Learning not to lose everything
LINK="#000080" VLINK="#800000" DIR="LTR">HOW NOT TO LOSE EVERYTHING
Luke 8:16-18
Weﾒre passing through very challenging times in our national life. Weﾒve enjoyed many years of relative prosperity. Many of us canﾒt remember serious recession. Very few of us can remember the great depression. Our newspapers seem to have a newly doom-laden story every morning. We wonder which bank will fail next. We wonder if our money is in safe hands. A report this week said that people retiring in the next few months stand to have thousands of pounds wiped off the pensions theyﾒve been saving for for the whole of their working life.
People are drawn to articles in the newspapers with headlines like this :- ﾓHow to survive the downturnﾔ. Some are putting their money into gold.
Weﾒre interested in something that will prevent us losing everything. None of us wants to lose everything.
Of course, Iﾒm not here to speak with any authority about the world of finance, important though that is. Urgent though it is. Iﾒm here to call you to think about an even deeper application of that big question. How can I make sure that I donﾒt lose everything?
Last Sunday morning we looked at the parable of the Sower in Luke 8. Jesus came preaching something called the good news of the kingdom. Heﾒs already made it clear that HE is the good news. Itﾒs good news about him and what heﾒs come to do. Heﾒs come to build a new kind of kingdom that will last for ever when all the kingdoms of this world have been sucked into the black hole of nothingness. If you want to enter into a kingdom which will never fail; which wonﾒt be spoiled by economic collapse; which wonﾒt be devalued by human incompetence; then you must enter the kingdom of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Luke is showing us conclusively, that this eternal, unfailing Kingdom has a King, and itﾒs Jesus of Nazareth.
We looked last week at the parable of the sower. The King is establishing his kingdom like a farm labourer. Heﾒs scattering the seed of the good news into as many hearts as possible. The only way to enter the kingdom is to believe the message in such a way that the life of the kingdom produces fruit right through your experience. Some people donﾒt ever let the message penetrate their affections. Other people let it penetrate only shallowly and then when the going gets painful, they allow kingdom life to wither and die. Others allow all sorts of rubbish to grow vigorously in their lives so that the life of the kingdom is choked to death.
And then there are others who do everything in their power to ensure that the kingdom grows in their affections. They welcome the seed, they nurture it, treat it with care, help to to grow and take over every area of life. Theyﾒre kingdom people.
You can tell from that simple parable that the thing that makes all the difference is hearing. See verse 15 - as for the seed in the good soil, they are those who, HEARING THE WORD OF GOD, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
Thatﾒs not describing something you do once at the time of your first interest in the Lord Jesus. Itﾒs describing a state of mind; a culture of heart. In my heart, every day and all my days, I make room for the Word of God to produce its fruit.
Donﾒt you think Luke is demonstrating the importance of how you hear the good news of the kingdom?
He drives home this particular nail in the next three verses by using three more pictures. And as he does so, he shows us how not to lose everything.
1. the essence of lamplighting (v 16)
Some of you may not find this difficult to believe. But, when I was a little boy living in Failsworth, Manchester, the lamplighter came every morning and evening down our street. We had gas lamps on our street. They were probably ten feet high. They were especially made so that little boys could climb up them and swing from the iron arms that projected out from just beneath the lamp. Every night a man came with a long pole. He tipped the lever that turned on the gas and then lit the four gas mantles that were inside the lamp housing.
Every morning he came back and put them out again. He was a very important man in our street.
It would have been mighty peculiar if the lamplighter had gone down the street lighting all the lamps at dusk, and then come down the street to put a heavy black bag on the lamp housing so that the street were plunged in darkness. It would have a been a contradiction. I would have been a nonsense, an idiotic nonsense. Why light the lamp if you then cover it over? The only reason you light a lamp is to let it shine and overcome the darkness.
No one would do such a thing - verse 16 ﾓNO ONEﾔ
Itﾒs a picture of what you do with the Word of God. The Lord Jesus is the light of the world. His whole business is to shine in the dark. Thatﾒs how he functioned in the creation. There was darkness and then there was light through the outshining of the Word of God.
When you receive the Word of God into your heart it comes as a light into darkness. The unfolding of your word gives light says the book of Proverbs. The Word is full of Jesus and Jesus is the Word of God.
So, why would anyone mess about with this. Why would anyone encourage the Word of God to enter into the darkness of their life, and then begin to cover it over so that the light canﾒt do itﾒs work of illuminating every corner of your thinking, feeling and deciding? No one, in their right mind, would do such a thing, would they?
But the first letter of John near the back of your Bible shows the kind of disastrous things we allow to happen. If you embrace teaching thatﾒs a contradiction of the beauty and majesty of the Lord Jesus, the light in your heart will be darkened. If you allow your eyes to be filled with the glittering prizes the world offers you in return for your devotion, the light will be darkened. If you allow a spirit of enmity to develop between you and another Christian, not least if youﾒre married to them, the light will darken. If you allow patterns of self-centredness and self-interest to grow in your spirit, the light will darken.
Thereﾒs nothing more God-glorifying we could do than to ensure that the light of the Word of God shines unimpeded in our internal world.
Picture 1 - The Essence of Lamplighting
2. The Essence of Judgement (verse 17)
When I was a boy I was apparently generally obnoxious to adults who came into contact with me, especially teachers. I remember particularly the morning that Iﾒd been misbehaving on the bus to school. Iﾒd made a nuisance of myself to the amusement of my friends by ringing the bell to make the bus stop when no one actually wanted to get off.
I got off the bus and got on with my school day. At break time a school prefect approached me and said that Mr Briton, the head teacher, required my presence in his room. I genuinely had no idea what that might be about. I couldn't think of anything wrong Iﾒd done so I went with a contented conscience. But all was revealed. What I thought had been hidden from him, was as clear as day. Iﾒd been reported by someone on the bus. My behaviour was an open secret.
I bent over the Headﾒs desk and received six strokes of the cane on my posterior. I got the impression that he applied the strokes with some enthusiastic relish.
The problem with poor behaviour is that you can get away with it for a long time, and you begin to imagine that thereﾒs no harm in it. You gradually harden your heart and conscience, but it doesnﾒt feel so bad. You allow it to happen by degrees and you donﾒt realize just how serious a condition youﾒve allowed yourself to drift into. Before you know where you are, your Christian lifeﾒs on the rocks. Youﾒre shipwrecked. You allowed the ship to drift off course by just one or two degrees, and the end result was a ruined journey. You didnﾒt arrive at your destination even though you thought that there wasnﾒt anything wrong with a degree or two of departure from the compass. Whatﾒs a degree or two? you asked yourself.
And, you think you can keep the whole process hidden. Hidden from yourself and from the Christians who know you. And, the more you do the hiding, the easier it becomes.
But, the essence of judgement is that what you hide will be brought into the open. What you pursue in the dark will be exposed to the light. Sometimes, it happens in this life. One of Paulﾒs best workers began to allow his life to slip one degree at a time into compromise, and the apostle had to write with grief, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. The whole Christian world now knows about the shipwreck of a gifted Christian worker.
This sort of thing always happens when you prevent the Word of God from doing that work in your heart that it was intended to do. May God forbid that any of us will hide our neglect of God and His Word until itﾒs too late.
The essence of lamplighting
The essence of judgement
3. The Essence of Loss-prevention (verse 18)
Take care then HOW you HEAR.
It seems to be a principle that God has built into the natural order that if you abuse what youﾒve got, then what youﾒve got will be lost to you. But if you rightly use what youﾒve got then what youﾒve got will be added to. If youﾒre given a packet of seeds and use them as something to decorate the mantelpiece, then eventually youﾒll lose the ability of the seed to produce a crop of flowers or whatever. If you use the seeds properly and take the trouble and care of planting them in thee right conditions and caring for them with the right activities, then youﾒll have a multiplied joy. What you had will be added to. Abuse means that what you once had will be lost to you.
This verse is saying that the same principleﾒs built into the seed of the Word of God. Many of us seem to think that itﾒs there for show. We have the Bible in our own language. We have pastors who are committed to the accurate explanation of what that book means. We have two Christian bookshops in our town centre. We have the biggest Christian supply of books the world has ever seen only a click away on the Internet. We have instant access to the worldﾒs greatest preaching in the form of mp3 downloads to our desk tops.
We have more access to the hearing of the Word of God than any generation in the worldﾒs history. We can listen to Piper, Lloyd Jones, Carson, any day of the week we choose. What a privileged generation we are.
So, How have we heard. Have we taken care of our privileges. Have we made good use of the gifts God has showered upon us? Have we taken care to plant, water, nurture and encourage the life of the seed in the environment of our hearts.
If we have then thereﾒll be a harvest of godly fruit. The seed will accomplish that for which it was sent, and weﾒll never lose the lovely thing that the Word of God has created in our experience. What we enjoy of the life of God in the here and now will be ours in abundance in a better world.
If we donﾒt then what we had in the first place will be taken away from us, once and for all.
One of the great purposes of this chapter is to illustrate just how important it is that we treat the Word of God as God requires.