It's probably hard this one. There's two kinds of crazy. There's a man who takes off all his clothes, goes off into the woods, and houses at the moon at night. And there's the man who does the same thing in my living room. Frankly, one of them is none of my business. The other one I'm kind of forced to deal with. That's from Hoosiers. If you didn't recognize that, I shame you. We're spending four weeks talking about evil, about spiritual warfare, and what Satan is doing to try to combat the church, and there's two kind of fights going on. There's two wars we have to be aware of. One is out there. And frankly, we can't do much about it. It just shows up from time to time. It showed up last night in Allen. It showed up last week in Henrietta. And when evil comes, we pray that the Lord will use it for his own good. But frankly, we can't do much about that. Tornados are going to hit, and we're going to go and help people, but we can't prevent them yet. But there's another fight. There's another war. There's the one that's going on in our living room. And that one we very much can be engaged in. We can very much learn how to defend ourselves. And the war we're talking about is the war that goes on in our own heart between evil, sin, ourselves, whatever you want to call it, the flesh, and the word of God. How do we prepare ourselves? How do we protect ourselves so that the word of God bears fruit in our lives? We have our own definition of fruit in our church. These are the kind of things we want to see happening in you and for you with you. We want to see you growing more and more confident that God is happy with you, that he smiles at you in Jesus. We want to see you being more and more open and transparent and not having secrets, but being open with yourself and your friends. We want to see you healing. We know that everybody in here cares with them wounds from trauma's past, and we want to see you healing. We want to see you experiencing peace. We want to see you inviting others to the party. We want to see you pouring your lives into other people. Those are the fruits that we want to see, and we believe that as we preach the word of God, we will see them, but for that to happen, the word of God has got to find root in your heart. Before it will bear fruit, it will get into your heart and put its roots down and grow. And the sad thing, the frustrating thing about gardens, about gardening, is that all you have to do to ruin a garden is nothing. We just come up, you know, just quit watering them and they'll die. If you don't believe me, come to my house around the first week of August. I will have quits, taking care of my flower beds, it's just too hot, you know, that's what October's for, that's when we pull weeds, October, not in August. It will look good and good again by March, but all you have to do is nothing, and everything will die. It's frustrating. Jesus tells us that we have to tend to our hearts. We have to be active. We have to actively tend to our hearts if we want God to bear fruit in our lives. If we want God's word to bear fruit in our lives, we have to actively tend to our hearts. Please stand as we read about the spiritual battle that's going on within us from Luke, chapter 8, verses 4 through 15. Here's the word of the Lord. And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell among the path and was trampled under foot and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock and as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold. As he said these things, he called out, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, to you, it's been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. But for others, they're in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing, they may not understand. Now the parable is this. The word is the seed of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard but the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved. And 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 but in a time of testing fall away. And 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. As for that in the good soil, they are those who hearing the word of God hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience. As for the reading of God's word, Jesus goes on to say in this section that everything that is secret will be brought out into the open, everything that is concealed will be brought to light. Therefore pay attention to how you listen. Please be seated. Jesus is telling us here that we have to actively tend to our hearts if we want God's word to bear fruit. First of all, he tells us we have to battle the birds. He talks about life on the path. He talks about the pathway that has been walked over so many times that it is hard, it is compacted. And the word of God comes and the seeds just lay on the top of it and they never can penetrate it because it has been so compacted and has been trampled on and the birds come and the distractions come and take the seeds away before the word of God has root. And we learned two things from that. One is some people, a lot of people have just been so trampled by life that God's word doesn't penetrate. When I was in seminary, we watched a, we were watching videos about different evangelism methods and just different things people were doing around the world. One group was in the Mexico City landfill, preaching the gospel to those, the extremely poor who are walking around looking for something to eat, looking for something they could sell, just so they could exist for another day. And we discussed that as students. We said, you know, you can't really preach the gospel to somebody who is hungry. You've got to feed them first. You've got to take away their fear for survival first. Then you can preach the gospel. You've got to do both. And without that they just can't hear it. That's probably not you. I don't see you rummaging around garbage cans too much. But it might be that life has just trampled you. Maybe just the traumas of life have just pushed you down so much that the word of God has trouble penetrating and you need to seek healing from that so that it can get in. That happens to many. And I encourage you to come to me or come to Jonathan and let us get you on a pathway of healing. The other thing this text teaches us is to be careful of distractions. The distractions often will steal the word of God. The crows come in and steal the word of God before it takes root in our hearts. I think we could all probably spend hours talking about distractions. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short story back in I think 1961 but I'm not good with dates. And he was about an era when America or the government didn't really say America, the government is trying to keep everybody docile and under control. In the way they do that is basically they keep everybody dumb. And so anybody who is intelligent intelligent enough to spring together two sentences intelligent enough to follow a story. They put a little speaker in their ears. And so every two minutes or so they just send out a noise to distract them and they're not able to keep their thoughts. They're not able to the noise just changes their mind. You know redirects them and they're not able to really put two sentences together or keep the train of thought. And I thought that's amazing 1961 and he knew that iPhones were coming. And it's true. They're always, always disrupting us or distracting us. And it's hard to put those away. And now we even wear them on our watches. And the University of California Irvine says that it takes 26 minutes to get your concentration back every time it's broken. 26 minutes to really get back to where you were at work. And I just debate that because if that were true then I would never get work done. But I kind of know it's true. Right. You're sitting there talking with somebody or you're listening to someone teach preach the word and your wrist buzzes and you're saying don't look, don't look. And you can't not. And you didn't hear what was being said. And then you're wondering to yourself, well I wonder what they said. Now wonder if it was even important anyway. And before you know it, you're gone. And Jesus tells us don't do that. Don't let that happen. Yes, Jesus told you to put your iPhone on the airplane mode. You probably didn't know that. But he did right here. Don't don't be distracted and don't be a distraction. Don't be a distraction. Let other, you know, you said under the preaching of God's word for 30 minutes a week. This is funny. I'm going to pick on the first service y'all are doing fine. But they're they're men in that first service who I know will make their children wait a hundred miles before they'll stop to go to a restaurant area. But they can't make it 30 minutes or something. I'm like, you know, if not for you for everybody around you just fit. You can do this pretend you're driving to Memphis. You know, let the word of God find purchase. Well, that's not many of y'all. Let's go to the second point. You wouldn't be here if it was. The second point is that some some soil is shallow. It's got stones just beneath the surface. And so when the seed falls on that, the roots can't go down. And so it shoots up real quickly. But when the sun comes up and gets to high new it, withers the plants and they die. Fastening thing about this text is this. It's the sun that kills the plants. Nothing for a minute. Can you grow plants without the sun? No. Well, in an arrow without grow lights. No, you can't. The sun is what nourishes plants. The sun is what makes plants grow. But if you don't have root, that same sun that makes plants grow kills the plants. Some people when they go through trials, I mean, James says it, Peter says it. James says, count it all. Join my brothers when you fall into various trials for this suffering that you're undergoing for a short time. It's perfecting your soul. Some people are, their souls are perfected by their trials. Other people, they say, well, if God's not going to prevent this, what good is he? And they go away, they go find something else. And one of you said to me a few years ago, it just kind of found that it's, it's just my way into my mind. It looked at me and said, I thought becoming a Christian made everything better. And I'm so sorry somebody told you that. It is not true. Becoming a Christian makes you better. It makes you more able to withstand difficulty. Makes you more able to withstand distress and suffering and hurt. It makes you stronger. But the world is still the world. The world still hurts. The world still has evil in it. And we're all going to experience it. It's just hard for all of us. So how do we make sure that we have thick roots, deep roots? How do we make sure we don't have stones under the soil? Well, I would just urge you to play like you practice. How do you respond to small stresses? How did you respond to suffering when you were in high school? Think about when you were young Christian. Because if you don't intentionally change, then that's just going to continue to be the way you do it. If you just ignored problems and watched TV, if you ignored problems and went shopping, if you ignored problems and life was hurting. You've silenced that by eating peanut butter or drinking, then you're probably going to do the same thing as an adult. You play like you practice. So get start practicing sitting in your sadness with Jesus. That is what he does. The miraculous wonderful thing about the Son of God is he did not stay in heaven looking at us going, man, that looks like it stinks. He came down to be with us. And if you let him come and sit with you, he will change you. I'm not going to promise you he'll give you what you want. I can't make that promise. But I promise you he will change you very likely so that you will want what you have. And he will enable you to walk through it. There's distractions and there's rocks and there's stones. But thirdly, and this is really the thing that applies to us. I mean, most of you, if you were in these, either one of these two groups should be out there somewhere. But the third group that I think is the most dangerous is the weeds. And why do I think the weeds are the most dangerous? Because the soil is good. The soil is good. That's why there's weeds there. Weeds don't grow on stones either. Weeds don't grow on the path either. Weeds grow in good soil. When I was the first time I had flower beds in Jackson, Mississippi, I got out and went and bought those little shaker packs of seeds. I told the soil, we put some loam in it and out some peat moss and made it real fluffy and nice. So we put the seeds out. And man, I mean, see, things were coming up in days. It was so excited. Things were growing. I went and got my landlord and she said, what did you plant? And I told her and she goes, I said, look, see what they are. There they are. She said, I'm not sure that's what you planted. Oh, yeah, it is. Might be weed. No. And we said we were moving actually that summer. And I said, just send us a picture or a postcard to let us know how it looks. And she goes, oh, well. And two weeks later we get a postcard with just the word weeds. That's us. Good soil. We want to be good, but it's hard. It's hard because there is worry. The worries of life. That's how Matthew says it. The worries of life. Anxiety. They're going back and forth and we can't really sit under God's word because we were just worried about so much. Our jobs, our families, our kids, our future. And we just can't silence those things. And we know that Jesus tells us don't be anxious about your life. What you will wear or what you will eat. Your father in heaven knows about these things. He feeds the birds. He closes the flowers. He's going to take care of you. He tells us there's two ways we really deal with anxiety. One is remembering the fatherhood of God. He tells us cast all your anxieties upon me because I care for you. Prayer is not worry. And worry is not prayer. You know that, right? Worry is worry. It accomplishes nothing. Well, it makes wrinkles. Rob your sleep. It accomplishes negative things. Prayer is taking those things out and going, okay, Lord, I'm really worried about my son. These are the reasons why. And I confess that I just don't trust that you love him more than I do. Even though I know you do, I don't trust that. Will you take care of him? And then to quote Tim color, you take your hands off the steering wheel of your life and let him drive. You trust him. Not, of course, you're going to make decisions and be wise. But worry. Worry is trying to grab the steering wheel. It's trying to be a backseat driver. It's trying to say, no, you're going the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. Worry is the belief that God's going to get it wrong. And sometimes we just got to stare at the cross until we understand that he got it right. He loves us. We can trust him to be a good navigator. And we'll be ready wherever he goes. But worry. The wealth, the deceitfulness of wealth, the belief that more money will make us happy, will make us better, will solve our problems. And we spend all of our time thinking about how we can get more and more and more. It was interesting when I was in Nashville three or four weeks ago. A friend of mine, I just kind of went to friend to friend to stay out there doing and talk with him as long as they wanted to. And one of them, he said, let's go eat lunch and we shared lunch together. And he basically just said, I don't want to talk about the shooting anymore. Can we talk about anything else? He said, lead the way. And it was interesting because he turned to this topic. He is a venture investor, a venture capitalist thing. And so he works with some of the richest people in the country, venturing their capital, I think. It's not clear. But anyway, for some reason, he found it was important to look me in the eyes of Ricky. Look at me. I work with the wealthiest people in the country. They are not happy. They are some of the most miserable people I ever have seen. I know I promise you more money will not make you happy. I was like, how do you think you're talking to him? I don't have no money. But anyway, because I'm the one, because I don't have money, I'm the one who's so apt to believe that it would solve my problems. I'm fine. I don't mean to sound like I don't have money. You know what I'm saying? Paul says in Timothy, first Timothy, he says, those who desire to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful schemes that plunge men into ruin and destruction. It's the desire to get rich that makes it so susceptible to temptation. You know, I can make me memorize that when I was in seminary. Can you imagine why? It's right there is that desire. It's just that money is such a liar. The wealth is a liar. You know, John Jacob Astor said the care of 20 million, this is back in the early 1900s when 20 million could buy you something. He said the care of 20 million, it's more than any brain can conceive of it is more than any children can bear. Come on, everyone of us just thought, give me a shot. I think I can. It's deceitful. And then the seat of riches, chokes out God's word, had a student at Mississippi State and he was his pre-med and he's studying for the MCAT and I was talking to him and he was miserable. He's just miserable and I said, what's wrong? He said, well, I got to take it. I haven't been studying for it. I can't make myself study. I don't want to tell me about it. Just talk about it. He said, I don't want to be a doctor. He said, my dad's a doctor. He's miserable. All he does is complain about his hours. My brother's a doctor. He's finishing up his residency. He's working 23 hours and 59 minutes a day. I don't want to do that. That sounds miserable. So what do you want to do? I want to teach history. I want to coach a baseball team. I want to mentor high school boys through all the trials of life. I want to do something that I think I'd really enjoy that and find that meaning for him. I said, why don't you go do it? This is not a unsolvable problem. Go do it. He said, you don't understand how people look at you when you tell them you're pre-med. I just respect you so much more. I said, OK, let me just see if I got to try. You're saying you're willing to be miserable if it makes you able to impress people you don't like. That's it. OK, I think he's a school teacher in Greenwood now. It's the seapleness of wealth and it's pleasure. Pleasure isn't working the weeds. The pleasure that just keeps us looking for a high. I think this is every one of us here. Every one of us were so addicted to pleasure and we can't really not be. I mean, your standard is just your standard and we're always looking for something that's a little better. There's this chemical in our brain called dopamine and when you get something special it fires and it feels so good. And sometimes I get asked, why do I think there's so much depression and anxiety and those kind of problems in the world that seem like they used to be. And my answer and I have no proof of this but my answer is basically because life is so good. I mean, we don't really know hardship. Not really. I mean trauma, yes, but hardship. Not really. Like my mom, for instance, I know you are sick about hearing sick of hearing about her but frankly you're going to. My mom picked cotton when when the cotton harvest was ready. They canceled school and everybody went out into the cotton fields and picked cotton by hand for six days a week. They picked cotton. And on that seventh day, they would gather their money and they would walk down to town and she would buy ice cream and I promise you there is nothing in your life that brings you the joy that ice cream brought her. The last thing I was able to do for her, she was like, Ricky, please go to the sonic and get me a milkshake. Yes, mom, I'll get you a milkshake. So I went and got a one and strawberry milkshake and she just sucked on that straw and the smile that came on her face and I just never enjoyed anything like she enjoyed that milkshake. And see, there's this weird thing that happens that the better your life is, the stronger something has to be to give you that dopamine hit or an article about why wealthy children tend to be addicts more often. And the conclusion that came to is if your life is basically one big amusement park, if you're always have the best you're always enjoying things then you get to a point where only heroin can give you a high. And we're in that. I don't frankly don't know how you avoid it. I can't imagine not spoiling my kids. I mean, I gave them everything to ask for. I have one during church just text me asking me for money and he got it. You know, and I was thinking about all these responses like you have money spend your own money and all the things I could say and I was thinking about those as I was sending him apple cash. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I think we need to be talking to each other about it and that's one of the things your community groups for is just kind of holding each other accountable to about the weeds. And we are getting choked out by the weeds. And then there's one other weed that Jesus talks about before he explains the parable and this is the this is the big one. This is I don't know if you've ever seen a vine that's gotten so big that it's choked out a tree. It's that kind of vine that kind of weed in itself righteousness. And you're saying I don't see self righteousness in this text. Oh, let me show you. Look at 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 hear. What does that mean? It means he intentionally told parables so that those who don't get it won't get those who don't know their need for Jesus will never understand a parable and the reason why is you always get to decide who you are in the parable. You get to pick who you are. And so if you're sitting there reading this parable going, oh man, I know somebody like that. Oh gosh, I know so many people who just withered away and died. Oh, yeah, man, so many people addicted to worry and pleasure. That's one of the word of God's never going to find purchase in their hearts, never bear fruit. I can't news for you. Self righteousness has you in a chokehold and you don't even know it. If you don't know that you're the person struggling with the weeds. If you don't know that you're the shadow of soil and you need somebody else to come and remove these rocks, if you don't know that your heart is hard and more times than not, it just sits on us. And we forget it before lunch. I mean, we say we've had a quiet time, but really when we think about it, we don't remember a word that we read. It's us, it's all of us. Now, I got good news for you. The good news is seeds don't weed, a dirt doesn't weed itself. Flower beds don't weed themselves. Rocks don't remove themselves. Hard paths don't plow themselves. Somebody else has to come and do it. And Jesus will do it if you ask. He is the one who bore the weeds. He had the crown of thorns pressed down upon his head. He is the one who bore the hot, withering sun. He quotes the psalm that says, my strength is dried up like in the dead of summer. He says, I thirst with one of his final words. He is the one who suffered Satan's attacks for us. For us. And he'll rip those things away if you ask him to. He never refuses anybody who asks. So ask him. Ask each other, hey, what weed am I not seeing? And then start praying that the Lord will remove it. It works if you work it. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, we come to you. We eat rocky soil. Father, I confess that I am riddled with all four of these weeds every day. And we thank you that you're not like me. You don't get tired of pulling weeds. And I pray that you would gently, lovingly dig out the weeds and the rocks from all of us. So that your seed would bear fruit and Jesus name. Amen.