One Important Thing • Luke 8:1-22
56:43 Teaching begins
Notes
What do you think is more important, being physically healed or receiving and holding on to the word of God?
Today we’re shown two groups of people, both of whom receive healing and miracles of saving from Jesus. However, one group receives the word of God, the other one doesn’t. I hope you see the huge difference.
The receivers are transformed to where they are children of light, who give back to Jesus.
The non-receivers’ values are completely backwards to Jesus. They don’t think like Him, they don’t act like Him. They don’t understand that they’re dead in the dark.
What is that most important thing to have, so important that if you don’t have it you lose everything, even your own soul? Your life rises or falls on your receiving the word of God into your heart and holding on to it.
I’m reading in Luke chapter eight from verse one.
1. Jesus has been in Capernaum for a while. Now He returns to proclaiming the kingdom of God.
A. Jesus is undoubtedly teaching His disciples by example.
B. He goes to larger towns and smaller villages. People are important. Find the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
C. They hear how to proclaim Jesus through Scripture.
1. Jesus proclaims Himself by expounding the word of God about Himself. We saw Him read Isaiah 61 in the synagogue of Nazareth and say, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He keeps on connecting the Scriptures to Himself.
2. The kingdom of God is Jesus fulfilling the word of God with power.
2. Women travel with Jesus and the disciples and support them.
A. Mary who was called Magdalene. Jesus delivered her from seven demons. One demon would have been impossible for her to fight; seven demons is seven times impossible. But Jesus overpowered seven demons and saved her. Jesus is everything to Mary.
B. Joanna was the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza. The steward is a high official like a personal assistant. He manages the master’s property with the master’s authority. It’s close, personal, and trusted. So Joanna knows life at the top levels of society and power. But Jesus either cast out a demon or healed her. Her values have completely changed. Now she follows Jesus wherever He goes.
C. Susanna we know nothing about except Jesus healed her and made her well and she followed Him.
D. These women and many others were providing for Jesus and the disciples from their own means, out of their own pockets.
1. Which means, first of all, that Jesus had expenses and needs. Food costs money, maybe the travelling requires staying in lodgings. We don’t know what other expenses He had, but obviously He had needs.
2. He wasn’t miraculously multiplying loaves and fish all the time. He didn’t live differently from how the disciples would be living when they went out on their own, or how we would be living when we go out in present times. People have expenses, so did Jesus.
3. These women saw the need and used their own money to meet the needs, and Jesus accepted it. He Himself said that the worker was worthy of his wages, that the one who preached the gospel should make his living by it. The principle is, let the one who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches, Galatians 6:6.
E. This trains the disciples to live humbly in dependence on God.
F. It’s reasonable for the women to respond materially for their spiritual blessing. I’m sure they would have said, “This is nothing compared with what Jesus did for me. I thank God I can give what I can. Thank God Jesus receives it.”
1. The spiritual blessing is greater, there is no contest.
2. But it’s right for the one blessed to respond with material blessing.
3. We have a strange situation where the people don’t understand when Jesus tells them they don’t understand, vv. 4-15.
A. The situation has changed. Jesus began going to their cities and villages. Now they come to Him in huge crowds from those cities and villages. Either they’ve seen Him before or they’ve heard about Him and they want to see Him for themselves. There’s lots of people who want to be healed.
B. Jesus does something different: he tells them a parable.
1. A parable is a comparison. This familiar earthly thing is like this spiritual thing. If you grasp the way the earthly thing works then you can understand how the spiritual thing works.
2. Jesus told all kinds of parables and He never taught without one.
C. The problem is that the crowd doesn’t understand, and Jesus doesn’t explain it. He only says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
D. The disciples don’t understand either. They have to ask, “What are You doing? What does this mean?”
E. Jesus is fulfilling Scripture, that people who reject His word remain in the dark.
1. To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Mystery is a kind of religion that had outward symbols that people could see, but to the initiated they had secret meanings. The difference in Christianity is that the mysteries are not secret, they’re written out and explained in a book for anyone who wants to know. All the answers are right here.
2. But to the rest it is in parables, in order that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand. Isaiah 6:10.
3. This is a judgment on people who do not turn to Jesus and receive the word of God. They like the miracles and casting out demons. But they reject the word of God.
4. They think, this is great. If He is giving it away for free I’m right there to receive anything He has. But I’ll stop at the healing. I don’t have to submit, that’s great.
5. The great difference is that the disciples have received the word of God, these great crowds have not.
4. Jesus interprets His parable.
A. The seed is the word of God.
1. A seed is a living embryo. You plant that seed in the dirt and it will begin to grow into another plant from which it came.
2. That word of God has the life of God in it. You receive it, you have the life of God growing in you.
3. That life of God is valuable beyond price, beyond comparison with anything else. This is eternal life.
B. In three situations people don’t receive the word of God because their values are completely backward to God.
1. In these great crowds are many people completely closed to receiving the word. There is no entrance into the heart. It stays outside. I don’t want this at all. Now, this is eternal life, but this person doesn’t want eternal life. Closed to God is open to the devil. This person’s values are backwards.
2. Second kind of person is partially open to the word of God, because it speaks of joy. This person wants joy and the good things of the gospel but not trials and tribulations. Who needs that? Trials are necessary because they refine your faith. You naturally depend on things that aren’t God. The trial melts that away. You cry out to God. He answers. You realize, “That thing I thought I needed is worthless; only God can save me.” So this person doesn’t want a necessary part of eternal life. He doesn’t value the refining of his faith. He hangs on to something worthless and lets go of eternal life. This person’s values are backwards, too.
3. Third kind of person is anxious about bad things that might come in the future, and focuses on the pleasures in the present. The word of God teaches that the things in this life are temporary, and all our hope is in God’s good things coming in the future. So this person values the present, dreads the future, and lets go of the word of God. His values are backwards.
C. The seed only grows and bears fruit in one kind of person with an honest and good heart. Really? Honest? Good? How can that be?
1. That person values the word of God above every earthly thing. He understands it’s eternal life.
2. In the time of trial, when he has to decide what he is going to hold on to, every time it’s the word of God, and he lets something else go. He lets go of comfort. He lets go of what others think of him. He lets go of his own choices, his own plans, his hopes and what he wants to be. He says, “Not my will, but Yours be done.”
3. His faith is refined, everything that is worthless he lets go of, until the word rules his life. His values agree with God. He is living on a higher plane of life, it is noble and honest.
4. Therefore his life bears fruit. He gives back to God. Here’s my money. It’s Yours. Please help me steward what is Yours. He perseveres because he looks to the future and hope doesn’t disappoint because the word of God is true. It can’t fail. Heaven and earth will pass away, but this word endures forever.
5. When you have the life of God you have the light of God that dispels darkness, vv. 16-18.
A. It’s another parable. You light a lamp, you live in its light. You don’t light a lamp and go back to darkness.
B. So you live out the word of God, and it brings light into the world.
1. People say there is no God. There is no such thing as truth. We are accidents. We can live any way we want. We can believe anything we want.
2. In us people get to see love, kindness, self-denial, purpose. How do you get goodness from an accident? How does a person become noble and honest? They get to see God in us.
C. And they become aware that there is judgment. The light is coming that will dispel all darkness and judge the secrets of men’s hearts.
D. Our lives are the evidence that God is good and God will judge the world in righteousness.
E. Jesus says take care how you hear. Don’t listen and let it go in one ear and out the other. Don’t be casual with the word of God. This is no idle word with you. It is your very life.
6. Unless you are born again through the word of God, you cannot see the kingdom of heaven, vv. 19-21.
A. Mary has seen an angel. She has been filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. But she doesn’t see why Jesus is so zealous for the word of God that He wouldn’t have time to eat. That’s what Mark says.
B. So she and Jesus’ brothers stage an intervention. They’re going to get Him to come home and come to His senses. Be normal.
C. This is normal, says Jesus. Again, He is fulfilling the word of God: Zeal for Your house will consume Me. This is not crazy. This is the life of God that will save the world. My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. Anyone who says differently has their values backwards.
D. Even Mary, mother of Jesus needed to be born again of the word of God.
7. So what?
A. There’s a whole crowd of people that Jesus healed and cast out demons. But they missed the most important thing because they didn’t think it was worth anything. Healing, cool! The word of God? What’s that?
B. This word is valuable beyond price. Heaven and earth will pass away, but this word will endure forever. It’s worth your life to receive it and know it, and let it transform your life.
C. If you don’t understand what the fuss is all about then you don’t even know that you’re still in the dark. You’re dead in your sins against God.
D. That’s why Jesus says, “Take care how you listen. If you do not have, even what you think you have will be taken away from you.” If you do not have what? What is that most important thing to have, so important that if you don’t have it you lose everything, even your own soul?
E. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. You need Jesus in your soul. If you have Him more will be given. If you don’t have Jesus even what you think you have will be taken from you.
F. Take care how you listen. Don’t listen carelessly and leave without receiving Jesus. Have you received Jesus? You know you have because you love His word and fill your life with it. If you don’t understand that you are still lost.
Let’s pray.