 This is one of the more fascinating parables in the Bible. Obviously, all of the parables, all of the stories, anytime something comes out of Jesus' mouth, it's important. But this one here, I don't think we pay close enough attention to and we should. It is very, when I say theologically rich, I mean theologically rich and a little bit of controversy as well. Let's jump into it. In Luke chapter eight, verse four, he's speaking about the parables and he says, when a great crowd was gathered around verse five he says, a sore went out and sowed seeds. And as he showed some, fell along the path and was trampled underfoot and the birds of the air devoured it and some of the rocks. And as it grew up and withered away because it had no moisture, verse seven. And some fell among thorns and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell on good soil and grew and yielded 100 volt. As he said these things, he called out, he who has an ear, let him hear. Why would you say that, Jesus? What's the point of Jesus saying, he who has an ear, let him hear. Is that to imply that there are some who have ears who cannot hear? Well, that's true. Remember, Jesus is gonna, as a matter of fact, he's gonna say just a little bit. He's gonna kind of explain this. The Jews who were not trying to hear, not trying to listen. At a certain point, Jesus said, you know what? From now on, I'll just speak to you in parables. So matter of fact, let's pick up in verse nine the disciples themselves also were having trouble understanding this and look what he says. In verse 10, he said to them, to you it has been given to know the secret of the kingdom of God. In other words, to them, I'm gonna let you know. And to others, there are some it had not been given to, but to you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. For others, they are in parables. So for other people like these Jews, they are gonna have it given to them in parables. Why? He said to them so that seeing they may not see. And hearing they may not understand. So it's possible, matter of fact, everybody has the ability to hear, but everyone won't have the ability to understand. And we're gonna find out that that might be something, this ability to understand is something that's given to them or to us by God. So let's go back to it, verse 12, I'm sorry, verse 11. Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. In other words, so what we hear, the gospel, the preach word, that is or the Bible, that is the word of God. Anybody can receive it. Anybody can receive it because it's the word of God. That's not the issue. The point is not the word of God. The point is the seed and what it's sold on. Verse 12, the ones along the path are those who have heard then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. This part is extremely important. We're gonna come back to this. Verse 12, again, continue verse 13 though. The one on the rocks are those who when they hear the word, they receive it with joy but these have no roots. They believe for a while. Also important, they believe for a while and in time of testing they fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches of pleasures of this life and their fruit does not mature. So the first set of examples of people who hear the word and then after a while, after receiving the word, hearing the word believing, later on they don't. Well, what gives? Well, here's the answer in verse 15. As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word. Again, anyone can hear the word, anyone can receive it. They hold fast in what an honest and good heart and they bear fruit with patience. So the question is, how is it that they have a good heart versus the other? Is this heart a result of them? How do you, how could you, is it possible for you to prepare your heart to be good? Is that a work of view or work of someone else? Well, the fact of the matter is that is not a work of you. The Bible is clear that God has had a problem with man's heart. We are just wayward. We like to sin. We have a propensity to sin. We enjoy it. We enjoy being wayward. We enjoy doing our own things. Now we'll say we're gonna do the right things. We'll say that we're gonna follow God. We'll say that we believe and mentally we can ascend to those facts. We can believe it's possible guys to believe that I'm in sin. It's believed that I need a savior that I can't save myself. I can believe that I don't have the ability to save myself, but God has made a remedy by sending his son Jesus to pay a debt that I couldn't pay. He paid the debt by dying on the cross and God accepted that. He died, rose and I sent him to the side of the father. It's possible to mentally ascend to that statement, to believe that. It is possible to believe that and not be saved because you can believe it, but do nothing with that. You believe that, but it's not internalized. You don't live that. It's not something that is in you. Why? Because what is gonna cause you to keep believing that? What is gonna cause you to remain in that? What's gonna cause you to keep following, keep hearing, keep believing? What's gonna keep you from walking away? What's gonna keep you from not living a life where you're bearing bad fruit but living a life where you're bearing good fruit? What's gonna do so? Well, it's gonna have to be one or two things. Either something on the outside that makes you a fortune to do it or something on the inside. Well, we're not in the Old Testament and so it's not like we're gonna have the glory of God leading us and coming down and supping with us externally and having a prophet lead us and so forth and all these different offerings and so forth. We're not gonna have that anymore. What it's going to be, it's gonna be something on the inside, something internally and this is what God has prophesied in Deuteronomy 30. He tells the Jews that I am going to, after I take you out of the land and bring you back into the land, then after that, I'm going to circumcise your heart. He tells them first, do so themselves. They don't. As a matter of fact, they can't circumcise their hearts. They don't want to. It's not gonna happen. But God says that I will circumcise your heart and then we see it again in Ezekiel 11. Let's go there. In Ezekiel 1119, he says that I will give them one heart. This is what he's gonna do in the future, of course, as we're reading this, that future has arrived. I will give them one heart in terms of when I say arrived, let me clarify. It has arrived for us. And it's not arrived fully for the Jews. We'll deal with that at another point in time, but he says I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them and I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances to do. They remember what we talked about in Luke 8. What does the word say? And let's go back to Luke 8 one last time not one last time, but let's go back to Luke 8, verse 15. Those that received the word, they did it with a, they hold fast to it in that good heart. So this good heart is not our work, it's his work. God is the one that brings about this good heart, this new heart, how? By taking his spirit, putting it into our heart and giving us a heart of flesh, remove this heart of stone. He also makes the same statement going back to Luke 8. I'm sorry, not Luke 8, but to Ezekiel. And let's go to 36. We've covered this before, because I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart. There it is. And put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you'll be careful to observe my ordinances. And so he's saying what he will do, God is the one that's gonna do those things. As a matter of fact, Jesus bears witness also in John 3. He says to him in John 3.3, truly, truly, I said, that unless one is born again, the word here is, Genetheanothim born from above, born from the spirit of God, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So the first thing that has happened before salvation takes place is you have to be born from above, born again. And he uses three ways of saying it, born from above or born again, which is born of the spirit. The other way he says it is born of warden spirit. The other way is born of the spirit. They all three mean the same thing. And that's not a work that you do. That's something that God does. As a matter of fact, Paul bears that also in Titus 3. He says that he saved, that's God. He saved us, not we ourselves, but he saved us, not on the basis of deeds, anything that we could do, which we have done in righteousness, not even faith, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. So even the faith that we would have, we can't take credit for that because he did so by his mercy, by what regenerating us and the word that's used there, this word for regeneration, by the washing regeneration, is Palin, which is again or above, again Genomai, which is to be born again. The same thing that we see in John 3. The same thing we see in 1 Peter 1, 3 won't go there, but he says that God cost us to be born again. So the heart change that we need to have that's necessary for salvation, where the word is sown in our hearts. If the heart is a bad heart, it doesn't matter. But in our case, if the word is sown in a good heart, then it does matter. So let's go back to Luke. And so this is why verse 15 makes sense now. As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart. So you gotta have that. But I wanna go over a couple of things that was stated earlier. Remember, he says that they have to have, having ears they don't hear, having eyes they don't see. Where does that come from? Well, as a matter of fact, let me put something in the scriptures really briefly. I wanna take us to Romans. And let's go to chapter 11, verse 25 it is. He says, I do not want you to inform, this is Paul speaking of Israel, because they have these blinded eyes. He says, I don't want you to be informed brothers of this mission so that you will not be wise in your own estimation. But look what he says that a partial hardening has component Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. So they have this spirit of stupor that's over them. They cannot hear, they cannot see. They have this partial hardening. There are some Jews that do through God's sovereignty, but overall Israel has not. But it's been given to some to hear, to some to see. And so this is what he's speaking of in Luke 8. You can believe, but the believing is temporal. As a matter of fact, how we know it's temporal because we'll go back to verse 12. He says, the ones along the path are those who have heard. Then the devil comes and takes away the word from them. Well, first of all, how does he do so? That part is not totally clear other than to say that there's various different ways we can go about doing it that he can go about doing it through trials, testing, through wishing people's ears, whatever it's different things that will come our way to test to see that we are actually here. He's not actually reaching in someone's heart and pulling the word out. That's not what he's mean. This is really kind of idiomatically to say that he takes it from their heart. He's not doing it physically, but he's causing it to happen through other means. Or just speaking to someone, you can get enamored with other things of the world. And we see these different examples that are brought up in Luke 8, get cared. I mean, you can start caring about the riches of the world and so forth. Things kind of choke out the word of God that you no longer hearing it. The reason why, the reason why you're not hearing it, is it's kind of pushed out because it hadn't taken root in your heart. There is no depth of soil for the word because why it was not sown in a good heart? Because look, here's the reason why he wants to do so. He says he wants to do so, so that they may not believe. Hina may pistosantes. This is in order that not they will be believing. And I use the word be believing is because this is a participle. In other words, when the Bible refers to us as believers, he refers to us as people who are in a continual state of believing, this participle of an ING. So he doesn't really refer to us as someone that believe duh temporarily. He refers to us as someone who is believing. And Jesus makes a statement in John 6. He says that if you are believing at that moment, then get what you have. Eternal life, life right now going on for forever. How can he make that statement? Because you are in a state of believing. Why is that? Because you have a good heart and it's the Holy Spirit that's in you. Remember, the Bible says that he who began and could work in you, that's God through his spirit, he is going to complete it. He's that faithful. It's his spirit that's gonna keep us, as Ezekiel said, keep us walking in his statutes, keep us believing, keep us following, keeping us hearing. So once it happens, it's a foregone conclusion. It's a done deal. We are going to keep believing. The devil, however, wants to do the very best that he can to keep us from believing. He doesn't want us to be believing. Bad English, but hopefully you get my point. He doesn't want us to be believing. Why? Because to be believing would mean that we would be saved. So the devil wants to come and take the word as best he can so that we won't be believing. Well, how can he do so? He can only do so if the seed that's sown is sown on a bad heart, a heart that has not been regenerated. If the seed is sown on a good heart, there is nothing the devil can do. Now, the reason why this can be a difficult subject is because it necessarily deals with the fact that it is God's work at play first and foremost. The preeminent factor in this is God's work in our heart. That's the most important thing, what he is doing, what he has done, and that he is the one that's gonna see us through. Does this also deal with the whole issue of internal security? It absolutely does. Because again, that's the whole goal that we would be believing. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this shed a little bit more light on this parable. We go over this parable a lot, or at least sometimes. And sometimes we don't really flesh out what it's really saying, but hopefully as we just look at other scriptures, how it's leading up to this, how it fits in with what Jesus is saying. Hopefully it makes more sense. If you guys disagree, please let me know. I'd like to hear your comments on the other side. In the meantime, guys, be blessed. Amen.