Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 8:16-21, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 21
- Date: Sunday, June 22, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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A Code That Required Understanding
This is a group of men who served as soldiers in another war.
These men fought for the United States in World War I.
All the men in this photo had ties to Oklahoma. I believe every one of them was from Oklahoma, and they were members, as I am, of the Choctaw Nation. And these men, pictured here, were instrumental in several battles toward the end of the war.
They and others like them were instrumental in several battles near the end of the war, when things were not going well for the American forces. They were pinned down on the Western Front. You have probably seen films or documentaries depicting the soldiers dug into trenches in France during a stalemate with the Germans.
One day, a commander realized that two of his soldiers were speaking Choctaw to each other. And he had no idea what in the world they were saying. That gave him an idea.
He thought, if I don’t know what they’re saying, the Germans don’t know what they’re saying. Because almost no one in Germany spoke Choctaw. He realized that his unit included eight Choctaw soldiers.
And they began to put them on the radio to send messages back and forth. You are probably familiar with the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, but these Choctaw soldiers had done it first. Eventually, by the time the war ended, there were 18 of these men who were trained to transmit messages back and forth on open radio.
And the Germans could hear it, but they couldn’t understand it. As time went on, the code became more sophisticated. Even other Choctaw speakers who had not been trained might understand the words but not their intended military meaning. They used descriptive phrases for modern military equipment. For example, there was no traditional Choctaw word for machine gun. They called it “little guns shoot fast.” They called a grenade toli, meaning “stone.” In World War II, the method was used again. Because there was no traditional word for tank, code talkers called it luksi, meaning “turtle.”
They were credited with helping turn the tide of several battles because they could communicate in a way the Germans could not understand. The code worked because it was secret, but it was useful only because someone on the other end of the radio could understand it. Sometimes information must be hidden for a purpose, but it makes no difference unless someone is given understanding.
If they had simply shouted Choctaw words into the radio, it would have accomplished nothing without someone on the other end who understood. That provides an illustration of how the Word of God works. That’s what we’re going to look at today in the parable of the lamp in Luke chapter 8.
Jesus talked about how the Word was hidden, but it’s not hidden forever. It’s not hidden from everybody. The Word is given so that He may reveal its meaning and give understanding.
Hidden truth benefits no one unless God grants understanding. Somebody has to be able to understand it. That’s what we’re going to look at today.
Luke 8:16–21 records:
Verse 16 says, now no one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So take care how you listen, for whoever has to him more shall be given, and whoever does not have even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.
And his mother and brothers came to him, and they were unable to get to him because of the crowd. And it was reported to him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. But he answered and said to them, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.
Last week, Dr. Hand was with us speaking about missions. It was the week before that we looked at the parable of the sower, which is the thing that comes right before this in Luke chapter 8.
The parable of the sower concealed its meaning from hardened unbelievers. Jesus was preaching to a mixed crowd—some who trusted Him and others who were skeptical or undecided—and He wanted His disciples to understand that some hearts are receptive to the Word of God while others are not. At a particular moment, a heart may not be receptive to the Word of God.
He wanted His followers to understand this, so He told it in a parable that hardened unbelievers in the crowd would not necessarily understand yet. But to these believers, his disciples, he said it was granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, and that’s why he explained the parable to them. Here He goes a step further, moving from seed to light to show that He does not intend His Word to remain a mystery to His people.
That’s the one thing that probably the most important thing I want you to take out of this message today is that if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, he does not intend his word to be a mystery to you. Now, that doesn’t mean we understand everything all at once. Coming to Christ does not mean that everything is instantly downloaded into our minds.
We’re never going to understand everything on this side of eternity. But neither should we remain unable to make sense of His Word. Okay, especially as we go on and we grow in Christ, we should be able to understand His Word.
That’s His will for us. There are several things He tells us through this parable of the lamp. As He tells this short story about what happens when you light a lamp, what it’s there for and what it’s not there for.
God Intends His People to Understand
The first thing he tells us that he intends for us to understand is that God speaks intending that his people would understand. He speaks intending that his people would understand. We see this in verses 16 and 17.
It says, no one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container or puts it under a bed. Putting the lamp under a container would block the light. Putting it under a bed does not mean sliding it beneath a modern bedframe.
That would be a good way to set a mattress on fire. Back in their day, they had mats they slept on. The picture is closer to throwing a blanket over a flame to extinguish it.
Nobody’s going to put their bed over this lamp so that as soon as they’ve lit it, they extinguish it. Jesus is saying that such behavior would be senseless, especially in a world like they lived in where lamps were a little bit pricey. I won’t say they were a luxury item, but you were going to be very careful with your lamp and you’re going to use it when you needed it because there was a cost involved in that lamp.
He says, nobody lights it just so they can hide the light or extinguish it altogether. No one would go to that trouble and expense merely to extinguish the lamp immediately. He says instead there in verse 16, but he puts it on a lamp stand so that those who come in may see the light.
So instead of taking it and hiding the light or extinguishing the light, as soon as you’ve gone to all the trouble and the expense of lighting the thing, he said the lamp is lit so that it could be put in a prominent place. This was done so that an entire space could be filled with light and everybody could receive the benefit of that light. We’ve had enough power outages between tornadoes and just the fact that my electric company decided to redo all of the lines in our neighborhood right after we bought the house, so we spent about two years with them just shutting the power off whenever.
One time they notified us in advance. That was nice. But the rest of the time we just had random outages.
And so we kind of learned to keep some LED lanterns and things handy. A good LED lantern can produce a great deal of light. But you don’t necessarily set it in the floor.
We would stack something in the middle of the room and place the lantern high enough to illuminate the entire space. That’s the purpose of having a light like that, having a lantern. And so Jesus is saying the purpose of having the light, the purpose of having the lamp, is so that the light can shine on everything, so that things can be seen.
Otherwise, you’re just stumbling around in the dark. Now, it’s important that we stop here and understand what he’s talking about and what he’s not talking about. I struggled while preparing this message because at first I misunderstood the point.
I thought I understood what Jesus meant, but I was wrong. Apart from the Holy Spirit, context is the most important key to understanding God’s Word.
And so I’m looking at this, and I’m thinking of what Jesus said elsewhere about letting your light shine before men. And I’m thinking this has to do with our good works. He’s telling us to put our lamp on a stand.
I also found commentaries that interpreted the lamp as our own witness. This is talking about our performance. This is talking about our good works.
This is talking about us shining the light. In this context, however, that is not His point. When you go back and look at what he had just said earlier in Luke chapter 8, he’s talking about how the truth would be hidden and then the truth would be revealed.
And then he comes over and he talks about the lamp and he’s talking about the light being hidden and it’s not supposed to be that way. The light is there to be revealed. I realized He is talking about His Word.
He’s talking about his truth. That’s why these two stories are together. This passage is not primarily about what we are supposed to do, though it still has implications for us.
It is about what He does. This is about His promise to us that He has not given us the light of His Word just for Him to put it under a bushel, just for Him to extinguish it. We are not given the Word merely to remain puzzled by it.
He speaks to us with the intent that we would be able to understand, that He’s going to give understanding to His people. He’s sharing the truth in parables. And he did this throughout his ministry.
There were times when not everyone needed to know everything immediately. Someone might say that this sounds elitist or discriminatory. He didn’t want everybody to know the truth.
If everybody understood everything that Jesus was teaching, they might have taken him out and tried to stone him. In fact, they attempted to do so on more than one occasion. As we read the Gospels, and especially as we read them in order.
Jesus was carefully following the Father’s purpose, which was not for Him to be stoned in Galilee. Nor was it for Him to be forced into power as an earthly king. And if Jesus, I’ll just say it this way, if everybody knew everything, there was a very real danger of one of those two things happening.
In obedience to the Father’s will, Jesus revealed enough for His disciples to understand His mission without provoking the crowds to crown Him or kill Him before the appointed time. Jesus’ destination was neither assassination nor a throne in Galilee. It was a cross outside Jerusalem.
That is why Jesus kept some truth close until the proper time. That’s why sometimes these things, these truths had to be hidden. But to them, to his people, he gave the light that was needed to see the meaning of what he said. That’s why he tells us in verse 17, for nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.
He’s telling us here that God wants his people to understand his word. I give my children instructions because I want them to understand and obey.
Sometimes I am not as clear as I should be. My wife will tell you that one of my weaknesses is being too indirect, telling the kids, you know, it might be a good idea if you went and, you know, cleaned up all your toys before I try to mow the yard, and she’ll say, why don’t you just tell them to get out and do it? I thought I had given a clear instruction, but they did not detect the subtlety.
Okay, get out there and do it. Now, I tell them, I give them instructions because I want them to understand what I’m asking them to do. I go through a drive-through.
I give instructions. We all do. That sounds rude to say I give instructions, but we tell them what we want because we want them to understand.
Apparently, “no cheese on the burger” can also be difficult to understand, but I digress. We give those instructions because we want people to understand.
God likewise speaks in order to be understood. We look at His Word like it’s a big, huge mystery. And again, there are things that are easier to understand and there are things that are more difficult to understand in His Word.
God did not give us His Word so that we would remain in perpetual confusion. He gave it to us so that we would understand. He wants us to understand.
He also expects us to work, study, and devote ourselves to it, but His purpose is that we understand. So understand that. When you come to your reading and study of the Bible, God is not against you in your quest to understand.
God is for you in your quest to understand because that’s what he put it there for. But there’s a second point here in verse 18. God speaks intending that his people would listen.
God Intends His People to Listen
The emphasis here is specifically on God’s people. Yes, God would like everyone to listen to what he says, but here we’re talking specifically about his people. God speaks intending that his people would listen.
In verse 18, Jesus gives a command to His disciples, the ones to whom He had granted understanding. Others in the crowd heard only stories about seeds and lamps without understanding their meaning. His disciples are the ones that he’s given the understanding to, and so he’s talking to them, and he gives a command, and he gives a warning here in verse 18 when he says, take care how you listen, okay?
The command here is that we must pay attention to how we approach His Word. When He says, “Take care,” He means that we must pay attention to how we approach His Word. Yes, it’s God’s intention for you to understand, but it’s not God’s intention just for you to understand so you can fill up your brain and move on and do nothing with it.
He says take care how you listen. Pay attention to how you approach His Word. And we can think about what that means, and that may apply differently to each of us, because we may each struggle in different ways with how we approach God’s Word.
Several questions help us consider how we approach God’s Word. Some questions that came to my mind, are we eager to hear His Word? Hearing His Word covers a great deal of territory.
Are you eager to sit down and read this and hear what God says? Are you eager to come to church and listen in the service and listen in Sunday school and take in what God’s Word says and the instruction? We must always compare any instruction we receive with God’s Word.
And if what I say or what any other teacher says doesn’t line up with God’s Word, ignore us and listen to God’s Word. But are we eager to hear His Word? Or do we approach it thinking, “This again?”
I’ve got to listen to this again. I’ve got to sit down and read my Bible again. Are we eager to hear what he has to say?
Do we treat his word seriously? By seriously, I do not mean somberly. Okay, let me turn off the lights and light the candles and put on my best black outfit and somber music, and now it’s time to read God’s Word.
That’s not what I mean by taking it seriously. But do we treat it like it’s the actual word of God? This is not a book of fairy tales and fables.
This is not a book invented by men. Now, the Bible does say that the Holy Spirit used men to write it, but it was very much inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is not a product of human imagination.
This is not something that becomes the Word of God. This is not something that contains the Word of God. Do we approach it like this is God’s Word to us?
God is speaking to us in and through this text. Do we listen to it and treat it accordingly?
Do we approach it saying, “I am going to this Book so that I can engage with the mind of God”? Do we take His Word seriously? Do we prepare ourselves to hear God’s Word?
Let me tell you, He talks about being given and being taken, and it’s talking about spiritual growth. We’ll get to that in a minute, and it deals with understanding. But if we come to God’s Word, whether it’s in our personal study, whether it’s listening to somebody preach or teach, and we get nothing out of it, that has a huge amount to do with how we’ve prepared to engage with God’s Word.
I know this from my own experience and from times when I have approached teaching with a bad attitude. I have walked into conferences thinking, “I have to listen to this man?”
There are some guys that are just boring. I try not to be one of those guys, but I may be at times. There are some people that bore me.
There are some people that just bug me. It’s not even that what they teach is heretical. There’s just something about them that bugs me. I love them in the Lord, but I do not necessarily want to listen to them for thirty minutes.
And if I walk in and I have that kind of attitude, guess what? I’m getting nothing. And I’m walking out of there saying, well, that was a bust. But that failure is mine if the speaker faithfully preached the Word.
But if I catch myself doing that and say, it’s not about him. It’s not about me. It’s about the word.
I’ll give you an example. Last year, I went to Falls Creek with the group from the church. I entered with a slight attitude.
I’m also not their target demographic. But walking into that, I am used to people watering down the message when they talk to teenagers. I assumed the messages would be little more than cotton-candy fluff.
This is, I’ve got to sit through a whole week of this. As the first message began, the Holy Spirit convicted me: “Stop that.” You’re going to get out of this what you expect to get out of this.
So I sat down and thought, “He may not preach the way I would, but let us listen.” Those were some of the best messages I have ever heard. I do not know what happened during any other week or year, but I know that my preparation to hear the Word had an enormous effect on what I received that week. do we believe his word when we hear it? Are we sitting there saying, maybe, maybe not, or do we believe it’s true because it’s His truth? He told, we saw two weeks ago in the parable of the sower, that if we don’t believe His Word, we’re not going to understand it.
Do we leave space for His Word to change us? Whether in personal study or public teaching, do we approach His Word saying, “That is interesting, but it does not apply to me”?
Or do we come saying, God, how do you want to change me today? That is one of the most dangerous questions we can ask, but also one of the best. God, how do you want to change me today? Do we leave space for his word to change us?
So there’s this command that we’re supposed to pay attention to how we’re approaching the word. Are we approaching it to actually listen? And there’s a warning that accompanies that.
The warning here in verse 18 is what happens based on how we listen. So he says, take care how you listen. The warning is this: “Whoever has, to him more shall be given.”
And whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has, shall be taken away. This is not referring to salvation. Nowhere in here is Jesus talking about salvation.
Jesus is speaking to His people about their understanding of the Word. So he says, take care how you listen, take care how you engage with my word because those who have, more is going to be given to them. Those who listen carefully, pay attention, and receive the Word will be given greater understanding.
You’re going to get more understanding. You’re going to get more spiritual growth. But if you’re sitting there saying, I can take this or leave it, I don’t care about this, I’m not worried about being changed by it, it’s going to go in one ear and out the other.
Even the spiritual understanding and maturity you think you possess will diminish. The less committed we are to God’s Word, the less we’re going to understand it and the less we’re going to grow in it.
It’s that simple. So if we intently pursue the Word of God, He’s going to grow our understanding and He’s going to grow us. But if we’re careless or we’re unconcerned about the Word of God, then what we do have is going to be taken away.
So whether we listen and how we listen to the Word of God has a direct impact on our spiritual condition and growth. To be clear, this is not merely an appeal to pay better attention on Sunday mornings. I’m talking about the way we engage with God’s Word every day.
Whether we read Scripture ourselves, hear preaching in the truck, or hear one of our children quote Scripture at home, how we engage with God’s Word, how we listen, and whether we listen has a direct impact on our spiritual condition and growth. So the question we need to ask ourselves is, what is it that keeps us from taking the word to heart like we should? Is there something that keeps you from taking the word to heart the way you should?
Has God made something clear in His Word while you respond, “No, I will not do that”? That doesn’t apply to me. You say, no, Lord, I’m not doing that.
Is there something that keeps you from taking the word to heart. Luke then places another story here that occurred earlier. This is not a contradiction or error.
It’s not an error. He doesn’t say this is the next thing that happens. Luke says and, not then.
But there’s a story that happened a little earlier that we read, and Luke puts it at the end of this because I think Luke is making the point that what Jesus did next illustrates his point. His mother and his brothers show up, and they want to see Jesus. And the people say, your mother and brothers are here.
And he says to them in verse 21, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it. God speaks intending that His people would obey. Luke is connecting these two stories so that we understand.
God wants us to understand his word. He wants us to listen to his word and take it to heart. And then he wants us to actually do what his word says.
Jesus connected closeness to Him with obedience. If we want to grow closer to Jesus, and if we want to become more like Him, it’s not just a matter of understanding. It’s not just a matter of knowing what the Word says.
It’s not just a matter of understanding how it fits together, and not just a matter of taking it to heart. It’s taking that next step and actually doing what it says. He gives us the understanding, and He calls us to listen so that we can obey, so that we can grow closer to Him.
The question I ask myself—and suggest that you ask yourself—is this: Are you aware of anything that His Word says that you’ve left undone? Now, all of us have something in His Word that we’ve left undone because we don’t have perfect understanding of His Word.
But is there something you’re aware of? Something that you’d say, how did you know? “How did you know I have been struggling while God has been telling me to do this and I have been resisting?”
Whatever that is, whatever that thing is God may have just brought to your mind, that is the next step of obedience you need to take. God has given us his word so that we would obey. Obedience to Jesus is how we live out our salvation, but it’s not how we get it.
Obedience Follows Salvation
Everything Jesus says in this passage is addressed to people who already believe and trust Him. The expectation is that if you are a believer, somebody who’s trusted in Jesus, that you will listen to him and obey him. But the way we become his people is by trusting Him in the first place.
Trusting the One Who Gives Light
And what we mean by trusting Him is that when He says that He’s God’s Son, that He’s Israel’s Messiah, that He’s mankind’s Savior, when He says those things, we believe it. When Jesus predicted His death on the cross for the sins of humanity and said He had come to seek and save the lost, we believe Him. When He predicted and accomplished His own resurrection as proof of who He was, we believe Him.
We believe Him. When he promises eternal life, when he promises forgiveness of sins, if we’ll simply believe in him, that we believe that. And so where this relationship with Jesus starts is not obedience.
It’s not try harder, do better. It’s understanding Jesus died to pay for your sins. All the times we’ve disobeyed God, they incurred a penalty, and Jesus died to pay that penalty so that we could be forgiven.
And he rose again to prove it, And he asks us to believe that and believe him and ask for that forgiveness. And we’ll have it. If you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Savior, it’s that simple.
Do not begin with, “I must do this. I must fix that. I must obey.”
Believe what Jesus said about himself and ask for that forgiveness.
