|
To listen click here
To save for later, right click and ‘Save as…’
Mark 4:1-34
1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered round
him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake,
while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. 2
He taught them many things by parables
The crowds have been
growing and growing in Mark’s Gospel.
Here is this Man Jesus who walks around planet earth like He owns
the place. And they flock to Him
from everywhere.
Imagine the crush here
by the lake. Jesus gets into a
boat to give himself some distance from the crowd so He can project His
voice wider and teach them. And
through Mark’s account, we are there in the crowd. Can you picture the scene?
Who’s in the crowd
with us? Well previously in Mark we’ve
met all the kinds of people who would be in this crowd. The 12 disciples are there. Around them, a wider group of devoted
followers. Quite possible members
of his family are there from the end of chapter 3. There are many who
have heard of Jesus’ miracles and want to see more. And of course there are the religious
authorities crossing their arms on the outskirts, figuring out ways to
kill the LORD.
That’s the crowd. Different kinds of people with
different kinds of reactions to Jesus.
So Jesus teaches a
parable from verse 3 to verse 20.
And it’s all about different reactions. Verse 3 – a farmer went out to sow his seed. The farmer has one kind of seed – but
there are four different soil types.
SLIDE
And each soil type
receives the seed differently.
And Jesus says, the way they receive the seed will determine their
success when it comes to the day of harvest. If a soil does not receive the seed or only shallowly or if
it receives the seed and a whole lot of competing weeds and thorns –
there will be failure on the day of harvest. If a soil receives the seed deeply and enduringly there
will be an incredible crop on the day of harvest.
And from verse 13,
Jesus explains the parable. The
seed is His word and the four soils are four different reactions to His
word. Some are like verse 15:
15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As
soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown
in them.
Last week Emma and I
were driving past a field where the farmer was sowing seed on a big
tractor. And behind the tractor
must have been a few dozen birds eating up the seed. I was shaking my fist at the birds –
“evil, demonic birds” I yelled out.
Emma said ‘keep your eyes on the road.’ But that’s what happens, sow the seed and immediately the
birds come. And Satan is like
that. Right now. Right now – he is at work snatching
away the word from hearers that aren’t receiving it. Jesus’ word does not forever remain on
the table as an option. If we don’t
receive it, it’s snatched away.
Because Satan is active.
He flocks to where the word is taught. He’s been very busy today all over the world, doing what
he’s done from the very beginning.
Remember in the garden, his first line to Eve is ‘Did God really
say?’. He has directed his
energies to doubting and devouring the word. That tells you what Satan thinks of the word doesn’t
it? Tactic number one of the
enemy is – disrupt, doubt, devour the word. That shows you how powerful
the word is – Satan goes after the word with a vengeance because he knows
how powerful it is. But those who
listen to his lies rather than the word of Christ have that word snatched
away.
Of course in the crowd
listening to Jesus were the religious establishment who were completely
closed to Jesus. And Jesus is
telling them – you’re not men of God, you’re Satan’s favourite feeding
place. That’s one reaction to
Jesus.
And what I’m going to
do with each soil type is give a brief space for us to prayerfully
consider where we stand. So let
me press pause and say: Look at verse 15 – a hard, uninviting soil. The word just lies on the top and is
snatched away. How is your heart
towards the word of Jesus this evening.
Are you ready to welcome the word, are you open to it – open to
how it could challenge and change you, or are you closed. A moment to pray to Jesus that He
would open our hearts wide…
Then v16 show us
another kind of reaction:
16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once
receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last
only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word,
they quickly fall away.
Have you seen this
happen? I’ve seen it many, many
times it is the most heartbreaking thing in the world. Someone hears the word of Jesus and
immediately receives it with joy.
It looks like a real conversion.
BUT – v17 – since they have no root, they last only a short time.
Then there’s the scariest word of v17: WHEN trouble or persecution comes
because of the word, they quickly fall away. WHEN, not if. Their
initial enthusiasm withers on the vine WHEN trouble comes because of
Jesus.
In the crowd there are
many people who look very keen to follow Jesus. People would commonly come up to Jesus and say “I’ll follow
you wherever you go.” (e.g. Luke 9:57)
And Jesus’ general response is to say ‘Really? Will you?’ Because WHEN trouble or persecution comes, that is the test
of whether the word has taken root in your life or whether you’re just
carried away by a feeling of religious enthusiasm.
Let’s press pause
again and let’s look at v17. Are
we prepared for the WHEN of v17?
Will we cry out to Jesus that He would give us strong roots so
that we endure. Let’s consider
that before the Lord now…
Then v18 shows us
another reaction:
18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19
but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires
for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.
This is the kind of
person who says yes to Jesus but they also say yes to other things that
compete with Jesus in their hearts.
The word of Jesus goes into their life – but so does a lot of junk
that chokes the power of the word.
What is this junk? What
are the thorns? Are the thorns
gross sins that we should prune out of our lives? Are they grossly immoral things that
we need to be vigilant against.
No the thorns are very common and absolutely insidious. Verse 19 says the thorns that choke
you are: the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the
desires for other things.
He’s not talking about
gross sins. Jesus is talking
about worry, wealth and wanting.
And to be honest the whole world RUNS on worry, wealth and
wanting. In fact most of the
world runs on those three things all at once.
What things are you
tempted to worry about daily? How
are you tempted to trust in wealth?
What captures your heart, your dreams, your desires? Those things are thorns. And it is impossible for the word to
be fruitful AND for you to nurture these things. Is the Holy Spirit convicting you of
worry or wealth or wanting that is taking you away from Jesus. Well as we press pause, let’s deal
with those things before Jesus right now. Confess them and ask Him to set our hearts on Him alone.
Well finally, v20
shows us the right reaction to Jesus:
20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and
produce a crop--thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was
sown."
That is an incredible yield. That’s a return on your investment of
3000, 6000 or 10000% Now I don’t
care if that yield comes in a year or over a lifetime – that is
incredible fruitfulness.
Supernatural fruitfulness.
And Jesus is saying those who hear the word and accept it WILL be
unbelievable transformed by it.
The word for “accepting” the word here is a word elsewhere
translated as “welcoming.” Jesus
wants us to welcome His word the way you’d welcome a friend who’s come to
visit – make them right at home.
And when we do that with His word we WILL become incredibly
fruitful Christians.
Again, let’s press pause and let’s spend a
moment before the Lord welcoming His word and asking Him to make us
fruitful by it…
Well that’s the parable of the sower – four
reactions to the word. And Jesus
is urging us – don’t be closed to the word, don’t get carried away by
emotionalism, be rooted in the word, don’t feed the thorns of worry,
wealth or wanting but hear and welcome His word. His word is powerful to create
incredible fruitfulness in your life.
But maybe you think I’ve skipped over some
important verses. You’d be
right. Let’s go back to verses
10-12. Read with me:
10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about
the parables. 11 He told them, "The secret of the kingdom
of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is
said in parables 12 so that, "`they may be ever seeing
but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise
they might turn and be forgiven!'"
In the parable there
were four reactions to Him. But
here Jesus says ultimately there are only two positions to be in: you’re
either an insider or an outsider.
The insiders are in v10 – there’s the 12 and – notice! – the
others around Jesus. It’s not
just the twelve disciples but anyone who presses in to know more – they
are an insider and they are given the interpretation of these things. But there are those on the outside and
in v12, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6 and says, there have always been
outsiders to the kingdom who think they can understand the kingdom
without coming to Him. Jesus
assures us "`they may be ever seeing but never
perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they
might turn and be forgiven!'"
Jesus is speaking
about the person who hears His word and thinks they can understand it
under their own steam. Jesus says
you can’t do it. His word doesn’t
work like that. You can’t stay at
arms length from Jesus and expect to understand Him. You have to come to Jesus, you have to
press forwards and ask, you have to become an insider if you’re ever
going to understand Jesus.
And this gives us
another clue about how to hear the word.
We must trust Jesus if we’re going to understand His word. We must come to Him as we come to His
word – because you can’t understand the word without Him. The Pharisees (who I think Jesus is
particularly addressing in v12) were people who had memorized the first
five books of the bible and yet Jesus said they didn’t know the
bible. Because they never came to
Him. Our bible reading must bring
us to Jesus or else we will remain an outsider that’s absolutely key.
I think Jesus put this
issue brilliantly in John 15.
SLIDE
Here he promises great
fruitfulness for the believer and He gives this condition in v7:
If you remain in Me
and my words remain in You.
More literally you
could say
SLIDE
If you make your home
in Me and my words make their home in You
That’s how we bear
fruit. Be the ultimate insider –
be IN Christ. Trust Him, make
your home in Him. And may His
words make their home in You – then you will be unbelievably fruitful.
Do you allow your
bible reading to draw you closer to Christ? Or do you read the bible simply because that’s what
Christians do? Jesus says the
bible is meant to draw you deeper in a relationship with Him. Make your home in Jesus and allow His
words to make their home in You.
Well that’s the first
section of Mark 4.
SLIDE
The word grows a
fruitful hearer
And we’ll see how the
parables Jesus tells in this chapter build on one another. First the word grows a fruitful
hearer. Next Jesus speaks about
passing it on to other. Then
Jesus speaks about the word growing a fruitful kingdom.
The word to us. Us to others and then through that,
the word to the world.
That’s Jesus’ strategy
for world domination. Fruitful
believers who welcome the word, pass it on and see how the kingdom grows.
Let’s look at this
next section from v21-25:
Here Jesus gives us
two simple pictures to consider
A lamp that shines and
then generosity
And the point of both
is that – what you have is meant to be shared. Light is meant to shine
and in just the same way, whatever Jesus gives you, you’re meant to give
on. Given the context, these
words a primarily applicable to how we treat Jesus’ word.
So how do we treat
it? First we welcome it into our
own lives, then we offer it to others.
And Jesus says, it’s completely counter-intuitive but it’s true,
v24: “with the measure you use it will be measured to you – and even
more.” The more you give the word
to others, the more understanding you will get yourself.
And that’s true isn’t
it? When you bring the word of
Jesus to others, whether it’s in Sunday Gang or in So Groups or just
telling your friends about Him – you’re the one who gets the most
understanding from it.
Paul says this in
Philemon verse 6:
SLIDE
I pray that you may be
active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of
every good thing we have in Christ.
When it comes to
sharing your faith – the more you give, the more you get. So Jesus says – let your light
shine. Give it all away.
Do you want to
grow? Hear the word, welcome it,
and give it away.
And if Jesus’
followers really get hold of this, what will happen? Well that’s the last section
SLIDE
Verses 26-34. We see the growing seed that comes up
all by itself and then the mustard seed that starts so small and grows to
fill the whole world.
Jesus invites us to
have big faith in the power of the word.
This word has a life
of its own – power of its own.
Look from v27:
27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and
grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil
produces corn--first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain in the
ear. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to
it, because the harvest has come."
And what kind of
harvest comes. A gargantuan
harvest – that’s the point of the mustard seed parable.
Verse 31: 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in
the ground. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the
largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of
the air can perch in its shade."
This is the power of
the word as it is scattered abroad.
It grows a kingdom that embraces the whole world.
Jesus says this in
Mark 4 and then a few years later after He dies, rises and commissions
the church to reach the ends of the earth, the book of Acts shows how the
word spread. It’s fascinating to
see the language used.
SLIDE
Acts 6:7: And the word of God continued to increase
Acts 12:24: But
the word of God increased and multiplied.
Acts 13:49: The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.
Acts 19:20: In this way the word of the Lord spread widely
and grew in power.
You’d expect it to say
the ‘church’ grew. But no – the
Word grew. The Word of Jesus has
a power and a life that is ever expanding. This word grows out to embrace the whole world.
Martin Luther was a
man who really understood the power of the word. He was once talking about how he
challenged the whole medieval church and their false beliefs, he turned
the world upsidedown like few others ever have. This is how he did it:
SLIDE
“I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's
Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer
with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the
papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I
did nothing; the Word did everything.”
So do we see why the
seed is such a good picture for the word?
Let me just tease out
why the word of Jesus is like a seed.
SEEDS – weak but powerful, internal but outgoing, gradual but multiplying
Seeds look very weak,
but actually they are very powerful.
This weak I
heard the story of a man from the middle ages who was so terrified of
meeting Jesus at the judgement that he commanded a giant marble slab to
be put over his grave. So that when
everyone else was resurrected, he would stay down. He thought that this marble slab would
prove an immovable object. Well
before the burial was complete and the slab was laid, an acorn fell into
the grave. Over the years, a great tree grew and split the slab in two.
You think –
well what chance does a little acorn have against a giant marble
slab. No contest, the acorn
wins. It looks so weak but it is
more powerful than a team of horses.
Weak but powerful.
Just like
the Word. You say a few words
about Jesus and eternities are changed.
You speak truth into another person’s life and for good or for ill
you can have a life-changing affect on that person. The word of Jesus is like Jesus
Himself.
Jesus looks
very weak to the world – strung up on a cross. But Jesus says in John 12 – He Himself is like a seed who
goes down into the ground looking very weak. But He comes back up with all the power in the world. Jesus is like a seed and His word is
like a seed – get scattering because it has power to turn the world
upside down.
Secondly –
it’s internal but outgoing. It’s
interesting that Jesus doesn’t here tell the story of The Brick Supplier
who delivers a pile of bricks to four different builders. That would be a very different
parable. Some builders would try
very hard and build very high and some wouldn’t. But if it’s about seed sown in soil –
how is the soil going to grow the seed.
How do you TRY to grow?
Well, it’s organic, it happens by the power of the seed itself.
And that’s
the thing about the word. Right
now, these words are being planted into you. And unless you’re closed and Satan is snatching them away,
this word is at work in you. It’s
internal but it will also be outgoing.
Down the track this word will have an effect.
I was talking to someone this week who had something go wrong with
him and he was in more pain than
he’d ever felt in his life. Yet
in the midst of chronic pain these words came to him from 2 Corinthians
12: “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in
weakness”. Where did that come
from? It came from the word that
had taken root deep in his life.
And it was sprouting up to comfort him when he really needed
it. The word is internal but it’s
outgoing.
Finally it’s gradual
but multiplying. Imagine the
sower goes back to the field the very next day. What would he find?
He’d find that apparently none of the soils were productive. And in fact if he came back too soon
he’d probably find that the rocky soil was the most productive of
all. The seed takes time. And so does the word.
If you want a quick
fix for your life, then try some other way of changing. But if you want deep-rooted lasting
change, then plant the word in your heart and in time it will produce a
bumper crop.
That is the
promise. 30, 60 or a hundred
times! Do you believe that you
could so be transformed by the word that someone would say – this is a
work of God. Jesus says that’s
exactly what the word does – in your life first and through you, in the whole
world.
So as I close: How do
we get this word deep into our hearts?
Let’s think about one
verse from Colossians. Colossians
3:16
SLIDE
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish
one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual
songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
Do it. Pick it up and read. If it’s been a while – turn to your
favourite passages
Get some bible notes if
you like but make sure they get you into the bible and not just into heir
notes.
Goto Biblegateway,
have it read to you or download the bible on iTunes
Do it with others:
Speak the word to each
other. If you’ve been reading
something in the bible and it’s spoken to you. Whatever that is – the Lord gave you that not only for your
own growth but for the growth of others.
So sometimes I’ll say to someone ‘I don’t know the ins and outs of
your situation, but I do know that Jesus is with us – and He is the same
Jesus who… and then I’ll mention some event from the bible. He is the same Jesus who received the
leper in all his uncleanness. Or
He’s the same Jesus who calmed the storm. Or He’s the same Jesus who said ‘Come to me and I’ll give
you rest.’ Or whatever. Can we begin speaking the word to one
another – that’s a key way of getting the word in deep to our hearts.
Or why not be
pro-active about it. Why not pair
up with a friend (or two). Pick a
book – could be 1 Corinthians, could be 1 Chronicles. But commit to read a decent chunk of
the book each day. Read it with a
pencil. Underline passages that speak to you. Meet up once a week and just read your underlined bits to
them for ten minutes – they read theirs to you for ten minutes. Then pray for ten minutes. How about that for letting the word of
Christ dwell in you richly?
Of course our growth
groups are major ways of having the word go into us. They’re called growth groups for a
reason. Pray for your growth
group. Pray for your receiving
and the rest of the group’s receiving of the word there. There is fantastic potential to grow
in these groups. If you’re not in
one – let me know, we’ll put you in one.
And then of course
church. Do you come to church
expectantly, prayerfully – looking for the word of Christ to dwell in you
richly. That’s a massive part of
why we gather.
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish
one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual
songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
Believe that
supernatural change is possible because it is as we welcome the Word of
Jesus.
20
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or
imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to
him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all
generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21)
Back to sermons...
|
