Be Careful How You Listen

Luke chapter 8 verse 18.

Luke 8:18

This passage will probably seem familiar to some of you.

We just talked about it a couple of Sundays ago, but we didn't really talk about the last

part of verse 18.

And so we're just going to talk briefly about it today and probably repeat a little bit

of what we talked about a couple of Sundays ago.

Luke chapter 8 verse 18.

Luke 8:18

Let's pray and we'll get started.

God, we come to you tonight.

I thank you that we have the freedom and the privilege to come and to hear your word.

I pray God that you would free us of the distractions of the world and the worries of the world.

Dear Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us tonight.

God, there is no word that I can say if it does not come from you that'll do us any good.

But dear Lord, I pray that we would seek your word, that your Holy Spirit would work in

each of our lives, that we would seek to listen to you and that we would seek to grow in you,

dear Lord.

Not to be stagnant, not to regress, but to grow in you, dear Lord.

And so I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us in these next few minutes.

In Jesus' name I pray it.

Amen.

Now, in the verses before, Jesus had talked about the parable of these seeds that were

sown in different kind of soils and some of them didn't have a chance to grow and some

of them grew a little and some of them grew a little more and some of them grew a lot.

And that was a parable.

That was a story about seeds planted that grew that really had to do with people and

their hearing of the word, that when we hear the word of God, when we hear the gospel of

Jesus Christ, how do we respond to the gospel?

And then he goes on to talk about in the next section that we're looking at tonight that

no one lights a lamp.

It would be foolish to have a lamp and light it and put it under a basket or hide it under

a bed or put it somewhere that its light couldn't be seen.

That is to say, it would be foolish for us to hear the word of God and not pay attention

to it, to hear the word of God and let it light up our life and then to cover that up

and not respond to it in any way.

That would be a foolish thing.

And so as Christians, we want to be those who hear the word of God, who listen, and

we want to be those that when those seeds are planted that they begin to grow and sprout.

Now, the seed along the path didn't grow at all.

It was in one ear and out the other.

And some of it kind of took root, but it was rocky ground.

So it didn't have good roots and it eventually died.

And some of it was in good ground and it really began to grow.

But the thorns choked it out.

The things of this world, the worries of the world, it said, came and kept it from growing.

And perhaps something that's something we may struggle against.

We hear the word, maybe, maybe we're pretty well rooted and we begin to grow.

And then the worries of the world began to come in.

The desires of the world began to come in.

And it's really a constant battle for me.

Maybe it's not for you.

It's really this constant battle of these thorns trying to come in, but trying to be

a soul that's good enough that produces good fruit.

And sometimes those things of the world come in and kind of slow us down or get us off

track or kind of choke us out.

And so we stopped growing.

Now Jesus desires for us to be a fruit that's going to produce, you know, 30, 60, 100 times

what was sown.

And so to do that, we want to be those who hear, those who see the light of Jesus Christ.

It begins to work in our life and to light our soul and to remove the darkness in our

heart and that we would respond to the word in a way that we reflect that light of Jesus

Christ in us so that others can see it.

And Jesus said here in verse 18, therefore take care how you listen.

Now that's the key that kind of ties this passage and the passage before it and the

passage after it.

Because if you just kind of take 16 through 18 by itself without looking at the context,

you may kind of miss the point.

But all of this passage about the seeds and about the lamb and about his family coming

to see him in the next passage are all about those who hear.

He makes it a point to say that those who hear his word and do them, that is his mother,

that is his brothers, that is his sisters.

Those are his family, the ones who hear his word and do them.

So this whole passage is about hearing the word of God, listening to it and doing what

it says.

And that's why he says, therefore take care how you listen.

Pay attention.

Be aware of how you are listening.

Understand that you have heard and that you have seen and that you've been exposed to

the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And when you read God's word and when you hear God's word, do you live by God's word?

And that's kind of a scary thing for me as I stand up here and tell you this because

there are some times that I know that I see God's word or I know what God's word says

and I don't necessarily do what it says.

And maybe you do that too or maybe you don't, but that's the warning that Jesus gives us.

Therefore, take care how you listen.

That is to say, when you read it and you listen to it and you understand it, live by it.

That it may begin to grow in you.

Know that you need the word of God, that you need to stand on the word of God and you need

to be eager to grow in it and hear more and to learn more.

And then he says, for whoever has more will be given and whoever does not have even what

he thinks he has will be taken away from him.

So those who have more will be given.

And I think what Jesus is saying is this, is that there are some who have received what

he said and they have it and they're living by it and they are humble and they are eager

to seek him and to learn more about his word and to live by that word and to grow in the

gospel of Jesus Christ and to grow in the word of God.

They realize that they need God, that they are sinners, that they want to soak it up,

that they want to get more and more and more.

Maybe there have been things like that in your life, that there's just something you

love and you want to get more and more about it.

You just research it, you learn everything about it.

Sometimes you see that with people who are fans of sports teams.

They know all these statistics from the 1973 Yankees or whoever it was and they know the

batting averages and who got how many RBIs.

And there are people that just, they find something that they love and they want to

just know everything that there is to know about it.

And maybe there are some of those things for us, something that we really love.

Maybe our cars or hobbies or guns or our fishing trips or our video games or our technologies

or whatever it is.

We all have our thing and not that any of those things in and of themselves are bad,

but there are things that we love and we just kind of, we just dig into it and we know all

the measurements and all the specifications of all these things.

But do we do that with the word of God?

Do we treat the word of God as important as those things around us?

Or do those things around us come in and choke out the word of God?

And so if there's something that we have, if we've gotten a little bit from the word

of God, then we need to be humble enough to say, God, I need more of your word and so

I want to dig into it and I want to seek it and I want to understand it and I want to

grow in it.

And those who do that, more will be given to them.

Those who have, those who seek, those who humble themselves before the Lord, more will

be given to them.

So be careful how you listen.

And if you are one who has, then take what you listen and live on it.

Listen to it.

Let it have an effect in your life.

Let it guide your decisions.

Maybe we do a good job of that or maybe we don't do a good job of that.

Maybe we can think of some examples in our life that we're not really reading the word

of God or we're reading it and it don't really say what we want it to say so we kind of justify

what we want to do and that's not good.

So we want to be careful how we listen.

I'm preaching to me maybe more than I'm preaching to you tonight.

I don't know.

Maybe y'all are all doing good.

Maybe I'm just preaching to me.

But we need to be careful how we listen so that what we have will grow and then listen

to what he says.

And whoever does not have, okay, so there are some who have that are going to do good

and that are going to continue to grow and that are going to mature and that are going

to produce fruit.

That's good.

That's what we want to do.

That's what the Lord wants us to do.

But he says, and whoever does not have, so some do not have.

But what does he say about these?

Even what he thinks he has.

So there are some who don't have, but they think they have.

There are some who are proud and think they know everything and they think they have it

figured all out and they think they know it all and they're doing just right and everything

is good.

But what Jesus says is what they really have is nothing at all, nothing whatsoever.

They have nothing.

They think they have something, but they don't have anything.

Now we see this in the scripture sometimes.

I think probably the best group.

We talk about it all the time.

Pharisees.

We see this with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

These were groups of religious people that really thought they had it all.

They thought they knew the word of God.

They were proud in that sense.

They thought they were better than the rest of the people.

They thought they lived by the letter of the law.

They thought that they were the most righteous people that they were.

They thought that they had everything figured out, but of those people, they really didn't

have anything, at least for most of them.

Maybe some of them were good righteous folks that really did seek God.

But it appears as though from the scripture that there was a lot of them that didn't really

have anything at all.

Yeah, they looked the part.

They said a bunch of good stuff, but really they didn't have anything they thought they

had.

And for whoever thinks that they have, Jesus says even what little they have is going to

be taken away.

So there's a little bit there, but they don't really seek God with what little bit is there

because they're too proud to.

And so what about us tonight?

Therefore, be careful how you listen.

For those who have more will be given, but those who do not have even what they think

they have will be taken away.

Are we those who are proud?

Do we think we know all of the scripture?

We understand it.

I know this, that, and the other.

I know more about him.

I know more about her.

I can tell them more than they could tell me.

I know more about everybody.

I know my way, my interpretations right.

I don't even need to read the Bible anymore because I know it.

And when we come back, when we get to that point where we're that proud, then even what

we have, we begin to lose.

And that's a scary thing.

So we don't want to be those who are proud in the word of God.

We don't want to be those who think too highly of ourselves.

We don't want to be those who fall into the trap of religion.

We don't want to be those who get lazy and quit reading the word of God and quit seeking

the word of God and quit listening to the word of God because the moment we do, then

the world begins to come in and we begin to seek the world and we begin to pay attention

to the world and pretty soon even what we thought we had, we lose.

So we want to be those tonight who have and who gain more.

Those who have and who are given more.

Those who have heard the word of God, those who listen to the word of God, those who respond

to the word of God, those who are humble and not proud, but those who are ever studying

and ever seeking and ever trying to learn the word of God and to live by the word of

God.

There's a big difference between reading the Bible and doing what the Bible says.

And I'm certainly guilty of times of reading the Bible, but not doing what the Bible says.

And so we don't want to be those who get in the habit of just reading the Bible.

We want to be those who get in the habit of reading the Bible and carefully listening

to what we hear so that we humble ourselves before the word of God and we seek God and

say, God, I know I need to grow in you.

I know I'm not where I need to be, but God help me to grow.

Maybe I'm producing 30 times what was there.

God help me to produce 60.

Maybe I'm producing 60.

Help me to produce 90.

Maybe we're producing very little at all.

God help me to produce just a little bit more tomorrow.

And the best place for us to start is in the word of God.

Don't matter if it'd be better to read one verse a day and to ponder on it and to let

it soak in and to listen to what it says than to read 17 chapters a day.

Don't matter how much you read.

Don't matter how much you can quote.

What matters is how much you listen to what you read.

You can quote the whole Bible from cover to cover, but if you're not living by it and

listening to it, that even what you have or you think you have will be taken away.

When we humble ourselves before the word of God, pay attention to what it says and listen

to what it says and live by what it says, then more will be given.

And then we will begin to grow in the word of God.

That needs to be our desire.

That needs to be our prayers.

As brothers and sisters in Christ, God would open our eyes and open our ears and open our

hearts that maybe there's hardness there, maybe there's thorns there, maybe there's

some things tangled up in there.

And God would come through with a weed whacker and start getting some of them thorns out

so that we'd be a fertile soil ready to grow based on what we hear from the word of God.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this good word and what a powerful, convicting word it is, dear Lord.

I pray that you would help us all to live by this truth, by this command, God.

I pray that you forgive me for my failures, dear Lord.

I am the first one to say I am guilty of not paying attention to what I've heard.

And I pray, God, that you would help me as a man and as a leader to just seek you, to

hear your word, to listen to it, to live by it, dear Lord.

I pray that you would help us never to be proud, to think that we know it all, but to

humble ourselves like a child, dear Lord, that's eager to learn, that knows that we

can only be taught by you.

So I pray, God, that we would seek you today, that we would open our hearts, that we would

hear your word, and that whatever we have in humility would begin to grow.

God, let us not be those who think we have, but let us be those who know we have.

God, I pray that whatever we have will not be taken away, that if there is sin in our

life, if there is hardness in our heart, that you would help us to overcome that, dear Lord.

I pray that you would help us to be a people as we are freshly starting this 2025 that

would seek your word, meditate on it, and do our best to live by it.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.