If I don't rise, my toe will be
tapping, I guarantee you.
Hey guys, I have to confess again, I
have eaten too much.
How about you?
Those cookies out there are about to kill
me.
If you see me, listen.
If you see me...
Okay.
Better than that, why don't you threaten to
tell my wife?
That'll even be, it's even more serious.
All right.
Well, let's turn in our Bibles to Matthew
chapter 13, please.
Matthew chapter 13.
Now, of course, you're familiar with this great
passage of Scripture that is in the first
part of Matthew 13, the parable of the
soils.
I'm not going to preach on that passage,
but I will make this comment.
I will read it in a moment, but
we'll make this comment that the Lord must
have meant for us to understand this passage
because he included it three times in the
Scripture.
So this is a very important, very significant
passage of Scripture.
But my attention tonight is drawn to verse
10 and following.
It's really a question that the disciples asked
Jesus Christ after he had given the parable
of the soils.
Disciples came to him, if you'll notice in
verse 10, and they said to him, why
do you speak to them in parables?
The answer that Jesus gives in the next
few verses down through verse 17 is the
text of the message tonight and tells us
a great deal about the way God gets
understanding into the hearts of dead people.
And that's a fascinating subject, but not just
fascinating, it's absolutely strategic for you, isn't it?
Because you care a great deal, don't you,
about the people who hear you preach, those
of you who are preachers.
You care a great deal about your family
and about your friends and your neighbors.
So this passage of Scripture is important for
us tonight, isn't it?
So we're going to try to delve into
these verses and make observations and gain some
insight into how God takes people who don't
have any light and brings understanding to them.
What is God doing?
What are the implications of that?
How is it working in the world even
today, not just in his day?
I have kind of a sub-theme as
well that is going to be on my
mind as I'm preaching through this text, and
that is it is my goal to decimate
our pride, to help us understand how absolutely
dependent we are upon God to make it
work.
So let's read through the first few verses,
the parable itself.
I won't make any comments.
You understand, of course, that the persons are
the soils.
The soils are not the plants.
The persons are the soils, and the seed
is, of course, the gospel itself, the word
of Christ.
Now listen to this in verse 1.
That day Jesus went out of the house
and was sitting by the sea, and large
crowds gathered to him.
So he got into a boat, and he
sat down, and the whole crowd was standing
on the beach.
And he spoke many things to them in
parables, saying, Behold, the sower went out to
sow.
And as he sowed, some seeds fell beside
the road, and the birds came and ate
them up.
Others fell on the rocky places where they
did not have much soil, and immediately they
sprang up because they had no depth of
soil.
But when the sun had risen, they were
scorched, and because they had no root, they
withered away.
Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns
came up and choked them out.
And others fell on the good soil.
And of course, we understand this to be
the true Christian, don't we, the one who
becomes the believer in Christ.
Others fell on the good soil and yielded
a crop, some a hundredfold, and some sixty
and some thirty.
He who has ears, let him hear.
And in my view, as we go through
the next portion of the scripture here, we
will find, I think, that that phrase, he
who has ears, represents or speaks of a
category of people.
He who has ears, let him hear.
Some years ago, during the colonial period in
our nation's history, one of the great preachers,
Samuel Davies, preached a message called the success
of the ministry owing to divine influence.
And here is what he said.
I want to read his words.
The different success of the same means of
grace in different periods of the church sufficiently
shows the necessity of gracious influences to render
them efficacious.
It is not by power.
It is by the power of God, nor
by might, but by the spirit of the
Lord of hosts that the interests of religion
are carried on.
Our own experience and observation furnish us with
many instances in which this great truth has
been exemplified.
Sometimes the reading of a sermon has been
the means of awakening careless sinners, when at
other times the most solemn and argumentative preaching
has been in vain.
Sometimes we've seen a number of sinners thoroughly
awakened and brought to seek the Lord in
earnest, while another number, under the very same
sermon and who seemed as open to conviction
as the former, or perhaps more so, have
remained secure and thoughtless as usual.
And whence could this difference arise but from
special grace?
We have seen persons struck to the heart
with those doctrines which they had heard a
hundred times without any effect.
He who has ears to hear, let him
hear.
Now the disciples come to Jesus and ask
this interesting question.
Of course, Jesus, in this particular chapter of
scripture, is giving us several parables, these little
agrarian stories.
And if you have never read this passage
of scripture before, I think you'd have a
ready answer for that question from the disciples.
You would probably say, having never read it,
you would probably say that the parables were
used by Jesus Christ for the express purpose
of making things understandable, making them very simple
and accessible to his audience.
But in fact, the very opposite is the
answer, as we will find out.
Let's see what Jesus Christ says and make
the appropriate observations as we go through the
passage.
Let me read the entire text now from
verse 10 through verse 17.
And the disciples came to him and said
to him, Why do you speak to them
in parables?
Jesus answered them, To you it has been
granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven, but to them it has not
been granted.
For whoever has, to him more shall be
given, and he will have an abundance.
But whoever does not have, even what he
has shall be taken away from him.
Therefore I speak to them in parables, because
while seeing they do not see, and while
hearing they do not hear, nor do they
understand.
In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is
being fulfilled, which says, You will keep on
hearing, but will not what?
You will not understand.
You will keep on seeing, but will not
perceive.
For the heart of this people has become
dull.
With their ears they scarcely hear, and they
have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear
with their ears, and what?
Understand with their heart, and return, and I
would heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
For truly I say to you that many
prophets and righteous men desired to see what
you see, and did not see it, and
to hear what you hear, and did not
hear it.
Now the first statement I want to make
in attempting to understand Jesus' answer is based
on verse 11, where Jesus again says, To
you it has been granted to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to
them it has not been granted.
So let me put it in almost the
same words.
Understanding of the mysteries of the kingdom is
granted to some and not to others.
Now there's a fact that you and the
people in your church will have to live
with, won't they?
It's just the truth of it.
God makes it absolutely plain.
There can be no equivocating about this statement,
can there?
To some it has been given to understand,
to others it has not been granted.
Truth or understanding is something that is given
or granted by God.
Now it's amazing, isn't it?
I'm sure you've had a similar amazement as
I have through the years that so many
people don't get it when you're such a
good explainer of the gospel.
I think of myself sometimes as a person
who, vainly I'm sure, but as a person
who tries to make things simple and understandable
and reachable.
But I am amazed, I have to say
sometimes when you talk to intelligent people and
they just don't seem to understand.
And then one of the other amazements that
I have is that many people who are
responsible for actually proclaiming the word, maybe even
go to school to learn how to proclaim
the truths of the kingdom of God, don't
get it either.
Now I have a habit, and several of
us in our church, I may speak a
little about this tomorrow, but I have a
habit of going to liberal churches for the
sake of evangelism.
I do that regularly.
It's just part of my evangelism practice through
the years.
And I've been amazed at how many people
there preaching the gospel really don't have a
clue what they're saying.
They'll sometimes read a scripture, you know in
liberal churches they tend to read more scripture
than we do in our evangelical churches.
But they'll read a scripture and then they
will say things that seem to have no
connection to the scripture that they've read at
all.
I mean, I remember hearing one pastor preach
about the subject of the wheat and the
tares and he went to great pains to
tell us what that meant was good and
bad influences in your life.
I thought, that doesn't have any connection whatsoever
with that text of scripture that he read.
Or another man talked about the Gadarene Demoni
Act and he said this is all about
our fractured lives.
We've got so many things to do.
You have to run to the PTA meeting,
you have to go to this meeting, that,
and we're just all, our lives are all
broken up, you know, with all these things
to do.
In one Methodist church that I was in,
forgive me if anybody here is a Methodist,
the devil by the way was a Methodist,
the Bible says we're not ignorant of his
methods.
But I turned to a charter member of
the church, an old fellow, it was a
rather large Methodist church and I have a
habit of asking questions of people after the
sermon to just, you know, see what will
come up and what I can do.
And I said, what is your church's view
of the Bible?
He said, well, he said, I'm a chaplain
for the Masons.
And he said, now, in the Masons he
said, I believe that we, you know, we
have a little stronger view of the Bible
than we do here in our church.
But he said, now you have to know
the languages, you have to know Hebrew and
Greek and Babylonian.
And it's all I could do to keep
from just bursting out laughing.
But apparently the guy thought that the pastor,
who just never could seem to get it
when he was speaking, knew Babylonian, I guess,
because he would listen to him week after
week after week, I'm sure scratching his head
occasionally, but saying, well, if you know Babylonian,
that must be what it means, you know.
One of the themes that runs through the
Gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of John,
in my observation, is this idea that people
don't get it.
A lot of times with the Pharisees, why
don't you understand?
Let me just take you to John real
quickly and we're going to come back to
our text.
But let's go to John chapter 8 and
just look at one case of this.
We could look at several and they're all
fascinating.
But John chapter 8, and let's look here
at verse 43, I think is where we
want to be.
All right, let's start there, verse 43.
Why do you not understand what I am
saying?
It is because you cannot hear my word.
You are of your father the devil and
you want to do the desires of your
father.
He was a murderer from the beginning and
does not stand in the truth, because there
is no truth in it.
Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from
his own nature, for he is a liar
and the father of lies.
But because I speak the truth, you do
not believe me.
Which one of you convicts me of sin?
And here I think he's simply saying, I
have impeccable life, and yet you won't believe
me.
Impeccable, you can't even accuse me of any
sin, yet you won't believe what I say.
Which one of you convicts me of sin?
If I speak truth, why do you not
believe me?
He who is of God hears the words
of God.
For this reason you do not understand them,
because you are not of God.
You see, it's been granted to some and
not to others.
Look at that verse 45, which I think
is particularly telling.
If you put the emphasis here, it helps
us see it, I think, a little better.
Look at this, verse 45, but because I
speak the truth, you do not hear me.
If I would distort things, if I was
like your father, the devil, then you could
listen to me, and you could hear what
I have to say, but it's for the
very reason that I speak the truth that
you are incapable of getting what I say.
Back to Matthew 13.
Sometimes we're caught up, we're mistaken about this
idea of understanding, and we look at somebody
who seems to be able to articulate, in
a way, the truths about the gospel, and
we might be confused in thinking that they
actually have understanding simply because they can articulate
things in a certain accurate way.
Let me illustrate what I mean.
Suppose you had a professor in one of
the state schools who was a professor in
the area of religion, and he was an
atheist.
That's not really an unusual situation at all,
is it?
Here you have an atheistic professor, and he
gets to that point in his lecture series
where he's to talk about the reformed doctrine
of justification by faith alone.
He is perfectly accurate, both in his history
and in his doctrine, when he gives that
lecture.
And then the professor goes into the teacher's
lounge and he kicks off his shoes and
puts his feet up on the coffee table
and lights up his cigarette, and a couple
of other professors around the room.
He says, well, today I gave my lecture
on the reformed doctrine of justification by faith
alone.
A person would have to be a fool
to believe that.
Now, do you think that that man understands
the doctrine of justification by faith alone?
No, he doesn't understand it.
If he understood it, he'd know who the
fool was, right?
And he would flee from his sin, and
he would run to Jesus Christ if he
really understood it.
He doesn't understand it.
He can state things about it, but he
doesn't understand the doctrine really at all.
So when the Bible talks about the impact
of the seed of the word of God
on a person's life, it's absolutely essential that
they have not just the ability to parrot
back to you some things about that truth,
but God is, if he's regenerating them, he
is actually giving them light, he's giving them
understanding, and they're hearing the word of God.
Now, that doesn't happen, in my view, as
I've looked through the scripture, it doesn't seem
to happen at all until the word of
God is viewed as irresistible, inescapable,
true, reliable, and justifiable.
Beautiful, excellent, exquisite, powerful.
Let me tell you why.
Because that's what the word of God really
is.
And you couldn't possibly be understanding it until
you grasp it for what it really is.
You see?
So when that begins to happen, you know
God is granting an understanding of the mysteries
of the kingdom of God.
How important that is.
I told the church they're Cornerstone Church, where
I preached, I had the privilege of preaching
this Sunday, I told them about my son's
conversion.
My son was converted when he was 18
years of age.
He was a very fine, model child in
many ways.
He was totally compliant in the family and
a very fine child.
Many people would have thought him a Christian,
because of his interests and things and so
forth.
But he knew that he wasn't.
And he grappled for several years actually with
the deep apologetic questions.
He would struggle with them.
He found that there was no way that
he could get to a place where he
couldn't doubt.
He always could doubt.
You know, a little bit of doubt goes
a long, long way.
He read more apologetics books than probably you've
read.
Or I've read, frankly.
How was he converted?
Well, he was converted as he, I didn't
know this was going on, but for some
long period of time, he would lock himself
into the room and for two to three
hours a day, he would go over and
over the Gospels of Jesus Christ.
And as he went over and over, reading
through it time and time and time again,
here's what he told me when he was
converted.
He told me, he said, what happened to
me was not my apologetics questions getting answered.
But what happened to me is I saw
the beauty of the word and I could
not resist its truth.
Now, I really believe that's the work of
God's spirit.
And I believe that's the way God does
it.
In one way or another, that's the way
God does it.
He is opening the understanding, opening the heart
of the individual to understand as a supernatural
work really, isn't it?
It is granted to some and it is
not granted to others.
Live with that truth, rejoice in it in
some ways because it has some powerful implications
in the positive as well as what appears
to be negative.
The second statement I believe we could make
out of Matthew 13 and the answer of
Jesus is found in verse 12.
And it's a curious sentence.
For whoever has, to him more shall be
given and he will have an abundance.
But whoever does not have even what he
has shall be taken away from him.
Now that is an interesting statement, isn't it?
And it's the kind of thing Jesus says
in another place or two as well.
Whoever has, to him more shall be given.
And by the way, here he's talking about
people, the haves and the have-nots really
here, isn't he?
Some people have, some people do not have.
What is it that he's talking about when
he says whoever has?
Has what?
Well of course in the context it is
has understanding.
Whoever has understanding, to him more will be
given.
But whoever does not have understanding, even what
he has, and I think he means by
that kind of phraseology, even what it appears
that he has, will be taken away from
him.
So our observation could be this.
Understanding increases in the elect to an abundance.
But even the appearance of understanding is taken
away from the non-elect.
In other words, what he's saying is this.
There is no such thing as a person
in your church who has professed to be
a Christian for, who is a Christian for
thirty long years who is at the same
place in their understanding as they were in
the very beginning.
No such thing.
Jesus says if you have, more will be
given.
Not just more, to an abundance, Jesus said.
Now you know I, I have to think
here a minute about old people.
And it's an amazing thing.
I'm kind of moving that direction a little
bit lately.
And I'll soon be fifty-eight.
Is that old yet?
Some of you.
I see a few older people here.
Good.
Well I'm encouraged.
I'm encouraged by what I'm hearing.
Alright.
But it's interesting as you get a little
bit older and we're all, we are all
moving that direction.
So be kind to old people, right?
As you get older, you not only wear
the kind of shoes you want to wear
that make a difference what they look like,
right?
But typically you begin to speak a little
bit more frankly about what you believe.
You care less actually.
You're not, no popularity contest anymore.
And it's been an interesting thing through the
years as I've talked to older people.
I've had the experience on a number of
occasions actually talking with older people about their
relationship to Christ to find to my amazement
that when asked about their, you know, how
they entered into relationship with Christ, they'll answer
something like this.
I was, you know, I joined the church
when I was seventeen.
And that would be their answer to the
question.
Now when they were earlier in church life
and they cared more about what everybody thought,
they would express with the proper nuances and
kind of the way that everybody would understand
in the, you know, about their conversion and
it would be satisfactory to everybody.
But now that they're older, they just say
really what pops into their mind, what they
really perhaps believe.
What I'm saying is that there are, there
is an indicator here, isn't there, that it's
very important for us to see that kind
of person.
You know what I'm talking about.
Otherwise a very nice person.
They make a great coconut pie or something.
You know, they're active in, when you have
a work day at the church, they might
be there.
But really as you look at their life
over all these years, at a time now
after so many years of supposedly being a
Christian, they ought to be at the apogee
of their wisdom and understanding of the things
of God, they seem to really have almost
no understanding.
You know what I'm talking about, don't you?
Have almost no understanding.
You can't really attribute this to just a
lack of education, they didn't go to college
or whatever.
It's not that, is it?
All these sermons, all these years of Bible
teaching, all that, you know, all that they
have has come in through those eyes and
the eye gate and the ear gate, but
it doesn't seem to make any difference whatsoever
in their real understanding.
That's a frightening thing, isn't it?
But you find them, don't you?
Third observation, look at verse 13.
Therefore I speak to them in parables, because
while seeing they do not see, and while
hearing they do not hear, nor do they
understand.
In their case, the prophecy of Isaiah is
being fulfilled, which says, you will keep on
hearing, but will not understand.
You will keep on seeing, but will not
perceive.
And the third observation then is this, repetition
of truth does not produce understanding.
Repetition of truth does not produce understanding.
They'll keep on hearing, but they really will
not perceive or understand what's going on.
That's true of so many people, isn't it?
And here I have to think a little
bit about our children, because there's never been
a day like our day, really, in terms
of resources for teaching children.
Would you agree with that?
Some of you who are older remember back
years ago, it just was nothing like the
kind of resources that are available to people,
and the concern on the part of a
lot of people about inculcating the truths of
God into the hearts of their children.
There really is a lot of concern.
A lot's going on in that area, and
I'm happy that it's going on, but there's
an interesting thing that's happening, though, in some
people's families, I think, as they teach them
umpteen Scripture verses, which is perfectly right to
do.
I did the same thing with my children,
as they catechized them, and so forth.
They teach them Bible story after Bible story.
They have in their minds, subtly, the parent
begins to think they have sort of a
half Christian there.
Now, the truth is that they might be
raising a very dangerous person, right?
They might be raising a little moralist or
a little Pharisee who does not have a
perception of what it means to be converted
to Christ, really.
They just move from all that great knowledge
that they have to a church life and
through their life, and these are dangerous people,
and if they ever happen to turn on
Christianity, they're especially dangerous, because they have all
this data in their mind.
Remember the Apostle Paul, who was originally named
Saul, and he had more learning, perhaps, than
any of our children.
Now, they remember huge portions of Scripture as
not young Jewish children, but did Saul have
understanding?
No, listen, by the way, we forget this
sometimes.
He had the same Bible before he was
converted that he had afterwards, and as he
was studying that same Bible, he was persecuting
the church.
Now, is repetition absolutely wrong in and of
itself?
Well, no, but I'm just making this point.
It in itself does not produce the understanding
that you so desperately need.
It doesn't do it.
If it were so, if it did it,
the people with the greatest understanding in the
United States would be the people in the
rescue missions.
I mean, they don't even get to eat
until they hear another message, right?
You can eat cookies any time you want,
but they have to hear another message.
Now, I think of the Apostle Paul like
this.
Have you ever had one of these little,
they're usually plastic, maybe metal, but it's a
little apparatus where you can take your change
at the end of the day, and you
just reach in your pocket, and you throw
your change in the top of it, and
then everything sort of filters down.
The quarters go in the right spot, and
the nickels, and the dimes, and so forth,
and the pennies, they all drop, they all
filter down into the right spot, and that's
the way I think of Saul.
He had all this vast amount of knowledge
in his head.
He was out, because of this knowledge, because
of the knowledge that he had, he was
that dangerous person I'm talking about.
He was actually out persecuting the church, but
when he met up with Christ on the
Damascus Road, what happened?
It's just like that coin apparatus.
Everything just went, oh, that's what it means,
as he said in Damascus with his Old
Testament open.
That's what this means.
This is what that means.
That's what that means, and all of that
vast amount of knowledge found its way into
the right slots, and so forth, and it
became, of course, a very effective instrument, and
so I'm hopeful that repetition can actually produce
some good in the end of it all,
and that's our hope, of course, as we
teach our children, and we train them in
all the ways that we do, but let
me tell you something.
If God doesn't do something, it's not going
to help at all, not in the least
bit.
In fact, it may lead them far away
from God, so repetition in and of itself
does not produce understanding.
And then a fourth observation.
Look down in verse 15.
For the heart of this people has become
dull.
With their ears they scarcely hear, and they
have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear
with their ears, and understand with their heart
and return, and I would heal them.
Responsibility.
Here's the fourth observation.
Responsibility for failure to understand is entirely the
person's.
It is entirely the person's.
You say, well, wait a minute, Jim, what
are you saying?
You're saying to some it has been granted,
to others it has not been granted.
I understand, but what the Lord is really
saying here is this, that if there is
understanding in your heart, if you are one
of those privileged to understand, you must attribute
it all to God, but if you don't
understand it's because you've closed your ears to
God.
You are responsible.
God never lets us get around this really,
does he, at all.
He always lays that blame at the feet
of the individual.
You are the one stuffing your fingers in
your ears and not hearing the things of
God.
You are unwilling to hear.
You will not hear.
You are bound, of course, to your fallen
nature.
Romans 3 says there's none who understands.
Nobody understands.
They have all turned aside.
It is the responsibility of the person that
they do not understand at all.
A fifth observation is this.
Look at verse 16.
But blessed are your eyes because they see,
and your ears because they hear.
For truly I say to you that many
prophets and righteous men desired to see what
you see and did not see it and
to hear what you hear and did not
hear it.
And here is that observation.
Understanding is so great a blessing that even
the prophets long to see and hear what
you see and hear.
I just think we need to have a
proper evaluation of what's going on here.
Why is it, I mean, we can actually,
I'm looking around here and there are a
few of you who have been or are
in mission work.
Why is it that you can name some
countries and all you can think of is
darkness?
Why is it that you can name some
denominations of supposed Christians and all you think
of is darkness?
They don't have the gospel.
Why is it that you live in a
part of the world where so few are
really believers?
You know one time I did, this is
nowhere near accurate, couldn't possibly be accurate, but
I actually took the census data, you can
buy a book that has the religious census
data, and I took that religious census data,
I went through it meticulously in my little
informal survey, and I deduced just from what
I know about various denominations and so forth,
this, that, and the other, in my mind
all I could see, I could only see
the possibility of there being about four, possibly
five percent of the United States who would
truly be Christian.
Now that's, you can double that if you
want to or cut it in half, it's
not important to me, but I'm just making
a point here that there are very few.
I remember being in Connecticut, some of you
are from Connecticut, and with a friend of
mine as I was preaching there, I've been
many times there, drawing a line around a
fairly good sized circle of towns, and thinking
to ourselves how many people were hearing the
gospel on a given Sunday morning, and we
couldn't get above one percent in that area.
That may be even better than your area,
I don't know.
Why is that?
Isn't that amazing?
But isn't it astounding that you understand the
gospel?
Why do you understand?
Why do you understand and your brother not
understand?
Why do you understand and your dad and
mom don't get it?
Why is it that you, why is it,
why did you have that blessing?
Do you realize what a great blessing that
is?
For you to have a comprehension and understanding
of the truths of the kingdom of God.
You've been given something amazing, really.
And then another observation, look down just below
this, and I'm not going to read, you'll
notice all of this, but notice verse 18
down through verse 23, what Jesus does is
he begins to explain the meaning of the
parable in the first nine verses, the parable
of the soils.
And the observation that I take from this
is simply this idea that understanding of kingdom
truths, though granted, is still to be pursued
through normal means.
And what I mean is that the normal
reflexive thinking, the normal use of the eyes,
the normal use of the ears to hear
the truths of God, the asking of questions
of somebody who knows the truth, the getting
of information through teachers, the reading of the
Bible in pursuit of it like my son
had done, that's a very normal, those are
normal means of learning something.
But don't you think for a moment that
there's nothing supernatural going on.
God has ordained that this brain, this brain
right here, these eyes, these ears be the
instruments that he uses to do something absolutely
otherworldly in our lives.
It's no less supernatural because normal means are
used.
Solomon is said to be the wisest man
in the Old Testament.
What did he say about getting wisdom and
understanding?
Dig for it.
Dig for it like you're digging for gold.
But nobody would have, should have appreciated the
idea that wisdom and understanding is granted more
than Solomon, right?
The way we get truths is not by
bombshells in the sky, you know, and reading
license plates, you know, and having mystical experiences,
at least not normatively.
But it's through the truth, it's through the
truths of the Word of God.
Really, God makes himself known by his communicating
through his Word.
Now, that's an important concept because you really
don't know anybody apart from their communication, do
you?
You don't know anybody.
There has to be words, there has to
be an unveiling, there has to be something
communicated by the individual before you will ever
know them.
God has used these words then.
Of course, it is more than merely words,
isn't it?
Every word of the Bible is the truth
of God, it is God's real Word, isn't
it?
But the Bible says, they shall be taught
by me, right, of the Father.
Those who have been taught and by the
way of understanding and you see the idea
of teaching and the use of propositions and
words, right?
But we see something more than just the
mere use of the reason or the mind
because we see that the Father is teaching
the individual.
So that somebody can hear Jesus speak, even
Jesus, even Jesus and not get it, right?
But the person who hears the words of
Jesus will be brought to understanding if the
Father is teaching that person, right?
Do you believe that?
I believe that.
A few implications quickly that will help us.
First of all, though I've used the word
amazement many times and I'm amazed, let me
just tell you don't be amazed that people
don't get it.
We've got to get in our minds that
it's not, should not be surprising to us
that some people don't get it, that many
people don't get it, frankly.
I had the privilege, and I really want
to kind of qualify that word privilege when
you hear what it is, but I had
the privilege of going to speak to scientists
in the Fermi Lab in Chicago.
Any of you know what that is?
Fermi Lab is a mile-long nuclear accelerator,
I think they call it, is that right?
And they're examining the Big Bang, and I
had a friend there who was a scientist,
and he said, I don't believe in the
Big Bang, but it pays for my meals
and things, it takes care of my family,
so I'm here studying, you know, working.
But he worked it out for little Jim
Elliott to come in there and talk, they're
Nobel Prize winning scientists in this place, and
so here I am meekly entering the doors
of the famous Fermi Lab in Chicago, and
we were going to have a voluntary meeting
of any scientist who wanted to come, and
I was to, of all things, not to
speak, but I was to answer questions of
the scientists.
Do you think I was a little bit
nervous that day?
I had irritable bowel syndrome, by the way.
It was a tough day, tough day.
So, but much to my surprise, they asked
the same questions that everybody else asks.
So I was trying to answer these questions,
and feeling better as I was going along.
One scientist then asked a question over here,
and he said, you know, Jim, what do
you really have to do to be a
Christian?
How hard do you have to work?
How much effort, you know, do you have
to put into this to be a Christian?
I said, well, that's a good question, and
I began to explain this simple question to
us, and that's a simple, easy thing for
us to answer.
I began to explain about the fact that
salvation is by grace through faith, and I
illustrated it, and I said it's not on
the merits.
This is not by something you do, really.
It's, you know, that God rewards.
It's just by grace and faith.
I explained it all, made it plain.
I thought any junior high kid could have
understood what I said.
And afterwards, and he was nodding his head
and listening thoughtfully, and afterwards, he came up
to me, and he said, shook my hand,
and said, Jim, thank you very much for
being here, and thank you especially for answering
my question.
I guess I'll just have to try harder
to be a Christian.
I just, shoo, went right past him.
In one way, that made me kind of
feel pretty good, you know what I mean?
He didn't understand something.
But in another way, of course, it was
sad.
Don't be surprised, really, when people don't understand.
It's something that God grants to some and
not to others.
We shouldn't be surprised then.
But by the same token, because understanding comes
by the Spirit of God, even the most
incorrigible sinner might understand.
I like this doctrine because I know that
God could do the most astounding things.
That dad of yours that you have tried
to talk to for years and years and
years, he's absolutely hardened to everything.
God might break through and grant him, all
of a sudden, understanding.
He can do that.
He's done it millions of times, really.
He's done it over and over and over
again.
There's hope in this message, isn't there?
Would you really want it another way?
No, not really.
You want it this way.
Otherwise, if you thought it was on the
basis of your ability to persuade them, and
I'm not saying we don't use the normal
means of persuading, but if it really happened
on the basis of your persuading, you wouldn't
have any hope at all anymore.
But you do have some hope because God
could do it.
I'm really happy about that.
Another implication is this.
Understanding, you must not forget, is granted in
the believer's life as well.
This doesn't stop when you first understand the
gospel.
It's an ongoing process.
I read not long ago in my Bible
reading, I was in the end of the
book of Luke, I believe it was Luke
24, and I read that passage about those
disciples of Christ who were walking along with
the resurrected Christ, and he was explaining things
out of the Old Testament.
And the Bible says this, Then he opened
their minds to understand the things which he
had been saying to them.
That's the picture, isn't it?
Isn't that a beautiful thought?
It still remains this way.
As we speak to believers, it's still this
way in the congregation.
And it's that way for us.
That God is the one who does this.
Now this is a true story.
It's not a preacher story, I'm going to
tell you.
This man was in Arkansas.
He was pastoring in Arkansas, in Hot Springs,
Arkansas, where there used to be more millionaires
than any place in the United States.
But it's pastoring the Park Place Baptist Church.
And he said a woman came to visit
him, to visit the church one day.
She had a son who had an incapacity
to understand things very well and articulate things.
He obviously had some difficulties in his thinking
process.
It was obvious to everybody.
And at any rate, they came and visited
in the church, and he returned the visit
and went to the home of this woman
to talk to her.
And when he was walking up to the
house, he said the young boy was there
with a Bible in his lap.
And he was oblivious to anybody else being
anywhere around him, and he was speaking out
loud, as sometimes you find people do, particularly
maybe in that category.
And he was just speaking out loud with
that characteristic.
And what he was doing was this.
He was looking down at the Bible, and
he would read a phrase of the Bible
out loud.
And then he would close his eyes and
he would say, now what does that mean?
And then he would read it again out
loud.
Now what does that mean?
And then he would say, oh!
And he would read the next phrase.
Something very right about what he was doing,
and something we should never forget could learn
from him.
It's not merely your reason and the Bible.
It is the Word and the Spirit that
brings understanding.
And that's true for you.
It's true for preachers.
It's true for people who've been veterans as
far as Christianity is concerned.
You have to have this work of God's
Spirit as you open the Word.
You're pursuing it with your mind and your
eyes and your ears.
You're aggressively pursuing it, but you don't get
it.
You don't have any great understanding unless the
Spirit of God is opening your mind to
understand.
You know that great Psalm, Psalm 119, has
so much to do with the Word of
God as you read through it.
Have you ever noticed the way most of
that is framed in the Psalm by David?
He'll say things like this, open my mind
to understand the Scriptures.
Teach me thy statutes.
Why did he phrase it like that?
Because he knew that God was the one
that had to make it happen.
He said God had to make it happen
in his mind.
Even Jesus, when he said in John 17,
17, sanctify them by the truth.
Thy word is truth.
Why did he put it like that?
Why did he go to the Father and
say sanctify them?
Because he knew it had to be a
supernatural work.
It would always be this way.
Which leads me to a fourth implication and
a final one.
That is this, and particularly helpful for those
of us who teach and preach and try
to handle the Word of God and help
other people.
That is this, don't teach without prayer.
Don't teach without prayer.
You're not going to make them understand by
your eloquence or your ability or all the
study you do.
You can pour over things all week long
and God's the one that has to open
their hearts to give them understanding.
Let's bow our heads and pray.
Lord, I thank you again for the clarity
of your Word and how pertinent it is
2,000 years later to our situation.
How needed by us.
What a reminder.
Help us, Lord, to always live with that
kind of humility that recognizes that you are
the one who grants understanding.
Never let us forget that.
In our own personal procurement of truth, our
own seeking of truth, help us to remember
it.
Help us to remember it in our own
evangelism.
Help us to remember it in our teaching
and preaching of the Word of God.
Never let us forget the place that your
Spirit has in this area of understanding.
We praise you, Lord, for it.
In Jesus' name, Amen.