Parables are King's work

Have you ever wondered about what is happening behind the scenes? Have you ever gotten a backstage tour, have you ever worried about tomorrow or thought about what is going on around us? Have you ever wondered what is a small part of what God is doing? This section of parables is some information about the kingdom of God that Jesus wants us to understand. It is important because it teaches us what he is doing to expand it and through that it reveals our part. We're going to be taken a 30,000ft perspective on God's kingdom plan here through the lens of parable. It's like looking down from an airplane window as you fly over a part of the countryside. This time we are going to look at this small part of God's kingdom plan from above.

Background

Now Jesus in Mark 2:17- Mark 3:31-35 We learn about who Jesus is when in conflict with the Pharisees. We learned in verses Mark 2:13-17 that Jesus is the great Physician who has come to

17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

And so he shares with them a characteristic of who he is, a man able to forgive sins and calls sinners to himself.

The next thing that Jesus reveals about himself is that he is the bridegroom. The Bridegroom is a title that God reserved for himself and so Jesus is calling himself God to the Pharisees.

As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. Mark 2:19

And so we see that Jesus declares that he is God to the Pharisees. He also reveals that he will be taken away, further pointing to the crucifixion, but by implication he also will return.

And so Jesus through this actions and interaction reveal more to us.

He reveals again with Through his final conflict with the Pharisees that he is the Lord of the Sabbath in Mark 2:23-3:6. He compares himself as th heir of David and he pushes the Pharisees on their teachings about the Sabbath.

By calling himself Lord of the Sabbath he reveals that he is the God of the Sabbath, by claiming the actions of David he makes himself as great as David. These words are what pushes the Pharisee to go to their enemies the Herodians to plot the murder of Jesus.

Jesus reveals next a truth that anyone can be part of God's family, when they're a disciple of Jesus. Mark 3:22-30

And that brings us to the Parables,

so not only has Jesus revealed that he is God he then starts to teach about the actions of him as God through the parables.

His teaching, and as the scripture says

Matthew 7:28–29 (ESV)28 And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Only God could know how his kingdom work. That's like you knowing the intricacies of your family, your business. Jesus so well knows how the kingdom of God works he can actually tells us a bit about it. So he does, as a 17 year old we went to the set of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. It was a make a wish, wish granting for my brother who had cancer at the time. We loved that show and so his wish was to go see it filmed. It was illuminating. Scifi shows, all movies need to film yet keep budget and what we learned was just how the cool scifi stuff was really just Styrofoam and paint, cardboard, and plaster. When you get to see how movies are made it really helps you understand how complicated they are!

God is showing us how complicated yet how his kingdom works. It is a kingdom not like the ones we'd expect. In our world were nations saber rattle, his kingdom is growing not buy armies, but by changed hearts As Jesus said before Pilate

John 18:33–37 (ESV)

My Kingdom Is Not of This World

33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

So we get to see just how it's done.

4:1-20 As we spoke about last week is how the kingdom of God grows and it's production. It also by this that the call to disciple all nations is explained, why sometimes it seems to work and how sometimes it doesn't appear to be so.

Jesus, being God pulls back the curtain and explains the spiritual happens behind all things that we cannot perceive in a way that we can grab it.

He goes on to explain why we Christians can understand God's way or at least they make sense to us because we can understand because we have heard God like the unbeliever cannot in Mark 4:10-12.

He teaches more parables, the ones we will look at today backing up his proclamation of him being God. Giving us more insight into the workings of the Kingdom of God.

Mark then does something very common in the gospels in 4:35-5:43 He backs up the teaching of him being God, Jesus's declarations about the kingdom of God, by showing us the power of God in the Miracles he does. The stopping of the storm, God having power over nature, the removal of Legion the demons from a possessed man, demonstrating God's power over the Spiritual realm, and the healing of two people woman who had a persistent discharge of Blood, and the dead little girl, demonstrating his authority over man, and the bodies of man.

BIG IDEA

So what Mark wanted the original readers to know and us to know is that the Kingdom of God is at hand, because the king is here. God's will is being accomplished on Earth as it is in heaven, even now as we speak.

FIRST PARABLE

So the first parable Jesus says this:

21 Also He said to them, “Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? 22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Jesus is the light, his message the gospel is the light. We know this because elsewhere in John it says:

John 8:12–14 (ESV)

I Am the Light of the World

12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 13 So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.

This truth Jesus was routinely revealing and telling people to not share yet. This was the mystery of God that was revealed to the people, that the messiah had come. When you look at verse 22/23 he says:

22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.

The same God who would often say go and tell no one did so because eventually

Here the idea seems to be this—“I have privately expounded to you these great truths, but only that ye may proclaim them publicly; and if ye will not, others will. For these are not designed for secrecy. They are imparted to be diffused abroad, and they shall be so; yea, a time is coming when the most hidden things shall be brought to light.”

Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. 1997. Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Vol. 2. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Jesus would start with the kingdom of God being small and quiet only for in Matthew 28:18–20 (ESV)

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The king proclaimed that the message should be shared! Jesus give us a warning!

24 Then He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. 25 For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”

As you learn more of the faith you're to conform to it, you're to discipline yourself to it and live by it. You're to share it with the world, to make disciples who do the same.

John MacArthur said on this verse:

The spiritual results which the disciples realized were to be based on the amount of effort they put forth; they would reap as they had sown. more will be given. The one who has learned spiritual truth and applied it diligently will receive even more truth to faithfully apply.

MacArthur, John, Jr., ed. 1997. The MacArthur Study Bible. Electronic ed. Nashville, TN: Word Pub.

The More you understand Christ, the more of Christ you have. We read with our Children Narnia and in the prince Caspian story Lucy sees Aslan, the stand in for Jesus in the woods, when she see him she celebrates and says "you've gotten bigger" he tells her that it is because she has grown in her love for him. The next thing he does is tell her to wake her family in the middle of the night to follow him into the woods to bring them to the location they were traying to find. He tells her they won't see him or hear him but she is to obey, to tell them to follow her, and even if they don't to follow him anyway. In her fear that they wouldn't believe her she goes and tells them and they believe and follow!

The more you know of Christ the more he will give you to do.

THE SECOND PARABLE

26 And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, 27 and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. 28 For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

Building off the parable we went through last week. The work of the, man is the sowing of the work of the king is the bringing the growth. Nothing the man can do would cause the seed to grow.

The kingdom grows because the king causes it to grow, and when the king cause to grow there is a harvest. When studying this and looking at what commentators have said John Mac said.

There are two possible interpretations of this unexplained parable. It could be referring to the entire scope of the kingdom, from the time Jesus sowed the gospel message until the final harvest in the future. His disciples would continue the work of presenting the gospel that would eventually yield a harvest. The better interpretation pictures the gospel working in lives. After the gospel is presented, the Word of God works in the individual heart, sometimes slowly, until the time when God reaps the harvest in that individual and saves him.

MacArthur, John, Jr., ed. 1997. The MacArthur Study Bible. Electronic ed. Nashville, TN: Word Pub.

So if it is God filling the world with his people until his return, or it is a picture of the king transforming a person's life God is good and at work!

THE LAST PARABLE

The seed is small, but grows into a large tree.

This is a symbol that the first centuary people would have understood very well. The seed starts small and gorws into something large, large enoguh for the birds to rest in.

The parable of the mustard seed illustrates that the kingdom’s present manifestation in the person of Jesus, which appears negligible, will issue in widespread, global fruition in the future.

Sproul, R. C., ed. 2015. The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust.

The birds find a place to rest, and the kingdom is a place for you to find rest

(Give the gospel)