Junior Hill - Satan's Strategies for Stealing the Sower's Seed - Luke 8:5-12

well thank you so much dr. Aiken what a joy it is to be in southeastern seminary I've been here several times it's always a joy to come to this school I love your president dr. Aiken as a matter of fact I was sitting there watching him what he's making those announcements and I thought I hope when I get that old I can be that good I just love old people that old Ohio do you know I always get intimidated when I preach in seminaries there's so many of these gifted scholars who know the Hebrew and Greek and all of you students who making straight A's and just makes me nervous standing before a crowd like this and make you listen to elmer fudd from alabama and I want to be sure that I'll get my facts exactly right I want to be careful that I know what I'm saying reminds me of a young seminary student who just graduated I'm sure he wasn't from South Eastern and I hope he wasn't from New Orleans where I graduated so we'll just say is from southern but he was being interviewed for his first church he'd never pastored a church and so the chairman of committee said son you know much about the Bible he said I sure do I'm a seminary graduate I know it all he said well my partner you know basis I know it all I know the Old Testament the New Testament and the fella said well if you know so much about the Bible why don't you just tell us one of the stories that you know for instance the story of the Good Samaritan you know that story he said I know it well he said well tell us that story he said well there was a man of the pharisees who was named Nicodemus who went down to Jerusalem by night and he fell upon stony ground and the forints choked him after death and he said what shall I do for I have no room to bestow all my fruits I will arise and go to my father's house and he arose and climbed up into a sycamore tree the next day the three wise men came and carried him down to the ark for Moses to take care of him but as he was walking into the eastern gate to the ark he caught his hair in the limb and he hung there for forty days and forty nights and he was afterward hungered and the Ravens came in fed him the next day Solomon and his wife Gemara came by and carried him down to Nineveh they found Delilah sitting on the wall and they said chunker down boys and they said well how many times shall we chunk her down until seven times he said nay but until seventy times seven and they chunked her down 490 times and she burst asunder in their midst and they picked up twelve baskets of the fragments and in the resurrection whose wife will she be and the chairmen of the Deacons said fellas I think we need to call him he's young but he really knows his Bible and I hope you really know your Bible I want you to open the Bible if you brought one with you to the Gospel of Luke chapter 18 Luke chapter 8 and I want to begin reading with verse number five Luke chapter 8 in verse number five a sower went out to sow the seed and as he sowed some fell by the wayside and it was trodden down and the fowls of the air devoured it and Sun fell upon a rock and it as soon as it was sprung up it withered away because it lacked moisture and Sun fell among thorns and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it another fellow on good ground and sprang up and bear fruit a hundredfold and when he had said these things he cried he that hath ears to hear let him hear and his disciples asked him saying what might this terrible be and he said unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God but to others in parables that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand now the parable is this the seed is the word of God those by the wayside are they that hear then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hearts lest they should believe and be saved in those shorts have versus they seem to divide themselves into four very obvious segments first there is the seed now thankfully Jesus did something when he told this parable that he did not always do explain the parable aren't you grateful that Jesus explained that terrible twos if he had not given us an explanation of what that parable meant only heaven knows what kind of interpretations we would have given to but he specifically says that the word is the sea so the Word of God divides itself in the seed second there is the sower there was somebody that had the responsibility of scattering or sowing that seed now that could be any one of us it speaks or sings or teaches or passes out a gospel tract anybody that has the responsibility or concern of sharing the seed of the word of God is described as a sword third there was the source I find it very intriguing that those seed fell into different kinds of soils and that within itself is a wonderful lesson that we do well to understand that not all seeds fall in the right place but now there is a fourth thing and it's one I want to isolate for you today and which sometimes don't see it very clear clearly not only is there the seed the sower the soils but there is Satan's strategy and look what it says it says that those seed that fell by the wayside and were devoured he said that represents Satan who comes and takes away the seed lest they believe and be saved so now I want you to get this in your eyes very clearly because it's what I want to talk to you about today here's a man with a bag of seed in his hand and he's going out scattering that seed and in the background the devil is watching that scene unfold and when that man throws those seed in a particular place the Bible says that the devil rushes forward and takes away that scene why unless they believe and be saved you see my young student friends the Bible says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God and the devil knows that unless he removes that seed from the one who has heard it they may believe and be saved that's what he said less they believe unless they be saying somebody ever watches that and he moves immediately take that seed out of the heart of the one who has heard it now that's what the Bible says he does but let me ask you a question have you ever stopped to think what the devil does that the Bible doesn't tell us about if you were the devil and you were watching that scene unfold and you knew that if you didn't get that word out of the heart of that person who heard it they might get saved you try to move that seed out of the heart but you also understand that it's a lot harder to remove the seed from the heart of the one who heard it that it is to take it out of the hand of the one who holds it and so the devil looks at that scene and his wise ingenuity if possible the devil will do all he can to take the seed out of the hand of the one who holds it and my dear brothers and sisters let me tell you emphatically as I know how to tell you the devil is always about everywhere at all times trying to take the seed from the hand of the one who holds it less we scatter it as God commanded now how's it gonna do that how is the devil going to take that seed out of your hand in my hand so that we do not sow it and if we not so it they will not hear and Paul says they will not hear except someone preach to them how's it going to do that well I want to show you three or four simple little ways and they're not very profound but they are interestingly and true first of all the devil does that by intimidation you see the devil's trick is to intimidate those that hold the seed so that we will not sow that seed because of his intimidation Jesus shared a little bit about that when he told his disciples these interesting words the world will hate you and they will hate you as they hated me if you were of the world the world would love his own but the because you're not of the world but I've chosen you out of the world therefore the world hated you remember the word that I said unto you the servant is not greater than his Lord and if they have persecuted me they will also persecute you if they have kept my saying they will keep yours also Charles Spurgeon put it well when he wrote these words slander is seldom short of expression it traits and prattles evermore neither David nor our Lord nor any of the Saints were allowed to escape the attacks of venomous tongues this is a thrice told story and to the end of time it will be true now listen he that is born after the flesh will persecute that which is born after the spirit now my dear brothers and sisters I want to say two years emphatically as I know how to say it you're going out into a culture that does not like you as a matter of fact many of them will hate you when I first started preaching I'd never been to church knew nothing about God or church or religious matters I've never been inside the walls of a church till I was nearly 13 years old all I knew about a preacher was that he had a beautiful suit and drove a nice car and brother Danny when God called me to be a preacher I thought everybody's gonna love me they're gonna think I hung the moon it didn't take me but a few weeks to realize they not only didn't think I hung the moon many of them wished I was on the moon hi folks let me tell you something you're not going to be very popular in the culture in which we live today not everybody's going to like you that has always been true as Jesus said it would be true but it has been intensified in the day in which we live we're increasingly living in a culture that is anti-god and Antichrist and anybody who dares to speak the Word of God will immediately be castigated is intolerant ignorant and biased listen to what a David Samuels an editor for the New York Times recently wrote the New York Times is arguably the most influential newspaper in America that's what the New York Times thinks but listen what David Samuels the editor of the New York Times wrote it is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit he's talking about his secular crowd that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy now that's what the New York Times says about dr. Daniel a kid that's what they say about jr. Hill and that's what they'll say about you you're crazy when you stand in a pulpit and dare to open the Bible and to say thou shalt not kill thou shalt not steal thou shalt not commit adultery honor thy father and thy mother if you dare to take that unapologetically stand for the truth of God mark it well that you will be viewed as intolerant bigoted narrow-minded and they will silence you by intimidation if at all possible and that's exactly what's happened tester's many have been intimidated because of the applause of the world had they ceased to declare the truth of the word of God I want to ask you crash now would you be honest with me what if the time comes when you're told that you can no longer preach the moral absolutes of the Word of God what will be your reaction today how will you stand when you're told that you cannot stand what are you going to do when the Supreme Court's rules as they likely will rule that you must marry homosexual couples how will you stand what will be your idea of the truth of the word of God will you stand or will you be intimidated into silence dr. Danny I've been telling young preachers where I've preached in the past few weeks months now I hope I'm wrong you know sometimes you preach things that you think will happen but you hope they won't happen and I hope I'm wrong about this but I want to make you this prediction I predict to you today that unless there is a radical alteration of the culture in which you and I now found ourselves many of you men and perhaps women in this building who dare to preach the truth of God are going to end up in jail you say my brother June you're talking about America the home of the brave and the free that's right but I'm telling you that the culture is tightening the noose around those that preach the gospel and the days ahead are going to be difficult and dark for you young men and women who are going out to serve and don't let the devil intimidate you I say to you if all hell freezes over and they call you every name in the book stand up and say thus sayeth the Lord Word of God and say what God told you to say don't let the world take away you see by intimidation but sometimes the devil takes away the seed by observation you say that preacher what in the world are you talking about vation well let me read you what the writer of Ecclesiastes said it's a very intriguing little passage of Scripture listen to what what he said he that observe ahthe the wind shall not soul and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap as thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all now listen to what he said in the morning so thy seed and in the evening with hold not thy hand now why for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that or whether they both shall be alike good now what in the world is he saying well here's what he said he is saying that that sore who has that bag of seed in his hand must never be intimidated by what he sees he that observe if the clouds or looks at the rain will not sell you must not be intimidated about what you see but he takes it a little step further you must not be intimidated about what you understand now follow me very close let me show you a very interesting thing about that little scripture as you read it here it seems what he's saying here's a man with a bag of seed in his hands now he has one or two choices that he can do he can disregard the clouds pay no attention to the winds or the rain and so those seeds or he can look at those seeds and porn out in his hands and observe and evaluate all of those seeds that one looks a little puny that one has some rough edges to it that one looks a little bit anemic I don't think that one will grow but these probably will and he can stand there observing and evaluating those seeds and then he puts in the ground the one he thinks will come up that's what he can do or he can do what God plainly told us to do he can so every one of those seeds and let the sovereign God of the universe determine which one will come out you see my dear brother God has not called you to evaluate the success of the seed he's called you to sow the seed and the scatter the seed and that's your responsibility it's not your business to spend all your life evaluating who will respond and not respond to the gospel that's not your business it's your business to proclaim the gospel and letting the God of heaven decide who will hear and who are not here I may be wrong about this I've been wrong once or twice I can't remember what it was but I have been wrong once it was but dr. Danny I believe that we're heavily tilted toward an excessive evaluation in our culture today now we have a generation of men and women that are frantically rushing from pillar to post trying to decide who will respond to the gospel and our evaluation and our observation has kept us from our Proclamation and we ought to just stand up and preach and let God be the author oh who will come that I had that happen to be some time ago I was invited by a little church outside of where I live to preach a Friday night harvest day they called it I got there on a Friday night and a Friday night is football in Alabama that may not be up here where y'all don't play football but in Alabama I'm ashamed I said dad but in Alabama Friday nights is a big deal and my home school was in the playoffs and this guy called me said brother junior would you come and preach on Friday night we're going to have a harvest match I knew better than to accept that I knew it was a Friday night ballgame and I didn't want to go to be honest with you but I said well yes sir I'll do the night came and I drove out there drove up in the parking lot there's hardly anybody there walked in sat down on the front pew hardly any but I suspect might have been 15 20 people there nobody spoke to me nobody welcomed me nobody said we're glad to have you and finally a guy walked down to the front and said dad who are you sir I said well I'm I'm Junior Hill I'm going to preach here tonight he didn't seem to know that so but didn't didn't matter he said well brother Hill I hate to tell you this but our pastor had some little difficulty several weeks ago and he's resigned and he won't be here he didn't bother to tell me that pastor never called me and told me wasn't gonna be there he said it and not only that but our ministers music got mad and he's resigned I didn't know that and he said not only that but our Secretary got mad and she's resigned and she won't be able to write you a check now that really got my attention and i thought lord have mercy if I've known all of that I'd resign myself and they have this guy get up the same a visting singer I've never heard anything like it in my life - he sound like a hoot owl with a post nasal drip and I was sitting there watching all of that unfold and I looked at in the audience it must have been about 40 people - very mostly look like these mad and out of fellowship and I'm sitting there listen that guys sing that song and I thought Lord God what am I doing here and I began to firm through my Bible to find the shortest devotional that I had I said Lord I'm gonna preach a little short devotional and I'll be back in time for the second half of the bullets the brother Danny as I said on that platform I did not hear her voice I did not have some vision but God breathed I did not bring you over here tonight to evaluate this church I brought you over here to scatter the things now you get up and you do what I told you to do and I stood and preached as a low simple sermon that probably insulted the angels of God but when the invitation was given seven grown people were saved and I said God could it be that you know a little bit more about this and I'm there my dear young brother listened to be God didn't called you to be at evaluator God called you to be a proclaimer and take this word and stand up where God told you to stand and preach what he told you to preach and let God be the author of who will and will not respond don't let the devil take away you seed by a value ish but I gotta hurry he takes it away by disqualification now I want you to listen dear Katherine Paul said that he that runneth the race is not crowned except he strive lawfully now we don't know exactly what that would meant it might have been that the runner got in the wrong lane he might have started prematurely he might have hindered other runners that were around him but whatever he did he did something unlawful and he lost the crown that he could have won now fellas and ladies listen to me I wish I didn't have to say this I wish that I didn't have to even remind you of this but the chances of their hand that there's somebody sitting in this building right here today that will end disqualified I hope that's not true I suspect it is true I was walking through the Birmingham Airport the other day as I walked down the car there's a man ran up to me and hugged my neck and put his hands upon my face and said old brother jr. I'm so glad to see you yeah I knew who he was he was a pastor friend that I'd helped in numerous revivals he was a wonderfully annoying man of God and as we stood talking he began to cry he said brother junior I guess you know what happened to me don't you well yes sir I do and I'm sorry but I won't tell you I love you I'm praying for you brother Danny he began to cry he said brother junior God was blessing my church he's running over a thousand people are being saved and my family was happy enough it was going so good but he said one day my secretary came in the office and I found myself looking at her in a different way than I'd ever looked before and he said to make a long story short I had an affair hey brother jr. of last month family I've lost my church I've lost my sis friends I've lost my self-respect he said I feel like a walking dead man a few days later I was preaching at Southwestern Seminary and I gave that story without any details much as to who he was as a warning to those students at South Western little did I know that that broadcast was being Skyped across the country and somewhere up in Chicago that pastor said it his desk and what's that involved and he called brother jr. I heard you yesterday and I thought I wish I could be there I wish I could stand up before that congregation and say he's talking about me listen he's talking about me lost his church lost his friends lost his self-respect but far worse than though he lost this bag of seed the same that he should have been scattering now sits idly by while he shuffles paper in a brokerage firm oh my dear brother my dear sister guard with every ounce of your energy your integrity and your characters you just have one and if you ever lose it you can never regain it I've told people for many years I prayed this prayer cross my life I said God if you know I'm gonna get involved with somebody would you please kill me before that ever happens I believe I say that with all my heart I had a smart letter to preach the other day challenge me when I said that he said brother jr. if I knew I was gonna get involved with some woman one day I wouldn't pray God killed me I'd pray God kill her well whoever needs killing let's pray that you'll do some kidding don't let the devil take away you see by disqualification now there's one other thing sometimes he does it by germination you say one of the devil's cleverest tricks is to get you to think when you sow that seed it's going to come up in the morning and that's why Paul gave this exact sortation to the believers be not weary in well-doing for in due season we shall reap if you faint not you know dr. Danny one of the joys of getting old if there is any joy in getting old is that you are able to see things that you didn't see when they happened at first I'm amazed that that happened so often I've been I've been trying to maneuver through airports I'm a in the final laps of my ministry I as dr. Falwell said maybe over time I don't know but I've been trying to maneuver through airports with bad legs I have bad legs I have difficulty getting up and down somebody said weii brother Jun I said I've been in too many song services now I want you kids listen to me if any of you gonna be ministers music I want you to hear me I am writing a new book I believe dr. Dani that it's gonna sell more copies than The Purpose Driven Life it's gonna be one of the most popular books ever written in this day every senior adult in America is going to buy one of these books you know the title of it 100 songs you can say sitting down did it ever occur to you that ministers of music and orthopedic surgeons may have some collusion among them now let's all stand an hour-and-a-half and sing this little course I bout decided the next time that happens I'm going to call the Ministry of music up there when I stand to preach sir would you come and stand right here and I'm going to preach about an iron hat and I'll say to him don't you look like you're about to sit down you stand up that's it well you know of course I'm joking you a little bit not much but these old legs are sort of worn out and I have to hobble along and I was coming home we're available the other day and as always I'll end it at the further escape from the the terminal it's always that way daddy if I go out somewhere I'll end up at a hundred and forty gate I was humbling along and trying to get to the deplaning place and get in the car and I just I was thinking Lord I've been doing this 58 years I'm tired I'm worried about legs are worn out God maybe it's time to hang it down and I came to the steps going down to the greeting area where everybody is waiting for people on the plane I knew there wasn't anybody there to meet me I parked in a car sighs alone and so I made my way down the steps and was getting ready to walk out to the parking lot to get my car and I heard something that call a man a brother here brother here and I turned at a little blond-haired lady with two little children by her side ran up to me and said are you jr. Hill yes ma'am I am oh brother junior I love you so much I said my am do I know you she said probably not but she said 20 years ago you came to the shades of Mountain Church in Birmingham Alabama I was a little eight-year-old girl and you preached and I got saved and our on the mission field and I'm waiting here from you get off the plane thank you sir thank you sir for being faithful to tell the gush and I said well glory to God maybe I don't need to retire maybe I just need to retreat

Channel: Southeastern Seminary

Views: 16,014

Rating: 4.8956523 out of 5

Keywords: Southeastern, Baptist, Theological, Seminary, Chapel, Message, Jesus, Preaching, God, Book, North Carolina, Wake Forest, Gospel, False Teaching, False spirits, Spirit, Danny, expository, Great Commission, Truth, Grace, Love, Discerning, Training, Education, Satan (Deity), Gospel Of Luke (Religious Text)

Id: yuq3nOlXvdg

Length: 34min 2sec (2042 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2013