know, nothing can change.
We've been passed from death unto life.
We shall not come into condemnation.
So I personally don't believe it's possible to fully stop believing, but I do think it's
possible to doubt, to lapse in faith, to reduce your faith, to get to where you're
not believing in a lot of the promises of God, and I think that that makes a lot
more sense in this context.
So that's what's going on with that group.
So quick review because I want you to walk out of here and remember this.
I want you to remember that the parable of the sower talked about people who heard
the word of God and didn't understand it.
Common situation.
It talked about people who got excited about church, but as soon as the hard times come,
they fold like a deck of cards.
Very common situation.
It talked about people who got into money and pleasure and having fun, and they got
out of church and faded away.
Super common situation, and it talked about a less common situation, but still pretty
common around here.
People who are winning 30 people to the Lord every year, 60 people to the Lord, 100
people to the Lord.
Why?
Because they have a good heart, and they heard the word of God.
They believed it.
They kept it.
They followed it.
They obeyed it.
They're not perfect, but they're bringing forth fruit on a yearly basis, and they're
rooted, and they're not going anywhere.
They can handle the testing.
They can handle the storms, and they're going to continue to bring forth fruit year after
year until their life is over or until Christ returns.
Those are the four categories here.
Now again, if we were to take the interpretation, hey, they stopped believing that Jesus is
the Son of God, how common of a situation would that be?
Because we could talk to all the people that quit Faithful Word whenever things got
rough for them.
We could interview all the people who quit Verity Baptist Church when things got rough
or other churches, and you know what?
They're all going to say that they still believe in Christ.
They're all going to say they still believe Jesus is the Son of God, and probably many
of them go to some watered-down Baptist Church where there's no testing and no temptation,
no tribulation, no persecution.
It's not that they stopped believing in Christ, but you know what?
They stopped believing that God can protect them, and they stopped believing that God
can bless them if they will stand strong.
It makes way more sense, much more common situation that we would see in real life.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for this great chapter, Lord, and the teachings that
are therein.
And Lord, we thank you for giving us the interpretation because some of the people
in the story didn't get to hear the interpretation, and thank you that we got to hear it.
Along with the 12 disciples, we got to hear this interpretation so that we could learn
from it.
And we have all the mysteries of the kingdom of God right here at our fingertips, an entire
Bible, Lord.
Help us to dig into it and read it and learn it.
And then we can watch it play out around us, Lord.
Over the years, we can watch these four scenarios take place over and over again
and see the truth of your word.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.