Sowing the Seed

The title of this sermon today is Sowing the seed. Today, I am letting this passage dictate how much I am going to be able to cover in the sermon. My intention was to go through verse 10-20, but after studying this text, there is no way that we would be able to cover all of that in the next 35-40 minutes. So we will be covering Mark 4 verses 10-14 but I am going to read through verse 20 so that we have the context in place.

Mark 4:10–20 (ESV)

Intro

Probing question - Did you understand what I said?

I ask this question quite frequently because I am positive that what I am trying to say and what I actually say do not always line up. When we speak, we want to be clear. How often does it happen that you say something and the person you said it to takes it a completely different way than what you intended.

I think about being around young children. I was at the coffee shop the other day and a mom had her two children with her sitting at the table next to me. The kids were getting a little excited and it got my attention. After a while, her son who is 4 came up to me and started talking to me. He told me his name and then stood there for a least a couple of minutes and was just talking away. After a while his mom asked me what he was telling me about and I just had to say, “I have no idea”. It is like trying to speak to someone in a completely different language.

This is the way the bible is to those who do not believe. They really don’t understand the things that are being said in the bible. They can make out the words and they understand the words, but they to not know what the scriptures are saying. I didn’t come to faith until I was an adult. If you are in that same boat, you can probably remember what it was like to be around Christians and feel like they spoke a different language. Or to go to church and sit there and listen to the preacher for 30 minutes or an hour and leave not knowing what he was talking about. Understanding is key.

The theme of our text today is evangelism. The oxford dictionary defines evangelism as the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness. It is literally telling others the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, if you have been coming to church here for very long, you will know that I give a clear gospel presentation each and every week. This week is no different. But I want us to really slow down at this moment. This entire message is about sharing the gospel to others. The gospel is not just that Jesus loves us. This is a truth of the gospel, but the gospel is much more. I want you to make note of these 4 things that we cannot leave out when sharing the gospel message.

God (Creator of the universe, creator of man)

Sinful Humanity (broke God’s law)

Jesus (sinless perfection, died on cross, rose from the grave)

Response (repent and believe)

Now let’s put those together. Here is the gospel. (gospel presentation)

Going back to my opening statement. Did you understand what I said? I think many of us would answer that pretty quickly as a yes. But we cannot assume that just because someone is nice or kind or generous that they believe the gospel. This is why evangelism is importation. This is why it is important for us as believers to understand evangelism. This passage today deals with several topics and we will deal with them as we go through it but there is one glaring idea that stands above the rest. The idea of the soil. As we will see later on in our passage, we cannot control anything about the soil. But there are things that we can control. And the biggest thing is our obedience. I heard a quote not long ago that I really love and I am not sure who to attribute it to. But it is to “Control the Controlable”. As believers, our focus in evangelism should not be on the conversion of others but on our own obedience. And that is where the main point of this text comes from.

Main Idea - We are to sow the word of God.

Let’s dig into our text for today. In our text, we are going to look at 3 things that Jesus is pointing out to his disciples. The secret, the sower, and the soil.

Understand The Secret

The Duke of Wellington is best remembered as the general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. During his earlier service in India, Wellington was in charge of negotiations after the battle of Assaye. The emissary of an Indian ruler, anxious to know what territories would be ceded to his master, tried in various ways to get the information. Finally, he offered Wellington a large sum of money. "Can you keep a secret?" asked Wellington. "Yes, indeed," the man said eagerly. "So can I," replied Wellington.

Now, that type of secret isn’t exactly what Jesus is referring to when he talks about the secret of the kingdom of God. We are not some sort of group that has information that we are keeping from others. In fact, we should act the exact opposite and be sharing anything and everything that has been revealed to us by the scriptures. So, lets see what Jesus has to say about this.

Mark 4:10–11 ESV

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,

He is no longer in front of the very large crowd. He is now in front of those who were left. We can assume that this group is not large at all with it just being the twelve and “those around him”. He had just got done telling the parable of the sower. And notice that the crowd is now gone. Oftentimes, Jesus would say things that were hard to hear. John 6:60 “60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”” John 6:66 “66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

People would leave Jesus because they did not like what he had to say. Things have not changed. This still applies today. This is why churches that have abandoned biblical teachings have become so prominent. Because people will flee from hard biblical teaching to soft, inclusive teaching. It is because of things like this that the gospel must be clear. If we try to make the gospel as easy as Jesus loves you, what Jesus are we talking about? Many people can get on board with a statement like Jesus loves you. But when you start teaching about Jesus and what he says in scripture, people will turn their back on that teaching in favor of soft teaching.

He tells the disciples that they have been given the secret of the kingdom of God. What is the secret? It is clearly the understanding of the kingdom of God and how it is going to grow. It is going to grow through us spreading the gospel (evangelism) and by people receiving it and responding to it.

Mark 4:12 ESV

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

Jesus is quoting Isaiah 6 here. People can see, but they don’t actually see. People will hear the words but do not understand what it is. But if they do, they can turn and be forgiven. The response to the gospel that makes us children of God is repentance and belief. Turning from our sinful nature and turning to the righteousness that is only found in Jesus. The secret that Jesus is talking about is repentance and belief in the gospel. And those who have this secret, have eternal life.

Think back to before your conversion. This quote from Isaiah 6 about people who can see but not perceive and people who can hear but not understand. This was you before salvation. I don’t know about you but I heard the gospel a number of times before it came to life in me. When I read this, I see two things that should really stick out to us.

The smartest person in the world can be shown all of the evidence in the world and witness the greatest miracles in the world, and still not turn to Jesus. It isn’t about intelligence. It isn’t about being street smart or being book smart. It isn’t about who you were raised by. It is only about the Holy Spirit working in the life of someone, drawing them into belief in the gospel and repentance of their sins. I don’t care if someone is the son of a 10th generation pastor, I don’t care if you have not missed a Sunday in 12 years. These things make you no more likely to repent and believe in Jesus than someone in a muslim country hearing the gospel for the very first time. It isn’t about our surroundings. It is about the Holy Spirit working on someone who has been set apart by God to draw them into salvation.

Number 2 is that, because of this, we should have zero pressure on being successful in our evangelism. It ins’t about success. It is all about obedience.

See but not perceive, hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. Just because someone sees and hears doesn’t mean that they will turn and be forgiven. It isn’t those things. It is about perceiving and understanding. Those are the keys. And when someone perceives and understands, then they will turn and be forgiven. And you can try and try and try to beat biblical truth into someone, but they will only receive it if the Holy Spirit works in them.

Understand the Gospel

As we read, we see that this whole parable is about the gospel and who accepts the gospel. So we need to understand the gospel.

Mark 4:13 ESV

13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?

For us to be children of God, we have to understand the gospel. This is what Jesus is telling them. That the only ones who will turn and be forgiven are those who understand the gospel. This is the secret. Understanding the gospel is the secret. This is one of the reasons that we need to have such a high bar for church membership. And I don’t mean that they need to go to seminary and write a dissertation to become a member of the church. But what has happened a lot is that the bar is so low for church membership that churches let unregenerate people into membership. This means that there are people who are not saved who are being admitted into church membership. This is why the gospel is so important. You want to know why some churches split and some church die. Oftentimes it is because there are people in leadership who aren’t saved. Plain and simple. We need to be thorough when we let people into church membership. The last several that have joined, I have had several conversations with beforehand. And one of the main questions I ask is “what is the gospel”? I am not looking for a perfect answer, but there are answers that make it clear that they don’t know what the gospel is.

Understanding is a big part of Christianity. We see this being dealt with very clearly in the very early church in the 2nd century with this young man named Marcion.

Marcion was the son of an elder of a church in a city off the coast of the Black Sea. He was a ship owner and hauled cargo and passengers throughout the Roman Empire. Around AD 140, his fathers church excluded him from fellowship in the church likely due to bad theology. He would leave the area and go to Rome. He was quickly accepted into the church in Rome. This is likely because of a hefty donation to the church that would equal between $2-3 million today. He would infect the church with bad doctrine such as Jesus only seeming to be human. This belief came to be known as Docetism. Ultimately, Marcion denied the God of Israel and the Jesus of scripture. Because of this, the church changed an aspect of baptism. Just like many of us today have done, they would always ask the receiver of baptism questions publicly before their baptism so that their profession was a public profession. The questions had to become more detailed due to false teachings like the one Marcion was teaching. Why would they want to do this? This is so that the receiver of baptism understood that their profession of faith was different than those of the false teachings of Marcion. So the questions evolved into what was known as the “Rule of Fatih”.

Rule of Faith

“Do you believe in God the Father, Rule of all? Do you believe in Christ Jesus, God’s Son, who was born of the virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried, and rose again on the third day, alive from the dead, and ascended into heaven, sat at the Father’s right hand, and will come again to judge the living and the dead? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, and the resurrection of the flesh?”

We must understand the gospel.

But, Jesus also talks about the sower.

Understand Sowing

My grandfather was a very good gardener. After he retired, he treated his garden almost like a full time job. Which, his garden was probably close to an acre in size, so it really was like a full time job. But it was something that he was really good at. He never sold anything out of his garden to my knowledge but he was very generous to his neighbors in giving them food. He was such a good gardener that he could probably sneeze on a seed and it would sprout up.

For many of us, we would probably consider ourselves better gardeners than evangelists. It nearly seems impossible to share the gospel with people sometimes. And when you do, maybe they do not respond the way that you think they should. But then, to top it all off, you probably know someone that seems to be batting 1000 at sharing the gospel. Every time they share the gospel, people come to Christ. Regardless of the outcome, this should not stop us from being sowers.

Mark 4:14 ESV

14 The sower sows the word.

I want to take this into two parts here. I want us to look at who is the sower and what is the word. But I am going to do them out of order. So first…

What is the word?

The word is the word of God. This is the seed that the sower spreads. They spread the word of God. At the least, it is the gospel. (gospel presentation with repentance and belief). But it may end up being more than that too. Sometimes we are spreading seeds that have to do with morality issues. God’s word does not know any bounds of effectiveness. Isaiah 55:11 “11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” God’s word will not return void.

Repentance and belief in the gospel is what saves. It is simple. No one has ever been saved by their good works, by their kind words, or by the faith of anyone else. It is repenting and believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ and what he has done on our behalf that saves.

Who is the sower?

If you were guessing that I am going to say that each and every one of us are sowers, then you are correct. It is simple. You have heard me say that we need to know, grow, and go. This is us being on the go. When the gospel came to us, it was headed to someone else. We need to be mindful that we are seed scatterers. Will the seed always take? No it won’t But that is fine. Because it is not on us. It is the Holy Spirit working in the life of the one that we are sharing with that draws them into salvation.

We do not know the outcome whenever we are sowing the word in others. Can it be discouraging? Absolutely it can be. But it isn’t about results. It is about obedience. So that is where we are going to end this for today.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters in Christ, are we being obedient in sharing the gospel. I am going to be honest, this is one of the greatest areas that I need to grow in myself. So you are not alone. Let this be something that each and every one of us want to grow in. This is why instead of a bulletin today, you got a guide that will help you in sharing the gospel. Keep it with you. Use it if you need to. Study it and learn it.

Remember that when the gospel came to you, it was on its way to someone else. Without evangelism, the church dies.

If you are here today and have never made a true profession of faith and you are feeling this tug on your heart, Jesus tells us simply what to do. Repent and believe. Turn from your sins and turn to Jesus. Believe that he lived a sinless, perfect life and died a horrible death to be able to defeat the grave to prove that he is God. And when we believe that he went through all of these things for us and we give our entire selves to him, then we are saved. I would love to talk to you if that is you today.