Jesus Journey - Part 7 - Mark 4:21-34

Welcome back to the Jesus Journey. This is episode 7. Uh, we're going to continue our work in Mark chapter 4. Um, if you remember, we're looking through the book of Mark, and last time we looked at the first 20 verses of the book of Mark, and we saw the parable of the sower. And the reason why I'm telling you a little bit of review is because we didn't finish this little section on parables, and so it still builds in Mark chapter 4. So we had the parable of the sower, and in the middle between the parable and the explanation of it, there was this flashback to Isaiah, which Mark likes to do when he's claiming Jesus is more than just a man, that he's, he's the Christ. And he reaches back to Isaiah's call, which was really interesting. Remember, it had this stuff inside of it that said, tell them stuff, but don't let them understand. Make sure that when they hear what they hear, they don't understand with their mind. And it sounded kind of mean? And then we, we looked at the way that in the middle of Mark chapter 4, verse, um, verse 11 and 12, it says, uh, the secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but those outside, everything comes in parables so that— and then it reaches back to that and says, they may indeed look but not perceive, they may listen, not understand, otherwise they might turn and be and in Isaiah it said they might turn and be healed, where in this parable, um, focus it says turn and be forgiven. So the word is changed to show that the way that, um, the kingdom of God is coming and the way that it is doing its work is through forgiveness. And healing, um, in this sense looks like forgiveness. Um, and then it goes back into explaining what the parable is all about. Well, when we continue on from verse 21, we're going to go from verse 21 down to verse, uh, 34. We get the rest of the, the rest of the package, the rest of the understanding of what Mark is actually saying through these sayings of Jesus and, and what he's building in the understand— for the understanding of the early church. So let's Have a look, um, if you have your Bibles. We're going to start at verse 21, and as we normally do, we're just going to read the whole block and then go back and look at what it might mean. Mark chapter 4, verse 21. He also said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed? Isn't it to be put on the lampstand? For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen. And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear. By the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and more will be added to you. For whoever has more will be given to— more will be given to him, and whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away. From him. The kingdom of God is like this, he said: a man scatters seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day. The seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn't know how. The soil produces a crop by itself—first the blade, then the head, and then the full grain on the head. As soon as the crop is ready, he sends for the sickle, because the harvest has come. And he said, what— with what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use to describe it? It's like a mustard seed that, when sown upon the soil, is the smallest of all seeds on the ground. And when sown, it comes up and grows taller than all the garden plants and produces large branches so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade. He was speaking the word to them with many parables like these, as they were able to understand. He did not speak to them without a parable. Privately, however, he explained everything to his own disciples. And that's where we're going to stop for today. So we have this connection through of this, from the sower of the seed story, the sower, the sower parable, to two more parables about seeds, the growing seed and the mustard seed, and they're unpacking and reteaching ideas of what it means for the kingdom of God to grow and what it means for the word to grow within us. But there's this little interesting thing that begins— it's for today, it's beginning our passage, but really it's smack in the middle of Mark chapter 4, and that's verse 21. Where we have this parable about using your light. There's this light parable in the middle of all these seed parables, these growing parables. There's this parable. He also said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed? And what's so fascinating is that there's, there's this core of truth in this light story. It's actually the heart of what he's saying in this whole chapter. God hides nothing. Without the intention of a greater revealing. And that's what he was saying with the Isaiah passage. That was what he's saying about parables, even the teaching of Jesus, this crypticness of it. It's because he wants it to be understood in the right time, in the right place, in the right way, so that it has its greatest effect. It's— and then its meaning is taken on board, um, even more so than if it had just been said and understood but wasn't the right time. And so it just kind kind of washed away. He saves the teaching moment for when the greatest understanding is possible. And what we're going to see in this passage is something really interesting as to when the greatest potential time for learning about the kingdom of God is. This explains this idea of tucking things away until you— people are ready to understand them, why Jesus told parables. It also explains why Isaiah was called to be confusing. It also explains why the kingdom of God is hard to find. You think, hard to find? Is it really hard to find? I mean, it's all around us, and yet you can go through your whole life and never find it. It's something that you need to seek for, and when you seek for it, you will find it. When you knock, it will be open to you. But it's not something you just walk up and go, hey, look, a new kingdom, let's just move in here. You, you have to be drawn towards it, and the secret has to reveal itself. Yourself through your excitement, through your journey. There's a cryptic secret even in this little parable. Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket? But it's not actually written that way. It's actually written as if the lamp has the ability to choose where it's going. It says in Greek, it says, does the lamp come to be put under a basket or under the bed, or has it come to be put on a lampstand? Now you say, oh, so this whole chapter is about the word. And if you say, does the word come to you to be tucked away and hidden, then no. Does it, does it come to be buried in theology? No. No. So Jesus could have been saying something about the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the scribes, and what they were doing with the word— that God's word was meant to be understood, but it was being buried in teaching, made difficult. Or he could be talking about his parables, that the parables— do they come to be tucked underneath the basket? Well, they are, kind of. He's— the way he's telling them is, you don't understand them now, but you will understand them later. Um, and then when you get to the idea of who is the word— if this word is coming, making a choice to come— then it's not actually the Torah choosing to be taught. It's the word coming, the word made manifest, the word incarnate, Jesus. And so he's giving us, in the way he's saying it when he said it and when it was written down, the way Mark wrote it down in Greek, he said The lamp came, the light came, and what did we do with the light when the light came? Well, he came and he spoke in parables, and he healed, and he, he did things that were clear that he was somebody special. But then he spoke in cryptic ways. When was the light fully revealed? Mark says when it's put on the lampstand. What does that make you think of? My mind jumped to Revelation when it's talking about the 7 churches, and it said that the, the light will be put on the lampstand, and the Church is the lampstand. And so when Jesus wanted to be fully revealed, when he wanted his parables to be fully understood, was after he gave his life, was after his death and resurrection had their full meaning, because they'd happened and people were now asking the question, what does this mean to us, that the God of the universe came and died for our sins and lived again and invites us to die and live in him? That we don't have to pay for the penalty of our sins. And suddenly their whole understanding of the parables, their understanding of the Old Testament, their understanding of what it means to the whole sacrificial system— everything was unpacked in Christ. But it was after he was returned to heaven— he died and was resurrected, and then he went to heaven— and the early church started, and he was put on the lampstand. The light was put in the church, and the church began to understand Jesus. In a way that he was never understood. The church began to understand God in a way that he was never understood. The church began to understand the word of God in a way that it was never understood because of Jesus. And Jesus lifted up first on the cross and then up on the lampstand in the church where we unpack Jesus for the world around us and for ourselves. Then we start to see in the rest of this passage when it's talking about seeds and it's talking about The first time it's talking about the sower goes out to sow and he sows seed in all different kinds of places. But then it changes the meaning when you get on into the next little ones where it talks about the soil produces a crop by itself. And it makes it sound like, well, wait a minute, before, was that the same point as the parable before? No, it's not the same point, but it's Jesus focusing in on good soil. A good lampstand shines the light clearly. When Christ is put up in the windows of the church, when he's put up in the windows of our eyes, when Christ is a light in us, the light shines through his lampstand. There's another cryptic verse that— I mean, it could be cryptic, could be misquoted quite easily— in verse 24, where it says, and he said to them, pay attention to what you hear. By the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and more will be added to you. For whoever has, more will be given to him. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And you think, how is that fair? That sounds like, like you're gonna— the smart people get more knowledge and, and the people who aren't so intelligent just have to suffer. It's not what he's saying. What he's actually saying is that the light is now in the— or on the lampstand. Jesus is alive in the church through us. We have Jesus on tap. We have full strength, Jesus, and he's been fully revealed and fully understood on the cross. If we seek him and share him daily, the tap will be opened wider. If we come to the tap only rarely, the tap will flow less. And if we don't seek or share Jesus at all, the tap will be turned off. And that's what Jesus is saying in this little sentence, this little parable in the middle of the light parable, is the light shines through the, the best lampstand. And it's not that— it's still the light that's glorious, but the lampstand, by being fully embodied with Christ, by being a church that says we are here purely for the glorification of Jesus and the storytelling about Jesus— Jesus is all. That when we, when we're there for that reason and we spend time with him and then we spend time with others telling them about him, we love the Lord our God with all of our heart and our soul and love our neighbor as ourself, then more is, is offered to us. More parables are easy to understand. More Old Testament scriptures start to make sense. More prophecies have a clarity to us, and more of what Jesus was talking about and doing and and calling us to do, it makes more sense because we're, we're more in league with him. We're more letting him shine in the lampstand. So verse 26, the kingdom of God is like this, he said. A man scatters seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day. The seed sprouts and grows, although he doesn't know how. So he's describing us. He's describing like We have let the seed be planted in us. We've said, yes, I accept that Christ died for me on the cross, and I want to live for him. And we have no idea how sanctification happens. It's just we spend time with him. We spend time. We're justified by the cross, and we accept that. And then slowly we become more and more like him, like two lines converging. I learned— I'm not a mathematician, but I learned back yonks ago when I was in high school, that you can divide— if you have two lines and they're approaching each other slowly, you can divide the distance between those two lines infinitely. You can just keep doing it. There's always a little distance to be divided. Even if you can't see it anymore, you can still divide it. And get— and that's how we are becoming like Christ. We're never going to be God, but we become more and more like him as we spend time with him and as The tap is open and we are becoming— we're drinking of him and we're becoming more and more like him and shining him through to others. The soil produces a crop by itself, which— that's just because we don't understand it. We say, I don't know how it's happening, but I don't feel like being the way that I used to enjoy being. I don't feel like doing the wrong thing. I feel like doing what seems like the righteous thing, but I don't consider myself righteous. I'm not sure how it's happening. The soil is just producing it all by itself. But it's really the fact that we are allowing him to live in us and to shine that out. And it's really interesting in the way that Mark portrays Jesus here, because in the, in the next parable, even though he's already talked about the sower and now he's talked about the seed, he's like still almost bumbling over the words, like, ah, what are we— what can we compare the kingdom of God to? Like, I am trying to think of something that I can articulate. Do you understand what I'm saying about the seeds? Do you understand what I'm saying about the planting? Do you understand what I'm saying about the light? Like, this is the way that God comes to earth. He comes through his Son and then out through you. You're going to become the light. But I can't say all that now because I— you won't understand me until I give up my life for you, until the seed dies and is broken and is planted in us, and then it will grow in the church. And so he says, so it's like a tiny seed, and a mustard seed is not the smallest seed in the world, and a mustard tree is not the biggest tree in the world. Mustard trees are really just big bushes. They're maybe 10 feet tall. Um, and the seed, it was the smallest seed that they put in their fields in that part of the world at that time. And so saying it was the smallest seed, Jesus is talking to his audience, right? And so it is true that it's the smallest seed they know, the smallest seed they throw into the ground. And, and that little seed somehow, somehow just comes out of the soil and becomes a great tree that in the desert. So it's not a massive tree like we have in Australia or in America where there's gigantic sequoias and redwoods and gum trees and, and those kinds of things. But it's, it's a tree in the desert that seems to come up out of nowhere from that tiny little seed and, and provide shelter, um, for, for the birds and shade even for people. And, and then Mark just finishes by saying he was speaking the word to them. So he kind of says, just in case you didn't get it, I'm talking about the word. Um, the word is the seed, the word is the light, the word is the Bible, the word is prophecy, is, is parables, the word is Jesus. And, and, and he's— there's so many layers of this, and like Shrek's onion. And, uh, he concludes with, he was speaking the word to them with many parables like these, and they were able to understand. He did not speak to them without a parable. I like that idea. Another version says Jesus said nothing without telling a story. I love that because I like to tell stories, and I just think that the richest parts of the Bible are the stories that leave interpretation open to the reader, to the listener, and be being able to hear the word and then say, to me today, this is challenging me to be or to become this or that, rather than saying I have the one meaning of this and it always means the same thing. Stories have the power to teach us something new every time we come to them, and sometimes they just seem like a good story until one day they make perfect sense, and they teach us deeply. And we say, I understand that story now. I understand why Jesus told that one. And it says, privately, however, he explained everything to his disciples. And we know from elsewhere in the Gospels that, yeah, he explained it, but they often just sat there like they didn't get it. And he said, how long have I been with you? You guys are not all— you're not going to understand all of this until I die on the cross. And then, or he would say, until the Son of Man lays down his life. Then Peter would come up, you know, you can't talk like that, you're not gonna die. And Jesus, well, yes, yes I am, but you need to, you need to listen to me rather than making me listen to you. So in this, this chapter of Mark, it's an interesting chapter because, well, the part we did today, because we really just took the end off of, of the whole story of what Mark is saying about Jesus's parables. This is the first time in the book of Mark that Jesus tells a parable, and Mark doesn't just have Jesus tell one, he unpacks the, um, what the parables mean, and he does that through parables. So it's a, it's a real microcosm of the power of parable. But tucked in that is that seed of Jesus, that all the parables were revealed by him, and the word that he brought to reveal is tucked into those parables to be revealed by the light who came to be put on the lampstand. And that's our job. How exciting that we've been commissioned, we've been given this epic role of being God's storytellers, of being invited into the message that Jesus was giving, and then being told, you now fully understood all the— understand all the foundations of this message. And you can share Christ and him crucified in a way that could never be shared. The nature of God could never be explained until Christ was crucified. And now you have that. And now you also have the richness of the tapestry of the church, that there's so many different wise men and interpreters and authors and speakers and storytellers and ways of interpreting that as we go to the word, we read it and it becomes richer and richer through this community of faith that we have, the church, and this lampstand and the 7 lampstands. Like, there's, there's, there's this breadth of, um, ability to understand the light and to let the light shine through us. But if we had to take a core message of what this passage is saying, as Mark 4 is saying, it's that good soil grows good fruit, and that the way to be good soil is to stay connected to Jesus. To recognize that he is planting himself. He planted himself on the cross, and he planted himself firmly in this world as one of us. And then he saved all of us by dying for us. And now he asks us to let that grow in us and to keep going back to it. To switching metaphors, open the tap and say, please let me drink fully of you. Let me each day spend time basking in your glory, understanding who Jesus is and who God is through Jesus and what the word is through Jesus and what the Bible means through Jesus and what all the richness of this world is through an understanding based on Jesus. And because of our Jesus filter, we embed into it an understanding, even the meaning of suffering and the meaning of relationships and the meaning of a new child being born or a grandparent dying, that there's not— it's not something that can— there's nothing, I should say, there's nothing that happens on earth that you cannot see say, this can be understood greater than it could before because of what Jesus did for us and who Jesus is and what he gives us in the scriptures. And by unpacking the world around us, by being in a sense, um, interpretive guides, we're interpreting the world through the filter of our understanding, but recognizing where that person is and saying, can I help you down the path that you're on? And help them interpret the path they're on and then help them take the next step. We have an epic role as, as God's disciple makers. Jesus called us to follow him, and then he says, now you call others to follow you. And he packs all this down into parables, and the parables are seeds for us to go back to. His word is a seed for us to go back to and let it be planted in us again and And the more time we spend with him, the more we become good soil. And that ability to, to get the kingdom of God, to understand Jesus, gives us a greater ability to connect to those who need him. So enjoy the word of God. Enjoy. I hope you're enjoying the book of Mark, and I hope that you're finding all of this unpacking of the details like turning the tap on, of drinking deeply of Jesus and of the Word and of what he would have you do and be and become. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you again next time.