Mark 4 | Good Soil

Introduction and Movement 1

[Walk to the pulpit holding the bowl of fake cherries. Set them down without a word. Let people look for a moment.]

We're going to start in Mark 4 today.

We've been here for four weeks. This is the last soil of the parable we’ll look at today.

Let’s read it again to keep it fresh in our minds.

Mark 4:1-20.

Mark 4:1–20 NIV

1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. 2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.” 9 Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” 10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12 so that, “ ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” 13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Four soils.

We’ve looked at first three.

The hard path. The heart trampled by trauma and self-protection. Grace tenderizes what trauma tramples.

The rocky ground. The heart with hidden debris underneath. Wounds, lies, agreements that keep the roots from going deep.

The weedy soil. The divided heart. Split between the Kingdom of God and comfort. Between Jesus and whatever else is competing for the throne.

Today we land on the good soil.

And here is the one thing I want you to walk out of here with today.

Write it down if that helps you.

Surrender produces what striving never can.

We're going to come back to that sentence several times this morning. And by the end I hope you're going to believe it in a way that maybe you don't quite yet.

Here's where we're going.

First, why striving doesn't work. Second, what surrender actually looks like. And thirdly, the harvest; we’ll look at what it produces, why it varies, and why that's not a competition.

Three stops. Let's go.

MOVEMENT 1: WHY STRIVING DOESN'T WORK

[Pick up the cherries. Hold them up.]

My mom has a bowl of these on her dining room table.

First time I saw them I almost grabbed one. I’m not the only one… it’s kind of a running joke in our family now!

Look at them.

That deep red. The gloss. The little stem catching the light.

These are not real cherries.

They’re carved wood. Painted by hand. Probably coated more than once to get that shine exactly right.

Someone spent hours on these. Real skill. Real craft. Real artistic investment poured into every single one.

Which, means, these had to cost more than real cherries. They had to. Think about what went into them. The carving, shaping, painting, sanding, layering.

Hous of skilled labor.

A real cherry. It doesn't work like that.

A real cherry grows on a tree. The tree does the work. The branch stays connected to the trunk. The roots pull up water. The sun does what the sun does. And fruit appears. Not because the branch tried harder. Because the branch stayed attached to something alive.

But these? These required everything.

And the result is something that will sit on a table and look perfect.

And nourish absolutely nobody.

Not even the person who made them.

I think a lot of us are in the cherry-carving business.

We've learned somewhere along the way to produce the appearance of spiritual fruit through willpower and religious discipline. And we’re good at it. The prayer that sounds right. The Bible knowledge that impresses. The serving that looks selfless. The consistency that seems like faith.

Beautiful. Glossy. Costly.

And underneath all of it, if we're honest, we know.

We know we're tired. We know it doesn't feel like it's coming from somewhere real. We know we're carving cherries instead of growing them.

Now look back at the parable.

What do the first three soils have in common?

The hard path can't receive the seed at all. The rocky ground receives it but can't sustain it. The weedy soil receives it but lets other things crowd it out.

In every case the problem is the same.

The soil is working against the seed instead of with it.

And no amount of effort fixes that. You cannot strive your way into good soil. The hard path doesn't soften by trying harder. The rocks don't move because you discipline yourself more. The weeds don't disappear because you add another spiritual habit.

That's not how soil works.

And that's not how the heart works either.

And Jesus explains how it works.

Loook at vs. 20.

Mark 4:20 NIV

20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Three verbs.

Hear. Accept. Produce.

Two postures. Then a result.

Here is what I need you to see.

The postures are yours.

The result is God's.

The soil doesn't generate the fruit.

The seed does.

Surrender produces what striving never can.

Because striving tries to manufacture what only the seed can grow. But surrendering makes room for the seed to do what only it can do.

Which kind of sounds like riddle right? Is anyone out there, thinking… bro what are you talking about?

You’ve been telling us through the series about cultivating the soils of our hearts. Now you’re talking about surrendering not striving. So there’s work to do, but it’s not work? Again, bro what are you smoking!

I get it, but this is what parables do! They make us lean in and struggle! They force us to use our imagination, to use our faith!

There is work for us to do. Remeber Grace is not opposed to effort. It’s opposed to earning. There is work to do but it looks like surrender rather than striving.

Clear as mud right?

I know.... Step with me into my office for a second.

MOVEMENT 2: WHAT SURRENDER ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE (REVISED)

Following Jesus is rarely frictionless.

Most days my relationship with God does not feel easy or peaceful or clear.

Most days it feels more like a wrestling match.

And the thing that frustrates me most is not that God seems absent.

It's that he seems unclear.

I read something earlier this week that stopped me cold. The idea was simple. Pay attention to God. Help others do the same.

And I put the book down and thought, okay. But how? What does that actually mean on a Thursday morning? What does paying attention to God look like when you can't see him, can't hear him audibly, and half the time aren't sure if what you're sensing is him or just your own thoughts recycling?

Here's the cry of my heart more often than I'd like to admit from up here.

God, Just tell me what to do!

Give me the marching orders. Tell me the time, don't build me the clock. Just tell me clearly what you want and I'll go do it. Stop being so confusing.

I'm a pastor. Helping people pay attention to God is literally my job. And some weeks I sit at my desk and think, I'm not even sure I know how to do this myself.

Which is exactly why Moses makes me mad!

I read a passage like Exodus 33:11 and find out Moses… He got to do this faith thing face to face. Like a friend. He met with God like a friend!

Moses came down from the mountain or out of the tent with his face literally glowing because he'd been in the presence of God in a way that it left a physical mark on him.

I want that.

I want the burning bush. The audible voice. The direct, clear, no-confusion version of knowing what God wants and where he is and what he's up to.

I think a lot of you want that too.

But then I read the Gospels carefully.

And I notice something that gives me pause.

The disciples had exactly what I say I want.

Face to face. Miracles in real time. Direct teaching from the source. They watched Jesus feed five thousand people with a lunchable. They watched him walk on water. They watched him raise Lazarus from the dead.

And yet they were constantly confused. Constantly.

Peter watches Jesus walk on water and sinks because he gets scared. The disciples argue about who is the greatest right after Jesus tells them he's going to die. Thomas, who was in the room for all of it, still says I won't believe unless I put my fingers in the wounds.

They had what I say I want.

And it didn't produce the clarity I assume it would.

So earlier this week I sat down with my journal and I brought all of this to God.

Not politely. I wrote out the frustration. God, I'm trying to pay attention to you and most of the time I feel like I'm straining to hear something just out of range. I want what Moses had. I want clear. Why does this have to be so hard?

And then I did something I don't recommend as a theological method.

I opened my Bible randomly.

I’ve not yet started a reading plan for the year.

And so I just prayed, God, move. Show me something. Then I opened by Bible randomly and landed in John 5.

I'm not telling you to build your theology on Bible roulette. Don't go home and try this and then come back next week blaming me because you landed on a genealogy.

But here's what happened.

John 5 is Jesus responding to people who refuse to believe him. And he says this.

"You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."

And then later.

"If you believed Moses, you would believe me. For he wrote about me."

I sat there for a minute.

My whole complaint was that I wanted the Moses version. Direct. Face to face. Glowing.

And Jesus says: Moses was always pointing to me. Every word of it. The burning bush, the tablets, the face to face conversations, all of it was pointing forward to the Word made flesh. And now I've sent my Spirit so the Word can be written not on stone tablets but on human hearts. It's not less than what Moses had. It's the fulfillment of everything Moses had.

And then verse 38.

"You do not have his word abiding in you."

Not lack of access.

Lack of reception.

That landed hard.

Because my problem was never that God was silent. My problem was that I wanted a different kind of speaking than the kind he is doing. I want the epiphanies, bright lights from heaven. Glowing faces. I want the marching orders delivered clearly from above written in the sky.

And I felt like Jesus was saying through as I read: I'm already speaking. In the Word. In the Spirit. In the ordinary wrestling of a man sitting at a desk with a journal and a frustration and an open Bible.

That's not less than Moses.

Jesus said it himself. John 16:7.

"It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you."

Jesus said it would be better. It’s better that I go way. Not easier. Better.

I hear it… but do I accept it?

Now here is what I need you to understand.

That morning was not peaceful. It was not a tidy devotional moment. I came in frustrated and I wish I could say I left with an epiphany or total clarity. I wish I could say I left with all my questions answered. I didn’t, I left challenged.

I heard the word that is alive and working. Jesus said it’s better for me if He goes. Will I accept it!

Most days, this Church is what surrender looks like.

Struggle, not an epiphany.

And the Bible actually has a word for that kind of engagement. It's not devotion. It's not quiet time. It's wrestling. A wrestling match you refuse to walk away from.

Think about a guy named Jacob in Genesis 32. He wrestles with God all night. Physically. In the dirt. Straining. And he will not let go until God does something through the struggle! And God did. He gave Jacob a blessing in the form of limp!

Jesus said this struggle would be real. In Matthew 7. Ask. Seek. Knock. The grammar in the original language is continuous action. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. Don't stop.

Here’s the point: the wrestling is not the obstacle to receiving the Word.

The wrestling is what receiving the Word often looks like.

But here's what makes this wrestling match different from every other fight you've ever been in. You're not wrestling alone. And you're not wrestling against God. You're wrestling with a Person who wants to be found.

The seed in the parable has a name.

John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

Verse 14. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

When you receive Scripture you are receiving a Person. The written Word and the living Word are inseparable. Every time you open your Bible and wrestle with what it says, you are wrestling with Jesus. Every time you bring your honest frustration and your hard questions and your genuine confusion and refuse to walk away, you are doing exactly what Jacob did.

And Jesus gets the struggle. Because He lived it. He did what the parable describes.

He heard the Father completely. He accepted the Father's will all the way to Gethsemane. Not my will but yours. That was not a peaceful moment. That was sweat like drops of blood hitting the ground. That was a wrestling match that cost him everything.

But he stayed in it.

And the harvest came. Thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. The resurrection. The Kingdom spreading to every nation and tongue and tribe. The fruit of one surrendered life still multiplying two thousand years later.

Jesus is the farmer and that seed.

And when his Spirit lives in you, the same power that raised him from the dead is now at work in your soil too.

You don't manufacture that.

You receive it.

But receiving is not passive. It's not waiting for the epiphany. It's showing up when you don't feel like it. Opening the Bible when it feels dry. Praying when it feels like talking to the ceiling. Writing your honest frustration to God and then actually sitting still long enough to read what he's already said.

Paul says it in Romans 10:17. Faith comes by hearing. And hearing by the word of Christ.

Hear it. Accept it. Produce.

There are those two verbs again from Mark 4:20.

Surrender produces what striving never can.

You see, when we learn the word of surrender, that’s when the harvest comes.

MOVEMENT 3 AND CLOSE (TRIMMED)

So about the harvest.

Jesus says something here that is easy to skip past if you're moving too fast.

He says, the yields vary.

Thirty. Sixty. A hundred times what was sown.

He’s speaking about good soil. All who heard, accepted and produced! They all produced, but the yields varied.

And I want to address this directly because if I don't, some of you are going to walk out of here doing math.

You're going to look at the person next to you and start calculating. Who's thirty-fold and who's hundred-fold. Whether you're producing enough. Whether your fruit measures up.

That's a weed. Pull it now.

Jesus is not grading us on output.

He's describing faithful response to what you've been given.

There's a parable in Matthew 25 that runs alongside this one. A master goes on a journey and entrusts 3 servants with different amounts of money. One gets five. One gets two. One gets one. The first two double what they were given. The is third does nothing with his and is called wicked. .

But here's what the master says to the first 2: well done, good and faithful servant.

Their yields varied, but they were faithful with what they were given!

The variation in yield is not a report card. It's a reflection of what God has entrusted to each person and what each person has done with that trust.

Some of you are carrying a lot. God has given you influence, platform, resources, wealth, relationships, gifts that are wide and deep. Your hundred-fold calling is going to look enormous. And that's right. Because much has been given.

Some of you are in a quieter season. A smaller circle. A faithful presence in a few lives. Your thirty-fold harvest is not less valuable to the Kingdom. It is exactly what the farmer planted in your soil.

The question is never how much are you producing compared to someone else.

The question is: are you hearing? Are you accepting? Are you staying in the wrestling match?

If you are, the harvest will come and it will vary compared to others, but God’s good with that! You should be too!

But here's what I really want you to see.

We spent four weeks looking inward. Checking the heart. Identifying hardness, rocks, weeds. That work was necessary. You cannot give away what you don't have.

But Jesus never intended the good soil to be the end of the story.

The whole point of a harvest is that it feeds people.

Which we’ll talk more about next week.

And if all of this is making you curious. Mark your calendars! October 16 and 17 we're hosting an Understanding the Wounded Heart conference at North Clinton Church. If any of this series has resonated with you, if it’s given you helpful language and a way to diagnosis your heart, the conference is built to give you tools to help you cultivate good soil in your heart! You can sign up online if you haven’t already!

THE CLOSE

Now come back with me to these. [Pick up the fake cherries one more time.]

Somewhere there is a craftsman who made these. Skilled hands. A good eye for color and detail. They carved the wood. Shaped each one. Painted them. Layered the gloss. Hours of work.

And the result is beautiful.

And completely unable to nourish anyone.

Think about what that craftsman could have done with all that skill and time and energy if instead of carving fake fruit they had just tended a tree. Watered it. Pruned it. Kept the soil around it clear. Let the roots go deep.

The tree does the work. The branch stays connected. And real fruit appears. Fruit that feeds people. Fruit that multiplies. Fruit with seeds inside it that grow into more trees that produce more fruit.

That's what Jesus is describing in Mark 4:8.

It came up. It grew. It produced. Thirty. Sixty. A hundred times.

Not because the soil tried harder.

Because the soil stayed open to the seed.

Surrender produces what striving never can.

Receive the Word.

Release the results to God.

Let's pray.