A 2023 commercial for Beyond Meat claimed that their meatless steaks, or Beyond Meat steaks, changed everything. In fact, they said that seven times in a 60-second commercial. To me, it sounds ridiculous because I like the real thing. I’m guessing our beef farmers do too. But I get that for people who maybe can’t have meat for allergy reasons or for a number of different things, it seemed like a huge deal to be able to have a steak that they could enjoy, that they would like. But it’s over the top, right? It’s over the top, it’s over-exaggerated. It’s ridiculous. Just because you can have a steak that doesn’t contain actual meat doesn’t change everything. I think they’re doing that to overemphasize the point. But how often do we do that with other things? Maybe we think if just an estranged child would call us back, or if a family member who, man, we just really have a hard time understanding, would reach out. If we could just get them—if I could make just a little bit more money, if I could do this, if I could get that, if I could be this, if I could be better at this, that, the other thing—you get it. We sometimes think that we would have some real fruit, then we would have some real peace, then we’d be okay. Yet those aren’t promises. Nowhere, nowhere are those sure things. A good advertiser is going to make them seem like they’re the safest bet in the world. But they’re not. There’s no genuine promise; there’s no objective standard to that. The only thing that can produce real, lasting fruit, real, lasting peace, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re looking at this morning. Only a relationship with Jesus can change us, can make us into these people that we, whether we know it or not, actually want to be. Only having faith in the One who made us can lead to life everlasting. Only the Gospel can do that.
We’re looking at a passage that I’m guessing is going to be pretty familiar to a good majority of us. If it’s not, that’s totally okay. We’re kicking back off our study through the book of Luke. We just finished—Tom did last week—the book of Joel. But we’re going to be back in the book of Luke, and we’re looking at the parable of the Sower this morning from Luke 8:1-15. My title is also the main point that I think the text is trying to prove, and I’m going to try to prove to us this morning that only the Gospel can produce real, lasting fruit.
There are three other points of proof of that in the text. The first is that Jesus embodies it. Jesus embodies this real, lasting fruit. We also see some wrong responses, some false responses to the Gospel, and how they produce shallow, fleeting fruit. Lastly, we’ll look at how the right response produces real, lasting fruit. Like I said, Luke 8:1-15 is our text. I’ll give you a moment to turn there now; otherwise, the words will be on the screen.
God’s word there says: “Afterward, he was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary called Magdalene—maybe your Bible translation has parentheses here; it says ‘seven demons had come out of her.’ Continuing in verse three: Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, Susanna, and many others who were supporting them from their possessions.”
As a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from every town, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path. It was trampled on, and the birds of the sky devoured it. Other seed fell on the rock. When it grew up, it withered away, since it lacked moisture. Other seed fell among thorns. The thorns grew up with it and choked it. So other seed fell on good ground. When it grew up, it produced fruit a hundred times what was sown.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.”
Continuing in verse nine, “Then his disciples asked him, ‘What does this parable mean?’ So he said, ‘The secrets of the kingdom of God have been given for you to know. But to the rest, it is in parables, so that—’ He quotes Isaiah 6:9: ‘Looking, they may not see, and hearing, they may not understand.’
This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. The seed along the path are those who have heard, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so they may not believe and be saved. The seed on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy. Having no root, they believe for a while and fall away in a time of testing. As for the seed that fell among thorns, these are the ones who, when they have heard, go on their way and are choked with worries, riches, and pleasures of life, and produce no mature fruit. But the seed on the good ground—these are the ones who, having heard the word with an honest and good heart, hold on to it, and by enduring, produce fruit.”
This is the word of the Lord.
So, like I mentioned, our big idea—the thing I want you to walk out of here with, because I think the text does here—is that only the Gospel can produce real, lasting fruit. Only the good news of Jesus can produce any sort of fruit that matters.
Our first proof of that is we look at the life of Jesus. In verses 1 through 3, we see that Jesus embodies real, lasting Gospel fruit. If you’re like me, sometimes—if we’re being honest—you tend to skip verses like 1 through 3 because it’s just his travel details: where he’s going, why he’s going there, and things like that. Maybe you do that sometimes too with the genealogies or in the New Testament letters, like the greetings or the conclusions.
On the surface, it seems kind of insignificant, those verses 1 through 3. But we notice a couple of really important things. First is he’s preaching the good news wherever he can; however, he can. Jesus is the world’s greatest itinerant preacher, and that’s pretty undisputable. And he’s sharing this good news. But maybe you’re wondering, how can he be sharing the good news here? He hasn’t died yet; he hasn’t risen again yet. Of course, the Gospel is Jesus’ perfect life, his innocent death, and his victorious resurrection. It is absolutely that. It is absolutely the good creation, the destructive choice, the deadly condition, the gracious cure, the new creation. The Gospel is absolutely that; it will never be less than that. But the Gospel is also so much more.
The Gospel is every good thing that we have in Jesus. So, Jesus was likely proclaiming things like, “Hey, I left heaven to come be with my people. I came to comfort the hurting. I came to bring peace to the anxious. I came to dwell among and be with my creation, my image bearers.” So, that’s likely what he’s proclaiming. But also, we know in passages like Mark 1:15, the first words that leave his mouth are also saying, “Hey, I’m going to die and rise again.” Because in Mark 1:15, he says, “Repent and believe the good news.” And elsewhere in the Gospels, he predicts his resurrection. So that’s what and how he’s ministering to.
But also, something equally important here is who he’s ministering to and who he’s ministering with. You notice here, there’s a few names of ladies: we have Mary—she’s called Mary, sometimes Mary of Magdalene or Mary Magdalene—and Joanna, Herod’s steward, Susanna, and there’s some other names. There’s also some ladies who support him. No rabbi in first-century Israel would have taken women disciples, women followers. And when I say disciples, I mean simply the basic definition of followers of Jesus. They’re not on the same authoritative level as the twelve. Still, they are image bearers. But no rabbi, a Jewish culture worth his salt, would have much really talked to women, let alone taken them on as students of his. It just wasn’t a practice because women were viewed as second-class citizens.
But that’s not how Jesus viewed them. He viewed them as image bearers, people who matter, people who are equally valued in God’s eyes. He spends time with them, and he shows them how to follow him. He says, “I don’t care what the culture says about you; I care what God says about you.”
The phrase “What would Jesus do?” I think overall is a helpful one, and it’s been a good one. It’s helped me to pause, especially at times before I’ve wanted to lash out or do something that’s probably not in my best judgment. The phrase is helpful, but I think too, overall, it’s sometimes even more helpful to ask, “What did he do?” We don’t have to wonder what he did do because he elevates these people that society looks down on. He relies on his heavenly Father to care for him, and he preaches the good news of the Gospel. We don’t wonder what he would do; he did do these things.
It’s in our name; we are Christians. If we want to become like Jesus, we look to the perfect example. Plenty of places in the New Testament talk about that. We are Christians; it’s in our name. The Bible uses such intricate language. It’s tighter than how I’m even wrapping my fingers right now. It uses this phrase “in Christ” if you know and are a follower of Jesus Christ. It says in Colossians 3 that we are hidden in Him. We are so wrapped up in Jesus, says we are hidden in Him. So you don’t have to wonder what God’s opinion of you is because if you know Jesus, he sees Jesus stepping into your place, and he knows you perfectly. We’re hidden in Him.
The New Testament uses the phrase “in Christ” 90 times in 27 books. It’s saying, “Don’t miss this. At the heart of our relationship with Christ is Christ.” Galatians 2:20 uses really strong language too. It says, “It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” If we are followers of Jesus, we look to him, and we want to become more like him. Hebrews 12:2 tells us, “Keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, for the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
The next time that we’re tempted to throw a pity party or think that other gospels, other schools of thought, or other ideologies can produce this fruit that we’re actually after, we must remember we need to look no further than Jesus, who’s the most fruitful person to ever live because he embodies real, lasting Gospel fruit—because he himself is the Gospel.
Some responses to the Gospel, though, produce shallow, fleeting fruit. We turn our attention to verses 4 through 8. This is probably the section that a lot of us are mostly familiar with, and maybe the section shortly after. But maybe we’ve heard this message, “What kind of soil are you?” and that’s absolutely a part of this. I’m going to offer just a slight twist to that too.
But we see a few different characters, and we’re not going to hit on all of them in this section; we’ll get to one later. But there are a few different characters. The first that we’re introduced to is the sower casting seed far and wide. If you’ve ever planted grass seed in a yard, you know you just throw that as much as you can. You probably bought the little cheap Scotts push-behind kind of thing and just want grass seed as far as grass seed will go.
But we also see something too, that’s really important about the sower. It doesn’t say that he’s banging down doors; he’s not trampling over roadblocks so that people can hear. You can take however you need to there. But I’m going to argue that’s because Jesus gives the same advice—I believe in the Book of Mark—that if people don’t want to hear it, there’s not a whole lot you’re going to be able to do about it.
So that’s the sower. Satan’s also involved here. It says he snatches things up. We’re familiar with Satan, also known as the devil or Lucifer, who is the enemy throughout God’s personal enemy of things that are good, and he’s involved in this scene here too. But then three of the four kinds of hearts I want to point out right now.
First is the people with the hard heart. It’s just calloused. You maybe think about dried mud or concrete, and it feels pretty impenetrable. That’s likely been the case because of things that have either happened to them or things that they’ve done, or maybe a combination of the two. Regardless of how it happened, their hearts have become so hardened to the things of God that the seed might as well—not that it might as well have not even been there—but it’s going to need a major, major miracle that God certainly can do for these things to happen. So those hearts are very hard, and it says that they don’t even really get much of a chance before Satan snatches them away.
Next, we see these people who have rocky soil kind of hearts. If you’ve planted stuff in rocky soil before, you know it maybe can grow up really fast, really quick because it traps heat in there super, super well. They grow fast, but the rocks keep it from growing deep. There’s not a lot of nourishment going on. They maybe grow wide, but they’re not deep. A big tall tree with not deep roots is not going to last.
For them, it might have been an intellectual ascent: “Yep, I read a great apologetics book by Sean McDowell,” or “I read ‘The Case for Christ’ by Lee Strobel, I believe.” But there was no spiritual nourishment going on. Or maybe they went to an awesome camp or retreat and had an emotional appeal, but it wasn’t a head and heart experience. Here at Lake Wisconsin, we believe it’s a relational experience. We believe that it’s a personal relationship with Jesus, but also rational; we should be believers both with our heads and with our hearts because God tells us to worship him in spirit and in truth.
Whatever the case is, there’s just not a lot of spiritual nourishment for these people. They’re maybe not connected to a body; maybe they’re not seeking growth. Lastly, we look at the people who have thorny hearts. There’s some initial growth, and of the three here, they maybe show some of the most promise. They have decent roots, but as soon as they’re trying to grow up, something hard is in the way: something difficult or maybe it’s a part of the Bible that they don’t agree with, or it’s a difficult life circumstance, and they say, “I kind of read this and understand this to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll follow Jesus anywhere’ until it gets hard—carrying my cross? Yeah, I’m uninterested.”
So these are kind of the three different aspects, the three different characters. And of course, we’ve got the sower, and we’ve got Satan in here too. A lot of times, we focus on the soil that we are, and we should do that because there’s work to do. You don’t come to know Jesus and then say, “Yeah, I’m good. I don’t need to seek growth.” That’s not how we follow the Lord; it’s cheap grace.
The Gospel here is the only thing that can produce this sort of fruit, that can produce this real sort of growth. Yes, there’s work to be done in keeping our hearts from being hard or the different aspects here. But the point that the parable makes over and over is that it’s the seed ultimately that’s needed to grow because we can try really hard and work tirelessly to do a lot of good things. But if there’s no Gospel presence, then there’s no real growth; there’s no real fruit. We learn some things about what not to do from these three responses: from the hard-hearted people who didn’t have much of a chance, who have grown callous.
Most people I’ve met who have made a major blunder in their life, it wasn’t a decision that they just made overnight. Similarly to how concrete just becomes hard—it doesn’t become hard instantly—or mud doesn’t dry up and become really hard instantly. It’s usually a consistent line of terrible choices or maybe even just going from slightly not good to bad to worse. It’s just over and over and over again, and for one reason or another, sometimes even believers allow our hearts to grow hard to the things of God.
So, it’s a reminder for believers to have people in our lives, to be involved with the life of the local church, to have brothers and sisters that know what’s going on, that we can confess to and celebrate wins with, but also to be really real and honest with the Lord.
What’s one thing we learn from the hard-hearted people? From the rocky people, the biggest thing that I can understand and glean from the text is there’s just no real roots; there’s no real nourishment. So maybe it was an intellectual or emotional experience, and they never got involved with the body. They never got involved with a body of believers. That’s why we gather; that’s why we are people that gather.
The New Testament uses the phrase “one another” 90 times in 27 books. The Bible knows no such thing as a Christian who’s not involved in the local church. I’m not saying that being involved in the local church makes you a Christian, but it’s really important that we do that. We gather; we proclaim who God is; we care for one another. So, we worship God. To grow spiritually, we must worship God privately, but also corporately. We need each other, and we need that personal relationship; that’s how we grow.
That’s why it matters to gather on Sunday mornings, to gather in small groups. For the thorny-hearted people, I think this one happens way more than we want to admit or want to think about because there are things in life that are really, really hard. There are things in the Bible that are not the easiest pill to swallow sometimes. And maybe “pill” is not even the right word. But following Jesus is always worth it. Following Jesus is the best deal we could ever have gotten. Following Jesus is not going to lead us astray; it’s going to bring us to a place we could have never thought of.
That’s something I’ve been learning over the past years. Jesus is far better than we could have ever imagined—better than the thing that we’re giving up, better than having to conform our lives to what he has to say. We get to conform our lives to what he has to say. As soon as the troubles of life creep up, instead of thinking about carrying a cross as a burden, we get to follow in the steps of our Lord. He calls us to the same sort of suffering. In Matthew 5:10, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.” That feels like an upside-down statement that does not make sense if we’re looking at it from a worldly lens. But if we look at it from a Gospel lens, if we look at it from God’s point of view, that’s some of the best news ever. Yes, we get to be like Jesus.
Each response—each of these three responses—they produce a shallow, fleeting sort of fruit. There’s something about it that might seem even temporarily attractive. For the hard-hearted people, they get to do things their own way. Sometimes that feels really good just to say, “Yeah, I’m going to get to do my own thing.” Sometimes that feels great, but it doesn’t last. It’s not going to pay off in eternity. Rocky-hearted people might get to be a part of a big moment, and they enjoy all the pleasures of that, but there’s no sustenance there. Thorny-hearted people get to, or at least think they get to follow Jesus without the hard stuff. But we’ve seen in our Bibles and in the text here that that’s not really an option.
There are perceived benefits to these wrong responses to the Gospel, but there’s greater life for us to be had—the sort of life that Jesus calls abundant life. This sort of real, lasting fruit kind of life can only come when we respond rightly to the Gospel.
We turn our attention now to verses 9 through 15. After Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9 in verse 10, he explains this parable to his people. I don’t know about you, but I would have loved to have been there when he’s explaining these parables. Maybe even still, some of us are scratching our heads here. It’s like, “Jesus, why are you speaking in parables?” He kind of explains it here, but it’s still kind of difficult. But he goes on to say that the hard-hearted and rocky-hearted people are after something. No matter how hard they work or don’t work, only the Gospel can produce what they’re after—what all the world is really after, whether they know it or not. Then he closes with saying those who endure will produce fruit.
He’s saying it’s no amount of hard work; it’s no amount of this or that. If you endure, if you make it to the end, you are the one who has real faith. You’re the one who’s going to produce real fruit. He says it doesn’t happen based off of hard work; it happens by knowing and enjoying Jesus.
As evangelicals, we believe we are saved by grace, which is a free gift of God. Grace is not something that you can earn; grace is something that’s received. We receive God’s free covering. We receive God’s payment of our sins because of the work and life and death and resurrection of Jesus. We receive that grace. It’s God’s ability to care for and to love us and to not cast us away.
We receive that grace by faith. We receive it by faith; we receive grace by faith. We couldn’t have earned it because God can’t be paid off. Of course, we’ll naturally do good things as a result of that. It’s not a mere intellectual ascent either. Faith is not simply, “I believe,” or “I believe intellectually,” because the book of James says even the demons believe intellectually. But maybe a better way to put it is we look especially in the book of Mark, this idea of the kingdom of God, which is referred to over and over again. Jesus talks about it quite a bit, and he’s the king. He’s going to reign and rule forever and evermore.
You don’t just say, “Yep, you’re the king.” No, it’s a full-blown allegiance to the King. It’s not just, “Yep, I believe that.” No, it’s, “I am signing up to do whatever, go wherever, and be whatever the King has called me to.” It’s a turning away from. The Bible calls the devil the prince of the power of the air—that’s anything that’s wrong, anything that’s wrong with the world: self-worship, sin, hatred, darkness, disease, any of these things that are wrong with the world. We turn away from the prince of the power of the air because Ephesians says that’s who we’re worshiping if we don’t worship the Lord.
We turn away from that. The Bible uses the word “repent” to turn away from and turn to and put our hope and trust in Jesus. If you’ve never done that, that’s a pretty simple application here this morning. If you’ve never put your faith, your allegiance to or in Jesus, then that is it; that’s where it needs to start.
Our application, if you don’t know Jesus, is that faith needs to come from and be put in him. But if you have put your trust in Christ—which I’m guessing is the vast majority of us here—let me, sorry, let me just go back to that. If you want to put your trust in Jesus, please just find somebody here with a name tag. We would love for you to be a part of God’s family.
If you have put your trust in Christ, my guess is that you want to see real, lasting fruit in your life. You want your life to matter; you want to please God. If you don’t, if you’re okay with your life being stagnant, if it does not look like your allegiance is to the King, that’s maybe a sign that you’ve never been a new creation—that you’ve never trusted Christ in the first place.
If you can just shrug your shoulders at that, but if you want to have the fruit of God in your life, if you want to have his peace, if you want to lead others to Christ, if you want to bring glory to his name, if you want to serve the poor, enjoy a right relationship with him, and so much more, then we must respond rightly to the Gospel. We don’t move past it.
The Gospel is not elementary; it’s not just the entrance to the Christian life. We don’t move past the Gospel; rather, we drill deeper into it. That’s what Jesus is saying here. He says we must feast on this Gospel. We must feast on this good news, reminding ourselves of it often.
Think of it this way: rather than trying to motivate yourself to share the Gospel with a friend, look to the words of Christ when He promises that we’ll enjoy life everlasting. That should get us actively excited. If our allegiance is to the one true King and we hear the promises of Christ, that should give us not only motivation but an incredible desire that should make our hearts flutter with excitement.
Or maybe consider the plea from the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says that if we extend mercy to others, we’ll receive mercy. Charles Spurgeon puts it this way: “The Gospel is not only the ticket of entry into the Christian life, but the powerful locomotive engine that makes it go forward.” Indeed, there is no other way to grow than the Gospel. In other words, if we want real, lasting fruit, we must remind ourselves of and feast often upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We’ve covered a pretty familiar passage this morning, and thank you for bearing with my sniffles. There’s a lot to look at in Luke 8:1-15. I think it was helpful for us to see that Jesus embodies this real, lasting sort of fruit, and we get some pretty practical application from it. He shows us how to interact with the least of these. We see what he did and why he did it.
We see the lessons from verses 4 through 7 about what not to do. We see how the hard-hearted, rocky-hearted, and thorny-hearted people remind us to do things like examine our hearts so that we don’t drift away, so that we don’t become hard-hearted to the things of God. He reminds us here that we need spiritual nourishment; we need the church; we need personal time alone with the Lord.
Lastly then, let’s consider this an invitation to follow Christ. If you’ve never done that, or if you have an area of your life as a follower of Jesus that’s become stagnant or needs realigning, again, consider this an invitation to just, regardless of where you’re at, to repent and believe the Gospel. Or if you’ve been walking with Jesus for some time, be both challenged and encouraged by our need to come back to the Gospel because only that can produce real, lasting fruit.
Brothers and sisters, be my guest as we feast on Christ and the promises of this Gospel together. The worship team is going to come back up, and let me pray for us as they come.
God, we love you, and it’s so good to know your word. It’s so good to enjoy you; it’s so good to love you. I think about hearts in this room that need to be made right with you. We pray that they would talk to someone here who has a name tag on, or maybe somebody who brought them, or somebody who just looks like they’ve got some of this figured out. They would ask questions, or if today’s the day they get to put their trust in Christ, oh, we pray that today would be the day, and they would be welcomed into your family.
We pray that you would not leave them, that you wouldn’t let them go from this place. If today’s the day that they need to do this, we pray that you would just pastor them into talking to someone this morning. We also pray for brothers and sisters in this room that have some work to do in our hearts—self included. We have some areas to keep an eye on, some areas where we let things slip. God, we pray that we would enjoy your Gospel, that we would make it happen—repenting people as we turn away from sin and turn back to and enjoy you and feast on your Gospel all the more.
God, we thank you for the rich depths and wideness of your mercy, that you care for us better than we could ever imagine or ever deserve. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.