It's Too Easy to Become a Tool of the Devil

In a recent sermon on how families profit from sermons, Dr. Beeke was working from the parable of the soils in Luke 8. Many of us have just been through that parable in the M'Cheyne readings in Mark 4. One of the points that he makes is how hard Satan works to distract us from the Word. I'd encourage you to listen to the whole thing. The following clip from 19:35 may whet your appetite:

"Remember children, Satan will oppose your listening to God's word with might and main, knowing that if you truly hear it, and you truly bow under it, and you truly go out to live it, He will lose you. So Satan will do everything he can to try to disturb you before the sermon begins, to distract you during the sermon, and to dismiss the sermon from your mind as soon as it's finished. Oh, he loves it when you go right out into the vestibule and talk about the score of a ball game last week or something like that, some crazy thing like that, when you've just been in the presence of Almighty God and you've just heard a matter of life and death and you shake it off like that hearer who just cast it away as soon as the seed was sown." (emphasis mine)

That bit about the conversations after worship struck me. Consider Jesus's own explanation of the parable (nearly identical in all parallels): "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." (Luke 8:11–12)

It's been some time since we emphasized having Lord's-Day-appropriate conversations, but I had never quite thought of it from the angle of the parable of the soils. When we hear the Word, Satan labors to snatch those thoughts right away from us. But if we immediately distract each other with whatever's new out in the world, he doesn't have to labor so much, does he? From Jesus's own explanation of the parable, that would make us tools of the devil.

That's sobering in both directions, isn't it? Both that we might be tools of the devil, and that someone who seems quite friendly could actually be acting as an enemy to our soul in the moment.

One of my great joys, in recent Lord's Days, has been to hear snippets of conversations in which so many are being friends to one-another's souls. What a glad privilege it is to be used by the Lord, to help the Word take root and bear fruit! But it's so easy to become a tool of the devil. The Lord give us grace to tremble at His Word (cf. Isa 66:2).