Transcription
Good Hearts Never Die. Look at verse 7.
"And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it." Choked it.
Now, for some of you, you wonder. You say, "Oh, what if that just means I've been choked and I didn't die, right?" Have you ever been choked? Ever had someone come up, you know, and uh, what happens to me is the kids ride on my back and they wrap. You ever had them wrap their arms around your neck and they start leaning back, and you go, you know, you're about ready to. I've been choked like that. That's not this word "choke."
Okay, keep your finger here and go to Luke with me again because I want to show you the Bible always explains the Bible. You don't need five commentaries and three dictionaries. You can make it with just the Bible.
Look at where we were in Luke chapter 8. And it says this, that that in verse 14, "Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they heard, go out and are what's the word there in 14? Choked."
Now, what kind of choking is that? Well, the blessing is that the Spirit of God, inspiring the authors to write, was engineering. And He knew that sometime a group of people would be reading this and say, "I wonder if that means that they, the word, died? It was choked, and so there's no life there, or if that just means the kids had their arms around your neck and they temporarily choked you a little bit, you know, and so this person's really a believer, right?"
Well, look at verse 33 because the same word is used right here in verse 33, only it's translated "drowned." But it's the very same word. Luke 8:33: "Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place to the lake and choked."
Now, how do you take that? Do you think those pigs were all blowing water out and swimming their hardest back to shore and and finally resuscitated? Mmm. How do you take Luke 8:33? They're dead. They're at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee, right?
And and what this scripture says is, look back. Go back to Mark 4 and look at verse 7. "And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it." Killed it. Drowned it.
Now, in Luke's account, the word "choke" is used right after in the sewer message to describe the pigs that were drowned. And this is what I wrote: God's word can never be drowned from the life of a believer, like demons drowned pigs. Okay? God's word will never perish. The life God gives you in your heart will never perish. It will never die. It will never get choked.
Now, we do go through times of the kids on our back with sin. And sometimes we allow something into our life that temporarily chokes us. Doesn't kill us. Grieves the Holy Spirit. It it renders us powerless. Makes us feel cold. Makes us feel distant. Makes us feel unsaved. In fact, that's a good thing when believers act like unbelievers, they don't feel like believers. Praise the Lord.
The problem is when people say they're believers and act like unbelievers, and it doesn't bother them. In fact, one of the greatest evidences of salvation is being convicted of sin and grieved of the sin in your life and hating it and wanting to turn from it. And that's why Jesus told this story. He said, if your life is getting trampled, don't let it be. And if you think you're a believer, then you should not allow that to go on in your life. And if your life is shallow, and if there are areas in your life that you're resisting God, then stop, as the writer Isaiah says, and allow God to come in and change you. And as the minor prophets say, let God break up the hardened ground. Jesus was warning, good hearts never stay trampled. Good hearts never die. Never thirst.
[Music]