Luke 8:11 Use the Bible. I. God's Word is a portion of the food He has given to man to live by. It is the spiritual sustenance He has provided to support the spiritual part of us, the soul. For the soul, as well as the body, requires its fitting food. Both must be supported and nourished, if we wou... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:11 I. The seed is the Word of God. And thus we are taught (1) That it is not in the hearers themselves. It is no result of their reasoning; it is no creature of their imagination. It comes to them from without. (2) It possesses living, germinating power. The power is its own. It is not taken... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:13 I. As the Lord is evermore speaking to us, and we evermore hearing Him, so must the receiving the Word with joy be extended in its meaning to include all possible receptions of that which He says. And, thus extended, we may interpret the characteristic to mean, as applied to the class befo... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:14 I. With the class of hearers mentioned in this verse all is favourable, and all goes well at first. Hearers of this kind present not to the Word of God the inattentive ear, nor the hardened heart; they rejoice not with easy and shallow susceptibility over that which they have heard. They a... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:15 The hearers referred to in the text yield fruit, which none of the others did. In them, all pointed at failure; in these, all point at success. In them, even the bright colours of promise were dashed with sadness; in these, even the weakness of our common humanity is gilded with the comin... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:18 Notwithstanding the importance here attached to preaching, many who listen to sermons are really no better for it. Indeed, our Saviour more than intimates in the text that such may be the case, and hence His emphatic warning, "Take heed, therefore, how ye hear." Several classes of persons... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:24 I. There is much in that expression that "Christ rebuked the wind and the waves." You will miss a great part of the intention of the incident if you merely look upon it as a miracle of stilling a tempest. Why did Christ rebuke the elements? The word appears the language of one who either s... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:25 The question before us has in it a wild sublimity. The waves had just found their resting-place; the wind was gone back into its treasure-house; and our Saviour stood upon the calm, and seemed to say, "The fierce enemies have been and gone, but where is your faith?" I. Everybody has faith... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:35 I. Consider this Story of the Demoniac. A man who was wild and furious becomes calm and orderly. He sits at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. What has wrought this mighty change? Is it the announcement to him of some law which God has laid down for His creatures? Is it any... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:38 The Religious Use of Excited Feelings. I. All the passionate emotion, or fine sensibility, which ever man displayed, will never by itself make us change our ways, and do our duty. Impassioned thoughts, sublime imaginings, have no strength in them. They can no more make a man obey consiste... [ Continue Reading ]
Luke 8:45 Faith's Touch. Notice: I. What this woman did. "Jesus said, Who touched Me?" That more is meant here than the mere manual or external touch is evident, not only from the whole circumstances of the narrative, but from the explicit and emphatic testimony of our Lord Himself. He expressly... [ Continue Reading ]