Grace to Hear
Text: Luke 8:4- 10
It’s good to be back with you all this morning… I had sort of a working vacation over the last two weeks. As you all know, we moved Leslie into her dorm at JBU… and I’ve just got to tell you, that was a hard thing for me to do. When you invest 18 years into someone… and I mean INVEST, not just raise them, but invest in them, your time and energy, and effort, and your knowledge, and wisdom, and your life… when you invest in someone for 18 years and then they’re gone like a flash off to college, it’s rough. I respect you parents who have done this all the more.
So… anyway… When I go on vacation, I always set it up so that it begins on Sunday, that way I can go to one of our association churches. We went to ******* (Name withheld) the first Sunday we were gone… it was interesting. They did a lot of songs and Pastor *** (Name withheld) preached about 12 – 15 minutes… they do it real informal. He sits on a stool and basically teaches. It was good… but different. Then during the week, we got Leslie moved in to her dorm and stayed in Siloam Springs until Sunday and we went to the Church she’s going to… it’s called ********* (Name withheld)… and it’s pretty good. It’s a Southern Baptist Church affiliated with 9 Marks Ministries and T4G… They sing about 6 songs and the pastor preaches for an hour and a half. Which was pretty cool. Then Sunday evening I drove down to my dad’s house in Lavaca Arkansas, and went to evening services with him, and he goes to a smaller church… smaller than ours, they only average about 60 on Sunday, and their pastor preached an hour long sermon on Sunday evening. So that was awesome. And on my second week of vacation, I fished on the Arkansas River… and during the evening, me, my dad, my uncle, my cousin, and my cousin’s kids just sat around the campfire and had Bible discussions. So; over all, it was a nice, relaxing vacation, and I’m grateful to you all for allowing your pastor to have those times to unplug and just enjoy God and His creation. So thank you all for that. BUT… like I said, it’s good to be home with my Church family today.
Now what I want to do with you this morning, is talk about God’s grace… specifically God’s grace in our salvation and in the salvation of all people. And God’s grace in the growth of His people… and the reason I want to do this is because I want us to keep the right focus on things, and I want us to not grow weary. Because here’s the thing. If you’ve ever spent any time at all sharing the Gospel with a lost person… or if you’ve ever spent any time at all trying to teach the Biblical truths or principles to a worldly person, of if you’ve spent any time at all trying to explain how a Christian should live compared to how the world says a person should live, you’ve probably… I’d say most likely… have wanted to bang your head against the wall and strangle someone.
As I was driving home from Arkansas, I was listening to a radio program where a man was describing what it’s like to be tone deaf. He was saying that when a person is tone deaf, they can’t hear pitch, and they can’t harmonize with others. They think they can. They think they’re on key, but they’re not. And so they think they’re actually singing well, but they really aren’t. And this guy was comparing them to people who do have perfect pitch, and who can harmonize, and people who can sing on key and who can distinguish octaves, and it was funny because he was saying how it seems like it’s always the tone deaf people who want to sing. So you have to kind of distract them when it comes time to do Christmas specials in Church, and distract them so they don’t sign up for the choir at school. They just don’t have the ability to hear like most people do.
And like I was saying, if you’ve ever spent much time trying to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone… or you’ve spent time trying to explain Biblical truths to someone and explain to someone their need for Christ, or explain to someone how their sins separate them from God, they look at you like you’re speaking another language… they just can’t seem to hear what you’re saying. They’re tone deaf to their spiritual problem.
And so there are some things you can miss out on if you’re tone deaf. Like I said, you might not be allowed to sing in the choir. You might be persuaded not to get up and do Karaoke. You’re not asked to do the National Anthem at the ball games… but if you can’t discern your need for Christ and appropriate your faith to follow and live for Him – the consequences are HUGE! They’re ETERNAL.
And in our text today, Jesus is going to address this problem. So let’s open our Bibles to the Book of Luke chapter 8 and we’re going to read verses 4 – 10 (READ LUKE 8:4 – 10).
Ok… so I imagine that most of you have heard this before… The parable of the sower… but sometimes we miss the lesson that’s in the lesson. That’s why we’re stopping at verse 10, because there’s actually a lesson before we get to the bigger lesson of the parable. And so this passage starts out by setting the stage for us. It tells us that a GREAT CROWD had gathered. So it’s not just Jesus and the Disciples here… there’s a great crowd of people here. And it says Jesus spoke to them (the great crowd of people) in a parable. Now that word “parable” comes from the Greek word “paraballo” and it literally means, “To see alongside”. So it’s not like an illustration. It’s not designed to give another perspective to an issue or a teaching. It’s a parallel teaching that is LIKE something, but it’s not actually that thing. That’s what a parable is.
And so Jesus gives them a parable… “A sower, sows seed. Some falls on the road and gets trampled and eaten by birds. Some falls on rocky ground and withers away. Some falls in the thorns and gets choked out, and some falls on good soil and bears fruit.” And then He finishes the parable by saying, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And that’s super important! “If you have ears to hear what I’m ACTUALLY saying, then hear it.” In other words, if you’re just hearing me talk about planting seeds and how some of those seeds don’t end up producing… ok, fine, but if you get the deeper meaning that’s good. And then what’s interesting is that in verse 9 we see the DISCIPLES, not the CROWDS, but the disciples come up to Jesus and ask Him what it was that He was talking about.
So it was the disciples who understood that Jesus was talking about more than just farming.
In 20 years in the ministry I’ve come to terms that some people are satisfied with just sitting in a pew on Sunday. That’s the extent of their faith. And really; when you get down to it, Jesus is giving this parable about the crowds. Some of them are like the path, some of them are stony ground, some of them have thorns and thistles in their lives that choke out the word, and some of them… the Disciples, are good soil. They’re going to get clarity, they’re going to get understanding, and they’re going to bear fruit.
And Jesus actually confirms that. You see; in verse 9 the disciples come and ask Jesus what He meant by the parable, and in verse 10 Jesus says, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” So catch this… to the disciples it has been GIVEN to know the secrets of the Kingdom of God… It’s been given to them. And we’ll come back to that in just a second, but let’s look at that word “secrets”. That’s the Greek word “mysterion”. Sometimes it’s translated as the word “mysteries” and that’s what it is… So to the disciples, and that includes us who are followers of Jesus today, it has been given to know and understand the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. These things that were previously hidden, but God has revealed to us who are disciples. So to the disciples it was given to know the secrets or mysteries, but for others Jesus speaks in parables so that even though they see, they don’t actually see the real meaning, and so that in hearing they don’t actually understand. And that’s a direct quote from Isaiah… Isaiah 6.
Let’s go ahead and turn there to Isaiah 6:8 – 13 (READ).
So when God calls Isaiah to ministry, He tells him to go and preach to the people… but the people aren’t going to listen… preach to them anyway, but it’s not going to do any good. God does the same thing to Jeremiah as well. Go and preach, and call people to faithfulness and repentance, but it’s not going to do any good. They aren’t going to turn form sin, and they aren’t going to follow God. But go preach it anyway. So God calls Isaiah, and Jeremiah to go preach, and do their best, and do all they could to get people to repent and follow God, and live for the Lord, but the people had hard hearts and wouldn’t listen. Here… Jesus is saying, I’m purposefully not making it clear so that people won’t understand. Now I know that messes with people. That shakes them to their core. “Wait a minute pastor Ken, are you saying that Jesus didn’t want people to understand?” Well look at verse 10 again.
Jesus says, “To the disciples it’s been given to know… but to others they are in parables (Why Jesus?), so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”
So in verse 4 you’ve got “Great Crowds”, and verse 9 you’ve got “Disciples”. The great crowds hear, but only the disciples get to understand. It has been given to the disciples to know… it’s the disciples who come and ask questions so that they can get understanding.
You want to understand that more? Read Romans 9. Read what it says. Don’t read what you want it to say, read what it says. I’ll just give you a tid bit to whet your appetite. Romans 9:15-16, “For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.”
Here’s my point in all of this… It was given to the disciples…. Do you understand that? In other words, it was a gift. It was a gift of God’s Grace. Just like your salvation and my salvation. It’s all by grace. It was given to them by grace. The disciples didn’t earn it, they didn’t deserve it, but they got it by God’s grace. They were getting this desire and ability to understand by grace. So if you’re sitting here this morning, and you understand. It doesn’t mean you’re intellectually superior to the person sitting next to you, it means that God has gifted you to understand His Word, and that means you should be grateful.
Let’s go back to the person who’s tone deaf for a second… they can’t hear pitch, they can’t tell what the right key is… but then there are some people who can. There are some who have perfect pitch, and who can harmonize perfectly, and sing on key, and who are able to sing really well… but I’d ask them. How is it that you can hear those things perfectly? Did you somehow, in the womb, work on your white matter in your frontal lobe which allowed you to develop perfect pitch? What did you do to get your ability to hear tone and pitch and key’s properly? You did nothing – it was a gift from God. It’s God’s grace.
James 1:17 – “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, which whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” The Father grants good things. If you’re here today and you’re able to understand the Gospel, and understand what it means to be a participant in the Kingdom… that’s grace… that’s from God.
In Acts chapter 17 the Apostle Paul is preaching to the Athenians and in verse 25 he tells them that it’s God who “… gives to all mankind life, and breath, and everything.” So if they had perfect pitch, God gave that to them… if they had understanding, that was from God.
And then Paul, writing to the Corinthians in 1st Corinthians 4:7 says, “For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”
And let me close out with this one… Ephesians 2:8 – 9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” So how have you been saved? BY GRACE. How did it come? THROUGH FAITH. And that was not your own doing – it is the gift of God. How did you get faith? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. That word “Hearing” is the same thing that Jesus is saying to the Disciples… to them it has been GIVEN. If you’re a Christian you’ve been given the understanding of your need for Christ, you’ve been given the understanding so that you can be given faith, so that you can be given salvation.
ITS BY GRACE! Grace is a gift from God, faith is a gift from God, understanding is a gift from God, and all of salvation is a gift from God. Salvation belongs to the Lord. So what does that produce in us? Well the one thing it shouldn’t produce is pride. What it should do is fill our hearts with gratitude and love and thankfulness. It should fill our hearts with joy and our lips with praise and joy and thanksgiving to our gracious and good, and merciful God. And that humble gratitude should change us, and flow out of us and explode onto everyone we meet, and everyone we encounter. You have been saved by the grace of God. You have been forgiven by the grace of God. You can understand the secrets of the Kingdom by the grace of God. You are a new creation in Christ, by the grace of God
Rejoice and be glad, and give thanks unto the Lord.
CLOSING
