Introduction, Outline, & Prayer

We might think that “hearing” is a simple act but I think I can show you that it isn’t. Imagine yourself sitting in a café waiting to meet a friend. You hear people all around you talking but you aren’t paying attention to anything they say—it’s just background noise that you automatically tune out while checking your text messages. But then, two people sit down at the table right next to you and begin talking in a language you don’t know. It’s a beautiful, intriguing language you can’t place. So, you start listening, trying to figure out what language it is even though you can’t understand a word of it.

Before you can solve the mystery, your friend arrives and you have a few minutes of casual conversation as he waits for his coffee. He mentions that he’s taking a new class on a subject you know nothing about. Now, unlike the crowd in the café, you don’t ignore him and, unlike the people next to you, you know the language he is speaking. But, you can’t still can’t understand because although the language is familiar, the concepts he’s talking about are foreign.

Once the coffee comes, the conversation becomes serious. Your friend has been enduring some really difficult things in life. You hear him pouring out his heart and listen with undivided attention, understanding both his words and what they mean, all while praying that God would use you to bring encouragement and hope in his life.

As the conversation ends, you hear a familiar voice call your name. It’s someone very close to you—your spouse, parent, child, boyfriend or girlfriend. Their call cuts through everything else in the room including the serious conversation you are having and immediately captures your attention like an automatic reflex you can’t control. As that person walks toward your table, another voice you’ve never heard before shouts the word, “Fire!” Everyone in the café turns toward that voice and gets ready to evacuate the building, making sure they don’t leave their coffee behind.

This story shows that there are many different ways we hear. We can hear without paying attention as we do in a crowd. We can hear without understanding a person’s words as we do when we hear a foreign language. We can hear without understanding a person’s meaning as we do when we hear about unfamiliar topics. We can hear in careful or casual ways as we do in serious or informal conversations. And we can hear in ways that automatically grab our attention no matter what we’re doing, like when people say our name or sound an alarm.

As we have seen over and over in Mark, Jesus came with a message for all to hear. He came “proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14–15). The question throughout Mark is, “Do you hear that message?” Or, more accurately, “How do you hear that message?” There are different kinds of hearing—just like we saw in the café story—and we need to check our ears to see how we are hearing Jesus. Is He just another voice lost in the crowd that we ignore? Is He just a casual conversation partner? Is He like an alarm we seek to get away from? Or do we give Him our full and undivided attention, clinging to every word? We will check our hearing this way as we continue through Mark 4.

Almost all of Mark 4 is devoted to Jesus’s parables, simple stories that help us learn something we don’t know by showing how it is similar to something we do know. In vv. 1–9, He told a parable about a farmer who planted seed in four different kinds of soil. Then He retreated with His disciples, first to explain why He taught in parables (vv. 10–12) and then to explain the meaning of the parable of the farmer and the four kinds of soil (vv. 13–20).

So, 4:1–20 has two sections: a parable publicly proclaimed and then a parable privately explained. In vv. 21–32—where we will be this week and next—we see the same two sections, only reversed. Jesus privately explains two parables to His disciples and then publicly proclaims two parables to the crowd. This structure makes Mark 4 like a parable sandwich; parables privately explained are the meat in the middle and parables publicly proclaimed are the bread on both sides. Today, we’ll focus on the rest of the meat, the next two parables Jesus privately explains to His disciples. First, we’ll look at The Lamp (vv. 21–23) and then at The Measure (vv. 24–25). Let’s read the text, pray, and dig in.

“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? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” 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. 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.” – Mark 4:21–25

Point 1: The Lamp (vv. 21–23)

When we hear the word “lamp” today, we picture something with a base, a shade, and a light bulb that plugs into a wall. Obviously, this kind of lamp didn’t exist 2,000 years ago; so, some of the force of Jesus’s parable might be lost on us. Hiding a typical modern lamp under a basket or a bed might be weird but it probably wouldn’t be dangerous. However, doing the same with a lamp in Jesus’s day would have been both weird and dangerous.

If you know what a gravy boat is, that’s sort of what lamps looked like 2,000 years ago. They were wide, oblong dishes made of clay or metal that were pinched closed at one end to form a little spout that could be lit after filling the dish with oil. They weren’t bright by modern standards but they were the lightbulbs of Jesus’s day. They also weren’t very safe by modern standards—having an open flame next to a shallow, uncovered bowl full of fuel was a significant fire hazard and I think that was exactly Jesus’s point. Putting that kind of a lamp under a basket or a bed would have been a really bad idea.

Kids, don’t try this at home but what would happen if you lit a candle and quickly put a basket over it? It would probably catch on fire. Or what would happen if you lost something under your bed and decided to look for it using one of those aim-and-flame charcoal lighters? The bed would go up in flames, most likely with the rest of your house. It would be foolish and destructive to do that because that’s not what candles and lighters were made to do. In the same way, lamps weren’t made to go under baskets or beds but to be put on stands to safely give light to rooms.

That’s the simple lesson of the story but remember: Jesus is telling a parable that uses simple ideas to explain complex ones. The simple ideas in the parable are the lamp and the secret things the lamp exposes. But what complex ideas are they pointing to in this passage? I think we can answer that question without even leaving chapter 4. In 4:10–11, “And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve 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.’”

Verses 11, 13, 21, and 24 all begin with the phrase, “And he said to them” (“them” meaning, “those around him with the twelve [asking] him about the parables”). There’s no change in audience in today’s passage. Jesus is still explaining the parables to the group that came to Him wanting to discover the truth hidden in His parables. Mark tells us this so that we won’t miss the symbols to which the lamp and hidden things point. Did you notice the connection between vv. 11 and 22? The hidden things of v. 22 that are exposed by the lamp correspond to the kingdom of God that was kept hidden from some in v. 11. And the lamp itself corresponds to the act of God giving the secret of the kingdom through Jesus Christ.

Jesus’s words and works are the light that allow us to behold the truth of God’s kingdom. And although He intended to keep God’s kingdom a secret for a time, His ultimate goal was to manifest and bring to light that hidden, secret kingdom through His own true and gracious words and works. It’s as if He said, “I’m hiding my identity in parables so that I can bring it to light with my actions.” Who Jesus is as seen by what He does—that is the lamp that is on a stand revealing the truth of God’s kingdom.”

The people in the room with Jesus as He told and explained this parable were living the parable—it was happening right in front of them. Jesus, the light of the world, was on a stand bringing to light the hidden secrets of the kingdom of God. I think that’s why He ended with the exhortation, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark 4:23). I think this is basically Jesus’s way of saying, “Earth to disciples: do you copy? If you haven’t truly heard the message that I am your only hope for seeing and entering the kingdom of God, it means you are spiritually deaf.” This will be an important theme in the coming chapters as Jesus wants people to admit their spiritual deafness so that they come to Him for spiritual healing.

Point 2: The Measure (vv. 24–25)

“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. 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’” (4:24–25).

Both then and now, a measure is something that determines the size or value of an item. If we want to know how big a room is, we use a measuring tape. If we want to know how much fruit will cost at the grocery store, we weigh it on the scale. The simple meaning of the parable is that whatever value you assign to something, that is the value you will receive from it. To get to the more complex truth in these words, we have to pay attention to Jesus’s command to pay attention.

Jesus said, “Pay attention to what you hear.” That is the main point of this passage. Attentive hearing is the measure we use to determine the value of Jesus’s message. The more we hear, the more we believe it is worth hearing and will gain a greater ability to hear rightly. The less we hear, the less we believe it is worth hearing and will lose whatever it is we thought we heard. To paraphrase v. 25, “To the one who has even the smallest amount of true hearing, more hearing will be given. To the one who has no amount of true hearing, he will lose whatever kind of hearing he has.”

Application: Pay Attention to What You Hear

This is the right time to jump to application. When you put Jesus and His message on the scale of your heart, what value does it read? What’s the price you would assign to it? How wide, high, and deep do you measure it to be? Those who hear God’s word and measure it to be of great value and surpassing width, height, and depth—those are the ones who will see that their measurements were too small—God will reveal to them how much greater and bigger His word is and they will rejoice to hear more. Those who hear God’s word and measure it be worthless, they will wind up losing whatever it is they thought had worth.

Paying attention is an act of faith, not an act of mere intellectual ability. Believing that something is worthwhile—not mental ability or intelligence—is what motivates a person to pay attention. Everyone has a different attention span. My son has an attention span of about 7/10ths of a second, unless he finds something particularly fascinating or enjoyable—then his attention span increases a thousand-fold (to about 2 minutes). It’s the same with all of us. If we believe something is enjoyable or fascinating or important or serious, we are able—almost automatically—to give it our attention in a very unique way. When we do what we love, no one has to remind us to pay attention to we are doing. Our experiential faith and joy in that activity is sufficient to hold our attention for an amount of time far longer than normal in a way that has nothing to do with our IQ and everything to do with our affections. That is how Jesus wants us to hear Him.

You don’t have to be smart, you just have to pay attention. If you are serious about paying attention to what you hear in God’s word, He promises in this passage to give you understanding beyond your natural capacities. That’s what He means when He says, “still more will be added to you… more will be given.” The more you pay attention, the more grace you will receive to understand.

Capturing the spirit of this passage, George Müller, a Prussian pastor in the 19th century, well known for his love for the Bible, encouraged people not to hear God’s word “so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe” but to “[consider] what we read, [ponder] over it, and [apply] it to our hearts.” Water running through a pipe is such a powerful image. But because it’s spring time, let’s replace the pipe with a garden hose.

If Jesus is the gardener, we are not to receive the water of His word like the garden hose. We are to receive it like the seeds and plants that He is watering. It is not supposed pass through us and fly out of our hearts and minds as quickly as possible. It is meant to soak into the soil of our lives, going all the way down to our roots, saving us from spiritually shriveling up and dying, satisfying our thirst, causing us to grow and become beautiful, fruitful plants that exist to please and show the unsurpassable care and skill of our Gardener.

He doesn’t want to be heard like one voice in a sea of noise that we instinctively ignore. He doesn’t want to be heard as one speaking foreign words or concepts that we dismiss as meaningless nonsense. He doesn’t want to be heard casually as though he merely came to talk about the weather. He doesn’t want to be heard like an alarm we flee from because it offends our ears. He wants to be heard as an honored, beloved voice that has our full and undivided attention, ready to receive His message with His blessing.