The Gospel Seed

INTRO

Have you ever met one of your heroes? Someone that you admire from a distance? Someone that you have read about and wanted to meet? I did that once. And it was a very disappointing experience.

PROBLEM:

We all have this tendency to make God in our image. That He should feel the way we feel, act the way we do, we want a King who does our bidding and fits our personal desires and comforts. When we hear GOOD NEWS and SALVATION we all have an idea of what that means in our own way much like Mark's audience here and Jesus' audience. But watch the disciples mentality. They were confused but they continued to submit to the revelation of Jesus’ teaching, and in turn got more! It should cause us to reconsider how we treat the gospel of Jesus, the cross of Christ. Reverence or rejection? Christ is the cornerstone. Everything God does HE does through His Son and For His Son.

MAIN IDEA: Since the Gospel alone is the power of God, we must, as the church, build our lives, our churches on the good news of Jesus Christ. On Christ alone.

In Christ Alone is the power for salvation.(Christ alone saves)

The Light has Come

Jesus first uses the illustration of a lamp being brought in. Now this word to be “brought in” actually has the image of the light/lamp arriving. Which makes us think back to the arrival of the light of the world which is Jesus. We want to remember that in the Gospel of Mark, Mark consistently wants to push Jesus to the front, wants to continue to exalt Christ above all. We’ve seen His authority in His teaching, His authority over healing, His authority over demons, and His authority to forgive sin. Here as Jesus is teaching the disciples, He tells them this light that has come into the world is not to be put under a basket but is meant to shine, is meant to be brought forward for all to see.

Illustration of marriage, if I hid Allison or if I didn’t put her out in front, it would be obvious of what I really thought about my wife. And in the same way, the way the Father puts forth the Son, brings glory to the Son, put’s all things under the Son’s authority is a clear picture of the “1st place” that Jesus has in the church and in the universe.

FOR Jesus says that by this “light” things that have been hidden will be revealed and things that are concealed will be brought to light. What does Jesus mean here? I think He has two things in view:

The mystery of the Gospel: Colossians 1:26-28 . His mission and ministry.The light has come. In first-century Palestine, oil lamps were typically hung from lampstands so that they would sit above the room and provide the maximum amount of light. They were not put under a bed or a basket, for that would not fulfill the purpose of lighting up the room. Jesus’ point, then, is that His reign and mission will not remain secret forever. God is a God who reveals.

The reality of the Jewish leaders hearts(remember in chapter 3 they began to plot to kill Jesus). So Jesus says my teaching will bring to light both the reality of God’s will(salvation) but also the reality of the human heart.

That’s what the Gospel does doesn’t it? It both reveals to us, the magnificence of the love of God, the mercy of God, the kindness of God, but it also reveals to us our own sinfulness and need. Jesus says what is going to begin to happen is that as I continue to reveal the mystery of God’s will(salvation for all through repentance and faith) your hearts will also be revealed. I’ve known men and women who have been broken under the reality of their sin towards God and so grateful at the good news of the grace of Jesus, and I’ve also witnessed men and women who can’t stand the idea of their need to be forgiven and in need of a Saviour to die for them. The Gospel does both. It is bad news and good news, and Jesus says those things that are hidden in the human heart, the Gospel will draw it out.

Tim Keller says this: “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

THEREFORE!

PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOU HEAR:

The Light needs to be received: This light, or seed, the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, has come, but it needs to be received. Jesus repeats here again pay attention to how you hear. How should we respond to the message of Jesus? Through Repentance and Faith BECAUSE....

Through Reception(belief/submission) comes greater revelation: Jesus repeats what He said before, how we respond to His teaching, about who He is and what He has done, has eternal significance for us. He says that, hey great, the light has come, the light has arrived, the knowledge of God and the gospel is here, but what are you doing about it? This phrase “by the measure you use it it will be measured to you(” is a phrase that when I first read it, I thought, “oh it’s talking about application of the word of Christ. The more we apply the word the more we grow and receive, which is a biblical truth, but actually this phrase doesn’t mean that, the phrase means the way we “judge something”. It is similar to what Jesus said in Matthew 7:2 . So what is He saying? The more you submit your lives to this revelation of Jesus, the more you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, however, Jewish leaders, the more you resist this revelation of who I am and why I’ve come, even the revelation of God you have will be useless because you have rejected the fullness of God’s revelation which is Me! We actually see this clearly in the lives of the disciples. As they submitted their lives to the teaching of Jesus, they were given more. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 . It is as we look(literally gaze) that we are changed and grow.

illustration: Jesus makes a reference to a lampstand. A lampstand is a narrow elevated structure for holding a lamp. Do you think He might be foreshadowing the cross? The most clear picture of the mercy of God, the justice of God, and the love of God. That is what Mark is hurrying to in this Gospel, it's like he can't wait to get there, that is where what was hidden is revealed. Colossians 1:17-20 . The cross of Jesus is something that divides. You see this in the ministry of Jesus the closer He gets to the cross, the fewer and fewer His followers are. I’ve known men who have been broken and humbled by the truth that we deserve wrath but God in His mercy stands in our place, and I’ve also known men and women who have hated that idea, the thought that they would need a Savior, and that God has wrath and judgement towards them. Jesus’ words brings us to this place where we are forced to make a decision. However is only in the cross that we are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.(1 Cor 15:1-2)

Christ Alone gives the power to produce fruit in a Christian.(Christ alone gives)

Jesus continues to teach His disciples about the kingdom of God. But Jesus is going to continue this theme that everything centers around who He is, the revelation of Christ in the Gospel. He talks about this farmer who scatters his seed and then sleeps day and night, rises and then one day, boom there is a crop. In this teaching Jesus says that it is the seed alone that has the power to produce fruit. If we continue to see the seed as Christ and His teaching, then we are led to believe that Christ alone is the power by which we produce fruit as Christians. Mark is the only writer to include this parable in his account. Why? Think about the audience he was writing to, a suffering, marginalized church, a minority in the empire. How could this parable that Jesus tells them be encouraging? 1. It says the seed grows and sprouts

By “itself” the word that Jesus uses here is where we get the word automatically. Jesus says that His teaching, the gospel, has the power to produce fruit by itself. What does that mean?

Through faith in Christ’s work, not our own. It means that our fruit in the Christian life rests ultimately on Christ’s work, and not our own. Look at the farmer. It says the farmer can rest, trusting in the power of the seed. Could you imagine if you walked out here and saw a farmer sitting there yelling at his seeds, yelling at his plants to grow, grow, grow! How many of us live our Christian lives from a place of resting in Christ’s work? It doesn’t mean we don’t “DO” anything, it just means that when we try and produce fruit by our own effort it’s like the farmer who tries to produce a crop without planting any seeds. Do any of you remember the fad that went around back in the 90s with the bracelets WWJD? The idea is that in any given situation we need to think about our action and ask “okay, what would Jesus do, now I need to do that”. I think I had like 5 or 6 of those things, I thought they were cool. But that, even though I understand the heart, actually can produce legalism in our lives. Because the Gospel isn’t about just doing what Jesus does, the point of the Gospel is believing in what JESUS HAS ALREADY DONE. Look at John 6:28-29.

BUT WE DO SEW THE SEED . John 15, we produce fruit by abiding(resting, trusting) in Jesus’ word. This is all a work of the Holy Spirit. Phil 2:12-13 . This isn’t saying that we aren’t called to do works, we ARE, a lot of them. Farmers are not lazy, it’s one the hardest jobs. We are called to produce fruit. In fact there are more commands in the New Covenant than in the old, but why? Because we’ve been given a new heart, and the life of Christ is living through us. When we look at all of the commands in the New Testament that should cause us to not be impressed with how amazing we are, but WHOA look at how awesome Christ is, and how much His power can do through me! Therefore good works are the fruit of the gospel in the heart of a person, not the root. It’s the hidden manifest theme here again. If the Gospel has really been “planted deep in our hearts” the result will be visible fruit. Paul says this “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Colossians 2:6-7 by faith. Trust that the Gospel will accomplish what God intends in your own life and in the world. Are you resting in Christ’s work? It’s like driving a car with no engine. The Gospel is the engine. Doesn’t matter how hard we press on the gas, honk our horn, WE WILL GO NOWHERE without the power of Christ.

Finally, we can’t move one without mentioning Jesus’ reference here to the harvest. This is referring to the final judgement, and once again Christ is saying that once this harvest is done growing there will be a final judgement, which again is all about Him, have we repented, and placed in faith in Christ’s work, become fruit bearing disciples, or have we rejected Him?

In Christ Alone is the power to expand the kingdom and grow the church.(Christ alone grows)

The nature of the growth of the kingdom. Finally Jesus is going to talk about the growth of the kingdom, or how the church grows. Once again Jesus uses a farming analogy. Any of you all ever worked on a farm? Jesus uses farming illustrations because the culture was a lot of farmers, but I also believe farming does teach us so much about the kingdom, about faith, and about work. So Jesus shows His disciples that not only will you produce fruit and there will be a harvest, but this kingdom that I’ve been preaching about is going to expand and grow into something that is huge. It took 725-760 mustard seeds to weigh a gram (28 grams equal one ounce)If you were one of these disciples and hearing Jesus talk about the growth of kingdom and how it's going to grow and expand, you might be thinking, really? It’s just us, your family has rejected you, the ruling religious leaders have rejected you, and the Roman Empire is still ruling and reigning. But where are all of those people now? Roman Empire gone. Pharisees Sadducees, maybe still around, but Christianity? Has grown into the largest religion in the world. The power of the seed of the Gospel.

Jesus came and with His teaching and He was rejected and despised by men, considered “small” in the eyes of men. But when this seed goes in the ground and dies(Jesus) it comes and produces growth. The church is built on nothing else but the proclamation of Jesus as Lord. This is what Jesus tells Peter in Matthew 16:15-18 “But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

Matthew 16:15–18 CSB

“But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

Some stats, we’ve mentioned this before, but I think it is always encouraging to look at the growth of Christianity all over the world. Jesus began with 12 Apostles. Later, there were as many as 500 believers (1 Cor. 15:6). Peter won 3,000 at Pentecost; and throughout the Book of Acts, that number steadily increased (Acts 4:4; 5:14; 6:1, 7). In spite of the sins and weaknesses of the church, the message has been carried to other nations; STATS HERE:https://www.pewforum.org/2005/03/02/faith-and-conflict-the-global-rise-of-christianity/

and one day, saints from every nation shall worship before His throne (Rev. 5:9). The kingdoms of the world HAVE become the kingdoms of our God.

Mustard seed relevance to Taiwan(percentage, come on!)

“Once, when I was standing at the church door after a service, a young man came up to me and began to tell me that he had heard me speak fifteen years before at a small church in Pennsylvania. He told me that following that service, he had asked me a question, and he was able to repeat my answer to him verbatim all those years later. He said, ‘When I went home, I could not get your words out of my head, and God used that comment that you made that day to convict me to go into the ministry.’” Sproul concludes, “God can use the smallest words that we speak, the smallest service that we give, and bring a (8) kingdom out of it.”​

SO WHAT?

ALL ABOUT JESUS.

If you or I acted like this we would be considered the biggest ego maniacs in the world. Yet I find myself sometimes doing this. Thinking that the world revolves around me, that the church revolves around me and my gifting, or that my family or my kids exist for me. But when we do that, what we do is we begin to lose the power that God has given us in the gospel, for the growth of the kingdom and growth in our own spiritual lives. So first, how are we resting and trusting in Christ’s work and not our own? Then how are we encouraging others to do the same?Example of disciples they are given more revelation. Remember Jesus tells these parables in order for us to respond. Repentance and faith. So I think it would be right for us to ask ourselves this question, if God the Father has places Jesus Christ as 1st place in all things, He is the power for salvation, He is the power for fruit in our lives, He is the power for the growth of the church, where have we been running to other than Christ for those things?

Story of when we began to plant this church, in America, I had to write out this plan of what the church was going to look like, and in almost everything I wrote it had to do with Oh we’re gonna DO this, and then DO this, and we’re gonna DO this, and it all centered around “doing”. But then I got a gentle rebuke that one of the most important things we do as church planters and as a church is to lay a clear gospel foundation, because our doing comes out of our being.

In WW2 the military had this great idea of inventing a gun that had a curved end, that should enable their soldiers to shoot around corners. So they made all of these guns and shipped them out only to discover that when men went to shoot, the curved end created too much stress and the bullets ended up exploding and spraying everywhere. Could you imagine going to war but being given an ineffective weapon? Church, God has not given us an ineffective weapon as we go out and follow the mission He has given us. He has given us HIS very power, the message of the Gospel, and the Spirit of the living God. However, when we neglect that power, when we rely on some other method it is just like carrying ineffective weapons to battle.

This means for us as a church, we strive to be a Christ-centered church, or a gospel-first church. That means our first priority as a church is to grow deep in our hearts this affection and awe of good news of the Gospel. We want to put it in front of our hearts, in front of our church, because it is what has power. So, what we did is we grabbed about 50 Chinese bibles and we want to give them to you today, and are asking you to think and pray about what person can you give this to? As a way to sew the word of the Lord? You could give this to them and offer to read it with them or go through it. Pick one up before you leave.

Let’s pray.