April 23, 2023

Again, he began to teach beside the sea and a very large crowd gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables. And in his teaching he said to them, listen, behold a soar went out to. And as he sewed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil. And immediately it sprung up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seed fell into good soil and produced grain growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold in a hundred fold. And he said he who has ears let him hear. And when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables and he said to them, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables so that they may indeed see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand unless they should turn and be forgiven. And he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables? The seed is the word, and these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground. The ones who, when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the, are the ones sown among the thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sewn on the good soil are those who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundred fold. Let's pause and pray once more and ask God's anointing on His time and his word. We pray, Lord, that you would just anointing this time together. We submit to the authority of your word, we submit to the authority of your spirit. And we ask, Lord, that you would just come to us and just show to us the great truth that we need today to be equipped with today to make us salt and light today. We pray, Lord, that you do this for your glory before we pray. King Jesus' name. Amen. So we are turning now to this parable of this often called the parable of the sower. It goes by some other names, the parable of the seeds as we'll see that we'll, , look at this, , parable and um, come to the conclusion that really is misnamed. It really should be called the parable of the soils because that's what it's really about. It's about the soils, it's not about the sower or about the seeds, it's about the soils. But as we come to this parable, we're reminded of just where Mark has brought us to. Because as we think about the context that's led us up to this point, the context has been this. Why is there such a discrepancy in the reactions to Jesus? Because there's been this wide discrepancy between those who are just so enthusiastic about Jesus. The crowds are so large and pressing upon him so much that he literally has to have a boat set aside for his possible safety. But then others are so irrationally seeking to kill him and do so illegally. Why this disparity in reactions? And Mark has been at pains through chapter three to express that to us and to explain that to us. But we today are forced or are faced with a similar type of question. Because today as we think about this, the son of man Jesus who came, we're reminded that of course there are multiple times in the scriptures in which Jesus gives us these. Purpose statements. You're all familiar with these purpose statements. One of them is going to, is going to come in Mark chapter 10, when Jesus will say, the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a as a ransom for many. And so that's one of the times that Jesus will give us a purpose statement for why he's here. But in that we're also reminded of other purpose statements that He gives and others give on his behalf. Such as the well-known one in Luke's gospel when Jesus said the son of man came to seek and to save the loss. That's his purpose. He says to come to seek and to save the lost. To seek out the lost and to save them. And so the Son of man, God incarnate, the perfect sinless Christ perfectly filled by the Spirit so that the sinless man, Jesus, perfectly equipped by the spirit of God who is here on this declared mission to seek and to save the loss we might expect. That all the lost are saved, or at least most of the lost are saved. But there is a lot of lost people. And so we're kind of forced to ask the question, if God incarnate came, as he said, to seek and to save the lost, why are there still so many lost now, too millennia after the death resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ and the filling of the church with the Spirit and the power of the Spirit empowering us to carry forth this life giving message? Why are there still so many law and there indeed are so many? The statistics, if we look at them, can be quite depressing in a sense. If we were to look at the global population, we are told that somewhere around 8% of the world's population would identify as evangelical Christians, 8%, and that's by their own identification. So we can assume that that number would be extraordinarily high. Those will be all the people living on the planet who would identify themselves with an evangelical church of some type. So the number would be significantly less than that. When we think about the true remnant of God's people, it's extraordinarily small number of people. When we think globally, it can get even more distressing when we think about certain specific people groups. And one of the people groups that comes to my mind is the nation of Japan. The gospel came to Japan in the year 1549. That's almost 500 years ago, and we're told that of the population in Japan, some 0.2% of Japanese identify as evangelical Christians. Two out of a thousand and Christianity has been there for nearly 500 years. 500 years of the life-giving message by the incarnate son of God, empowered by the spirit into his people, and yet two out of a thousand people would identify as. Being identified with a evangelical church there in Japan, or 8%, eight out of a hundred worldwide. Why are so few identifying with the body of Christ now to millennia after Jesus has gone to heaven and sent his spirit to empower his people to carry forth this message. And this is in large measure, the same question that Mark has been wrestling with through chapter three, which is to say the question of why such a, a differing reaction to Jesus. Some have traveled over a hundred miles to see and to hear this man, they're so enthusiastic, they're so excited about him, and we know that most of that crowd, they're just excited about the miracles. They're excited about the leper cleansings and the demon castings out. But among that group is a remnant of God's people. We saw that in chapter three as Jesus went up the mountain and called unto himself those whom he desired the birth of the church. So such an exciting. Faithful, enthusiastic reaction on one hand. And then there's the Pharisees and the scribes on the other hand, who have now determined that they are willing to conspire with non-Israelites in order to illegally kill a fellow is Israelite. Why the disparity in the, in the reactions. And the question really is the same question that we ask ourself, which is to say, What's the what, what's the clue? What's what, what is the difference? Why are there still so few saved? And also why such a, a disparity of reactions to the Son of Man and Mark's gospel. And so Mark has been using chapter three to kind of arrive at some answer about of that for us. And the place that Mark has taken us is he's taken us to see into the human heart, because Mark's answer for this disparity in reactions is this essential differential difference making thing in the, in the human heart. One heart would be fundamentally opposed to the work of the spirit or fundamentally opposed. To the, , to the sovereignty of the spirit in the heart, while another is submissive in the heart. And that is the key to the whole difference. And so we see a group of people who are basically submissive to the work of the Spirit and others who are opposed to the work of the spirit. So here's how Mark showed us that in chapter three. It's important for us to revisit that because Mark's not done with this. So in chapter three, here's how Mark showed us that we began the chapter with once again, yet another big crowd. This is the biggest one so far. And so this crowd is so large, they're pressing against Jesus so hard that Jesus has to secure this boat for his possible safety, cuz he may get trampled by such a crowd as this. And so then this crowd coming together among this crowd, we see something else. We see Jesus' biological family show up and they don't show up to support him. They show up to bind him or to seize him, to take him against his will. So here we see this disparity between the crowds that are so supportive and his biological family that's there to take him back against his will. Then mark, so masterfully cuts off to another story, but then when he comes back to the story at the end of that chapter, we see this group of people in this house sitting around Jesus. It's the same group of people that Jesus called unto himself. He pauses after this big crowd is there at the bottom of the mountain and he's healing and cleansing lepers and everything. And then he goes up the mountain and we're told that he calls unto himself those whom he desired. That was the birth of the church. That was the calling out of Jesus's sheep. Jesus'. Sheep hear his voice and they answer his voice and they come to him. And then that's the occasion for the giving of the Sermon on the Mount, which Mark doesn't cover. Now, later on, this same group of people is found inside a house sitting around Jesus' feet hearing Jesus' teaching. Meanwhile, Jesus' family comes again now to the house and they send word into the house because there's too many people they can't get in. They send word into the house to say, tell Jesus we're here for him, thinking that he's going to come out. Jesus then responds by saying, well, these are my mother and my brothers and my sisters, those who hear and do the word of God. So we're shown this stark contrast between those on the outside and those on the inside. Those on the inside are sitting at Jesus's feet. Those on the outside are standing outside the door. Those on the inside are hearing and receiving Jesus's teaching. Those on the outside are receiving Jesus' rebuke. Those on the inside are called the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Those who hear and do the will of God. Those on the outside think that they're the brothers and sisters of Jesus, but Jesus says they're not. Those on the inside are receiving this teaching from Jesus. They, they are the ones to whom Jesus will say, I've bound myself to them. These are the ones I have bound myself to. Meanwhile, his biological family is here to bind him and he won't be bound to them because he's bound himself to his people. So such a stark contrast is shown between those who have a fundamental opposition to the enlightening work of the spirit compared to those who are receptive and submissive to the enlightening work of the spirit. And then in the center of that story, Remember, this is Mark's signature technique of interrupting a story with another one. And the center story will always carry for us the, the bulk of the meaning, the bulk of the teaching. That's where the real meat really lies, kind of like a sandwich. And the story in the middle is the meat of the sandwich or the peanut butter and jelly, if you will. So in the middle there, that story in the middle is what really drives it home for us, because of the story In the middle is these scribes who come up from Jerusalem, having heard of Jesus and, and now thinking to themselves, this time we put a stop to this. They come up saying to themselves, well, he's doing this by the power of Beelzebul. They're telling everybody that they can. He's doing this by the power of demons to which Jesus then answers with that proverbial statement. How can a house be divided against itself? If Satan's divided against himself? He'll fall. And then he gives that teaching that we often refer to as the unforgivable or the unpardonable sin, which is to say, Jesus speaks about blasphemy against the spirit. And he says this, he says, all sins and blasphemies will be forgiven. But blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, but instead that one will have an eternal guilt. So we looked at that and we saw that what Jesus is saying here is that these scribes have been the recipients of extraordinary enlightenment. They've been shown an incredible amount of light because Jesus is doing these miracles. All these miracles are attesting to who he is. All this teaching that he's giving is, is just powerful attesting to who he is. They have seen this, they've beheld it, they've heard it, and yet in the face of the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit onto their minds, their hearts refuse to submit. And so we were careful when we were looking at that section to, to notice that, of course, Jesus says emphatically that there's no such thing as a special category of sin, that God's not willing to forgive. There's no special type of sin where God says, I'll forgive everything but that one type of sin. Jesus says plainly, all sins and all blasphemies will be forgiven. The children of Amen. However, if you having received this enlightening work of the Holy Spirit upon your mind to be shown that Jesus is the Christ, and in the face of that enlightening work of the Spirit, you refuse to submit to that, there will come a point where you so offend the Holy Spirit, that he will cease his enlightening work, at which point repentance will not be possible. And God is willing to forgive all categories of sin with repentance, but without the work of the spirit, repentance will not be possible. So all of that was showing us the main point, which is to say, this is the difference. There are those who receive this enlightenment from the Spirit. They see the miracles of Jesus, they hear the teaching of Jesus, and they submit. And there are those who see and hear the same things. And having seen and heard and come to some type of cognitive recognition, this is the Christ, this man is from God, yet refusing to yield to that. That's what we coined the term, enlightened blasphemy. So all of that is showing us what's at the heart of this issue. And the heart of the issue is the heart. The heart of these who though being shown this enlightenment by the Spirit. They refuse to yield. They refuse to submit. Now Mark's going to say, we're not quite done with this. Let's push this on a little bit further and let's think a little bit further of how Jesus showed us this, of how Jesus taught us this, these things. And so then Mark says, let's now go to the parable in which Jesus showed us this most plainly, most clearly, which is the parable that we sometimes refer to as the parable of the So in fact, that's the subheading and my addition of the Bible, the parable of the, so probably in yours as well. And so in this section, this is really where, where Mark is taking us to continue wrestling with this whole topic of the human heart and how the human heart can receive enlightenment by means of the Holy Spirit to show to us this is the Christ, and yet in our hearts we can still resist submitting and not yield to that while other hearts will. So this is where Jesus really goes with this parable of the so of the sower. So having said all that, now let's begin taking a look from chapter four and verse one. Our goal for today, just by the way, just so we, we kind of know where everything stands for today. Our goal for today is really just to do. Two things. If we have time, really just to kind of give an overview of the parable, just to set the, set the tone just to make sure that we're going in the right direction. We'll come back to this next week and then we'll begin looking at each of these soils in detail. But for today, today, we just want to make sure that we're started in the right direction. We just want to look at the details of it and understand what's happening. And if time permits, we want to look at this. Verses 10 through 13, this very terrifying, quite frankly, terrifying saying that Jesus will give as he references the quote from the prophet Isaiah. So let's begin from, from, , chapter four, one verse one again. He meaning Jesus began to teach beside the sea. So once again, Jesus now is not in Capernaum, but he now goes back to the seas where he, so he was in a house before, now he's back at the sea again. This is, this is one of Jesus' favorite places to teach. He seems to love to teach by the Sea of Galilee. So once again, he's backed down by the Sea of Galilee and teaching, and we're told a very large crowd gathered about him. So Mark uses something there called the superlative, the superlative sense of the word, , large crowd. So we have the same thing in English. We, we might say something like big bigger or Big S and Big S is the superlative version of big, right? And so we get that and Mark uses this. The superlative form of this large crowd to say, in essence, this is the largest, if we were to translate this quite literally and very woodenly and a largest crowd gathered. So what Mark is saying to us, this is the biggest, yet the biggest so far. Each time it just gets larger and larger. The response to Jesus continues to grow and people continue to be drawn to him. So this very large crowd gathered about him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the seat. So the boat that he gets to sit into it, it's a different boat we would assume from the previous boat. Mark uses a different word, the word for boat that he used before, the one that he had for his safety. He used the dominion form of boats. So, , I said I used the word boat, et cuz I was kind of a literal sort of thinking of it, but it's really like, like a small rowboat or something like that. Maybe one or two people could fit into it, but this is the normal word for boat. So this would be most likely a larger boat. Perhaps this was Peter's. Remember this, the whole gospel of Mark is the gospel really according to Peter because Peter is giving these events and narrating these events. So perhaps this was Peter's boat, or perhaps it was James and John's boat, but this is a larger boat, and in fact, this is going to be the same boat we'll see a little bit later. This will be the same boat that is trapped in the storm a little bit later at the end of chapter four. So this large crowd gathered and so that he got into a boat and sat in and literally Mark says he. He got in the boat and sat on the water, or he sat on the sea. So he got in it and sat on in, in it, on the sea. So he turns this boat into sort of a floating pulpit, and it's pushed out a little bit from the shore, and that's going to be the place from which he addresses the crowd. So this crowd, the whole crowd was now we're told beside the sea on the land, and he was teaching them. So Jesus teaching them from the boat, they're on the land. And for a long, long time, many critical scholars, liberal scholars of the scriptures, really doubted that that sort of thing could happen. That somebody could address a large crowd from a boat and actually be heard without amplification. And in recent years, that's, that's been proven, well proven that the acoustical effects of water has such a reverberating kind of effect, that someone can speak above the water and it, and it will bounce off the water. And you can hear if you've ever been fishing. You know when somebody's on the other side of the pond fishing, you ever done that and you can hear them on the other side of the pond, you're sort of surprised how well you can hear them. That's the way sound does as it bounces across water. So Jesus is taking advantage of that. In fact, we are even told that there is something here in this same area of the Sea of Galilee called, it's now named the Bay of Parables, and what the Bay of Parables is, you may have visited when you went to the, if any of you been to the Holy Land. The Bay of Parables is this little cove in this area of the Sea of Galilee, in which the land is sort of a cove like. , in, in cropping of the, of the water and the land as it meets the water all around rises at a particularly steep angle so that it forms this little bay or this little cove. And so it'd be easy to envision that the people could sit on the banks, even, even being able to see as they rise up, like a natural amphitheater sort of thing. So perhaps this is where Jesus was. So perhaps the people could not only see or not only hear, but also see Jesus as well. Perhaps this is where he is, but in any case, he's in the boat and he's teaching. It says that he sat down on the sea or, or he sat down in the boat. That would be the, the typical posture of authority. We've talked about that before, how the scribes and the rabbis of Jesus' day, when they would teach, they would sit, and that seating posture indicated a posture of authority. So Jesus sits down and the whole crowd's beside the sea on the land, he begins teaching them verse two. And he was teaching them many things in parables. Now as he was teaching them many things in parables that gives us a clue that this is not the first parable that Jesus has told. Jesus has been teaching in parables really all along. And Mark in fact, has also told us some of the parables that Jesus has spoken. We think of the parable of the wine skins or the parable of the, the new patch, or even some other parabolic type statements. Like when Jesus said, can a kingdom be divided against itself and still stand? Some might not consider that a parable. Some, some would think of the parables more in terms of the longer stories like the, the one that we're about to look at. But really all those should be thought of as parabolic type statements. And this is, this was the, the teaching style of Jesus. And this was, this was his style of teaching from the beginning until the end. Jesus taught in many, many parables. If you were to, , even just take a look at the bulk of Jesus's teaching, People, we really aren't even agreed on how many parables Jesus told. It seems like a simple question to ask, isn't it? How many, how many parables of Jesus are in the Bible? How many do you think? Anywhere from 20 to 60? And it's really all over the board, and there's really very little agreement as to how many parables there even are, because some people only consider the longer stories to be true parables. I myself would consider all of these, even the shorter statements, like the parabolic type of statement. How can, , how can a kingdom be divided against itself or, or anyone who puts the hand to the P and looks back as not worthy of the kingdom of God? I would consider all of those like a parabolic type statement, and I think you'll see why when we, when we talk just a little bit more about parables. So this was Jesus' Teach teaching meth method to teach in parables. Now I want to spend just a, a few moments thinking about parables and thinking about how we perceive parables and how Jesus's hearers perceive parables. And the reason for that might not be completely evident today, but as we work through the parable, it will become very important for us to have a good firm understanding of what a parable is, and particularly how Jesus' hearers heard the parables and how the parables were used for them. So what, what is a parable? A parable is, we talked about this not too long ago. The, the word literally means a casting alongside par parabola, just a casting alongside. And so the idea is that there's a, there's some sort of truth. And alongside that truth is cast something else. And that would be like a parable. This, a parable literally cast alongside another truth. That's the entomology of the word. And so as we think about these parables, one of the things that we tend to misunderstand about parables is the essence of what they are. I think the reason for that really is traced back to what I think is the most fundamental difference between people. You know that there's differences between people, all kinds of differences between people. There's all kinds of differences that cause us to think differently and see the world differently and process information differently and teach differently and learn differently. Differences such as our age, such as our ethnicity, such as the, the culture that we grew up in, the language that we speak, the socioeconomic class, that that we are in all kinds of things will affect how we perceive the world around us, how we communicate, how we teach, and how we learn. One of the big things that makes a difference is the time in which we live. So people who lived in the 13th century understood the world, world around them very differently than we understand the world today in our smartphone, automobile, airplane equipped world. There's just fundamental differences in how we perceive the world around us, how we communicate and how we think. But of all the things that make a difference between how people perceive the world and how they give and receive communication, the biggest, the biggest difference of all is not your ethnicity, your age, your education, not even the period of history in which you live. The biggest difference of all is whether you are a native Eastern culture person or western culture. Those two differences between east and west make the single biggest difference in how you think, how you perceive the world, how you process information, how you communicate information, how you teach, and how you learn. Whether your mind is a Western thinking mind or an Eastern thinking mind. So Western thinking minds like ours began with the Greeks. So let's take off selves all back to high school history. And when you talk about Greek philosophers, remember everybody, remember high school talking about Greek philosophers, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Seneca, all those guys. Remember those guys? I hated that because it made no sense to me because here's how it was presented. It was presented like these Greek philosophers were really interested in what they were interested in. The essence of things. Remember this? And the Greek philosophers liked to talk about the essence of a thing. And the example that was given to me in high school was the example of a table. And so we would think about a table and so, so they would say the Greek philosophers, they wanted to take everything and break it down to its essence and talk about the essence of a thing like the, the table ness of a table. You know, what's the table ness of a table? What makes a table a table? Anybody remember, this is bringing back painful memories for anybody. So that's the Greek, that's the essence of Greek philosophy, is to break concepts down to their essence and figure out the essence. So what's the, what's the essential table ness of a table? Maybe it's the rectangular, maybe it's the wilderness of it. Maybe it's the brownness of it. Maybe it's the four-legged ness of it. But that's how they would think. They would want to break a concept down to its essence. But the thing to sing there is that by breaking something down to its essence, that then allowed you to converse about it and teach about it and learn about it, and apply that to other things that are similar. Okay, so now let's take that from the abstract into the real world, and then you'll begin to see how western people think. Western people think our thinking is it. It's descended from Greek thought. And so we think of things rationally, logically. Okay. So that's, that's where logic came from. Logic would, would say something like, , this lectern is wood. Um, all wood is brown, therefore this lectern is brown. Right? That's what logic teaches us, and that's how our minds think rationally and logically linearly. So we see many examples of Greek thought in the New Testament, which is to say, taking a concept, breaking the concept down to its essence, knowing it, learning it, looking at the concept, and then being able to apply it. Let me give you an example. First Corinthians 13. That's exactly what Paul does in First Corinthians 13. Paul is schooled in Greek thought and rhetoric thought he was a Hebrew, but he has been taught Greek thought, and he processes and uses Greek thought very well. Why? Because he's the apostle to the Gentiles. So in First Corinthians 13, what does Paul say? Love is patient love is kind. Love thinks the best, and on and on. You see what Paul's done. He's taken the essence of biblical love, broken it down to a concept that he can talk about now and teach about, and his hearers can hear that as he's discussing biblical love, and they can understand that because they also are, Greek thinkers are western thinkers. Now that idea of taking something down to its essence and talking about its the New Testament, does that a lot. What is faith? It'll talk about the essence of faith. Hebrews chapter 11 or Chapter 12, rather, it'll, it'll take the concept of forgiveness. The epistles do this regularly. Now the question is find that sort of thing in the Old Testament and you won't. You won't find any sort of reasoning like that in the Old Testament anywhere. What do you find in the Old Testament stories and lots of them, in fact, that is in essence what the whole Old Testament is. Almost exclusively. Stories about everything. Stories about the creation of the world, stories about God's people and slavery. Stories about God's people being delivered from this army. Stories about this king, stories about that king. Stories about this. Esther stories about everything mixed in with all kinds of parables, teaching all kinds of lessons. And then come the prophets. And how do the prophets speak, thus says the Lord. And let me tell you a story about it, thus says the Lord and let me act it out in some way. Why? Because the Old Testament is written to Eastern thinking people. Hebrews. Hebrews thought in stories. They are eastern thinking people who fundamentally are storytelling people. And this is why I said that is the most fundamental difference between how people process the world around them. Whether you are an essentially storytelling person or a rational person, a logic, we, we in our Western culture are rational. That doesn't mean that we don't like stories. It means that we learn by processing ideas and concepts. Eastern thinking people like the Hebrews we're storytelling people. That's how they learned, that's how they taught. That's why the entire Old Testament is stories. Now much work has been done in recent generations from sociologists to sort of dispel some of the myths because what we tend to think as western thinking people, we tend to think, well, storytelling cultures must be more primitive by nature. They certainly cannot be as advanced. And much work has been done to show that very complex ideas can be communicated and are communicated through stories by the people whose brains have been brought up within a culture that that's how they think they think and they learn and they teach through stories. So now comes Jesus. Jesus is a Hebrew person. He speaks Aramaic, but he also speaks Hebrew. Remember Luke four where he opens the, the scrolls to the Isaiah scrolls and reads. So he speaks Hebrew. He, he is a native storytelling person speaking to native storytelling people. How is he teaching them? And stories. Jesus doesn't come to them and say, let's talk about the, the concept of biblical forgiveness and let's break it down to its essence. Jesus tells them the story of one who wouldn't forgive, and that's how Jesus teaches all through his ministry. So when Mark says that he's teaching them with many parables, mark is saying, this is how Jesus basically always taught, was through stories. And he's speaking to his hearers in ways that they grasp, in ways that they understand. So here's the crucial thing to see When Jesus is telling a parable as Western thinking people, how do we think of parables? We tend to think of a parable as an illustration. Isn't that how you think of a parable? Because that's how we use them, right? That's how we use stories. I will teach something or we'll, we'll look at this biblical concept or this biblical idea, and there may be an illustration or a story to illustrate that, and that's how we think the parables are. And so when we come into the parables in the scripture, we tend to import into them our Western idea of what a story means. And so we tend to think that Jesus, when he tells these parables, he's telling stories to illustrate what he's taught. And that's not what he's doing at all. He's not illustrating his teachings. He's giving the teachings. The teachings are the stories. The people to whom he's speaking are very well accustomed to learning by way of stories. And here how, here's how those parables, how those stories work. The parables are an earthly story about earthly things, things in the physical world that we can see and touch, and those earthly realities parallel a spiritual reality that we can't see. There's a spiritual reality, we can't see it. There's a spiritual truth. We can't see it, but we can see earthly realities and a parable lays alongside the spiritual reality that we can't see, an earthly reality that we can see. So it's a one-to-one correlation. It's not an illustration of a teaching. It instead is the teaching, and this is how Jesus is teaching. He's saying there's a spiritual reality. Let me teach it to you by way of a story of a, so, And how the so are so seeds and how the soils reacted to that seed. And by seeing that story, Jesus' hearers would've understood his point, or at least that was the idea, was that they would receive and understand his point about what he's saying to them. Now, all of that will become very helpful and very important when we get to verses 10 through 13, that's going to help us to understand why Jesus goes to the prophet Isaiah, why he seems to say by quoting the prophet, he seems to be saying, you know, I'm, I'm speaking in ways I, I don't want them to understand. That's not what Jesus is saying at all. Now we'll see that when we get there, but this also help us to understand what the scriptures mean when it tells us that Jesus was teaching by parables. He's teaching storytelling people spiritual truths by telling them stories. One way to think of this is you've heard it said that the parables are an earthly story with a, with a heavenly reality or heavenly truth, and there's truth in that. There's helpfulness in that. Maybe a tad over simplistic, but there's helpfulness there. It's almost as though when Jesus is telling these stories, it's almost as though Jesus is interpreting natural revelation. You know how God reveals himself through creation? The heavens declare the glory of God. Well, the creation speaks to us. Truths about God. It's almost like these stories are Jesus coming along and saying, let me interpret that truth for you. Let me interpret what the creation is saying for you here. So now that we've sort of got that into our back pocket, let's return back to the story now. And he was teaching them many things in parables and in his teaching he said to them, and here comes the parable, starting from verse three. From verse three. Listen, behold. So there two commands, two words there, two commands. The first one is listen. The first one is see, listen, and see. So the whole story, the whole parable is going to be a parable about listening, hearing 10 times in the parable, that word ‘akouete’ is going to…you can hear ‘acoustics’ in that. And so, 10 times, we're going to hear that. Hear, listen. So Jesus begins by saying, listen here. So what that clues us in is that clues us in to tell us that Jesus feels that this is a very important thing for his hearers to hear. He's probably told other teachings by, by means of other parables, but he comes to this one and he wants in particular. He wants his hearers to, to receive this one. Listen, behold. And here comes the parable. A sower went out to sub, and as he sold, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where there the, where it did not have much soil. And immediately a spraying up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and produced grain growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundred fold. And he said, he who has ears, let him here. And then he goes onto the next door. So as he tells this story, the story of the sower, again, the most obvious thing about the story is it's not a parable about a sower. Nothing is said about the sower other than the sower sewed seed. We're not told if he was a good sower or a bad sower, a skilled sower or an unskilled sower we're not told any information about his technique. Whether it was a good technique or a poor technique, we're told nothing about the sower other than he went out and sewed. So this is clearly not a parable about the sower. One of the things that can take us awry as we look at the parables of Jesus, Jesus' parables are not, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, oh, the word, just the word just left. What's the word I'm looking for? Where everything in the story has an attached meaning to it. Whatever that word is, somebody knows it shattered out who's got it? Brother Harold. So every element in the story doesn't have a meaning. Typically, the parable is going to have one meaning, or perhaps two, or one element of the story that has significance or perhaps two that has significance. One of the things that can go awry is when we make every element of the story have to have a meaning. So oftentimes we'll look at this parable, and I've heard it often taught that we'll look at how the sower sewed, how wasteful the sower is, sort of like a prodigal sower. He's throwing seed everywhere on all types of ground. And so we take from that that we too should spread the word in sort of this prodigal sort of way, spreading the word and we should, but that's not the point of what Jesus is saying. Jesus is not drawing attention to how the so, so deceive Jesus is drawing attention instead to. The ground itself, the soil itself. Listen, behold the sower went out to soap. And as he sewed, now he's going to talk about where the seed fell. Some seed fell along the path. The birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on the rocky ground, which it didn't have much soil. Other seed fell on, , ground that had thorns and brambles, and it sprung up. And then other soil, other seed, fell on the good soil and that sprung up to a harvest. So within these four types of soil, Jesus will then go on later to interpret all of these. Now let's take a look at verse 10. And when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables. So now this takes us to another day all together. So Jesus is now alone. This is going to take place perhaps the next day, perhaps the following day. If you look down with me all the way to the end of the chapter. At the end of the chapter, verse 36, on that day, when evening came, he said to them, let us go across to the to the other side. So at the end of this day, Jesus is still in the boat and he's going to say, let's go to the other side. And that's when the storm will come. So this getting us, getting along with Jesus is going to take place on another day, on another occasion. When he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables and he said to them, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables. So the secret of the kingdom of God, that's the word mystery on there. It's often in the New Testament translated mystery. We've talked about mysteries in the New Testament before now, mystery or secret, they don't carry the same meaning that are modern understanding of mystery has, which when we think of mystery, we think of something that we've got to figure out, something we've got to find the answer to. When the scripture speak about mystery, it speaks about something, not that we have to learn or figure out, but instead it speaks of a spiritual reality that we cannot possibly understand unless God reveals it to us. And he has, that's what a mystery is in the New Testament. Something, , something true about the spiritual realm. We never could have known that on our own, but God has now revealed it to us. We see this in, , the, in the prophet, Daniel. Daniel, chapter two in verse 27, verse 28, where Daniel says, you know, nope, no, or magician can know the dreams of somebody else, but there is a God in heaven who has revealed these mysteries. Or when Paul says, in Colossians chapter one, verse 26, this mystery that's hidden for ages and generations, but now is revealed to the saints. So this mystery that's revealed to some is this spiritual truth, the spiritual reality that we never could have known had God not showed it. So now notice how this mystery has always been known. The mystery is, That the kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is here, and the kingdom of God is now here. That's the mystery that's now revealed. But notice that all of the spiritual beings in the story of Mark have always known that mystery. This is a spiritual reality. The spiritual reality is that the kingdom of God is now here in this man Jesus Christ. And every spirit being in the story has known that all along chapter one, we hear the voice from heaven. This is my beloved son, and whom I'm well pleased, or the demons, we know who you are. You're the holy one of God. So all of the spirit beings in the story of Mark have known this all along. It's only the physical beings man. That doesn't know this because they're not spiritual beings. They're physical beings. So now this spiritual reality has been made known it's been made known to who Jesus says, those who are on the inside, and it's not been made known to those on the outside. So we see once again there this sharp differentiation, this distinction between those on the inside. And those on the outside, just like in chapter three, those who are on the inside, those who are called to be with Jesus, those who need desired, and he called unto himself, they're on the inside. And there's this contrast between those on the inside and those on the outside as we'll see in, , for example, first Corinthians chapter five and verse 12, for what have I had to do with judging outsiders says, Paul, it's not those inside the church whom you judge. Or Colossians chapter four in verse five, where Paul says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of the time. So we see this, remember back from Ephesians chapter two, when Paul talks about this great reconciliation, those who were far away on the outside have now been brought near. So this contrast, this separation, this distinction from those on the outside, Who have not perceived this mystery. This mystery has not been perceived by them. That Christ has come, the kingdom of God has come, and those on the inside to whom this mystery has been shown, and they have been, they have perceived it. So now, verse 13, and he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the payables? So Jesus seems to attach here a level of importance to this parable that exceeds the importance of all the other parables. He says, do not understand this one. Remember, he began the parable by saying twice, listen, watch, listen, see, listen, behold. And then he says here, when they come to him and they say, listen, let, let's revisit that parable, the parable that you told about the soils and the sower. We think we might understand that, but can you help us make sure that we understand it? Jesus's answer is, if you don't understand this one, how are you going to understand any of them? So Jesus seems to say to them this, this is like the gateway parable. This is like the doorway parable. This, this is the parable through which you understand all the parables. What is Jesus saying here? This parable has to do, as we said earlier, with the heart's reception of the enlightening work of the spirit. That's what the soils are about. So the spirit's work of enlightening, the heart of enlightening, the mind, the receptiveness to that. Jesus says, well, well, that's the key. If, if you can't understand this one, then how is the spirit going to show you any of the parables? This is like the fundamental one. If you understand the parable about how it is that the heart is made understanding and submissive to the word of God, then all the parables. Will make sense to you. So this is like the primary, the fundamental one, which is part of why we're going to spend a few weeks on this. Do not understand this parable. How then will you understand all the parables? The sower. Now Jesus will now explain this. The sower sows the word. So the word or the seed is equated to the word, the so or so is the word. And these are the ones along the path where the word is sewn. When they hear Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sewn in them. And these are the ones sewn on rocky ground. The ones who, when they hear the word immediately receive it with joy and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately, they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the word world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word and improves un fruitful. But those that were sewn on the good soil are those who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit. thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundred fold. So two things stand out. Jesus is focus on the soils. There's these four, four soils. The seed. He just tells us, well, the seed represents the word, but nothing else is said about the seed. We don't know if it's good seed. If it's bad seed. We don't know if the seed got watered. We don't know if the seed got plenty of sunlight or if it was too cloudy. We just know the seed was scattered. Then the focus becomes on the soils, on these four types of soils, and so then Jesus walks through the four types of soils. There's the first type of soil that's the hard-packed soil. That's the pathways that would lead along the sides of the fields, or perhaps through the fields. Remember in chapter two, when Jesus and his disciples were walking through the grain fields and they plucked a few heads of grain because they were hungry, they were walking on this footpath. Now, these footpaths would've been trodden down firm and hard, almost like a sidewalk or concrete, and so Jesus says onto this type of ground, the word falls and it's so hard. It penetrates nothing, and then the birds come and they snatch it away. Jesus says, the birds represent Satan, so the birds come and they snatch it away. The word comes, has no chance to germinate or to grow anything into that soil because the soil is so hard. And Jesus says that is the hard heart, the hard person, the hard man or the hard woman on whom the word falls and does nothing because the heart is so hard that the word penetrates nothing, and then the enemy comes and snatches that away. Then there's this other kind of soil, that kind of soil would represent those that would be the rocky soil. Now, with the, the rocky soil, I thought for a long time I thought about the rocky soil. Like I'm familiar with my, , grandparents farm where I grew up. Our best crop was rocks. We would grow rocks every year. I don't know how that worked. We never planted them. They just grew. But you know the kind of rocks that where there's soil and then there's rocks of different sizes mixed in there. However, that's not really the typical Palestinian, rocky soil. Jesus is speaking more about not soil, that's soil mixed in with rocks. Instead, he's speaking about soil that has a hard kind of a limestone layer underneath. Underneath maybe just a few inches of thin top soil. So it's not like there's rocks in there that need to be gotten out. It's like there is a rock bed underneath fertile soil on the top. And so that represents the heart, that receives the word with some fertile to it. Some reception, some submission. Glad to hear it. They receive it, and then there's life that begins there. However, there's a hard layer underneath that prevents the. Those roots from really getting down as deep as they need to go from getting down into the center of the person, into the heart of the person. They can have some superficial effect, some surface type of effect, but they can't get down into the very heart of the person. The person says, I gladly received this word, but only so far. I gladly received what the word has for me, but only so far. They're not like the hardened path where the person receives the word of God and it makes no impact whatsoever. They hear it, they hear the life-giving message of the salvation that's offered through Jesus Christ, and it has no effect whatsoever because the, the soil of their life is hard. This person, however, hears that and receives it to some degree and says, I would like that come and grow in me, but not so much that you take over in my life. Not so much that you begin to change everything about me. There's, there's things about me that I want to keep, just the way that I am. So the first group, the hard pack soil, they would represent the Pharisees. The Pharisees on whom the word that Jesus is speaking has no effect whatsoever. The second group, that this would represent, those among the enthusiastic crowd that they're coming and, and believing upon Jesus as a miracle worker, as a healer. And they're hearing what he says to some degree, but not so much as to make them leave behind their old lifestyle, not so much as to change everything about them. Then there's the third group, the third group of, of those who would have a fertile soil, a soil that's obviously capable of growing things. It's growing these brambles and thorns, right, which we're reminded there of the, of course, the curse of God upon the ground. And this soil is obviously capable of growing a lot of things. But the problem is, is that there's too much competition. There's, there's other things that are stronger. We know how weeds work. Don't weeds always grow faster? Don't they always grow stronger? Don't they always take up the nutrients of the soil? Don't they always take up the water? Don't they always take all the sunlight? And what you want to grow is the weakest, it's the smallest. And so in this application, this will be the heart of the person who receives the word with some degree of submission. But there's so many other things in that heart, in that life that compete such as worries, fears, cares, wants. Persecutions, tribulations, sufferings, all kinds of other things that would also come in and the person would say, yes, I submit to this word of the Lord, but there's these other things. And the word has not taken such great root in my life as to displace these other fears of mine. So we'll talk about that more as we go. They would represent also some in the enthusiastic crowd who are responding and believing in Jesus as a healer and a miracle worker. And they're receiving the words that he's saying, but not so much as to say, well now this will displace these other desires and fears and cares and goals in my life. And Jesus will say, well, those will always eventually choke them out. So many of these will be some of these followers of Jesus, some whom Jesus will say later in Luke's gospel. You know those who put your hand at the plow and look back. Not worthy for the kingdom of God. This, this is who Jesus is. Speaking of here, among those would be Judas. And then of course there's the final group. The, the, the group, the, the good soil. And Luke's gospel is called a good and noble heart. They receive the word and that word takes root and grows. And then we see the crop, 30, 60, a hundred-fold. So the takeaways for this are going to be, we're going to return and we're going to look through all of these soils closely. But the takeaways for us to see is, first of all, this, this parable is for us, an invitation for us to spend a few weeks in a difficult, focused, hard look at the soil of our own heart. That's what the parable is inviting us to do. In fact, that's what the parable is requiring us to do. Jesus says, look, listen. This is an invitation for all of us to examine the soils of our heart because what the parable is showing to us is that the condition of the soil is what determined the effectiveness of the seed, the effectiveness, the success of the seed is based upon the condition of the soil. Now, we would say, well, there's other things that play into effect there. There's, well, there's water or there's sun, or you know, how is the land cultivated and tilled? There's other factors, just like there's other factors in our life, such as the work of the Holy Spirit, but that's not what this parable is about. This parable is about your work of preparing your heart. Of making your heart receptive and submissive to the word that you received. That's what the parable is teaching. The parable is not teaching the work of the Holy Spirit or the parable is not teaching other realities or other facts, other spiritual truths about this. It's teaching your heart receptiveness, and so it's calling to you to examine your heart's receptiveness to the word. How do you receive the word as the Thessalonians that Paul writes to First Thessalonians chapter two at verse 13, and where he says, I thank God that you received the word that I brought to you. That's what it is. The word I've God or James when he says the, to humbly receive the word of God, which is your salvation. That's the invitation for all of us to humbly examine how we receive the word. Now, here's the key to that. I think many of us would sit and would say, well, clearly I have the good soil. Because I believe I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm a converted, legitimate follower of Jesus. However, I think that the parable is also teaching us that every believer has in your heart all four soils. Would you agree? Every believer has all four soils in your heart, depending on what aspect of God's word you're talking about. Every believer is capable of exhibiting any of the four soils to any of God's word, depending on what aspect of your life that word is addressing. Now, you might say, well, where's the parable? Teach that, not explicitly, but think about the soil that has the thorns and the, and the briars growing up, and clearly that's speaking of the heart that receives the word, but yet there's other conflicts that choke it out is does that not describe your heart? At least at times. And so certainly all of these soils can apply to every believer at certain points in God's word. All of us have those parts of God's word that we receive joyfully, and they bring forth bountiful harvest. All of us have parts of God's word, which we will receive it, but those parts of God's word will require us to jettison from our life other conflicting desires and fears and concerns that will perhaps find it hard to do. Others will find parts of God's word, which will resonate in our heart, but only to a certain degree where it really wants to do its sanctifying work. Maybe we draw a limit there. We're not quite ready to give that up, and sadly, all of us can have parts of our heart that are the hard-packed soil. They, quite frankly, that sin has found such a deep root into your heart that when the word of God addresses that it does nothing. It just bounces off. So this is a desperate invitation for all believers to, to humbly and with open eyes. Assess your own heart receptiveness to God's word. Do you receive God's word with skepticism or cynicism or, or doubt? Do you receive it to say, well, I'm more than willing to do this only so far, but let's not get too crazy about this or that, or this other thing over here. Well, this, this is really close to my heart. Okay? So it's an invitation for that. Secondly, this parable forces us to come to terms with the importance of this, the absolute importance of how your heart receives the word of God. The parable that Jesus tells here, really, it's a, it's a, the story of him, that's what he's been doing since the beginning of the gospel is scattering the seed. So it's really the story of him and the story will continue. And by connection, it's also the story of, of the church or the scattering of the seed and how it's receded and some rejected. And so this parable, in a sense is, is repeated over and over and over billions and billions of times since the word was first brought. Every time the word is preached, every time the word is taught, every time you speak words of testimony or ministry to, to a friend or to a loved one, to a fellow believer, every time you listen to teaching on a podcast or on YouTube, every time you listen to Christian teaching, this parable is being reenacted. And every time it's being reenacted, it's a life or death decision. And I mean eternal life or eternal death. How you receive the word of God is the most important thing about your heart. If you receive it with faith and submission, or if you receive it with doubt, if you receive it with skepticism, if you receive it with partial yieldedness, that makes an eternal difference. And so the importance of receiving the word with faith, with submission, with yieldedness, this is what the parable is going to bring us face to face with. Now lastly, the thing for us to see is to remind ourself to trust the har, the Lord of the harvest, to trust the Lord of the harvest. Did you notice how dismal everything looked until the very end? I mean, only one type of soil produced any fruit at all. And in the Bible, fruit equals life. No fruit equals death. Only one type of soil was going to produce any fruit at all. And so didn't it look really dismal until the very end? And we're told this harvest of 30 69 or a hundred-fold, we are told that in Jesus' day a farmer would consider it a good harvest to yield. Seven or eightfold tenfold would be a bumper crop that would be a tear down your barns and build bigger barns, kind of crop. And so even thirtyfold, 30 times the volume of seed planted even that was just, that's supernatural harvest. So until the very end, everything just looks bleak and dismal until the harvest. So this is t going to teach us to trust the Lord of the harvest. It will remind us that we must trust the Lord of the harvest. Now, that can mean to trust the Lord of the harvest. As a church, what would it look like for a church? To stop trusting the Lord of the harvest. If a church does not trust the Lord of the harvest, when the Lord of the harvest says, listen, it's going to look bleak, but there'll come a day when the harvest comes in, and until that day it'll, it's going to look really bleak For a church not to trust the Lord of the harvest, what might that church do? Maybe try to manipulate the seed. Maybe try to make the seed more adaptable to different conditions. Maybe if the seed needed less soil, if the seed didn't have to have soil all the way down, maybe if the seed didn't need the soil all to itself, maybe if the seed was more compatible with thorns around it, then we could have a better crop. Can you see the analogy? That's what it looks like for a church to not trust the Lord of the harvest. When the Lord of the harvest says there's coming a harvest in the last day, and until then you're going to think it's really bleak. To fail to trust the Lord of the harvest means we try to manipulate the seed to bring about the harvest ourselves. So this is going to remind us as a church to trust the Lord of the harvest, but it's also going to remind us as individuals to trust the Lord of the harvest. You know what it means for an individual to trust the Lord of the harvest in the same way in the parable it, it just, again, it looked like there was going to be no fruit until the very end. Do you ever feel like that? You ever feel like, where's the fruit? Where really is the fruit? I know that there's supposed to be fruit, visible fruit in my life. Sometimes it just seems like I've never seen it. Maybe a little bit, but it's just not there to trust the Lord of the harvest reminds us and it teaches us there's coming a bountiful harvest of fruit and that harvest will be supernatural. But for most of us, in most ways and in most in most assessments, we would not see that bountiful harvest until that day when we see him.