And for our reading from the Old Testament, I invite you to turn to the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 60. And our reading will be verses one through seven. Isaiah 60, one through seven. Listen to this. This is the very Word of God. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Lift up your eyes all around and see. They all gather together. They come to you. Your sons shall come from afar and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. Then you shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and exult because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you. The wealth of the nations shall come to you.
A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah. All those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you. The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you. They shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my house, my beautiful house.
And then for our New Testament reading and the text for this morning’s message, we go to the eighth chapter of Luke’s gospel. Luke 8, and we’ll read verses 16 through 21. This starts out with the words of Jesus that he spoke immediately after the parable of the sower. Luke 8, 16 through 21.
No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care, then, how you hear. For to the one who has, more will be given. And from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.
Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. But he answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
That’s the reading of God’s Word. Let’s pray once again for his blessing upon the ministry of the Word. Father in heaven, as the Word is proclaimed, as the Word is preached, we pray that you would inhabit it with the power of your Spirit, and your Word would go forth, not in Word only, but also with power, and that this would bring glory to our Savior, Jesus Christ. Please beautify your beautiful house by shedding your grace upon us this morning. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
I wonder if you any of you kids have ever had the experience of leaving a light on somewhere in your house. And one of your parents, maybe your mom or your dad, probably your dad came by and shut off the light that you left on and then scolded you a little bit for leaving the light on in a room after you’d left the room. Has that ever happened to you? Now imagine because You didn’t intentionally leave the light on in the room, did you? You didn’t say, I’m gonna show dad and mom, I’m gonna leave this light on. But imagine for a moment that you took a lamp, if you could do this, you took a lamp, you plugged it in and turned it on and then stuck it in a closet and closed the closet door. And then later on, mom or dad discovered that you turned on a lamp, shut it in a closet and walked away.
Do you suppose they’d be a little bit perturbed with you for that? Well, that’s kind of an example of modern electrical example of what Jesus is talking about in this parable that he presents in this passage. He says, no one does that. No one lights a lamp. and then puts a vessel over it, a jar or a basket. They don’t light a lamp and stick it under a bed. Well, this is the parable that Jesus teaches, that he shares after the parable of the sower. And with this parable, he’s reinforcing, actually, he’s reiterating in different ways, the message of the parable of the sower.
He’s reinforcing his point here in these verses, in verses 16 through 21. Now, the statements, these sayings that Jesus gives us in verses 16, 17, and 18, all three of those, those themes, those ideas are repeated later on in Luke. Here, they’re clustered together. They occur separately later on.
So, what he says about hiding a lamp, we’re going to find again in Luke chapter 11. verse 33, because it comes up again there. The warning that he gives us in verse 17 is going to come up again in chapter 12, verse 2. And then that puzzling statement that he makes in verse 18, the one about he who has, more will be given to him, but from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away. That occurs again in chapter 19. verse 26. But those three statements are grouped together here. They’re clustered in the text we’re looking at today.
And as a unit, they teach us that it is the duty of Christ’s disciples to proclaim the gospel, hear the gospel, and obey the gospel. Let me say that again, because this is the message of the text today. It is the duty of Christ’s disciples to proclaim the gospel, hear the gospel, and obey the gospel.
Now, sometimes a little bit of alliteration assists us to remember. So, here are the three points, because I said we’re going to, we’re commanded, it’s our duty to proclaim the gospel. We’ll use the word herald. We’re supposed to herald the gospel. And we’re supposed to hear the gospel. And we’re supposed to heed the gospel. Those are our three points this morning. Does that help? Each one starts with H, herald, hear, and heed. That’s our duty. as Christ’s disciples.
So first of all, to herald, in other words, to proclaim, we’re to spread the gospel message, not to hide it. Now in the parable of the sower, remember, the Word of God the message of the gospel was compared to, is likened unto seed that a sower went out and sowed. He spread the seed and that’s symbolic of the word and the message of God’s word being proclaimed. When we get to verse 16, there’s a shift to a different image. This is a new parable. It’s making a similar point, but rather than using seed as the example or as the illustration, now the word of God is being compared to light. light.
And you know that light can be intensified. Light can be magnified, it can be amplified, and it can be spread abroad. Hilary and I learned this when we were visiting our son, Branch, when he was stationed up on the coast of Oregon. We went and spent a week with him and got to see some sites up there. And one of the things we did was we visited a location with a lighthouse and learned a lot of really interesting things about lighthouses. And one of the things that I learned was that even back in the days before electricity, you could take a lamp, a comparatively small lamp, And if you put it up in a prominent place, like a lighthouse, and if you were able to amplify that light with the correct kind of lenses and mirrors and so forth, you can take the light of one little lamp and intensify, magnify that light to the extent that that light can be seen for many, many miles out at sea.
One little lamp. can warn seagoing vessels all along a coast to beware and not to get too close to the shore. So you see that light can be intensified in that way. Or even in your own home, if you light a candle, or if you turn on a small lamp, the amount of light that that candle or that the lamp can provide for the house depends greatly on where you put it, doesn’t it? You can optimize the amount of light by setting a lamp or a candle in a prominent place.
And that’s typically what people will do. So the message of the gospel is like light. That good news. that which proclaim in Jesus’ name, that He came to proclaim unto us. It’s like light. And in that sense, it’s also like a guide. You know, those words from Psalm 119 that says, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. God’s Word is like that. The gospel is like that.
Whereas it says in Proverbs 6, verse 23, the commandment is a lamp and the teaching, a light. Jesus himself, in his self-description, said, I am the light of the world. He went on later to say to his disciples, you are the light of the world. And the illustration that he’s making in verse 16 just points to the absurdity of covering up the light.
Nobody does that, especially in the ancient world, where they didn’t have light bulbs and lighting up a room wasn’t as easy as just flipping a switch. No, you needed a lamp, you needed oil in your lamp, and you needed fire to light the lamp. And after sun goes down, you didn’t have an electrical grid that lights up your little town. Things got really dark.
And if you wanted to be able to see you needed a lamp in your house. And so when someone lit a lamp, they would place it somewhere to give as much light as possible to the inside. So to cover it up would be a complete waste to defeat the purpose. My grandmother’s house had in the kitchen, a little indicator light above the door. And that indicator light would come on if the light was on in the basement. Because it’s very easy if you needed something from the basement to go downstairs, turn on the light, find what you need, go back upstairs with whatever it was, and forget to turn off the light downstairs. So there’s a cold, empty basement with light shining for no purpose whatsoever.
So the little indicator light would say, hey, the lights on in the basement, don’t forget to turn it off. You don’t want the light to be on if there’s nobody down there to make use of the light. and you wouldn’t turn on the light for no reason if you didn’t need to go in there.
Our purpose as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ is to publish the message of Christ. Or as it’s sometimes been put, our purpose is to carry the light to the world. That’s one of the reasons we’re gonna be praying fervently during that week in September, that the Lord would raise up laborers for the harvest, so that they can take the light and go out with it, so that they can minister the word in congregations of Jesus Christ that have no minister, and so that they can go places where there isn’t anyone to proclaim Christ, to carry the gospel, to carry that light to foreign lands, to people that need to hear. Matthew Henry said that Christians, each one of us, are like lighted candles, and we must diffuse the light. In other words, that word diffuse means we need to spread it.
Christ makes the same point in the Sermon on the Mount where he uses words very similar to what we see here in Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, you are the light of the world. I mentioned that statement of Jesus already. He said, you are the light of the world.
A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand. And it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others. so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
So we’re like lighted candles. It’s our job, it’s our duty to diffuse that light. How do we diffuse the light? How do we do it? Well, from that passage that I just read from Matthew chapter five, one of the ways we diffuse the light is by doing good works. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and glorify your Father who’s in heaven.
That’s one way. By living according to Christ’s commands. By being zealous for good works, as we’re told to be over and over again throughout the New Testament. Live in such a way that people glorify God. Not glorify us, but that they glorify God. That’s number one.
We diffuse the light through personal evangelism. And there’s been a lot of talk on this subject in recent months, even here at Westminster, because thinking back a number of months ago, Elder Winslow led us through a short Sunday school class on evangelism from that very, very helpful book. And then we had our evangelism seminar in July. And the week after that, we had West Coast Witness. The need for us to engage in personal evangelism is great.
We need to share the message of Christ. J.C. Ryle said, Happy is that soul which, as soon as it receives light from heaven, begins to think of others as well as itself. No candle which God lights was ever meant to burn alone. So we diffuse the light by doing good works. We diffuse the light through personal evangelism. And we diffuse the light through preaching. The preaching of the word, the ministry of the word.
Westminster Shorter Catechism number 89 specifies that God makes the reading, but especially, those are the catechism’s words, especially the preaching of the word and effectual means. Now, not all of us are called to preach. We’re all called to share the gospel. Not all of us are called to preach, but what you can do is this. you can invite your friends, you can invite your neighbors to church. Now, when it comes to trying to reach people for Christ, when it comes to the whole topic of evangelism, personal evangelism, just inviting someone to church might seem like a cop out. because our goal isn’t just to turn non-Christians into churchgoers. That’s not the goal, of course, but the goal is to expose non-Christians to God’s own favorite means of convincing and converting sinners, and that’s the preaching of the Word. So, your unsaved neighbor, your unsaved friend, that non-Christian you know, what do you have to lose by just inviting them to church? bring them under the ministry of the Word, and see what God might do.
Because we have this glorious message, this glorious message to share, this glorious message to herald to the world. And we need to do that. But It’s also a message that each one of us needs to hear, too. We need to hear it every day. And that brings us to the second point. Not only are we to herald the word, but we’re to hear it. We need it as well.
No matter how long you’ve been walking with the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter how sanctified you are, no matter how mature you are in the faith, you need to hear the gospel every day. So, Jesus admonishes us to listen diligently, to take heed how we hear.
Look at verse 18 with me once again. Look at the beginning of that verse. It says, take care then how you hear. What it says, literally, if you translate the Greek very wouldn’tly, it says, see how you hear. That’s why I titled the sermon, See How You Hear. I’m not sure if that’s intended to be a little bit of a play on words. in Greek or not, but see how you hear. In other words, see as in see to it how you hear. Watch out how you hear. Be careful, in other words. And so our ESV rendering is quite good. Take care.
And verse 18 brings out the point that we saw back in verse 10 last time. When the disciples asked Jesus about the parable of the sower, he said in verse 10, 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 as I said, verse 16 through 21 reinforced the theme of the parable of the sower. It reinforces, these verses reinforce the fact that how we hear the word of God is of supreme importance. Do we hear it carelessly? Do we hear it with, disinterest? Or do we listen and hear it diligently? How we hear the Word of God is, is of supreme importance.
And so it goes on to say in verse 18 of our text, after we’re exhorted to take care how we hear, he says, for the one who has to the one who has more will be given. And from the one who has not even what he thinks that he has will be taken away. Now, if you listen to those words from a cynical perspective that might come across as sounding like a spiritual outworking of the old adage about the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but that’s not the point at all. The one who has, in verse 16, is in parallel to the one to whom it has been given back in verse 10. and the one to whom it has been given to know the mysteries, to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, that person will pursue true understanding.
They hear the parable, and they want to know more. They go to Jesus, and they ask, explain the parable to me. Explain the parable to us. And so they pursue that true understanding, and they grow in their understanding. But the others, as it’s put, in verse 10, the one to whom it has not been given to know the secrets of the kingdom, they won’t pursue true understanding. And because they won’t, because they don’t, they’ll lose even the little they know or think that they know. So we need to be diligent.
We need to be careful how we hear to take care. J.C. Ryle gives three rules for hearing the Word of God. How are we to hear? Here are Ryle’s three points of applications to how we’re to hear, how we’re to listen to God’s Word when it’s read, when it’s taught, when it’s preached. First of all, hear with faith. Hear with faith. Believe that every word of God is true.
We’re taught and rightly so. And in some contexts, we’re taught to read and to listen critically, aren’t we? And we certainly should. But when it comes to God’s Word, we don’t approach God’s Word as judges. We approach God’s Word as subjects in his kingdom. We don’t approach God’s Word as the authority His Word is the authority. We’re not.
We approach His Word as humble children coming to hear the voice and the will of their Father. So, hear with faith, number one. Secondly, hear with reverence. Hear with reverence. Because the Scriptures are not man’s word. They’re God’s word. So, we need to hear with faith. We need to hear with reverence. And we need to hear with prayer. Before we read the Scriptures, in our services of worship here, what do we do? We always pray, don’t we? We ask God to bless the reading and the hearing, and the preaching of His Word. And then we pray when the when the message is concluded, too. And that’s not just perfunctory. That’s not just rote practice. We do it because we need God to bless. So even when you sit down to read God’s Word on your own, before you even open your Bible, take a moment to pray. Ask Him to bless. And then when you’re done, ask Him to cause that Word to find root in your heart. Ask for God’s blessing on His Word.
Quoting Ryle again, with specific regard to this matter of praying, Receiving and hearing God’s word with prayer, Ryle said, here lies the grand defect of the hearing of many. They ask no blessing. And so they have none. Didn’t Jesus say, ask and it shall be given to you? Ask him to bless his word to you each time you hear it. Ultimately, of course, he did say his first point was here with faith. Hearing the word must be joined with faith, always. It won’t profit unless it is.
Hebrews 4, verse 2, speaking about that wilderness generation of the Jews after they’d come out of the land of Egypt and they’re wandering, they’re waiting for the Lord to bring them into the land that he’d promised to their fathers. And some of them heard the word and they obeyed and they walked with God. Others didn’t. They rebelled. And Hebrews 4 too, speaking of that generation, says, for good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
So you see, faith is crucial. You have to hear the word of God with faith. Those who listen diligently to the word, those who hear with faith will both hear and do the word. They will heed the gospel message. And that’s our last point. We’re to herald the gospel, we’re to hear the gospel, and we’re to heed it, or to put it in another way, do what Christ says. One of the most stinging rebukes that Jesus gives in the gospels is when he says, why do you call me Lord, Lord, but you don’t do what I say. We’re to heed the gospel, we’re to heed the word.
Part and parcel of hearing carefully is responding rightly. Scripture stresses that faith is authenticated by good works. Of course, we always talk about that seeming tension. It’s not really a tension at all, but that seeming tension between Paul and Romans talking about justification by being by grace through faith alone. And then James coming along and talking about the importance of works. But what James says in chapter 2, verse 17 of his letter is that faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. You have to heed the word. You have to do what Christ says.
Christ says elsewhere that those who have the light should walk in the light. John 12, 35, the light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he’s going.
So Jesus says, take care then how you hear. And after he concludes his words in verse 18, something happens. His family comes. Jesus’ biological family, his mother, the woman who bore him, Mary, and his brothers, we’re told. They come to Jesus. They desire to see him. But they could not reach him, it says in verse 19, because of the crowd. And he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. And the response that he gives in verse 21 might sound as if he’s slighting, being dismissive of his own family.
But that’s not really what’s happening at all. if we see how Jesus interacted with his mother elsewhere, and especially what he did for her while he was in the very process of giving up his life on the cross. We see Jesus honored and loved his mother perfectly, even at his death.
Except for the early chapters of Matthew and also Luke’s gospel, we don’t hear anything about Joseph. The timeline that we know is that Joseph was presumably, he’s assumed to be Jesus’ father. He was not. Jesus had no human father. But Joseph was betrothed to Mary. Mary conceived in her womb and bore Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
So Joseph served as human father to Jesus after he was born as he grew. We’re told that when Jesus began his earthly ministry, he was about 30 years old. So in those 30 years between Jesus’ birth and the beginning of his ministry, Joseph and Mary had a normal marriage and they had children just like normal husbands and wives do.
Jesus had, we have four brothers mentioned by name in the Holy Scripture. And we also know that he had sisters, probably three or more. Mary and these brothers of Jesus come to him. Joseph isn’t mentioned. So somewhere along the line, before Jesus’ earthly ministry began, presumably Joseph died. Mary is now a widow.
And because of that, Jesus makes provision for his widowed mother, even while he’s in the very pains of dying on the cross through Roman crucifixion and bearing the weight of our sins and the wrath of God against our sins on the cross. He looked down, he saw his mother, he saw the disciple whom he loved. He says to the disciple, behold your mother, care for her. And it says that John, took Mary into his own home from that day. Jesus loved his mother, so he wasn’t being dismissive of her or his brothers whatsoever.
The point is this. God’s family, Christ’s family, is formed on the basis of spiritual ties. The family of God, the household of God is formed on the basis of spiritual things. Paul makes that point, even with regard to his own ethnicity, even with regard to the idea of Jewishness, when he wrote in Romans 2, starting in verse 28, no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart. by the spirit, not by the letter.” Those are strong words for Paul, who ethnically was Jewish. But he’s saying, you’re not really a Jew if all it is is the physical thing for you, lineal descent, ancestral ties. He says, it’s really about spiritual things.
And writing to the church in Philippi, which is almost entirely Gentile. Paul writes in solidarity with those Gentile Christians in Philippi, when he says, we, in other words, you and I are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.
See, God’s family, Christ’s family is formed on the basis of spiritual ties, not biological ones. Family are earthly families. Family is of tremendous importance. One of the Ten Commandments is honor your father and your mother. Jesus commanded that we love our neighbor, that we love our brother. So family is of tremendous importance, not downplaying family at all. But family is not ultimate. Family is important. but family’s not ultimate. Jesus said, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
So that statement we see at the end of verse 21, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it, that statement sums up what it means to be a true Christian. Hear God’s word and do it. Now, we didn’t really give much attention to verse 17. Jesus cautions us in verse 17.
Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be made known and come to light. What’s he telling us there? He’s saying that in the last day, at the final judgment, Everything will be revealed. God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. On that day, people will give an account for every careless word they speak. Jesus himself told us that.
Every careless word, along with our inmost thoughts. those things in your past, those things that you hope no one would ever find out about. It’ll all be out in the open. That’s what those words in our text, made manifest, mean. Everything will be made visible. Everything will be made apparent.
If you look in verse 17 in your ESV Bible, for example, the ESV renders this idea two different ways. It says, nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light, manifest and come to light. The translators chose in not only the ESV, but some of our other English versions. They use different wording there, but it’s actually a translation of the same word. The same word occurs twice in the Greek in that passage. It’s as if to guarantee to us by emphasis, that everything is going to be open and public. You ever spend any time thinking about that? Everything you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever said, everything you’ve ever thought will just be out in the open. That’s why it’s crucial that we hear the gospel.
That’s why it’s crucial that we put our trust in Christ, because if you don’t, you will be accountable for every sin you’ve ever committed. But if you hear and heed the gospel, Christ will take the penalty for you, for all of it. Which do you prefer? And not only does Christ bear the penalty for your sins, but he himself calls you his brothers, his sisters, his mothers. He claims you as his family. Isn’t that just the best news you’ve ever heard? And don’t you want to share that with others? Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, as your own word says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Thank you, O Lord, that we will come into your hands in the safekeeping of Christ and his gospel. Lord, may we believe it and impress these truths upon us, Lord, impress it upon us and upon our hearts, the glories of the gospel that Christ Jesus himself bore in his own body the full penalty for all of our sins. and he embraces us as his brothers and sisters. Lord, make our hearts rejoice in this more than ever before. And may these truths motivate us to let others know that there is a gospel that they need to hear, and that Jesus says to them, come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Lord, let the message go forth. Let it go forth with power. We pray this for the honor and glory of our Savior, and we pray it in His name. Amen.