FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Kingdom Keeps on Growing – Continued

From Last Lesson: The Jews of Israel expected the Day of the Lord would come at once, and God’s enemies would immediately be subjugated.

The story would end with God’s chosen king reigning over the world from Jerusalem and the Jews in their proper place as top nation. So they certainly were not comfortable with this picture of slow, almost invisible growth. The idea that when God’s kingdom arrived it would grow within an evil world, that the harvest would be long delayed, that God’s people would still need a lot of patience, that was totally unexpected. This, I am wholly convinced, is why Jesus spends so much time teaching them through the parables about the kingdom, using these images of peaceful, quiet, steady growth. As all these parables show, the kingdom does end up in triumph, in a successful harvest, but it doesn’t all happen in a matter of minutes.

The beginning of the kingdom was indeed like a single seed, tiny, apparently insignificant. It truly began as a small seed in Mary’s womb. It then transitions with Jesus appearing by Lake Galilee, preaching to the crowds and beginning to gather around Him a nucleus of followers. It continues as He sets His face to go up to the capital in Jerusalem, where He faces His own death. At that point it seems even to His followers that this tiny plant, this new kingdom, has been finished off before it has even begun. But a couple of days later Jesus has risen from death. A few weeks after that, He returns to His Father God’s side in heaven, but the plant continues to grow. Now at last His followers realize that Jesus’ death is actually the key to it all. Only after Jesus has died and planted in the earth and then has left the earthly scene, and the Holy Spirit has been given, does the kingdom really start to grow. Within days it is sending out shoots in all directions. In a few years it has branched out beyond Israel into the whole region and then far beyond. It’s the kingdom that goes on growing, even today.

God is growing His kingdom, Jesus is growing His church from among every nation on earth. You can go anywhere in the world and meet people who are part of this kingdom, people who love and follow the Lord Jesus. But the time for growth is limited, because the harvest is coming. Have you seen what a field of wheat looks like when the harvesters have finished with it? There is nothing left. Everything living has gone. The world we know is coming to an end. It may be sooner or later, we don’t know the exact time, but it will happen.

This parable gives a positive picture: a field of ripe grain, all safely gathered in. It’s a positive picture because it’s a picture of the kingdom, of people who are rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ. But the Bible gives us other pictures too, and they don’t make such cheerful reading. For people who are outside Christ, people who don’t know Him intimately, there is a harvest too, but a harvest of judgement and condemnation. Revelation 14:14-20 gives a vision of a double harvest. There is the happy picture of the grain in the field being gathered in, God’s people being brought home at last to Him. But coupled with that is the haunting picture of people being gathered in for judgement, thrown into the winepress of God’s wrath, crushed by God’s anger against the evil things they have done. The harvest is coming, and the only way to be ready is to be in Christ, to be part of His great, worldwide kingdom that is growing to fill the whole earth.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Kingdom Keeps on Growing – Continued

From Last Lesson: All this sowing and planting and rooting and growing has been for a purpose, because there is a harvest to come from it.

So, what is the point of this parable? Actually Jesus has already given us a clue to that when he explained the parable of the sower. In verse 14 we read, “The sower [farmer] sows the word.” This parable is simply about that word, the message of Jesus, taking root and growing in someone’s heart. As someone like you or me receives the message, a new life begins and grows. There is a new start, a new birth, when someone comes to know Jesus. Then the person grows. The growth seems to happen mysteriously; you can’t control it. If you have watched a new Christian grow and develop, you recognize the picture. We can encourage it. We can surround a young Christian with all the help and support we can, just as a gardener will feed and water a growing plant, but we can’t make the growth happen. That is a miracle, and miracles are always God’s department. Then, maybe long afterwards, comes the harvest. Grain plants are there for a reason. They are in a farmer’s field, and the farmer is coming back. The parable is about us, and the Lord, who, like the farmer, is coming back. The only question is, what will He find when He does?

Let’s move on to the second of these parables about the kingdom, the mustard seed (see Mark 4:30-32). It’s as though Jesus muses to Himself: “How can I show these people what my Father’s kingdom is really like?” He chooses a somewhat different picture this time; instead of a field of grain, where each plant stands for a single individual, in this case the one mustard plant stands for the whole kingdom. A single tiny seed is sown in the ground. The point here is not about scientific accuracy, so let’s not stumble over it; seeds do exist which are smaller than mustard seed, but Jewish tradition regarded the mustard seed as proverbially tiny. However, from such a tiny seed, see what happens as it grows! In this area, mustard plants can grow up to ten feet high, it “becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches,” as Jesus says, big enough “so that the birds of the air may nest” and hide in and shelter from the heat of the sun.

It’s a very short, simple parable. The basic point is the contrast between the tiny seed and the fully-grown shrub. Each of those birds that come to perch in the branches weighs thousands of times more than the original seed. This kingdom, whatever else it may be, is something that starts out tiny and ends up enormous, but it all takes time. That is the aspect that Jesus’ original hearers would not have appreciated.

The Jews of Israel in those days had very clear ideas about the kingdom of God, but their ideas were quite different from what Jesus is teaching here. If they had expected their Messiah to tell parables at all (which is unlikely), they would have expected Him to compare the kingdom to a hurricane which sweeps in suddenly and flattens everything in its path, or else to an invading army that sweeps through the land in no time at all, destroying all resistance and ending with the king enthroned. That is what they expected God to do! The Day of the Lord would come at once, and God’s enemies would immediately be subjugated.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Kingdom Keeps on Growing

In the remainder of this section (Mark 4:26-34), Jesus tells two more parables on the “people are plants” theme, and then Mark neatly closes the section on the parables by telling us that Jesus told many other parables besides. Mark has shared only a small selection. Jesus continues to speak in parables, and “spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it” holding out the opportunity for people to come and find out more, until they will listen no longer. The parables continue to divide the people Jesus is calling to Himself from those whose minds are closed to His message. So He tells these parables about God’s kingdom, and then He gives the full explanation to the disciples, His own inner group.

At this point we might wonder, ‘”If only the disciples got the explanation, how can we know the true meaning of the parables except in the rare cases where the explanation is actually recorded? How can you be sure,” you might ask, “that someone isn’t just reading in whatever they like into the story Jesus told?” This is a valid and a very good question. The answer is that, from where we stand now, we can see the big picture much more clearly than those crowds by Lake Galilee. Thanks to the inspiration and anointing of the Holy Spirit, we have the full record of Jesus’ life and death; we have the whole New Testament to give us the big picture of what Jesus came to do, and the themes we see in these parables are part of the story that runs through the whole Bible. These little stories are not the only place where the message is given. So we understand these stories just as we read any small part of the Bible, in the light of the whole book. That is why it is so important to read the whole Bible and not just cherry-pick our favorite passages!

Therefore, let’s look at these final parables. Notice one difference from the parable of the sower. Whereas that first parable was about the message of the kingdom and how it is received, Jesus opens each of these parables by saying explicitly that this is what God’s kingdom is like.

First there is the parable of the growing seed (see Mark 4:26-29). This parable, instead of describing different responses to the seed, zeroes in on the crop growing in the good ground and focuses on what goes on there. Once again, someone is out sowing seed and the seed begins to grow. In a parable we need not worry about every minor detail. The mention of night and day, sleeping and getting up, is just to put it in a familiar setting. The point is that time is passing. All through that time, this mysterious process of growth is going on. Of course, there are actions the farmer can take that help the seed to grow. He can water it; he can make sure it is fed with all the nutrients it needs to grow successfully. But he can’t make it grow. The basic miracle of growth is just that, it’s a miracle. A living seed has all that potential within it, “the earth yields crops by itself,” to it’s fulness. Finally it is ready for harvest. All this sowing and planting and rooting and growing has been for a purpose, because there is a harvest to come from it.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Purpose of the Parables – Continued

From Last Lesson: Jesus tells the parables to everyone. The opportunity is there for anyone to come and ask Him for more.

In fact this is what Mark 4:24-25 is about. You are responsible for what you get, but at the same time it is God who decides what you will receive. In our limited human minds we will always find it hard to hold these two together, they are like parallel lines that never seem to meet. But they are both true at the same time.

Now what does this story have to say to us in our day and age? First, the parable explains why so many people rejected Jesus’ message then and yet still do today. To die or to grow, reject or accept? Even when Jesus, the Son of God, walked the earth in person, the great majority of His hearers rejected His message, because most of them were not “good ground.” So it is not surprising that people today reject Jesus Christ in just the same way. It happened to Jesus; it happened to His first followers; and it will happen to us, when we tell people the same story.

Yet, on the other hand, and this is the second point, for those of us who know Jesus, this story should encourage us to keep sowing. We never know what kind of soil we shall find when we go out to sow. Sometimes we shall be very surprised; sometimes the response will be a wonderful surprise, and sometimes it may be a very nasty surprise. In fact we have no choice but to sow as widely and as indiscriminately as the farmer in the story. But success is in God’s hands, not ours. If you truly think about it, there is a fifth kind of soil which doesn’t feature in the parable . . . the soil that gets no seed at all. Whose fault is it if the soil never meets the seed? We need to sow the message widely and, just like any farmer, we long for a successful outcome.

Lastly, this passage holds a very serious warning for anyone who is rejecting Christ’s message. Tacked on to the end of Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the sower is the cryptic little saying about the lamp (Mark 4:21-23). This mini-parable has been interpreted in various ways, but in this context the lamp which is “brought” surely represents Jesus and His mission. The message may be hidden to begin with, hidden away in parables, hard to understand. But in the end, truth will win out. One day, everyone on earth will be confronted with the truth shining out as a bright light, a beacon. As Jesus spoke these words, very few people, a few dozen perhaps, had any real idea of who He was, and even they didn’t have the full picture. But, as the years have passed, the truth of Jesus Christ has spread throughout the world, and now hundreds of millions have seen His light. One day there will be no concealment, as everyone on earth will be forced to see it. However, when that day comes, it will be too late for those who have spent their lives rejecting Christ. God will hold each of us accountable for the response we give to His Son. Jesus says, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” He tells us, “Take heed what you hear.” In other words, consider carefully what you hear today.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Purpose of the Parables

You might be asking the question, why does Jesus use parables at all? Why doesn’t He just say, for instance, “Look, when I preach, people will react in these four different ways?” Why doesn’t He say what He means? Clearly, in spite of what we may have thought, the parable is not to make the message easy to understand. Our instinct, supported perhaps by what we were taught at Sunday school, is to think that the parables are intended as helpful illustrations, just as a preacher today will use illustrations to get his point across. The disciples come to our assistance here because they ask Jesus specifically what the parables are all about (see Mark 4:10-12).

Verse 12 is a quotation from Isaiah 6:9-10. Isaiah has just had an overwhelming vision of the Lord in the temple and he is being given his commission to bring God’s Word to the people. But the shock in that passage, and the shock here in Mark, is that, however faithful the prophet, however clear his message, the people are simply never going to respond. That has an application for anyone who is involved in gospel ministry. You can’t guarantee a response just by having the message right, or by being superbly gifted, or by working yourself to death; none of that creates an authentic response to the gospel.

However, back to the parables . . . we see from these verses that many people will not respond because that is God’s purpose. The parables are told, not to make it easier to understand, but actually to make it harder. The parables draw a line between those who will hear and understand and those who never will. We may not like that interpretation, but it is what Scripture is telling us. It is what Jesus says. How do we respond to it? On one level, we can say that people who heard the parables and didn’t understand them would still be able to come and ask for more, which, in fact, is what the disciples do here (notice that in verse 10 it is not only the Twelve who pursue the meaning). In that case, the parables will serve the purpose of arousing people’s interest and they will hopefully be drawn in. But, on the other hand, and this is the main emphasis here, this is about God’s sovereignty. Over the whole question of who responds and who does not, who accepts and who refuses, stands God’s majestic decision: He calls some people to follow Him, and others He does not call!

The disciples, Jesus says, are on the inside, others, are on the “outside.” The “mystery” or secret of the kingdom has been made clear to them. In Scripture, a “mystery” is not something you solve for yourself; it’s a secret that God has to reveal to you. But those on the outside will never grasp it. The parables create an opportunity to come and find out more, but for most people the parables are a barrier. They are deliberately obscure, like an instruction book that is written in a foreign language. So, as we often find in Scripture, God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are placed side by side. God’s choice takes nothing away from our responsibility. Jesus tells the parables to everyone. The opportunity is there for anyone to come and ask Him for more.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

The Parable of Parables

Of all the parables of Jesus, this parable of the sower is probably the best known. Here is a farmer; it’s the time of year for sowing, and out he goes into his field, scattering the seed by hand of course, and we shall see where it lands. Some of the seeds land by the “wayside,” and that’s no use; nothing can grow there, and all the seed does is feed the birds. Some of them land on “stony ground” where the soil is very thin; as soon as the hot Mediterranean sun gets to work, the little shoots which spring up from these seeds wilt, then wither and die. Some of the seeds land on a patch that looks more promising yet is filled with “thorns” that squeeze and choked them out. Even if the plants survive, they won’t produce anything useful.

Only in one area of the field is there any chance of success. There is some “good ground” where some of the seed falls, and that patch produces a bumper crop, up to “a hundred” times what was sown, enough to make up for all the rest. Jesus starts and finishes his story with a command that adds a note of urgency: “Listen! . . . He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

This is a parable. Clearly, the point is not to analyze the sowing techniques of Galilean farmers. This is not a lecture at an agricultural college! But what is this all about? You may have read and heard this story hundreds of times, but would you have understood what this picture is really about if someone hadn’t told you? I don’t think I would. yet, although some of the same ideas are hinted at in the Old Testament, the plain fact is that no one who was present when these words were spoken seems to have gotten the point. Jesus isn’t giving much away. It seems that most of the crowd are content to think, ‘”That was a nice story. I don’t know what it meant, but that reminds me, I must go and see how my crops are doing!” However, at some later point, when they can get Jesus on His own, His disciples and a group of others gather round and ask for an explanation. I can imagine, that gently, He says, “Come on, if you don’t understand this one, how are you going to understand any of the others? This is the key to all the parables, because this one is not explaining my message, it’s actually about how you hear the message” (read again Mark 4:13).

The seed that is sown represents the “Word,” the very message of Jesus. It is sown all over the place, into the lives of all kinds of people. There are people just like the “wayside.” The message never gets into them at all. Satan, the Evil One, makes sure it is removed before there is any response. There are people like the thin, “stony ground.” You see a response for a while, like a little seedling growing up, full of “gladness” but as soon as the going gets tough, they “stumble” and give up. Then there are others who hear about Jesus and think, “This is great!” But there is so much else they want in life, so much to buy, so much to worry about, that just like a mass of weeds growing up from the ground these things squeeze the life out of them. However, then there are people who “hear the word” from Jesus, take the message into their hearts “accept it, and bear fruit,” living the life that Jesus offers to them. They do far more than barely survive; they grow up and flourish, and then they have the chance to sow more seeds themselves and spread the word to new places.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:1-34

Imagine that you have bought yourself some furniture that needed assembly. You dig out the instructions and start leafing through. You find the diagrams and think to yourself, “no problem.” Yet as you continue, you see that some instructions to go along with the images would help a lot, but there are none to be found. You have to rely on how much you can understand from the images alone. What a predicament it could be! I’ve stated all that to lay a foundation for you.

When Jesus taught the crowds in parables, He didn’t make it easy. What He gave the people were pictures, but without an explanation. The pictures were intriguing, but they were hard to understand. He put his listeners in the situation where they had to decide what to do with the pictures. They could do nothing, or they could come back and ask what it all meant. But, of course, when Jesus spoke there was more at stake than putting together a TV cabinet or a folding table. These picture stories, these parables, are about whether or not we are going to be part of God’s kingdom. They are about joining up with Jesus, and thus belonging to God, or being left outside in the cold. That makes it essential that we understand the instruction book, that we listen very carefully to the story behind the pictures. Or, to put it in the way Jesus Himself puts it here, we must have ears that can hear and a heart of understanding.

Jesus has once again left the town, and He is back in one of his favorite places, on the shore of Lake Galilee. Once again the huge crowds have gathered. Previously (Mark 3:9) we can see that Jesus asked His team to have a boat ready for Him to speak from, because the crush of the multitude was so intense. This time He actually gets into it; they anchor the boat a few yards out, and from that vantage point Jesus can address the crowd in peace. It’s as if to tell us, “This is the big one. This message is so crucial that it has to be heard properly.” The throng edges right down to the waterside and Jesus begins to teach them using “parables.” The word “parable” (from the Greek para, meaning “beside”) is a very general word. It can mean anything where some sort of comparison is made; often a word picture is drawn and a particular point is made. Some parables contain more detail; others less. In general, we should not expect that everything in a parable has to mean something. Most parables intend to make one single point and they usually contain some incidental details simply to fill in the picture.

When the Bible gives us images of what people are like, they are most commonly depicted as plants. Sometimes it may be trees; sometimes grass and sometimes, as in several of the stories in this chapter, the picture is of a crop in a field. A plant doesn’t do much. It’s not in control of its own destiny, or of anything else. We like to think that we make our own way through life, shaping our world, making our own decisions. A plant can do none of those things, yet the Bible repeatedly compares us to plants! In these parables, not only are we like plants, we are plants waiting to be harvested. There is an end in view: we are planted here for a purpose, and the world does not meander on for ever; it is heading for a conclusion.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved