Our scripture reading for today will be coming from the book of Mark, chapter 21 through 24. And he said to them, is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed. Nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Then he said to them, take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you. And to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And he said, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night, and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow. He himself does not know how, for the earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head, but when the grain ripens, immediately he puts it in the sickle, because the harvest has come. Then he said, to what shall we liken the kingdom of God? With what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth. But when it's sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade. And with many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear. But without a parable, he did not speak to them. And when they were alone, he explained all things to his disciples. Thus far, the reading of God's holy and inerrant word. May he bless the preaching of it. Please be seated. So I wanted to start out with a story. This has been a good week. And as many of you know, preaching is not my job. It's more like my night job and not my day job. My day job is a claims adjuster. And this, over the last few months, after many, over a year of being half-staffed and the corresponding work for the rest of us, I was threatened to be fired about three weeks ago. And I've been complaining to the Lord about that. It's been a struggle, it's been a trial. And that gave me an ultimatum that by the end of September, I needed to be all cut up, which there was no way to be, and I even packed my desk, put the stuff away. I figured it'd just be easier when they fired me to have everything already packed. Somehow, I didn't get fired. Beyond my understanding of reasons why, and I kind of hoped that I would. But then, a hurricane happened. And of all the claims, I got one claim that was in North Carolina. And because of the Department of Insurance, they required me to do all this extensive training for this one claim. It took me about three or four hours of my day, of which I did not have time for that. And so by the time that I finally got to call on that claim, I was not in a great mood. And then I called this man. And he's allowed me to share this with you. I believe it's a work of the Lord that for some reason I didn't get fired so that I could share the gospel with this guy. And he, again, gave me permission to share his story. He was living in an RV on the mountainside in North Carolina when the mountainside fell on him. He was tossed and turned in his RV, over and over, spun around, all down the hill. And all of his town, except for four people, died. He and his neighbor, who lost 11 members of his family, died. And as I listened to him tell this tale, I was shocked. disturbed I was, and yet I felt he's way too happy for this to have happened. He was buried under a pile of rubble. He had a skull fracture, ribs, all sorts of things. He thought he was dead. And through my discussions with him, I decided that I would break my company rules and share the gospel with him. I didn't really care that much if I got fired anyway. But I shared that with him and he was immediately receptive to it and he had been clearly being talked to by the Lord. The Lord had been knocking on his heart. There had been seeds that had already been planted in his life that suddenly sprouted. And we talked for an hour and we've been texting and back and forth in the coming days and he is taking huge leaps of faith and steps towards honoring God with his life. And it's been an amazing thing. And honestly, I look back on the trials and troubles that I was experiencing and they seem rather I had to repent of that. God smacked me upside the head. In my own little world, there's a much bigger world. We often get caught up in that. And I'll tell some more details as we go through this passage, because it seems to fit. So in this passage, we see what seems like a disjointed group of thoughts. We have talking about light, talking about heating what we hear, and then a couple of parables. And they are not all disjointed groups of thoughts. And it's in line with what Brother Jordan had preached the last time he was here, and he preached the first half of chapter four, and we'll be referring back to that a time or two. But when we start to look at Verse 21 here says, it is the lamp not brought and put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand? For there is nothing which will not be revealed, nor is anything being kept secret, but that it should come to the light. So what is that light? We found that in John three, that light of truth, that light of Jesus. That is our light. Jesus is the light of the world. And a distinguishing character or mark of a believer is a drawing near to that. It's a pursuit of that light. True, we don't put it in ourselves. That is a gift from God. And if that light is in you, we are commanded here not to cover it, not to put a bushel over it, or a bed, as it says here. Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes who had been essentially closing their eyes to who he was. They were putting a bushel over it. They were covering it up. They were refusing to look at that all of the Old Testament was pointing to Jesus. That was an inconvenient truth and they were covering it up. They were putting that light under a basket. We often do the same, do we not? We try to fit in with the culture. We put on a different face at church than we do out in the world. We put that light under a basket. We put it under a bed. But we are commanded here to shine forth, embrace it, reach for it, draw near to it, and it exposes, as it says here, it reveals anything that is being kept secret. So when you put a lamp in a house, it illuminates the whole house. And if you look at yourself as a house, there's lots of closets, lots of rooms that maybe you don't go in there very much. There's things that you know that are there, that skeleton in the closet, that sin that you keep secret. It's in there. But that light of truth shines. That light of truth still shines, and it's pointing to it. It requires us to confess those things because they do come to light. They do open up the dark parts of our heart. Nothing hidden can be hidden from the Lord. And as we look into this now, this next passage, it's an interesting one. It says, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. This is said over eight times throughout scripture, Jesus is saying this, and you've maybe heard it after the reading of God's word, he who has ears, let him hear. Well, what does this mean? Jesus says it quite frequently. He who has ears, let him hear. And it is a distinguishing mark, like I said, of a believer who we draw near to the light, we draw near to the light of truth, We see in this world a lot of lack of hearing the word of God. And it's by design. The thing that we can look into this passage is jumping forward to verse 33 and 34, and it says, with many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. But without a parable, he did not speak to them. And when they were alone, he explained all things to his disciples. It's this distinction that Jesus is using parables. Is he hiding the truth? No. He has not given all ears to hear. Even looking back on the previous parts of chapter four in verses 11 and 12. It says, but when he was alone, Those around him with the 12 asked him about the parable, and he said to them, to you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that, and this is a quote from Isaiah, seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should turn and their sins be forgiven them. This is an uncomfortable truth. We don't like this truth. It's an unpopular doctrine that not all men will be saved. The doctrine of universalism is basically that every man will have the opportunity to accept Christ. This would say otherwise. I have lost a friend and a couple others that we refuse to talk about this very subject because it's a sore subject. They don't like to think about that. And as I pondered why that is, why they want to, and partially that comes from my own background, growing up in a church where I chose God over and over again. It was all me. I was the worker of my own salvation. Did it over and over again. But God, he is the author of salvation. He is the one that opens the ears to hear. My friend in North Carolina, wasn't hearing, and before a mountain fell on him, he suddenly had ears to hear. And as he was buried under rubble and debris and mud, encased in mud, thought he was dead, he says, as he described it to me, he felt he's heard the words of God, and saying that you need to, he could see a little bit of light above, just barely enough, and that he needed to crawl towards it. And he said that no one was coming to rescue him. And that was what he felt God telling him. And I have no doubt that perhaps that he did. And as he crawled toward that light, he did emerge. He did get out. And his ears are open. Open to the gospel. Open to the words of God. And that's something that is amazing. Maybe we are all a little bit dense. Maybe we don't like to hear things sometimes. There are lots of uncomfortable truths in scripture, and we don't like to hear them all. We avoid some of the touchy subjects. And even this one is perhaps one of them. that God has chosen in his sovereign plan who would be saved. In 2 Timothy 2.19, it says this. Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands alone. Having this seal, the Lord knows those who are his. And that everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor, some for dishonor. God creates both the righteous and the wicked. We can't get past that. Maybe we don't like that. Many people don't and reject it out entirely. So there are those that are meant for destruction, and there are those that are meant for glory. And so, as we move on here, it says, the next section says, take heed what you hear. So we can open our ears. There's a lot of voices talking to us in this day and age. A lot of the world, the flesh, and the devil are three great enemies. constant sources of disinformation and lies. So we are to take heed. Okay, that word heed in the Greek, it's a very interesting phrase, take heed what you hear. Heed is actually the word blipu, which is to see, or to hear, or to understand, or to discern. And then there's also the joining word between that is ti, it means what or who. And akuo is the other, is the to hear. So we could say it in this way is that see, discern, know, understand who and what you hear. This is more than just hearing words that go into your ears. This is far beyond just the words that you hear from day to day. And this is God is saying, take heed. And with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you and to you who hear, more will be given. Hmm. So, we can, from this, gather that what we hear grows. We can see, and we'll get to the parables in a second, what we hear grows, seeds grow. what we hear oftentimes is fraught with error. And we need God's discernment to help us weed out truth from fiction. In a political time of what we're in right now, it's hard to, I mean, you see so many lies. Every commercial, everything is just lying, lying, lying. And we see that has been part of our culture for, well, forever, but it seems predominantly pervasive right now. And I did some research on what it takes to believe a lie. If you want to believe a lie, it only takes once. But if you don't want to, it might take 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 times to hear a lie before you begin to believe it. And it's different for everybody, but like I said, oftentimes the devil likes to drip those lies in that we want to hear. We want to believe in a certain thing, or do a certain way, or act in a certain manner. And so we can find the itching, find the preaching, or even find the research that supports our opinion, and follow after that lie. but we are to take heed, heeding what we hear. We hear the world's wisdom all the time. We are surrounded by it. You can't really escape it unless you're out in the woods all by yourself. But that also, as it talks about here, and we're talking about this little section that talks about measuring, And again, I guess a good way to put this whole section is a parables of proportions and measures. We see when we are listening to the words of God, they grow and he will add to them. A measure will be used, it will be given to you. So what measure are you using for the word of truth? Is it small amounts? Sure we all start out perhaps with small little bits here, little bit there, but God says he grows that. But then we get to verse 25, but whoever has, to him more will be given. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. So we maybe start out with a little bit of scripture reading a day. And then you spend the next 12 to 16 hours inundated by the world and its wisdom. Who's gonna win? Which truth will grow? It's a matter of proportions. Which proportion is of the word of God compared to the rest of your day? Certainly, I know that you all cannot pray or read scripture all day long. But that should be the goal, shouldn't it? Not that that's a requirement, but that should be something we pursue after. To grow in our understanding of God's word and who he is. This is the key to this passage. Because often, and maybe you've known some people that maybe have read a little bit of scripture here and there. Dabbles in religion. and then seemingly forgets all that they've read and walks away from the Lord, walks away from what they know and what they've read in scripture. You can see it, what they had was taken from them. It was torn from them, taken away by this world and all its wisdom. And this is a constant battle that we fight every day of the year, all the time. At no time in our Christian walk can we simply just sit back on our heels and let it happen. Sit back, resting on our morals and our ideals and just say, I'm good, I read the Bible once. I've had people tell me that, they've read the Bible and then they live like they've never read it. We often get in this, not that we're any of us perfect in this way, but we are to seek after this. But there is no time to stop. There's no time where it says, no, you know what, take the day off. You don't need scripture. You don't need prayer. Really? What lies are you believing? You need more and more and more And there's something, as I've gone through seminar, as I realize there are so much more truth in this book than I ever thought possible. I'd sat in a pew my whole life, and I'm reading things that are blowing me away. No man has ever completely gotten all the Bible understood in every single way. It's a mystery. There are many mysterious things. We are to seek diligently that wisdom from God. He gives that wisdom if we seek it with all our hearts. And he blesses it and he grows it. And so we can look at this seed, these seed passages. The earlier part of chapter four of Mark is dealing with the soil and the soils and how that's related to the kingdom of God. But now we look at the seed. We look at what seeds do. The seeds are the kingdom of God. Though they be small, they grow, they mature, they bear fruit. Seeds shows us an idea and an understanding of what exponential growth really means. And this is only done with the Lord. Even a tiny seed can become a tree that provides shelter and shade and comfort to other creatures, as the parable of the mustard seed is seen here. This is the kingdom of God. We're not to remain seeds. We are to grow. How do we grow? In the word of God and the blessing that God bestows through the reading of his word. God takes the seeds planted and makes them grow. But sometimes they lay dormant, right? There's often dormant seed that is bound up in soil. They're covered. They don't have the right nutrients. They don't have the right sunlight. The conditions aren't right. There's not enough moisture. There's a lot of reasons. It's interesting. In the spring, I like to burn the grass that we have on our property. And it's amazing, it exposes the seed and it grows back so vibrant and green. It's beautiful. You would have never known all those seeds were there. New things grow that had never grown there before because of the cleansing fire that had washed away all the clutter and created the conditions for that seed to grow. And I oftentimes think that we need that. We need that cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit in us so that we can bear more and more fruit, exponential fruit. Again, this is something of a parable for portions. One small grain makes many, many times its fruit. We can see that in the earlier, we didn't read it, but Mark 4. 20 says, but these are the ones sown on good soil. Those that hear the word accept it and bear fruit, some 30, 60, and some 100 fold. That's pretty good growth. That's very good growth. We see with a parable of a mustard seed that was about the size of a grain of sand turned into a tree. That's a lot of growth from a seed. But we want to look at what seeds do and what they require. For seeds to reach the light, they somehow know where to go. That light is something that draws us. And it was interesting, as my North Carolina friend said, he pursued the light. The little bit of speck of light that he could see as being buried alive. And we often do the same, do we not? I hope you do. This is something that we must strive for, strive to reach the light. I have a small sapling that's kind of annoying. It's planted right, well, it's just randomly started growing near our house, right near our foundation, right next to our well. It can't grow there. I've cut this tree down, I can't even remember how many times, And it's relentless. It keeps growing back. I stopped paying attention to that spot for three months, and it's already three feet tall again. It's relentless. It's got all the nutrients that it needs. It's not in the right spot, and what I basically am just saying is I'm a little too lazy to dig it up and move it to where somewhere it needs to be, which might be an entirely different sermon illustration. but it pursues the light. It has the nutrients. It's bursting forth. We are to do the same before God with a fervor that only can come through him, through the life that he's given us to pursue that light. But interestingly enough, in this discussion and understanding of our idea of seeds, seeds have to be planted. They have to be buried. Unless a seed dies and falls to the ground, it remains but a single seed. As I pondered the story of my friend in North Carolina, he was buried, but not as a dead man, but as a seed. We are all seeds. We are all once seeds. And I want to bring into your understanding Romans 4, excuse me, 6-4. All of the chapter of Romans deals with death and resurrection, buried and life. Number four. Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. But just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. There appears to be a death that needs to happen in all of us, in all seeds, for it to burst forth and cause new growth. For those of us that perhaps don't have the opportunity for a mountain falling on you, We have other mountains that fall on us. We have other circumstances. Life throws curves that we can't handle. It's meant, I think, sometimes to overwhelm us, so that we have no choice but to look up, looking to the light, and reaching for the Lord. I almost think that that is a necessity for our Christian walk, that we must be born again. Well, it is a necessity. Christ outlines that we are to be born again, born from above. You were once a seed, but seeds you are no more. You're growing. And so let us look, how do we apply this? The most and easiest, obviously, one was take heed what you hear. That one should be readily available to our understanding. Be discerning. Something that has served my household well, and it's something, a passage of scripture for Thessalonians 5.21. Test everything and hold on to the good. That is the motto of this dark home. That has served us well. In this day and age where the lies and the twisting happens, we can get lost. We need to be cautious of who and what are the voices in our lives. Is it God? Or is it the world, the devil, the flesh? It's interesting how they all seem to work together, those three. And like I said, lies spoken often enough are something that begins to change our belief. Point two, how do we apply this, is to exercise and obey what you see and hear in the word. We need to remind ourselves of this constantly. Not just being hearers, but being doers of the word. Everyone has been given this mission, to exercise, to work out, to grow. So we must draw near for understanding. A distinction we should make sure to notice in this is that Jesus spoke these parables to the multitudes, but it was the ones that came after and asked questions. They grew, they yearn for more. I don't understand that. I didn't get it. And we are no different. We don't understand all of this in here. There are men who do. There are people you know who to go to. There are resources even online where you can grow in new ways in understanding of God's word. And this is a gift from God. He will direct you, but you must begin. You must start that process of growth, that God will give you the strength. You're not doing this yourself. Your sanctification is not upon you alone. It is something that God blesses, that effort. And as I said, there are voices that need to be turned up in our lives. and there are voices that need to be turned down or off. We need to be cautious of what we hear, especially children. They are more willing to accept lies more readily than adults will, typically. We must guard them. We must train them ourselves so that when the world comes a calling, and it always does, they will be able to discern light from darkness. We must protect our children in this, that their ears do not hear the wrong things, and that we pray for them continually that their ears would be hearing what God commands and directs us to. So as we established, what you feed will grow. To those who have, more will be given. You only need to start small. Don't get hung up on, oh, I didn't get my six hours of reading today. Start with six minutes, and then 60 minutes, and then grow from there. Just keep going. It is possible. You can do this. Pray for this, grow in this, ask God to give you the strength to do this. This is your life. Are you a believer in Christ? And this is who God is calling you to be, to grow in him and it's your knowledge of him. And yes, granted you will not always understand everything written in scripture. Growing up as a child, I clearly did not know all of what I do know now. And every day I seem to grow even more. But you don't need to get down on yourself about not understanding everything that you read. Again, there are resources. God gives us a church in which you can hear the exposition of God's word. It's imperative that you be in a church, growing with other believers. having those willing to speak into our lives, seeking after those that are perhaps more wise in the word than you are. There's no one that's exempt from this. We're all called to this. We are all needing to grow in this way. Point three, plant seeds of the kingdom. Simply enough, right? We're not the ones that make it grow. We're not the ones that make it flourish and bear fruit. But we do scatter the seed. We speak to other people. We are planting seeds. And the beauty of this is that, as we can see in the parable, that first part, 26, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter the seed on the ground and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow. He himself does not know how. That takes the burden off of you. You're not responsible for the growth, or lack of it, It can be discouraging sharing the word of God, spreading the seeds of God. We will see a lot of lack of fruit. Interestingly enough, when I was in a church where I did a ministry half as in what we would describe as the Arminian church, where salvation is dependent upon you and your choosing of God, and I became convinced of reform doctrine, And I was still an evangelist. I still loved to share the gospel. But as I changed from realizing that it's all God and had nothing to do with me, it was such a burden lifted. It was so much easier to know that all I am obligated to do is spread the seeds. God does the growing. lets it land in fertile soil and he causes this growth that we can't even understand how a seed goes from a seed to a beautiful plant, a flourishing plant. So be encouraged even though you don't see the growth. This is not a call upon evangelists or just pastors, this is a call upon all of us. Every man, woman, and child is called to spread seed. We are seed spreaders. And so as we draw to a close today, be encouraged. If you are here today and listening or listening to this message, it is not an accident. you have been given the keys to unlock the mysteries of God. Maybe not completely, as no man has, but in due time, God will reveal and bring forth growth. We must be patient when it is in times of what seems like drought, but he does bring growth. You have been given the light, as we first talked about. That light of who Jesus is, the light of truth, has been given to you, and you have ears to hear. It's not a mistake that you hear. God is speaking to you. And though the world turns a deaf ear to him, you are not. You're here, you are growing, you are learning constantly. Be encouraged by this. You have been given the light and you've been given ears to hear. You were all once seeds, but seeds you are no more. And now as you grow in the growth that the Lord provides, you are growing children of God. So go and bear fruit in accordance with God's perfect will. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would guide us in this understanding of the scripture, applying it to our hearts, opening our ears for understanding. Lord, there is so much more here that we can unpack. Lord, I ask that you would reveal it to us as we Take what has been planted within us and allow it to grow. Let your growth be seen by others. Let the light that you've planted in us be seen by others so that they would question you, question all of us. Why and where does that come from? Lord, be gracious to us as we may stumble and fall, and that you would guide us in our understanding. And even when we are, appears to be failing, you never fail. Your word always comes back to you with fruit. Your word bears fruit always, and you bear it through us. And Lord, we are grateful for that opportunity. And Lord, we give you the praise and the glory for this. We pray all these things in Jesus' precious name.