Sermon - Sexagesima 2023 - Luke 8:4-15

From Hortus Deliciarum, Herrad of Landsberg, circa 1180

Hearing the Word

1. Challenges to hearing

2. Hearing rightly 

At the height of popularity during Jesus’ ministry we read: “A great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to Him.” Cloaked in a parable Jesus taught them about what they were currently doing: hearing the word. To His apostles He privately explained that there are challenges to hearing and how we ought to hear rightly. Jesus’ parable is very appropriate for us today as well, since it helps to explain many of our current experiences.

We live in an age which is rather depressing at times since we still remember, quite vividly, the good old days at church. The days when the pews and church calendar were filled to the brim. But especially the past twenty years there’s been a lot of change and decay in all around we see, like the hymn writer penned. Our attendance and membership has plummeted over the past couple of decades. This trend is true to our larger church body as well, the LCMS, which has seen the same decline across the board. Among nearly all Christian denominations in the US attendance has declined dramatically, excepting the Amish whose membership has doubled in the same time.

Looking at demographics, even those specific to the LCMS, the projections for the next 40 years look quite grim. Of course demographics are just projections based on past and current trends, so we have to take it with a grain of salt, God could work a miracle. That said, based upon current trends, in 40 years the LCMS will have about 400,000 members total (today we have about 1.8 million members). Even if we immediately double conversion rates, and double the number of children each couple has, we’d still have less than a million members and we’d continue declining. If we wanted to cease numerically declining in 40 years, we’d have to double our retention rate, which is currently just 40%, along with doubling the conversion rate and the birthrate. We’d still decline dramatically, but only to 1.2 million members.

The big takeaway from all of this is that even in the best-case scenario, where we immediately do everything twice as good as we are now, we still decline over the next 40 years. This is a very hard pill to swallow. Trust me, I know it’s a painful truth, I’m a young pastor who’s dedicated his life to the ministry, and if I live to an old age the numeric decline I will live through is going to be huge. It’s not a particularly pleasant thought.

But I don’t present this information to you in order to depress you, but in order to inform you about our present situation. We can’t move forward unless we know where we are right now, and we can’t make solid decisions unless we know how we got here. Our tendency is to blame one another for our problems, just like Adam and Eve did. “It’s your fault!” we like to say. “If you did this and didn’t do that, then we wouldn’t be in this mess!” 

Now, I’m not saying that people don’t make mistakes, but I will say that it’s entirely unhelpful just to blame each other. It only serves to tear one another down and turn Christians against each other, it’s certainly not going to help. But what’s more is that the cause of our decline isn’t really the direct result of doing or not doing some program, in fact whether congregations did or did not make huge changes in order to try and numerically grow in the past few decades had no significant impact; they still declined. 

So how did we get in this situation? What is the cause? Why have Christians been falling away from the faith so dramatically the past few decades? More importantly, how can we turn it around? What’s the secret? Jesus gives us the answer, and it’s about hearing His Word. “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God.” 

The world is like a field with different types of soil, different challenges to hearing God’s Word. It’s not that people are the different types of soil, and if you’re the wrong soil you can never be saved, rather these different types of soils are different challenges which all Christians face when it comes to hearing God’s Word. Jesus knew that the crowds He spoke to wouldn’t all believe, many would fall away. Like we heard last week: “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Many fall away, we are experiencing a dramatic numeric decline, because of the challenges to hearing God’s Word.

When considering the challenges to hearing God’s Word, I don’t want to simply focus on other people falling away from the faith. I want us to hear these challenges as things which each and everyone of us faces. Too often we hear something in the Bible but we only apply it to another person; “It’s too bad that so and so isn’t here, they really need to hear that.” Sure, they need to hear it too, but so do I. They aren’t here, but I am here, and I need this word for myself.

This gets us into the first challenge of hearing God’s Word. “The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.” This isn’t just a matter of actively hearing God’s Word, but it’s a matter of believing God’s Word and applying it to oneself. God’s Word is spoken, and what the Lord says is true, and applies to me and my life. God’s Word gives direction, practical and applicable direction for my day to day living. These aren’t just nice pieces of information, but they’re for me. Jesus died for me; God is my God; I am a sinner; my own personal sins are forgiven; God teaches me how to live right now; I will rise from the dead. But the challenge is that we often don’t believe it for ourselves. So instead we must hear God’s Word and believe it, apply it, take it to heart! 

The second challenge to hearing God’s Word: “The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.” The challenge here is a shallow faith. Sometimes we mistake having a childlike faith with a shallow faith. A childlike faith isn’t shallow at all, it’s curious and inquisitive, it always wants to dig deeper and learn more; it readily believes what it hears. But often we mistake it for a shallow faith, where we don’t learn too much, we don’t go any deeper than surface level. It’s a “Jesus loves me faith.” Jesus loves me, and that’s all I know.

But a shallow faith cannot withstand trials when they arise. A shallow faith never dug deeply into God’s Word, and so doesn’t actually have anything to hold onto. When a shallow faith is confronted with any hardship, the faith quickly disappears because it didn’t actually believe that much. To use a different analogy, it didn’t have a foundation, but it was faith built upon shifting sands. So instead, let us dig deeply into God’s Word and learn more and more. Let us learn it by heart, memorize it, and keep working at learning more until the day that we die.

The third challenge to hearing God’s Word: “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” The challenge here is worldliness. Even when you know the scriptures well and believe them to be true, worldliness comes up like thorns and weeds and chokes out the faith over time. Like the saying goes, we are to be in the world but not of the world. We may live here, but we aren’t citizens here, we belong to God’s kingdom, not this worldly kingdom.

This is by far the most seductive challenge we face today in hearing God’s Word. We hear the word, we study it deeply, we get confirmed, we volunteer at church, but over time we fall away because the allurements of this world are too powerful. God hasn’t called us to be worldly, but He’s called us to be Christlike. We shouldn’t fit into this world, we should stick out like a sore thumb, we should look and behave like Christians, not like pagans. 

So being aware of all of those challenges to hearing the Word, let us learn to hear it rightly. “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.” We should hear the word, hold it fast in our hearts, and bear fruit in time. We too quickly tire and get bored with God’s Word, but how shameful that is! God never grows tired of His Word, He’s like a little child wanting to speak it on repeat! We too should become as children and listen to it over and over again with joy, always wanting to know more with gladness.

We should be like the Bereans, who upon hearing the Word studied it deeply and pondered it within their hearts. This is the only way forward for us Christians, because it is promised that God’s word bears fruit abundantly. “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty.” Granted, this requires patience, because the hard, rocky, weedy soil of our hearts needs to be plowed up, watered, and weeded with constant attention to God’s Word. Sure the demographic projections look bad, but look at it from another perspective, this means that there are and will be many people who need to hear the Word of God and be saved. Let us not be discouraged and give up, rather let us devote ourselves to deeper study of God’s precious Word and then speak that same word with joy to others, even if they don’t want to hear it at first. Afterall, God continues to sow His Word among us, and by grace He assures us that His Word will bear abundant fruits with patience. What a joy and a comfort to know that the Word of God will endure forever and bear fruit!