Series: Mark,#10
August 5, 2007
KINGDOM GROWTH AND YOU
Mark 4:21-32
Mark 4:21-32 NIV
He said to them, "Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand? [22] For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. [23] If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."
[24] "Consider carefully what you hear," he continued. "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you--and even more. [25] Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him."
[26] He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. [27] Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. [28] All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. [29] As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
[30] Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? [31] It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. [32] Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."
The Broncos summer training camp has started, and you can only imagine how hard those guys are working in the hot summer sun to earn a place on the starting roster this fall. In the locker room there is lots of chatter going on, but when Coach Mike Shanahan walks in and says, “Alright you guys, listen up!” you can bet the chit chat stops immediately. He’s the boss, the head coach, and when he speaks, the team listens intently.
I. Listen Up! Mark 4:23-25 cf. Ezek 12:2; Mk 4:1-9; Lk 14:26-35
That’s exactly what Jesus wanted when He said, Mark 4:[23] “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus used this phrase several times, but the idea shows up first in God’s words to Ezekiel (12:2), "Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.” That helps us understand what Jesus is saying here. He’s saying, If you have ears that can hear the words I am speaking, then pay attention so that you really understand and grasp what I am saying. I know I am teaching in parables, or I am teaching things that are hard to accept. That just means that you have to pay all the more attention so that you can grasp, and receive what I am saying. Don’t have a rebellious heart that ignores me!
He goes on in Mark 4:24 to say that the measure of effort you use in that process of trying to figure out what God is saying in His Word will be the measure of blessing you receive from it. The New Living Translation says it well: Mark 4:24-25, “And be sure to pay attention to what you hear. The more you do this, the more you will understand—and even more, besides. [25] To those who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But to those who are not listening, even what they have will be taken away from them." We might paraphrase this, “you get out what you put in.”
How much effort do you put into studying and understanding God’s Word? Some people never read it, because they say it’s too hard to understand. Of course it is, if you don’t try! Or do you just casually read it, and then put it down when you get to the hard parts? Folks, this is the Word of Life! This is worth your time and effort. Dig! Pay attention. Work at it. Wrestle with it. Don’t be satisfied with an all-milk diet; get in there and chew on the meat! Tackle the hard theological questions, and the parts that give you fits, that you just can’t see how that can be true or what He’s getting at. And don’t forget to ask what God wants you to do about what He has said!
The Bible is amazing in that its primary message can be grasped by little children in our nursery, and yet it provides enough challenge for the brightest minds of all time to plumb its depths. Somebody said that it is shallow enough for a lamb to walk in, and deep enough for an elephant to swim in. Whichever you are, come on in—the water’s fine! Let’s listen up!
So pay attention, Jesus says. And here are the three things He says that we should pay attention to in this section in Mark 4.
II. A Lamp Shines Mark 4:21-22; John 8:12; Matt 5:14-16
[21] He said to them, "Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand?”
[DARKEN THE ROOM] Let’s say the power went out in an evening thunderstorm some night, and suddenly the house was dark. But that’s ok, we have a hurricane lamp, so we get it out and light it. [light a hurricane lamp, put a box around it so it blocks the light] Would we keep the lamp in a box like this? Of course not; that would be stupid. The whole point of having the lamp is to be able to shine the light where it is needed. [take box off the lamp]
Jesus is the light of the world. In John 8:12, He said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." PULPIT LIGHTS BACK ON
If we have Christ living in us, then His light can shine through us, and we are also the light of the world. Matthew 5:14-16 has a little more from Jesus on this same point. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. [15] Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. [16] In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” SANCTUARY LIGHTS BACK ON It’s dumb to have a lamp and keep it under cover. The whole point of the lamp is to shine its light into the darkness.
So what does that say to churches and individual Christians who effectively hide their light from their community? This past week, we hosted the Interfaith Hospitality Network guests, homeless families from our community who needed a place to sleep and meals. That’s a good thing we do. We also have a few folks who serve meals at the soup kitchen downtown once a month. That’s a good thing that lets our light shine.
But there is much more that we could be doing. I think many times, we just don’t even see the needs that are there, so we don’t respond. So I’ve given you on your way in today, a copy of the latest United Way publication listing many volunteer opportunities in Larimer County. For example, Alternatives to Violence is a ministry to people who are victims of domestic abuse. Secret Santas for the Elderly work to bring love and encouragement to senior citizens in nursing homes and assisted living homes, many of whom don’t have family to visit them. Meals on Wheels provides a hot meal to homebound persons, thereby enabling them to remain in their own homes. Almost every one of the organizations listed in here provides a way that we can “let our light shine before men, that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven.” It has been said that especially in this culture, people don’t care how much you know about God and the Bible until they know how much you care about them. These are ways we can show the love of Christ in very tangible, concrete settings, and that, in turn, will earn us the right to be heard when we speak His truth.
A lamp shines; that’s what it does. Seed grows. That’s the subject of the next two parables.
III. Seed Grows
A. “All by itself” Mark 4:26-29
How many of you understand the biochemistry of how a seed germinates and grows into a plant? Relax, I’m not going to tell you. Some people do understand that now, but in Jesus’ day, no one understood it. So He said, [26] "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. [27] Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. [28] All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. [29] As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
The seed sprouts and grows whether the farmer gets up or sleeps in. Sure, he can water it, and weed it, but the internal dynamic of how that dry seed in the ground turns into a living plant above ground happens without him, and even without his knowing how it happens. We can’t make the seed grow into a plant; only God can do that.
This is a picture of someone in whom the seed of the gospel has been sown. It grows and develops within that person totally apart from us, “all by itself,” without our help or our understanding, because that is God’s work. At first, the individual may experience just an inkling that something is amiss in their lives, or a curiosity about Jesus, or a friend says something that starts them thinking. But slowly, this grows within them, and soon they are thinking about it more and more; they are asking people questions about God and faith and the Bible. They find themselves waking up thinking about it; they might attend a church service, or they steal a Gideon Bible from a hotel and read it. They start to examine their own lives in a new light; they begin to wonder about what lies on the other side of the grave. Later, they sense their need for a Savior, and eventually, they cry out to God to save them. [2]
God does all that, so that the little seed of the gospel sprouts and grows and produces fruit until it is ripe for the harvest and that individual is ready to receive Christ and enter a new life with Him. From the outside, it looks like all that happens “all by itself”, but God is the one causing the kingdom to grow within them, just like the seed in the ground.
But we do have a responsibility here, namely, to sow the seed in their lives. As Paul said in Romans 10: [13], “‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ [14] How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? [15] And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ …[17] Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” Somehow or other, the seed of the gospel message has to be planted in their hearts and minds. Most people in the U.S. think they know what the gospel is, but very few actually understand it. They have heard jokes about it, and seen caricatures of Christians aplenty, but few of them have ever heard the message presented in a clear, understandable way. That’s our job, folks. There’s no getting around it. God makes the seed grow in their lives, but we have to plant it there.
Then Jesus tells another parable about seed, this time emphasizing that even really tiny seeds can grow to large plants. This parable is more about the growth of the kingdom on earth, as it spreads from person to person.
B. From small to large Mark 4:30-32
[30] Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? [31] It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. [32] Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."
No doubt you have seen mustard seeds in Christian gift shops, encased in plastic or something. They are really tiny. And yet, mustard plants can become quite large. Apparently, they have a kind of mustard plant in the Middle East that grows bigger than the ones that are grown commercially in this country, because the mustard plants I could find pictures of are not that large. But commentators speak of having seen mustard plants ten feet high in Palestine, so that must be the kind of plant Jesus is referring to. The point Jesus is making is clear: the kingdom of God starts small, but will grow very large.
We can trace the growth of the kingdom from one Man, Jesus Himself, to the twelve apostles, to the 120 in the Upper Room, to the 3,000 who were saved on Pentecost, to the additional 2,000 who were saved a bit later, to the spread of the gospel through the entire Roman Empire, and now, to the ends of the earth. Here’s an illustration of the point just within the lifetimes of some of us: Fifty-eight years ago, in 1949, the Communists threw all the Christian missionaries out of China and instituted severe persecutions against the Christians there. Outside observers feared that the fledgling Chinese church would be destroyed. When the bamboo curtain was lifted about thirty years later, we were astonished to discover that the Church in China had expanded 1,000% to somewhere between 30 and 50 million believers.
Here’s another way to look at it: As THIS GRAPH[3]
shows, the number of people becoming Christians each day has skyrocketed
in the last 150 years, so that now, something over 50,000 people a day
are coming into the kingdom.
Adoniram Judson went to Burma for the Lord, one of the first missionaries sent from America to any foreign country. He had a terrible time, great suffering, bitter persecution. He would have died in a Burmese jail if his wife Ann had not found a way to smuggle food to him. But he persevered. Today there are 1.9 million Baptists in Burma (Myanmar) - the church movement that he started, with his few initial converts.
The kingdom Jesus founded as a mustard seed with just twelve men has become a great tree with its branches spreading all over the world. The picture of the birds perching in the branches of the mustard plant may point to the fact that people from all nations will come into the kingdom of God. There are references in contemporary literature of the time that use birds as a symbol of different ethnic groups. That certainly fits with what the Bible says elsewhere, as for example in Matthew 24:14, where Jesus says that, “…this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” In Rev. 5:9, we have the picture of the end of time, where people around the throne of God sing to Jesus, "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”
So you can’t judge the significance of a work by the size of its beginning. The enormous cottonwood trees we see around here started from the really little seeds born by their springtime blizzard of “cotton” floating through the air. You can hardly even see those cottonwood seeds in the fluffy things that float by, but that’s how those big trees get started. God has started something that is going to cover the entire earth—every single people group in the world—and it all started with Jesus and twelve men.
IV. Common Themes
It’s always a good idea to look at the stories and events that the Gospel writers group together, to see if there is a theme they are trying to emphasize. In this case, there is: Starting with the parable of the four soils, which comes just before the passage we’re looking at today, Mark records four short stories (parables) by Jesus that all have two common themes: one theme is the expansion of the kingdom. The seed planted in a person’s heart grows until it is ready to bear fruit in salvation. The four soils parable is about the importance of the kingdom growing within us in sanctification—God’s Word is intended to make us more like Christ so that we produce the fruit of the Spirit. The light of the world shines out from Jesus and from our lives into the darkness of the society that does not know Him. And fourth, the first small group of twelve disciples has now grown to a world-wide church of about two billion people.[4]
The second common theme throughout these four parables is our responsibility to make meaningful contact with the world.
· We plant the seed of the gospel in individuals’ lives and God makes it grow until they are ready to receive Christ
· We sow the seed in the four types of people, in hopes that some of them will become Christlike
· We have to let our light shine into the world in such a way that it points people to God
· We plant the tiny seed of the gospel in a people group, or in the world, and God makes it grow until all peoples on earth have a chance to know Him.
So I think the application for us is, what are we doing to expand the kingdom of God? We can’t make it grow, any more than we can make a seed grow into a plant. But God in His mercy has given us the privilege of cooperating with Him in this marvelous process of expanding His kingdom, and we need to be about it. What are you doing? It could be going on a mission trip like 78 of our people did this summer; or serving the Interfaith Hospitality guests. It could be volunteering at one of the agencies in our area that are trying to address the many needs people have here. It could be having your neighbor over for a BBQ with a view to building a relationship of trust. We all have different temperaments and gifts, but every one of us is absolutely needed in the expansion of the kingdom.
A man was walking along the beach picking up star fish that had been left by the outgoing tide, and throwing them back into the surf. A boy watched him for a while, and then said, “Hey mister—what are you doing that for? There are so many of these star fish you are never going to be able to throw them all back. What difference does it make if you throw a dozen or two in?”
The man picked up another star fish and threw it far out into the surf, turned to the boy and said, “It makes a difference to that one.” People matter to God; they should matter to us as well.