Luke 8:7 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Luke 8:7

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‘In verse 14 we have the Saviour's explanation: ‘And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.’ Now this is a little different again, the thorny ground hearer. He hears the message of the gospel, he or she sees the desirability of it: ‘I need forgiveness. I understand that Saviour who came from heaven and went to Calvary's cross. I understand that God is so holy he cannot just bypass my sin; he cannot just let me off unconditionally; he cannot say to me, ‘It doesn't matter after all.’ He is holy; he is the judge; he must judge righteously, and yet he is so loving and so merciful that he has sent Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, equal with the Father, down into this world. He has come to enter into a human body, to assume a human personality, to be a representative for lost men and women, to go onto Calvary's cross. He allowed himself to be arrested in seeming weakness when he didn't have to do this at all, and then calling out to his Father, ‘Father punish me instead of them. Put that eternal weight of punishment that those people deserve, and concentrate it upon me, and I will bear it away. The thorny ground hearer may understand even that: that God can be merciful only because he has come himself in the person of Christ to make an atonement, to take our punishment for us. He sees the necessity of salvation. Then what is the matter with me if I am a thorny ground hearer? The trouble is that the thorns are there in this ground, and they grow up within my heart: the thorns of worldliness, desiring the old life, the things of this world. In other words the thorny ground hearer a double-minded man, as he is elsewhere described in the Bible.

Application

There are many people like this today. They pick and mix in their approach to religion. They think you can have faith in Christ and be received by him, and have sin at the same time. You can have opposites and combine them in your life. ‘I can have Christ and I can keep my selfish ambitions. I can have Christ and serve and please myself as well. I can have Christ and all the fashions that I want, whatever they amount to. I can have Christ and I can have status and fame and fortune. I can desire heaven and pursue my objectives in this world too.’ The thorns are never removed. Coming to Christ means that I believe in him, and at the same time I leave the old life and I repent of my sin and I seek his mercy and his cleansing. For the thorny ground hearer, two systems, two objectives, are working alongside each other at the same time. The Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘You cannot serve God and mammon.’ The thorny ground hearer says that he can. The thorns are ruthless. You can try to repent all you like, and you can try to give your life to Christ all you like, but if you keep the thorns, the sins, the things of this world, they will grow up and they will choke you, and you will never go to heaven.

In verse 14 there is an interesting term: ‘cares and riches and pleasures of this life’. There are many legitimate pleasures in the Christian life. Coming to Christ doesn't mean you give up all pleasure. You get great wonderful happiness as the disciple of Christ. We are talking about sinful and selfish pleasures. But these people bring forth no fruit to perfection. That doesn't mean that they never become perfect; it means the plant never matures. It get strangled by the thorns; it never bears the fruit; you never become a Christian, you never obtain salvation, because you are double-minded.

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Luke 8:7 Commentary and Bible Study