How is Your Hearing?

“How is Your Hearing?”
Luke 8:4-15
October 12, 2025

One of the phrases a parent uses most often is “listen to me…”  Parents use that phrase with distracted three-year-olds and impatient 17-year-olds.  They use it when they are teaching, when they are correcting, when they are encouraging, and when they are warning.  It’s a useful, and well-used, phrase.

The Bible also uses similar language to teach, correct, encourage, and warn its readers:

• “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart” (Dt. 6:4-6; my emphasis).
• “Now then, my sons, listen to me And do not depart from the words of my mouth” (Prov. 5:7; also 7:24; 8:6, 32, 34; 12:15; 13:1; 15:31-32; 17:4; 19:20, 27; 21:28; 23:19, 22; 25:12; 28:9).
• “…blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it” (Lk. 11:28).

One of the remarkable blessings of our lives is that God has revealed Himself to us.  God, who is infinite, transcendent, and beyond our knowing, has made Himself knowable to us and has revealed Himself to us (in creation, conscience, and Scripture).  The question is, are we hearing?  Are we listening?

We are in a section of Luke this morning that is very familiar to you — the parable of the soils (8:4-15).  But it is also in the middle of a section in Luke where people had been coming to hear Jesus (5:1, 15; 6:18, 27, 49) and now Jesus is also asking whether they really are listening and exhorting them to listen to Him (8:8b, 18, 21).  We can summarize the theme of this morning’s passage this way:

Beware of the obstacles of following Jesus; be a follower who heeds His Word.

It seems in these verses that Jesus is still popular with Galileans; He is traveling widely (v. 1) and large crowds are coming to Him (v. 4).  But this story is a test — do the crowds (and do we) really want to follow after Jesus?  It seems that the story is just a story; but there is an important meaning behind the story — how are we hearing and how are we responding to Jesus and His Word?  

1. Jesus Tells a Story (vv. 4-8)
2. Why Jesus Told Stories (vv. 9-10)
3. Jesus Interprets His Story (vv. 11-15)

Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 8:4-15.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.

Capernaum field and pathway.