Good afternoon, church. How are you guys doing? We are looking today at Mark 4, verses 1 through 20. It's printed off in your pamphlet, but it's also on page, I think, 839 of that Bible in front of you. So we'll read that, and then we'll pray and get into it this afternoon. So read Mark 4 with me. This is beginning in verse 1. This is the word of God. Again, he began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. And the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things and parables. And in his teaching, he said to them, listen, behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell along rocky ground where it did not have much soil and immediately it sprang up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell in good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing, and yielding thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. And he said, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables. And he said to them, to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see, but not perceive, may indeed hear, but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. And he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word, and these are the ones along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on the rocky ground, the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while. Then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, they fall away. And others are the ones sown among the thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit 30-fold and 60-fold and 100-fold. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. Lord, we just ask that you would teach us something new about you today. God, that it would guide our minds and our hearts, Lord, and that we might be a people that love you more because of your word. So Lord, would you make this clear to us today? In your name that we pray, amen. So today I really just want to do two things. Just walk through this passage and try to answer two questions. So the first one is in general, why does Jesus speak in parables? The son of God come to save humans, decides to speak in a way that is intentionally concealing of the meaning of what he's trying to say. Why does he do that? Then the second one, what is he trying to communicate via this particular parable of a sower and four types of soils? So that's where we're going. We're just gonna try to answer both of those questions. So walking into that first question, why does Jesus speak in parables? Why does he speak in a way that conceals the meaning of what he's trying to say? Few years ago, I was in a Bible study, and an old pastor kind of had a group of young men around him, and he loved to give us a passage like this. We would read it, and then he would kind of ask us a philosophical question like I just asked you. So we would sit back and say, why do you guys think Jesus speaks in parables? And we would come up with all sorts of speculative and incorrect answers, just kind of out of the air. We would try our best to guess the answers to his question. And once we were done with our bad guesses, he would finally lean forward and slowly whisper, look at the passage. Something I love about the Bible is so often our questions are answered in the passage right in front of us. And it's the same with Jesus in this particular passage, too. So if you look with me to verse 11, he answers that question, why he speaks in parables. So verse 11, he says, to you, disciples, has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, meaning those who don't follow Jesus, everything is in parables so that And that so that indicates purpose. So he's about to say, here's why I speak in parables. So that everyone on the outside may indeed see but not perceive, may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. If you're looking at the Bible in front of you, you can see that that quote is separate from the rest of the text, which typically means it's a quote from the Old Testament. That's exactly what Jesus is doing here. He's quoting from a passage in Isaiah 6, where the prophet Isaiah is told to go to a group of people and preach a word that's going to harden their hearts. So Jesus here, part of the reason why he teaches in parables, is a form of judgment on those that don't believe in him. It's a form of hardening the hearts of the people that aren't going to listen anyway. And when I first read that, I was like, this seems really unfair. Right, like Jesus doesn't want people to repent and be forgiven, and so he's gonna communicate his truths in a way that conceals it? It was really helpful in answering that question that Isaiah 6 context, So Isaiah is not speaking in parables. He's speaking in plain speak. And yet the people still aren't going to hear the word. So Isaiah is speaking to a context of Israel that's already unrepentant. That is already not seeking the Lord. And it's the same with Jesus here. His crowd isn't neutral. No one is neutral about Jesus. And it's the same with people today. We all have an opinion about Jesus. You're either for Jesus or you are against him. And so in one sense, it doesn't really matter how Jesus communicates his message. Some people just aren't going to hear it. We all kind of have that bias as either toward him or away from him. And to kind of show you that from this passage, if you look back with me to verse 1, you can see there's a large crowd gathered about him. And so he has to get in the boat in the sea to be able to speak to all these people. So there's a ton of people here to hear his parable. And then in verse 10, and when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parables. So we have this huge crowd. Everyone hears the message in parables. So not just those on the outside. Everyone in the crowd hears this parable. No one understands it. It makes no sense to anybody. But some people hear a confusing story and they say, I don't know what he's talking about. but I know enough about this man that I'm not gonna leave. I'm gonna keep following him. I'm gonna keep pursuing him. I'm going to inquire what he's talking about. I don't know what he just said, but I want to know more about this man, Jesus. And those are the ones in verse 10 that receive the secret to the kingdom of God. Those are the ones that have the understanding of the parable revealed to them. And then you have some that hear this confusing parable that they don't really know what's going on, and they say, that was confusing, I don't really wanna follow this guy, I'm out, I'm gonna leave. And so you have two types of people, no one is neutral, everyone has an opinion about Jesus, so he gives them this message, and you have the choice, you're gonna keep following him, even though it's confusing, or are you gonna leave, or are you gonna run? So that's kinda what happens here in this parable and in this passage. So at a high level, Jesus speaks in parables to instruct those on the inside, those that truly wanna know about Jesus, He's gonna speak to them in parables and then reveal the interpretation to them later. And then he's also gonna speak parables to judge those on the outside that really don't want anything to do with Jesus in the first place. So that's kind of his reasoning for doing that. There's a lot more you could say about parables, but I want us to jump into this actually particular one. So what is he talking about? We got a sower, we got seed, and we got four types of soils. What is Jesus trying to talk about? What does he want to communicate here? I think there's two main things that Jesus is trying to communicate here. One, I think he's setting his disciples' expectations for ministry. And then two, I think he's trying to help them persevere in the faith. So setting their expectations in ministry, and then encouraging them to persevere in the faith. So regarding their expectations in ministry, I don't think it's an accident that Jesus gives this teaching to them in Mark 4 before he sends them out in Mark 6. So in Mark 6, he's going to send out his disciples to go preach the word and to go heal people. And he gives them this parable before to have the expectation of, hey, there's going to be four ways that people respond to my word. And I'm going to communicate that to you through parables of soils. And so those four types of soils, those four responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which existed 2,000 years ago and still are the same today, are these four. So response one, those along the path. So the ones along the path hear the word of God, but it falls on empty ears. So completely, they deny Jesus. Satan immediately comes away and takes away the word. Response two is the rocky ground. Immediately they receive it with joy. They're excited to know Jesus. They're delighted to hear about it and they follow for a while, but when suffering and persecution comes, they leave, they fall away. The third type is the one among the thorns. Similar to the rocky ground, they accept the word immediately, but the cares of this world, the thorns, the deceitfulness of riches, the desires for other things creep in and ultimately kill their faith and they also walk away. And then the fourth is the good soil. So those on the good ground, they hear it, they accept it, and they bear fruit. And they bear fruit 30-fold, 60-fold, and 100-fold. So the interesting thing is, soils two through four might look exactly the same at first, but only one soil perseveres. Only one soil bears fruit. And so that's the difference there. Those are the four types of responses to the gospel during the time of Jesus and the disciples in the first century and all the way up into today. Those is how our people are going to communicate there. I want to tease out some applications kind of for all those types of souls of what that actually means in our ministries as we go out and seek to communicate the gospel to people. What will this actually look like? So there's five applications I gathered from there. First one, kind of as an overarching application. The seed, the word, the gospel, goes out to everybody. We don't just try to find people that are going to respond well to it. This message goes to everyone. Because ultimately we have no idea the soil of people's hearts. We don't know what has been going on in them. And so we seek to communicate this message to everyone. This goes out to all nations. We are not partial in who we communicate the gospel to. That's the first one. And then walking into each particular type of soil, It's that first category of soil, those along the path. Some people just are not going to accept the truth about Jesus. So if you have a coworker or a neighbor that, let's say you've been ministering to for the last two years, right? Like you have been loving on them, trying your best to serve them, trying your best to be an example of Jesus. You haven't been perfect, but you've done a pretty good job. You've tried your best to love them well. And then one day you finally get to tell them about Jesus. You finally get to tell them that God created the world and then man came and entered into the world and chose to sin and that there was this fall. But God sent his one and only son to live the life that we deserved and to die the death that we, to live the life that we should have and die the death that we deserved so that everyone who believes in him might have life. Right, you tell them the gospel message. Surely they're going to believe, right? You've spent the last two years showing them a Christian witness and then communicated the gospel clearly. Unfortunately, this parable tells us that there's a chance they still might not believe. And so it's good to have that expectation. Despite your best efforts, sometimes people still won't believe. God hasn't lost control. You maybe haven't done anything wrong. Just sometimes people's hearts are so hard that they don't want to hear it. So that's one application from that hard soil. And then the second type of soil, those on the rocky ground. Let's change the scenario just a little bit. Let's say that, again, two years you ministering to your neighbor, your coworker, preach the gospel to them, and they accept it. They accept it with joy. They want to know Jesus. They want to start coming to church with you and doing all these types of things. Celebrate, like be excited for them. But from this parable, we know that your job is not done. I am a proud evangelical, which means I love kind of those big megachurches and the big revivals where people preach the gospel and there's a ton of conversions like Billy Graham type thing. But one thing that we have gotten wrong in America as evangelicals, really since before America was started, I mean you can see this in the early 18th century, is to focus way too much on initial conversions. So we focus way too much on, did they accept Christ? Can we get them to pray a prayer? Can we get them to do something here? Come to the altar? Still really good, but this parable is telling us that our aim in ministry is not simply conversions, but it's fruitful Christians. That's our goal. We want fruitful Christians. We don't just want conversions. And so that's a learning thing here that if you communicate the gospel to someone they believe, press on them to make sure that they actually believe in Jesus. Get them in a church. Do your best to get them around Christians and get them plugged in. The third type of soil. So that's the one among the thorns. Again, this person might look similar to the one on the good soil in the previous one, but they ultimately won't be fruitful because of the cares of this world, the desires for riches, the deceitfulness of riches, and the cares for other things kind of creep in. I think in America, this is probably the more prevalent soil today. Yeah, the culture's changing a little bit, but I still think that the deceitfulness of riches, the desires for worldly things are going to be more prominent in people's hearts than suffering or persecution on account of the word. And so this is a really, I think, popular soil that you might come across as you go out and do mission today in our American context. In this type of scenario, when you're ministering to people, and they accept the gospel, and they're saying they're Christians, and you see in them a care too much for this world. They care way too much about their appearance, their finances, their reputation, their travel schedule, their fun, anything. If you see that in them, warn those brothers or sisters. Because this parable teaches us that those things will come up and will kill that plant. They will kill the tree. Riches and the passions and the desires of this world are very, very dangerous for people. And so you warn those brothers and sisters when you see them kind of in that sin pattern. One other thing that we can take from this soil in the last one. Unfortunately it teaches us that people will walk away from the faith. I feel like I've seen a lot in Christian circles when particularly a high profile Christian or maybe even a pastor walks away from the faith, people get really shaken. You know, they're almost like has God lost control? Has God out of the picture? What happened? Well, this parable teaches us that people are going to walk away from the faith. And we can be sad when they walk away, we can mourn, we can be surprised, but we should never be shaken when people walk away from the faith. Because Jesus has promised us and told us that it will unfortunately happen for people. So again, we should have that expectation in our ministries that people will walk away from the faith. We do our best to keep them in. But we have to know that God hasn't lost control if people do walk away. Fourth type of soil. This is the good soil. This is why we do ministry. This keeps us from cynicism and ministry, right? Jesus Christ has promised us that when we go out and do mission and tell people about him, people will believe. And they won't just believe, they will be fruitful. Like he will take wicked, wicked sinners and make them into fruitful Christians that bless the world and bless the society around them. This is the glorious soil that we yearn for in all of our ministry. I love a verse, kind of a random verse, in the book of 3 John, where an older John says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. It's amazing to see someone accept the gospel with joy. It's amazing. How much more amazing is it to see them continuing to walk in that gospel years later? To see them being fruitful people that are a blessing to those around them? How powerful is it to see someone go through intense suffering and persecution on account of being a Christian and still love Jesus? How amazing is it to see someone that could have had it all in a worldly sense, could have had the fame and the fortune, and said, no, I'm gonna stick with Jesus. How amazing of a story is that? And I love the language in this parable, the 30-fold and 60-fold and 100-fold type of yield. In the first century, crops didn't yield that much. So this is meant to kind of shock and exaggerate the reader, right? These are fruitful people. These aren't just average people. They are changing the societies and worlds around them simply by the way that they live. Their love is radically different than the circles in which they exist. And so Jesus has promised not only will some persevere, but they will be fruitful. They will be a blessing to those around them. And so that's just a beautiful picture, again, of wicked, wicked sinners that have been changed from the inside out and not only accept the gospel of joy, but they are fruitful, fruitful Christians out in the world. So those are the four types of responses, that as you go out and do ministry in your workplace, in your home, in your neighborhood, wherever you go, those are the four types of ways in which people are going to respond to the message of Jesus. Kind of the last thing I wanna talk about is that perseverance in the faith. I think Jesus gave us this parable to encourage us to persevere in the faith. Do you know what the difference is between soils one through three and soil four at the end of the day? It's actually not the existence of weeds, thorns, and rocks. Every soil has weeds, thorns, and rocks in it. Every heart has sin. Every heart is tempted to leave when suffering and persecution comes. Every heart is tempted by the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things and the desires for worldly things. We all have sin in us. The difference is one soil bears fruit and the other three don't. So the essential question is, how do I bear fruit? How do I be someone that's in soil for? How do I be someone that has a heart of good soil so that when the word comes, it bears fruit and you last? John 15.5, so the book of John kind of makes this crystal clear for us, where Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. So the only way you can bear fruit, the only way you can be a soil four type of person is if you actually believe in Jesus and you are found in him. That's the only way. It doesn't matter how hard you garden. It doesn't matter how hard you pick up the rocks, rip up the thorns, rip up the weeds. If you are not in Jesus, you will not bear fruit. And so you've got to be in Jesus Christ to ultimately be someone that bears fruit. And the warning to that, too, in Matthew 5, there's a warning that every tree that does not bear fruit will be thrown into the fire. And that is an eternal fire. That's the hell that you have heard about in church before. And again, that's a hard teaching. But the Son of God wouldn't have had to come on earth and die a gruesome death if there weren't a punishment for people that don't come back to him, that don't seek Jesus. So that's the warning. If you don't bear fruit, you will be thrown out into the fire. So this is an urgent thing. Again, there's no one neutral. This is an urgent message. You have to decide, who is Jesus to you? Do you believe in him or do you not? And so that's the last thing. Do you believe in Jesus Christ truly? If after hearing this and reading this passage, you're like, honestly, I am a type one type of person. I'm a soil one. I don't believe in Jesus. And frankly, I don't really want to. I would just urge you to reconsider, and anyone at this church would love to talk to you more about what it means to be in a relationship with Jesus. And if you do believe in Jesus, say, I'm all in, I believe in Jesus, similar to what Russ was talking about earlier, don't mess around with the weeds, thorns, and rocks in your life. Because if you do, they will grow up, they will kill the sunlight, they will block the sunlight, they will take all the nutrients, and they'll take all the space from your tree. And you ultimately will be unfruitful. So don't mess around with the sin in your life. It will kill you. And again, that's a strong message, but it will. We've got to take that seriously in our lives. So when you do face suffering and persecution as a Christian, Remember Christ, remember the suffering and persecution that he went through on your behalf so that you might have life. What he went through is infinitely worse than anything we will ever go through. And so let that be an encouragement to you that as you face suffering and persecution, God is with you and God loves you and you know that because he went through intense suffering and persecution so that you might be with him in all eternity. And then secondly, if you're tempted by the riches, if you're tempted by worldly things, remember how much better Jesus is than any temporary thing can offer. Like eternity in heaven with God. How much better is that than any temporary pleasure that you can find here on this earth? So don't let those things in your heart draw you away from the source of life. Come to Jesus, and if you come to Jesus, you have that promise from John 15, that if you believe in him, you will bear fruit, and you will bear fruit abundantly. So let's be a people that flee from the sin in our lives that so entangles us, and run to Jesus, and trust that he will make us the fruitful Christians that we are designed to be. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. God, we just thank you that every week we can come together as a church and learn from you. God, would we be a people that truly, truly believe in you and truly, truly love you? God, would you penetrate our hearts? Would you rip up the thorns and the weeds and the rocks in our soils, Lord? And would we be people that bear fruit greatly, that seek to glorify you, Lord, and seek to tell people about you? And God, would you empower us to be people on mission? Lord, would we be ministers in our places of work, in our neighborhoods, in our families, Lord? And Lord, would you show us good soil people? Would you bring people to life through the ministry that we do? So God, we thank you for who you are, and we just pray for fruit to bear greatly in this church and in this city. In your precious name do we pray, amen.