The Kingdom of Heaven

The Kingdom of Heaven Mark 4:1-34

If you would, please turn to Mark 4:1-34 for our text this morning

Mark 4:1-34, when you’re there, if you’re able to, please stand with me as I read our text for this morning

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. 2 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables.

11 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,

12 so that

“‘they may indeed see but not perceive,     and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”

13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 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. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 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. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

21 And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? 22 For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 24 And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. 25 For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

30 And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.

34 He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

This is God’s Word

You may be seated

As we have already seen in Mark’s gospel, things do not slow down

His gospel is replete with the activity of Jesus because he wants us to continue to ask, “Who is this Jesus?” And Mark is helping us and his readers answer that question by pointing us to what Jesus does

But today we slow down a bit and look at the largest and longest block of teaching of Jesus in Mark’s gospel

Our text starts off telling us that while Jesus is teaching a large crowd gathers, so large that He has to get in a boat in the sea so that all could hear Him.

Mark tells us that during this teaching, Jesus speaks to the crowds exclusively in parables

Yet, Mark draws our attention to only one of the many public parables, which in Jesus’ mind seems to be the mother of all parables based on His words to His disciples in verse 13,

“Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?”

So, there’s something about this parable that provides us a lens to see the rest of Jesus teaching and ministry in the gospel

Our passage today deals solely with how we are to understand and think about the Kingdom of God.

So I want us to have this in our minds as we walk through it this morning:

AS THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS PREACHED, ITS IMPACT NOTICEABLE, ITS REACH INCALCULABLE, AND ITS SAVIOR UNDERSTANDABLE.

And we’ll see that play out in three ways:

I. The People of the Kingdom (1-20)

II. The Nature of the Kingdom (21-32)

III. The King of the Kingdom (33-34)

Let’s dive into the

I. The People of the Kingdom (1-20)

Jesus signs off His teaching on parables by saying “He who has ears, let him hear.”

But everyone who was listening to Jesus obviously had ears, so what could Jesus be talking about here? Well it seems that there is a hearing that goes deeper than just listening

The disciples are unsure of what Jesus is talking about in His parables, so they decide to ask Him

And before we scoff at the disciples, we have to take a moment and realize that the time between verse 9 and 13 is a lot shorter for us than it was for them

Imagine being in the crowd and hearing all that Jesus said, would you not have questions too? Wouldn’t you want to make sure you were understanding correctly?

And isn’t it so kind of Jesus that He does not immediately rebuke them for asking questions and not being sure what the parable is about?

In fact, He takes time before explaining the parable to share with them the reason why He is speaking with parables

We learn that Jesus is speaking in parables in order to fulfill prophecy

As the kingdom is preached, God will sovereignly withhold understanding from some in order to showcase their hardness of hearts

And at the same time, He discloses the secret of the Kingdom to others

The coming kingdom of God will divide people. Some will be on the inside, and others will remain on the outside

Thanks to Jesus’ explanation, we know that the parable of the Sower is talking about the condition of the heart

So let’s notice a few things about Jesus’ explanation of the parable: the soil, the seed, and the sower

The Soil

It’s would be true to say that there are really only two responses to the message of the Kingdom: belief and unbelief

But Jesus knows our hearts better than we do and is able to show layers of unbelief that can be present in our hearts.

So we have three causes of unbelief and the result of belief

We have hard soil, shallow soil, thorny soil and good soil

It is important to remember brothers, that in the ministry of the Word, we not only have hard hearts against us, but also an adversary

The word we have has the ability to change lives and cultures, to bring the dead to life!

Should we be surprised that Satan would oppose this?

If that is the case, then we ought to prayerfully ask God to prevent Satan from stealing away the life giving power of the Word.

While the hard soil never produces any fruit, the shallow and the thorny soil are a little more insidious because they have the appearance of belief

The shallow soil reminds us of Bunyan’s character Pliable in the Pilgrim’s Progress

He decides to journey with Christian upon hearing of the blessings of the kingdom and the joys it can bring in the life to come

But when they reach the slough of despond and he realizes that the journey onward will not be an easy one, he quickly departs from the way

He received the word with joy, but decided that the discomfort of now was not worth the pleasure of the future

To be sure, the focus is not on the sower or the seed, but the heart of those who have the seed fall on them

Notice the sower sows irrespectively!

Perhaps the sower does know what sort of soil he is throwing seed on, but it doesn’t matter. The sower is magnanimous in his distribution of the seed

And because Jesus tells us that the seed is the Word, it’s incredibly practical for us to hear as ministers of the Word

Don’t stop preaching! Don’t predetermine where you sow seed

Every single heart needs the seed. Even if it doesn’t produce fruit, we learn that the seed is sown to all

This might press the parable too far, but I do think it’s helpful for our day and age too

Notice the sower sows THE seed. Not half of it, not certain parts of it, but all of it!

In a culture where a lot of what we believe can come across offensive and not politically correct, we have to be careful not to uphold the parts of word people like and hide away the less liked parts

Brothers, are you embarrassed by what we find in this book?

Are you embarrassed by our Lord?

We’ll see later that it’s not up to you or your strength to see the seed grow, but we could stifle fruit if we don’t sow it all