”CALLED

“Teaching in Parables 1 – The Sower”

9.30am Sunday 14 September, 2008

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-10; Mark 4:1-20; James 1: TNIV

The longer I live the more convinced I am of the Scripture that says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”[1] I never cease to marvel at the way God has put the human body together with marvellous economy of bone structure sufficient for us to stand upright, run, walk, jump, skip, sit crawl. I want to focus very briefly this morning on one part of our bodies as it fits in with what Jesus was talking about in Mark 4, that is, the human ear. We have two of them, one of each side of our heads so that we get as near to all round sound detection as is possible. Someone wisely said we have two ears and one mouth to remind us that we are to listen twice as much as we speak. Our ears are important not only for hearing sounds, but also for our sense of balance and body position. Our hearing is really amazing, how we can hear different tone levels, and know a person’s voice on the phone as soon as they start speaking. We can also tune things out if we set our minds to it. If we are sleeping at night the usual sounds around the house do not normally disturb our sleep because we are used to them, but as soon as we hear something that is not usual we are on full alert. As well as physical hearing there is also a sense in which we can hear spiritually, that is, that we discern when God is speaking to us or prompting us. You could call this our spiritual hearing, and for a Christian that is just as important to develop and our physical hearing.

The Bible stresses the importance of hearing in many places. The passage we read from Mark is one such example. In this passage we hear that Jesus is once again teaching by the Sea of Galilee. This is the third time Mark mentions Jesus teaching by the lake. Note the progression. The first time was in Mark 2 where we are told, “…Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.”[2] The second time is in Mark 3 where it says, “Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him.”[3] In the passage we read this morning it said, “The crowd … was so large that he got into a boat.” First he is teaching by the lake, then with a boat handy, and then from the boat itself. The reason for this was that more and more people were flocking to hear him and his growing popularity gave concern for his safety as people thronged just to get near him. Note also that by this stage in his public ministry Jesus teaching is almost exclusively outdoors. There is only one other time in Mark’s Gospel that we read of Jesus teaching in a synagogue, and that is in Nazareth.[4] Because of growing opposition it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to teach in such places.

There is an important truth here for us today. It shows that Jesus was willing to adopt new methods when the occasion demanded it. He wanted the people, especially the common people, to hear the good news of the kingdom. That was why he had come. Now that he was unable to do this in the synagogues, he went elsewhere to heal and preach. I mentioned a few weeks back that this was what John Wesley had to do in the eighteenth century. As a loyal Church of England clergyman he had no desire to step outside its usual practice. When he first heard of the large crowds who were flocking to hear George Whitefield preach in the open air and that hundreds were being converted, he was repulsed by the idea. He wrote, “I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way – having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.” But when he saw the results of such preaching, especially the conversions, he said, “I cannot argue against a matter of fact.”[5]

The church today needs to follow Jesus’ example. When something is not working, you do not keep doing things that way. You look of other ways of going about it. To rely on church services as the primary method of sharing the good news is not going to get the message out to our community. I am not sure that open air preaching will necessarily do it either. We need to be adventuresome and look for other creative ways in which it can be done. Stephen Fox is a good example of this with his $20 challenge, a novel way of presenting the gospel which is being used by Stephen and others to good effect.

Jesus was wise enough to know when new methods were necessary, even although it probably brought accusations of sensationalism from his enemies, the Pharisees. There is a very salient lesson for the church in what Jesus did. He did not let things stand in the way of his primary purpose for coming to this world. He used obstacles as stepping-stones to enlarge his ministry. Outdoor preaching has been used with great effect down through the ages, but it does require a different approach. For one thing, when people are sitting inside a building such as the synagogue, they feel obliged to stay there until the meeting had finished. However, there are no such restrictions when attending an outdoor meeting. You are free to come and go as you please, and so to hold a crowd the speaker must not only capture people’s attention. He or she has to hold their attention, and that requires skill. One of the best ways is to tell stories. People enjoy a good story, and when told well, it will make people want to stay and listen. Jesus, the Master teacher, knew this. Mark tells us, “He taught them many things by parables…”[6] That is, he told stories. Now people were familiar with this approach in Jesus’ day. Many of the well-known rabbis used this method, and there are examples of this in the Old Testament, such as when the prophet Nathan used a story to confront King David with his sin.[7] So the methods we use today need to be ones that people are familiar with. We live in a visual age. Advertisers are well aware of this and seek to capture people’s imaginations in advertising their wares. Images and pictures, when used to good effect, can help communicate God’s truth to people. The old adage, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ still holds true when used appropriately. This is why Power Point, when used well, can be a useful tool in getting the message across.

Another good reason for using parables is that it makes an abstract idea concrete. Most people have difficulty grasping abstract truth, but when that truth is put in story form and lived out in the life of a real person, the idea becomes more clearly defined and people can grasp and understand it better. For example, when the New Testament talks about faith it constantly points us to Abraham as an example of what it means to really trust God. This helps to relate the truth to everyday life. The other great benefit of using the parabolic form of teaching is that it makes people think for themselves. It does not give the answer. This is the best way to learn. If your children are having difficulty with maths it does not help to do the sums for them. But if you can show them how to work it out for themselves, they will remember how to do it much easier next time. Jesus did not want to save people from having to think for themselves. By presenting the truth is this way, he wanted to encourage and challenge them, you and I included, to doing their own thinking and discovering truth in a way they could own for themselves.

Mark 4 is a significant chapter in this Gospel as here for the first time we are given something of the content of what Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. Mark tends to focus more on what Jesus did than on his teaching. It is the most action-packed of all four Gospels, which could well be why it is shorter than the others. However here in chapter four we have our first glimpse into what Jesus taught the crowds. It is not only the first time we have the substance of Jesus’ teaching. It is also the longest passage in Mark given to what Jesus taught. The story of the sower, which is what we will consider today, is such a well known story that when you hear it you might be tempted to switch off, thinking that you know it all and do not need to listen. Do not do that because the message of this passage is timeless? You and I need to be constantly reminded of its importance.

The picture of the sower sowing his fields was very familiar to people living in Bible times, as it is even today in the Middle East. The girls and I saw several places where the ground was being prepared for this to happen. Bullocks were being used to plough the fields ready for sowing. Later the sower would come with his seed bag tied to his waist and scatter the seed on the ground. They also use camels to plough their paddocks as well. This image was very familiar to Jesus’ audience. There may well have been someone sowing his fields nearby even as Jesus taught.

Jesus’ first word in his teaching is the command, “Listen!” This emphasises the importance of what he was about to say, and would have immediately brought to the mind of his audience the words of Moses at the beginning of the ‘Shema’ in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” recited daily by every pious Jew. Jesus ends this parable similarly with the summons, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”[8] The importance of listening is the central thrust of all Jesus’ teaching in Mark 4. Now a parable usually has one main message, one truth that is being emphasised. In this particular story, there was nothing wrong with either the seed or the sower. The sower was faithfully fulling what he was meant to do, and all the seed that was sown was good seed. It is with the hearers that the differences come. This is what Jesus focuses on in his explanation of this parable to his disciples. The hearing of the word is the one thing that is common to all four groups of people in this story. All hear the word. What went wrong? The reason why Jesus takes issue with the first three groups of hearers is because the word that is used for hearing in this story implies a hearing that requires a wholehearted response on the part of the hearer. Hearing on its own is not enough. If that is all you do, you are, as we read in James, deceiving yourself. You are fooling yourself if you think that it does not matter how you respond. Jesus says your response to what you hear is vitally important. Your future depends on it. This message is reiterated time and time again throughout Scriptures. In much of the prophetic writings of the Old Testament this is identified as the primary cause for Israel’s suffering and exile. Hearing God’s truth is a wonderful blessing, but with it comes both responsibility and accountability.

Notice in the parable that the failure of each of the seeds comes at a different stage of its growth. The first does not even have a chance to germinate before it is snatched up by the birds and eaten. The second, the seed that fell on the rocky ground, does sprout, but as soon as the heat comes on it quickly withers and dies. The third is virtually full-grown, but it is suffocated by the thorns and thus unable to develop to a full head of grain. We can take from this that some people do not even get as far as believing in Jesus. The preaching of the Gospel to this group of people is like water off a ducks back. It does not get the chance to germinate. Because of hardness of heart the good seed of God’s word never penetrates beyond the surface. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were people like that. They had no time for the truths Jesus taught. Their minds were made up. They would never entertain the idea that what Jesus was teaching was from God. There were only two of the leaders of Israel who recognised Jesus for who he was, namely Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night,[9] and Joseph of Arithmathea, who we are told was “a prominent member of the council.”[10] Others will hear and respond enthusiastically, but when difficult times come or people begin to make fun of them or provoke them their enthusiasm quickly wanes and they drop out of things. Still others will continue their Christian walk despite oppositions and difficulties, but because there are things that vie for central place in their live their witness is compromised and they become ineffective and unfruitful.

Mark stresses the importance of this parable as it is about the proclamation of the gospel and how it is received – i.e. the response which is made to Jesus himself. The existence of the four groups of hearers should not conceal the fact that in essence there is only two: those whose hearing of the word bears fruit, and those whose hearing proves to be fruitless. The proclamation of Jesus divides humankind into two camps, and the number of those outside is large in comparison with the circle who accept him. There are only two ways one can go. The authorities whose hearts are hardened and who reject Jesus’ teaching, the crowds who hear Jesus gladly but are not prepared to accept the way of discipleship, those men and women whose concerns are centred on themselves to the exclusion of thought of God’s kingdom – all these groups stand in opposition to the small band of disciples who “hear the word and accept it.” The challenge to the members of Mark’s community, who have gathered together to listen to the parable and to its explanation, and to you and I this morning, is clear: we must ensure that we are found in the last group. Those who “bear fruit” are those to whom the Kingdom is given.

Now it may be that at different times in your life you fitted into each of the first three categories Jesus lists, but through circumstances or some person who came into your life you changed and came to not only listen but respond. This is the prayer of every preacher, that in some way God’s Spirit will touch people’s hearts so that they move from just listening to God’s word, to taking it seriously. For some people this can happen quite unexpectedly. I remember one minister telling me how that happened for her. She was a high school student at the time and had never given any serious thought to her relationship with God. However, one day during a talk by a person from Gideon’s International at the school assembly when she was not paying any particular attention to what was being shared, something the speaker said jolted her out of her daydreams, made her sit up and ask herself, was she ready to meet God? It had been the furthest thing from her mind a moment ago. She cannot remember what the person said, but thoughts to begin to flood her mind about her own spiritual well-being. Did she have a relationship with God? Was she ready to die? The seriousness and urgency of her situation troubled her greatly and from that time started to seek God in earnest. What happened in that assembly that morning radically changed the direction of her life. Her whole outlook on life took on a different focus. Looking back she knows God broke through her indifference to spiritual things at that time. The meaning and purpose of her life took on a new importance and urgency. It was some years later that she became a minister, but she looks back to that time as the moment when she moved from being a person who allowed Satan to immediately snatch God’s truth from her mind, to really listening to what was being said and determining to do something about it that her life was completely changed. So there is hope. We need not remain in one of the first three categories if that is where you identify yourself this morning. If you allow God’s truth to take root in your life, and if you determine to live by this truth by putting into practice what God says, your life will be transformed. God’s truth is powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. It can penetrate between the chinks in the armour we put on against it, and radically change your life. It is the truth that will set you free, free indeed.

This is an encouraging story for preachers and teachers of the Bible. Although some of the seed never came to anything, the fact remained that at the end of the day there was a harvest of varying proportions, some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times. It might seem that we are not accomplishing much, that there is little to see for our labour, but the truth is, if we faithfully teach and preach his word, a harvest is assured. God will see to that.

The question that you and I must ask ourselves as we listen to this story, into which category do I fit? To be in that last group there are three things we must do:

1. We must HEAR the message. We must take listen and pay attention to what Jesus says, as we have it in Scripture.

2. We must RECEIVE the message. We must not shut our minds to God’s truth, but rather welcome it into our thoughts and meditation so that it changes our thinking.

3. We must put it into ACTION. James says, “But those who look into the perfect law that gives freedom and continue in it – not forgetting what they have heard but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.”[11]

[5] Quote from William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: the Gospel of Mark (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1975) 84.