Corrective Lenses

Dannah Gresh: Can you see? I mean, can you see accurately? Chris Brooks says you might need glasses.

Pastor Chris Brooks: Jesus invites us to read His Word because His Word is like corrective lenses to those of us who have had our vision obscured by sin.

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of The Quiet Place, for Monday, January 17, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: What kind of relationship do you have with God’s Word? What role does God's Word play in your life? I'm not talking about how many verses you read each day or whether you check off the box that "I had my quiet time." I want to know about the condition of your heart toward God's Word.

Chris Brooks is a pastor in the Detroit area. He also hosts a daily call-in program called “Equipped with Chris Brooks.” Last fall at Revive '21, Pastor Brooks spoke about the vital role the Bible plays in our lives. The theme for that conference was "Grounded," and Pastor Brooks shared how we can get grounded in God’s Word. In order for that to happen, we have to check the condition of our hearts. Here’s Pastor Chris to explain. 

Pastor Chris Brooks: Well, this morning we have the joy of going deeper into God’s Word. How many of you love God’s Word? Jen Wilkin says that God and His Word are far too lovely to be abandoned for lesser things. That means that the top priority in life is to know Him as He has revealed Himself through His Word. What I love about our worship is that it is based upon the Word of God. What I love about this conference is that the centrality of it is the exaltation of Jesus Christ through His Word.

If you are going to be a woman who is anchored, a woman of substance, a woman who will impact the generations that come after her, you must be anchored in the Word of God. As a matter of fact, we have nothing to offer you of value beyond the Word of God. The only thing that is enduring in this life and can preserve you in the life to come is the seed of the Word of God, incorruptible, unfading, and saving. That is His Word.

Today, Nancy has asked me to talk to you about what it means to be a woman who is grounded in the Word of God. Now, I want to take a little bit of a different spin on that, because I believe that in order for us to be grounded in God’s Word, we have to have the right heart. 

I want to talk to you for just a moment about the type of heart you have to have in order to be grounded in God’s Word. Let’s first start with an understanding of what God is trying to accomplish with His Word.

The Word of God is not given to us, contrary to popular belief, so that we might be able to pass some future theological quiz. Some people have posited in their minds that Peter is standing at the front of the pearly gates with some type of clipboard (or I guess at this point, some tablet), and you’re going to have to pass some theological quiz in order to get into heaven. Let me just tell you, Peter is not at the front door, and there is no tablet, and there will be no theological quiz. Now, that doesn’t mean doctrine is not important; right belief leads to right living. Bad ideas not only have consequences, bad theology has victims. So, it is important for us to have right doctrine.

But what is God ultimately after? I would argue that what God is after as He draws us into the beauty of His Word is our hearts. What God wants is your heart. You know, reading Scripture faithfully has often been called a spiritual discipline. I like to call it a spiritual rhythm. The reason why God gives all of the spiritual rhythms—like prayer and fasting and Scripture reading—is for relationship. What God is ultimately after is your heart.

The Bible is full of great propositional statements and truth. It is full of very clear teachings and history and facts about the God we serve. But it is also full of narratives and stories. 

How many love stories? How many love great stories? I love great stories! As a matter of fact, my favorite type of movie is a biopic movie, a biographical movie that really brings alive heroes and characters from the past. How many have ever seen the movie, featuring Daniel Dane Lewis, called Lincoln? Anybody ever seen that movie? Man, did he do an amazing job! It’s one of my favorite movies. He walked like Lincoln, he talked like Lincoln, made you feel like Abraham Lincoln was alive again. It was a great movie.

How many have ever heard of the baseball legend and hero Jackie Robinson? Anybody seen the movie by Chadwick Boseman, Forty-Two? Has anybody seen that movie? It’s one of my favorite biopics—again, he makes the character come alive and the movie come alive.

But maybe my favorite of all time is Chariots of Fire. Now, if you’re young in here, you have no idea what I’m talking about. (laughter) Before there was Netflix, before there was YouTube, there was Chariots of Fire. I encourage you to watch that movie. You can probably go and watch it for free, but I didn’t tell you that.

Chariots of Fire chronicles the story of this young man whose parents are missionaries to China. He chooses to pursue running track as his sense of calling. His sister’s trying to reason with him, trying to persuade him to pursue another path. I love this line. He says to her, “I run because when I do I sense the pleasure of God.” Where do you sense the pleasure of God leading you?

Stories are powerful because they captivate us. Long after the facts fade, the stories remain. One of the primary teaching tools of our Savior is these stories. We call these stories parables. Now, parables are interesting because they’re what you would call linguistically, indirect communication. Indirect communication is communication that takes the listener or the hearer or the reader on a journey unwittingly into the front door of truth. They’re being dragged into a confrontation with deep and profound truth, and in Jesus’ case, eternal and spiritual truth, and they don’t even know it because they’re so captivated in the story.

Have you ever watched a story, and as it unfolded you were so enthralled by the story that when the moral of the story, the climax of the story hit you, you were surprised? You didn’t even see it coming. This is what a parable is.

Direct communication is wonderful for giving plain and simple facts of the matter, but what’s beautiful about indirect communication is it goes through the back door of your heart to confront you with a truth that will transform your life. 

Jesus is a master teacher, the master storyteller, but I just want to look at one parable this morning. Turn in your Bibles if you can with me to Luke’s gospel, chapter 8. We’re going to look at what would arguably be one of Jesus’s most famous parables, famous for so many reasons, not the least of which is that this is one of the parables in which He explains why He gives the parable. With most of His parables, He doesn’t give an explanation. We’ll encounter why that is in just a moment, but for this particular parable He explains why He teaches in parables, which will unlock our understanding of all parables.

Now, when you turn in your Bible to Luke chapter 8, if you have one of the modern English versions, which I would imagine most in this room do (some are so spiritual that they’re reading the Bible in Greek), but for the rest of us there is probably a header over this parable. The header in your Bible may read, “The Parable of the Sower,” like mine. How many have that header over this story?

Let me just tell you about headers. Headers are something that has been added in by the publisher in order to help you to reference and to focus in on some aspect of what you’re about to read. But the headers are not the inerrant Word of Jesus, and sometimes they should be challenged. I would challenge this. I would challenge this title of this parable to not be the parable of the sower, but the parable of the soil, because what God wants us to focus in on as we unpack this story is the soil, not so much the sower. We’ll get to that more a little bit later.

The story is straightforward; not much complexity here. I’ll read it straightforward for you. Verses 4–8 is where we start. It says,

And when a great crowd was gathered and people from town after town came to him [referring to Jesus], he said in a parable, "A sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. Some fell on the rock, and as it grew up it withered away, because it had no moisture. 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!"

Now, it’s easy to say, “Well, that’s a simple message.” I picture Jesus telling this story with seeds in His hands to illustrate what He is communicating to His audience, an agricultural audience, using a very clear reference point. There is so much richness in this story that if we’re not careful, we’ll miss it through quick reading. So, let’s highlight some of the facts here.

It’s important as you study God’s Word that you ask good questions, and the first really good question to ask if you’re going to get out of God’s Word what the Spirit intended in God’s Word, reading the Bible for all its worth, is to ask the question, What is here? What do I see here? We are so quick to ask ourselves, What does this mean and how does it apply? But before we get to what it means for us here and now, we need to ask ourselves what it meant to them then and there.

Verse 4 tells us something very interesting, and that is that there was a great crowd. Jesus here is teaching to a mixed audience, a great crowd composed of, no doubt, religious leaders who were antagonistic towards His ministry, His disciples, no doubt some who were intrigued or curious about who this Jesus was. But it was a mixed multitude, and Jesus knew it was a mixed multitude, and so He taught them in a parable. He tells them this story, and in many ways as we read about these four different types of soil, what we see Jesus doing through His Word and through His teaching is dividing up the crowd. The Word of God always divides up the crowd. The Word of God always reveals who is who.

As He goes through this story, He tells us of four different types of soil that were represented here. 

The first type of soil was a path. It was a path that, if you picture it, was a well-trodden path, a path that had a lot of compacted dirt. No sense of rootedness in it. The seed is cast there, and it takes no root at all. The first was a path.

The second was rocky. It was rocky terrain and soil, maybe along the side of the path. Picture a well-trodden path, and alongside of it was some soil with rocks there, and the seed was sown there, and it took root for a little while, but when the sun scorched and the heat came, it withered away.

The next type of soil was good soil. It didn’t have many problems, except for the fact that there was competition that was there. The competition that was there was the thorns. The seed was sown, and as it grew, the thorns grew as well, and the thorns end up overtaking the seed and choking it out.

The fourth type of soil is what Scripture clearly identifies as good soil, soil that receives the seed and produces a hundredfold. This hundredfold reference is no hyperbole or exaggeration. It refers back to Genesis 26:12, where we are told that Isaac’s field yielded a hundredfold, showing the blessing of the Lord.

Clearly here Jesus is calling His audience to a very common picture, a picture that they would have seen over and over again. Jesus uses common things to draw our attention in. They would have been wondering, no doubt, Where is He going with this story? 

So was the case as we go to the next verse, verse 9, as the disciples pulled Jesus aside. When His disciples asked Him what this parable meant, in verse 10 He said,

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 understand."

Jesus, what in the world are You talking about here?

Clearly, the disciples were a little bit confused. “We have this great audience, Jesus! This was a great opportunity for You to clearly declare Your kingdom and Your kingship, but yet, You told a story. What is this story all about?” They were confused. We have the privilege of having the rest of the story given to us, but at that time they were confused, so they turned to Jesus for clarity. Jesus’ response seems to be counterintuitive, contradictory to what we know about His character. He says to them they have been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God. To God’s children it is given the privilege to know the secrets of His kingdom, but for the others, the rest of the crowd, He speaks in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.

What is it saying here? Is it saying that Jesus is actively working to ensure that some don’t respond to His Word? No, that’s not what it’s saying at all! As a matter of fact, this is a reference, again, back to Isaiah chapter 6, verses 9–10, where God says to Israel that seeing they would not see and hearing they would not understand. He is referring to the hardness of their hearts around their own religious perspective. He is challenging the nation of Israel in Isaiah concerning their own expectations being thrust upon God.

What He is saying to them is that “because your expectations are primary and preeminent in your heart, you will not see and you will not understand.” See, this is the power of a parable. The power of the parable is that it forces you to play by God’s rules and not your own. Jesus isn’t here to entertain us. Jesus and His Word is not given in order to satisfy our desires, but rather, it invites us to learn of His desires.

Today I want to, again, reinforce what type of heart we have to have to be grounded in God’s Word. What God is challenging His disciples with and what Jesus is challenging the audience with is, “Why did you come out to see Me?” No doubt, in that great crowd there would have been a whole lot of people with different expectations. 

Some would have come out to Jesus wanting Him to fulfill their political aspirations, that somehow He would overthrow the government that they were disgruntled with. But Jesus, instead of overthrowing the government, comes and tells them a story, a story that they needed but different than what they expected. 

Others would have gathered around Jesus because they heard about some of the miracles that He performed, desiring to receive a miracle themselves. But instead of giving them miracles, He gives them a story. 

You know, each and every one of us comes to this moment with various desires, but it’s so important that we not impose our desires upon Him, but that we allow His Word to inform our desires. Let’s not play scriptural lotto.

You know what scriptural lotto is, right? You open up the Word of God, hoping that it falls to a chapter or a verse that speaks blessing to you, and you mess around and open up to an Old Testament prophet who says, “Woe unto Edom!” And you say, “I don’t know where that fits.” (laughter)

No, what God wants us to do through faithful Scripture reading is receive from Him His imparted Word of truth:

• so that we might be able to rightfully see the rest of the world.
• so that we might be able to see Him as He presents Himself.
• so that we might be able to see ourselves through His eyes.
• so that we might be able to see the rest of the world correctly.

I wear these glasses because I need corrective lenses. Jesus invites us to read His Word because His Word is like corrective lenses to those of us who have had our vision obscured by sin. When these lenses are on, we see clearly.

This is what C.S. Lewis said:

I believe in Jesus for the same reason I believe in the sun; not just because I can see it, but because of it, I can see everything else.

This is the power of the Word of God! As we read His Word, everything else becomes clear. So what Jesus is saying concerning the parable is that the parable is both invitation and judgment. It invites those who sincerely desire to learn of Him, but it judges those who do not.

In John chapter 6, Jesus once again challenges those who have come to Him with erroneous expectations—some wanting Him to be a political anarchist, some wanting Him to simply be a miracle worker who gives them what they want. Jesus tells them that “if anyone will follow after me, they must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood” (v. 54). You know what happened after that; many began to walk away.

Jesus is not enamored by crowd sizes. He seems to be okay when people walk away because they have rejected His truth. He says to the twelve who remain, “Will you also walk away?”

Peter’s response is correct: “Where else will we go for the word of truth? Only You have the word of truth” (v. 68).

When you come to God’s Word, come with a humble and teachable heart, come ready to receive what He has for you. Don’t impose upon God your own expectations, but be humble at heart to receive from Him.

Dannah: Yes, every time we open God’s Word, may we open our hearts to be ready for what He wants to teach us. We’ve been listening to Pastor Chris Brooks share the first part of his message from Revive '21. He’ll pick up where he left off, tomorrow.

Nancy: I really hope this message from Pastor Brooks has made you consider your own heart’s response to the Word of God. I know it did that for me as I sat and listened to him speak that Saturday morning at Revive '21. Here at Revive Our Hearts, we’re passionate about seeing women get into God’s Word and God’s Word get into them. Throughout this month, we’re emphasizing the importance of consistently spending time reading, dwelling in, and soaking up Scripture. We want to offer you a special resource to help you do just that.

Dannah: Yes, you’ll learn to start every day in God’s Word with Nancy’s A Place of Quiet Rest Journal. Over the next thirty days, you can use this journal to make a habit of beginning each morning resting in God’s presence.

Nancy: The goal is not for this to be something more to check off your to-do list. What we want to do is help you cultivate a rhythm of spending time with God in His Word. As you do, as you listen to Him and respond to His Word, you’ll grow closer to Him.

Dannah: You can get a copy of Nancy’s A Place of Quiet Rest Journal when you make a donation of any amount to this ministry. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959 and be sure to request your journal.

Nancy: What's the condition of your heart? Tomorrow, Chris Brooks helps us do some heart diagnosis work, or maybe we should call it “soil analysis,” as he continues with part two of his message from Revive '21. This was a powerful message. I know it spoke deeply to me. I hope you’ll be back as we share part two tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth invites you to live in freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.  

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.