In his sermon 'The Lusting Heart,' Peter Allison explores the Parable of the Sower from Luke chapter 8, focusing on the metaphorical representation of different types of hearts that receive the Word of God. He emphasizes the 'lusting heart,' where the seed falls among thorns, representing the cares of the world, deceitfulness of riches, and pleasures of life that hinder spiritual growth. Allison discusses how even good things can become thorns if they distract from spiritual priorities. He warns of the deceitfulness of riches and the dangers of seeking contentment in material wealth rather than in God. The sermon calls for believers to actively remove these 'thorns' and prepare their hearts to receive the Word, emphasizing the need for daily spiritual discipline and reliance on the Holy Spirit to achieve true spiritual maturity and bear fruit.

Our scripture reading this morning, Luke chapter 8. I'd like to read this parable again beginning verse 4. Verse 4. And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to him from every city. He spoke by parable, a sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed some fell by the wayside, and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it, and some fell on rock, and as soon as it sprang up it withered away because it lacked moisture.

And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it, but others fell on good ground, sprang up and yielded a crop a hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Then his disciples asked him, saying, "'What does this parable mean?' And he said, "'To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.'" Now, the parable is this, the seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear, then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. But the ones on the rock are those who when they hear receive the word with joy, and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.

Now the ones that fell among Thorns are those who when they heard go out and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of life and Bring no fruit to maturity but the ones that fell on the good ground are those who having heard the word with a noble and a good heart keep it and bear fruit with patience." In Matthew 13, 22, he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful." May we speak of these testimonies before kings. Heavenly Father, your word is truth. It is wonderful truth. And we ask that you would open our eyes, that we may see it, and open our hearts that we may understand. We asked this morning that you would transform us through this, your Word.

That you would teach us, that you would guide us, that you would convict us where we have gone astray, that you would instruct us where we are ignorant, we ask that you would give us new light and understanding this morning. We ask, Lord, for Your Holy Spirit, for all of these things we cannot do in our own strength. But we look to You, our Father, and to Jesus, the Captain of our salvation. Amen. In the last couple of weeks we've been looking at this parable and at each of the hearts that Jesus describes through this metaphor of seeds that are being scattered on different types of soil.

And we looked at first the hard heart, that is the seed that falls on the hard packed path. It never goes into the ground, it never sprouts, it never has a chance to germinate because Jesus said this is like the heart that hears the word and Satan comes immediately and snatches it away, takes it away, there is no further thought of it, so there is no response, there is no life. That heart continues hard and dead. Then there was also the stony heart, which had a little bit of soil but is a lot of rocks, and So this seed falls in a little bit of soil, and it's warm, and it immediately sprouts. There's an immediate response.

Jesus described it as immediate joy. But there's no root. The structure under the ground is not there. And so there is no moisture in this plant that sprouts very quickly, dies just as quickly. Like that plant that God caused to grow beside Jonah, came up in a day and died in a day.

That's this heart, this stony heart. There's an immediate response, there's great exuberance, there's a great emotional response, but it's not an emotional response born of the Holy Spirit. It's just human emotion and it quickly fades away. I know one pastor described, that I heard, described having a list of names, some 30 names from some crusade, evangelistic crusade that had come through town. He had 30 names of people that had made some sort of profession of faith at this crusade in the emotion of the moment and following up just less than 30 days after I think all but a couple had lost all interest in their profession of faith.

And the couple that apparently still were interested were people that had had prior teaching in church. They had prior engagement with the Word of God and hearing the Word of God. And so that's the stony heart. Well this morning most of us probably don't fall into either of those categories, we wouldn't be here. No, we're probably more like the next two categories of hearts that Jesus describes.

The heart, what I'm calling the lustful heart, the lusting heart, or the good heart. The lusting heart is what Jesus says is like the seed that is sown and it falls among thorns. Now here the soil is okay, the soil is good, the plant can sprout, But there are thorns around it, and these thorns come up and hinder the bearing of fruit. They hinder the plant that is sprouted by this seed that has been sown and I would suggest I would expect this morning that this kind of heart is Is That that we this morning would have this kind of heart or a good heart that we are Where we are dealing with our own weaknesses and sins, we are dealing not with a heart that has never responded to the Gospel, not a heart that Satan has snatched the seed away before it bore any response, or not a heart that has risen with immediate joy and fallen away because there are many here that have been in church and following the Lord for decades. Where we I would guess would have our struggle and where we would be characterized is these hearts here where the seed has fallen among thorns.

And Jesus describes these thorns as the cares of this world, the riches and the pleasures of life. And if we put the two phrases from Matthew and Luke together, Luke just talks about cares and riches and the pleasures of life, But Matthew talks about the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and Luke the pleasures of life. These then are the thorns into which this seed falls. So we note then that first of all the thorns are already present. The thorns are there.

They represent the cares of the world that we have. They represent the riches, the deceptiveness of riches. They represent the pleasures of life. And they're there. And the seed falls among those thorns that are already there.

Now Many of these things that are already there, these thorns, they are not evil in themselves. The cares of this world are many times necessary. If we don't provide for a family, Paul said we're worse than an infant. That's the cares of this world. Paul said that a man who has a wife, he has to take care of her.

And so that means if he's taking care of her, that's time that he's not able to spend in kingdom work. And so he was promoting, in a sense, some of the blessings of being single and that you you don't have some of these other cares of the world so these aren't necessarily These aren't necessarily evil things in themselves. Good pleasures, the pleasures of life, these are God's gifts. He says that wine has been given to man, it has been given to us to make our face glad, oil to make it shine. These can be God's good gifts.

Christ himself did not reject all pleasures. He didn't go out and live as an ascetic in the wilderness and just eat what he could the, what he could gather from the ground. Christ went to weddings. He went to feasts. He ate luxurious food at times.

But these pleasures did not choke out or prevent him from doing his work that he was called to do. It's when these cares of this world, it's when these pleasures of life, when the deceitfulness of riches keep us from the means of grace, they keep us from prayer, they keep us from the Word of God. It's then that these things that are sometimes good in themselves, yes, there are pleasures that are sinful in themselves, but it's when these good pleasures keep us from the Word of God, when they keep us from prayer, that they become thorns that are not good. Second thing I would point out is that these, that we see here, is that these thorns are allowed to grow up with the seed. They grow together.

They grow together. Now, These are not the tares, when Jesus talked about the parable of the wheat and the tares, He's talking about people who are not Christians, who are not believers, that are in the church along with those who are believers. These thorns are a little different. These thorns, remember, represent not other people per se, they represent the cares of life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the pleasures of life. So these things are present, they are alongside the seed as it grows.

And The next thing Jesus says is that these thorns then choke the good seed. The thorns as they grow up, they compete for the moisture in the ground. They compete for the sunlight. And if they can grow faster and grow bigger leaves and a bigger root system, then they can take the moisture and take it away from the good seed. And They can, with their leaves, get the sun and it falls on the thorns and the sunlight doesn't fall on the good plants.

Then what happens to those good plants? They get weak. They get yellow. They look straggly. They're not robust.

The vines are not robust, but they're limp because they're being choked by the thorns. They're fighting for a little bit of water and a little bit of sunlight. They're getting squished. You ever see something grow up too tight, a tree or another plant where there are other things crowding it and so it can de-form the plant as it is being pressed by other things around it. This is the picture that Jesus is painting of these cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the pleasures of life as they choke out the good seed.

A good seed. See jobs and the cares of this world might be our job. And Jobs are a good thing. But a job that doesn't leave us time to worship God, doesn't worship the Lord who provided the job, is becoming a care of this world that is choking out the good seed. It's choking out the Word of God that has been sown, and it is limiting our ability to bear fruit.

Cooking, cleaning, child care, these are all good things. These cares. But if they become the reason that we don't have time to read the Word of God, to meditate on it, to study it, We don't have time to memorize it. We don't have time to pray because we're just so busy with cooking and cleaning and taking care of the family and the children. See then, the cares of this world have begun to choke out the good seed.

And how many times haven't we said to ourselves, well, I don't have time for this. I don't have time today. I know that's happened too many times for me. But that's what Jesus is talking about when the good seed is falling among the thorns. And that's not even talking about the movies and the games and the social media and all the entertainment that we engage in that fill the spare minutes of our day.

We all know that the Bible says the biblical priority is seek first the kingdom of God. Seek that first. That means before we do the cooking, before we do the cleaning, before we do all these other things that we have need of that are good, we are to seek first the kingdom of heaven. And the Lord will supply all these other things that He knows we need. But still, sometimes these things become so heavy for us.

They become such a pressing burden that we become convinced that we have to do this now and we can get to the reading of God's Word a little later and what we can pray a little later and before we know it the day has gone by and the cares of this world have choked out the Word of God and the seed that has been sown. This is how Paul instructed Timothy to view the cares of this world. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. We're all born, We don't even have any clothes on. We're born with nothing.

And that's how we leave with nothing. We take nothing with us. Now it is true, a righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children. And so Paul said to Timothy, having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lust desires." And that's why this is called the lusting heart.

Because it is the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, and the pleasures of life that cause us to fall into a temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. The cares of this world can choke out, the good cares of this world can choke out the seed if we are not diligent every day, every day, to deal with the thorns in our life. The second thing Jesus speaks about here is riches.

And in Matthew adds the deceitfulness of riches. It's not just riches themselves, but it's the deceitfulness of riches. See, the deceitfulness of riches lies in the fact that money appears to solve problems, and that it appears to be necessary to life. It appears to solve problems because we see that when somebody has enough money, then we can simply buy whatever is needed to address whatever the problem is in front of us. It really sort of seems obvious to us, according to the wisdom of this world, is that the reason we can't buy something is because we don't have enough money.

And if we just had more money, then we could get whatever it is that we need to solve the problem that we're dealing with at that time. And this logic seems perfectly logical to us because we see things play out like this all the time. But Jesus said something else. He said, take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of things that he possesses. And We really don't need money in order to be content.

Now money is a blessing of God. It is something that He does provide us. And He does, through it, provide many blessings to us. So we're not saying that we need to give all of our money away, although Jesus did tell that to one young man, one rich young man who thought he was doing everything, keeping the law of God perfectly in every way. Jesus pointed out that he had a love of something that was greater than His love of God.

Maybe the Lord will take all of our money away like He took it all away from Job. Job recognized that his life didn't consist in all the things that he had. And when he lost everything, he said, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. God is able to provide all of our needs, even if we lack money. Now, we might lack money because of our lack of diligence, but it might be through no particular fault or sin of our own that we do.

And in that case, the Lord is able to provide. He says, look at the plants of the field. They are dressed beautifully, and yet they don't do anything for that. And how much more value are we than these plants? And so, The deceitfulness of riches then is, first of all, that it seems to appear to us that we need to have money to live, and that's just not true.

Secondly, the deceitfulness of riches lies in the fact that we think we will be happier or content with just a little bit more money. We might have money and we think, well, if I just had a little bit more, then that would solve all my problems. If I just had a little bit more, then life would be wonderful. If I just had a little bit more, things would be okay, and I could live in contentment. But of course, the Bible says that the issue is not how much money we have, but whether we have learned contentment.

That's the real issue. And Paul said, I can be content with a little bit, I can be content with a lot. I can be content whether I abound or whether I'm in destitute. I've learned, he said, to be content in whatever condition I find myself, whether it's a great abundance or a great lack. The issue here is contentment.

And the deceitfulness of money is that we need just a little bit more. That's really a discontentment with what God has given us. The deceitfulness of riches can also blind us to the state of our soul. Great material wealth, and most of us would hear, probably all of us, would qualify as having great material wealth. We all have clothing, and we all have food, and we all have shelter.

We're wealthy in that sense. Great material wealth can blind Us to the state of our soul it can cover the spiritual poverty that we're living in And that's another aspect to the deceitfulness of riches It's It's when you take everything away from somebody that you can see what their true character is. When somebody has lots and lots of money, sometimes their character doesn't show like it does when they are destitute of everything. Another aspect of the deceitfulness of riches is that they can lead us to believe a lie about where our money comes from. They can lead us to believe a lie about where our money comes from.

They can lead us to believe a lie about the source of our wealth. And this was a warning specifically that Moses gave to the children of Israel as they were about to go into the promised land. This was a land flowing with milk, a milk and honey, a prosperous land, a rich land, meaning that the soil was fertile, the fruit of that land was abundant. And this is what Moses said as they were about to go into that land. He said, Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today.

Beware lest When you have eaten and are full and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them." And that's probably us today. We have eaten, we are full, we have nice homes and we live in them. And, when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, when your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness in which there were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water, who brought water for you out of the hard rock, flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do you good in the end. When all this is happening, he's described a picture of plenty. He's described the picture of people living in a land flowing with milk and honey, beautiful houses, a full stomach, a family.

He says then, when this is the case, then beware that you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth." In other words, we look at our bank account and we think, oh, look at all of the money that we have because of this, because of this we've done or that we've done or whatever that might be. Most of us beware of that. That's the deceitfulness of riches, forgetting that it is God that has given to us everything that we have. It is God the Lord who has given to us the ability even to get wealth. The deceitfulness of riches begins to think that I can get this, that my ingenuity can earn this money, that my entrepreneurial skill can build this business and bring in this money.

That's the deceitfulness of riches. The deceitfulness of riches also is in the fact that it can lead us to trust in them. To forget that our help, our security, our preservation is in the Lord and not in money. Money can fail. Money can take wings and fly away.

It can disappear quickly like Job found out. It can disappear in a day. The stock market can crash as many investors have found it and half their wealth evaporates. And if they're leveraged up and in debt, then the other half goes too. Because they can't service the debt.

So riches can lead us to trust in them. And the Bible calls them uncertain riches. And that's another deceitfulness of riches. We begin to put our confidence in them. We think, well, I've got this money, and we begin to look to it for our security, for our help, and not recognize it.

The Lord is the one that gave us the power to get it and the Lord is the one that preserves it to us and it's the Lord who is our strength. We may think that if we don't have money then we won't be able to do anything. And the testimony of scriptures and of many, many people since is that what the Lord calls us to do, He will give us the money to do as well. Great riches and one more aspect of the deceitfulness of riches is that it can lead to carelessness in stewardship. When we have plenty and a great wealth then we might see little need or no need, less need to be careful with how we use the wealth and the resources that God has given us.

We become, well that's just a dollar, and not bother to care about how it gets spent or not worry about it being wasted. Whereas when we have a small amount of money we might be more careful in how we use it. So the deceitfulness of riches can lead us to poor stewardship and to a lack of thankfulness and a lack of care about where it all goes and what we're using it for. So the seatfulness of riches can choke out the good seed. The last thing Jesus mentions as something that can choke out the good seed is the pleasures of life.

The pleasures of life. Pleasures of life are an anesthetic that dull our spiritual senses, that dull our spiritual love of our Savior, our love of the truth, our love of His Kingdom. The pleasures of life are like a dessert that is eaten before the meal that satiate us and cause us to desire no further food, no hunger for the Word of God. That's why in any culture that falls under the thumb of a tyrant, there is this necessity for entertainment, necessity for pleasure. It dulls the senses of people.

And if you look at history, you see that there was no real equivalent of Hollywood in most people's lives before the 20th century. There really wasn't any aspect of sports much before the 20th century. And there wasn't the Olympics much before the 20th century. The Olympics had been quit millennia ago. And it was only in the 20th century with the revival of hedonism and paganism and the lust of the deceitfulness of riches and the pleasures of life, that we see a resurrection of the Olympics.

That we see this whole blossoming of a whole industry of entertainment that just never existed before. There were plays and other, there were games and things like that, but not the professional entertainment that we see today. This is something that was more like the Roman Empire, with their Colosseum, and the gladiator games and the other sports that were there for the entertainment of the people. These pleasures of life are an anesthetic. They dull our spiritual senses.

They make us not hunger like we ought for the Word of God. They curb our appetite and our desire for God's Word and His truth and for communion and fellowship with Him. Because if John said, don't love the world or the things that are in the world, because if we love the world, the love of the Father isn't in Him. We can't have a love and a satisfaction with all of those pleasures and still have a love for the Father. Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, The love of the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. The world is passing away and the lust of it, but He who does the will of God abides forever. The pleasures of life, the pleasures of life choke out, Drown out the good seed of the Word of God. Remember Lot's wife.

Remember Lot's wife. Lot's wife, remember Lot's wife, she looked back at the pleasures of her life in Sodom, and she was unwilling to flee those pleasures. They had completely drowned out. They had completely choked out the good seed in her life, the Word of God. The last thing Jesus says about this heart is that fruit starts to grow, but it doesn't reach maturity.

See, the other hearts, there is no mention of any kind of fruit. But this heart, Fruit starts to grow, but because of the thorns, they don't bear any fruit to maturity. The fruit is unripe, it's deformed, it's defective, It's diseased. They don't bring good fruit to maturity. It's immature fruit.

The lusting heart starts to bear fruit, but it's stunted. There are many good intentions. There are many good starts. So I'm going to do better this year. There are many great New Year's resolutions, but they're forgotten within weeks.

And so there's never bringing to maturity, There's never bringing fruit to maturity. So three things I would remind us. One we need to prepare our hearts to receive the Word. The thorns are there. The seed that is sown falls among the thorns Because the soil has not been prepared.

The weeds have not been uprooted, cut back. We have to prepare our heart. We have to be able to set aside the cares of this world. And that's a conscious effort every day to pull up those thorns, to set aside the cares of this world, to not be deceived by riches, or have our appetite curbed by the pleasures of this world. Those are daily ongoing tasks, duties, work that we as the Lord's people need to do.

Set aside the cares of this world. Prepare our hearts to receive the Word. Seek first the Kingdom of God. We need to prepare a time. If we're not actively defending that time, if we're not making that time a priority, then the cares of this world and the pleasures of life will just encroach upon it, and encroach upon it until it completely extinguishes the seed of the Word of God.

We need secondly to remove the weeds that grow up after the Word is received. The weeds that come back, the thorns that grow. If the weeds have grown up in your life, if they have choked the Word of God out, that doesn't mean there is no point in continuing to fight the weeds. Going to fight the weeds. God can restore even what the locusts have destroyed.

God is able to enable you to remove those weeds and to begin again. That doesn't mean removing all pleasures. Doesn't mean going out and living in the wilderness or living on a pole as some people did in times of church history. It means seeking first the Kingdom of God, making that the first priority in our day, the first priority in our life. The third thing I would say is that when we are removing the thorns we need to remember to get the root.

When we are removing the thorns we need to remember to pull them up by the root. And what do I mean by that? The root is the desire. Desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown brings forth death. The root of these weeds is the desire.

See, it's the battle between the conscience and the will. The conscience is the gatekeeper. It says, don't do that. Tells our will, don't do that. That's wrong.

That's the Holy Spirit that brings that conviction. But in a battle between the conscience and the will, the will is what we desire to do. In the battle between the conscience and the will, the conscience will always lose in the long run. When we are pulling up the weeds, we have to remove the desire. We can't just be content with saying, well, I didn't do that thing I was tempted to do.

We can't say, well, yes, I did have the Word of God today. We need to look at the desire. What was our desire? And we need to pull up the root, the thorn by the root is to attack that desire and say, why am I even desiring this? That's a wrong desire to have.

And we need to address our will. We need to pray that the Lord would sanctify our will, our desires. Because if we don't, eventually the conscience will always lose. And we'll always find ourselves falling again and again. Victory comes when the thorn is uprooted, the whole taproot out of the ground, when the very desire of our will is addressed and our desires are conformed to the Word of God.

If we're going to be victorious over sin, that's where we need to deal with it. Our will needs sanctified. Otherwise, nothing will ever get well. This then is the lusting heart. May the Lord give us His grace to prepare our hearts to pull up these weeds and to pull them up by their roots.

This is His promise by the power of the Holy Spirit who has given to us. Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Holy Spirit that gives to us this power to mortify our flesh and our sinful and our sins and To follow you and Lord we do not want to do this in our own flesh. We cannot For we will fail every time Father we Need your power. We need your spirit It is the fruit of Your Spirit that we desire love and joy and peace and patience and gentleness and kindness and faith. This is the fruit of your Holy Spirit.

And we ask, Lord, that you give us perseverance to remove the thorns, the pleasures of life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the cares of this world that would keep us from bearing these fruits to maturity. You Lord are the author and the finisher of our faith. And so we ask for your strength to run this race with patient endurance. And we ask, Lord, for your blessing that you would keep us from stumbling. We walk by faith and not by sight.

And we live and move and have our being by the word of your power. And we are sanctified by your grace, by your work of grace. And so Lord we look to You again this morning, thankful for that work in us, and putting our hope in You, and waiting eagerly for our redemption, for the redemption of our bodies, for the redemption and sanctification of our wills, so that we love what you love and hate what you hate. So that we not only walk in the light, but desire that above all else. We ask all of this in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.