BASIC PRINCIPLES IN ‘GETTING IT’ – Mark 4:9-12
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on February 15, 2015 under 2015 |
Message preached Sunday, February 15, 2015 from Mark 4:9-12
Theme: There are basic principles involved in truly ‘getting’ the truths of Jesus’ kingdom.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
And now we’re seeing how Jesus began to teach the principles of that kingdom. Truly, He was the greatest teacher who ever lived. Here we are—two-thousand years later—still learning as His students; still transformed by the lessons He taught!
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Now; in our last time together, we saw that a large crowd of people gathered together along the shores of the Sea of Galilee to see Jesus—a crowd so massive, in fact, that He had to get into a boat and push away from the shore. And there, from the boat, He taught the crowd one of the greatest and best-known of His parables—the Parable of the Four Soils.
Let’s open our Bible’s to Mark 4 and read that parable again. We’re told that the Lord looked out upon that great crowd along the shore and told them;
“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred” (vv. 3-9).
We went on last week to read of how some of His followers came to Him privately, and of how He explained the parable to them. The sower, He told them, sowed the word of the gospel. And seed on the wayside spoke of people who didn’t have a chance to let the truth of God’s word sink in; because the devil came quickly and snatched it away. The seed on the rocky ground spoke of those who didn’t allow the word to sink in deeply enough; and trials and troubles caused the word to dry up before it could grow. The seed on the thorny ground spoke of those who received the word; but who didn’t produce fruit because the cares of life choked it out. The good soil represented those who received the word of God and produced fruit.
But between the telling of the parable, and the explanation of it, Mark tells us about something very important that happened. A ‘private’ meeting occurred in which Jesus gave crucial theological truth to His followers. And it’s this private meeting that I ask that we concentrate on this morning. After Jesus had preached His parable to that massive crowd on the shore, we’re told how He closed it:
And He said to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve 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
‘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’” (Mark 4:9-12).
I can’t stress enough how important this little private discussion was. It has everything to do with our ability to ‘get’ the things that Jesus taught.
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Now, I’m going to ask you to keep your finger in Mark 4; but please turn back in your Bible to the Old Testament—and particularly to the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah. There’s a story there that I need to share with you. I typically try not to share one story on top of another. But in this case, I feel you need to hear the story in Isaiah in order to fully appreciate the story in Mark’s Gospel.
So, shift gears with me now; and let yourself be taken up by this remarkable story in Isaiah 6. It tells of something that happened at a key moment in the prophet Isaiah’s life. It happened at a time of crisis—at the time when King Uzziah, a godly king who had reigned over the Jewish people for fifty-two years, had died. It was at that time that Isaiah was given a vision. He wrote;
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke (Isaiah 6:1-4).
Now; the effect that this vision had on Isaiah was to deeply convict him of his sin. That’s what any true encounter with the majesty holiness of God does to us. In the light of how holy He is, we see the truth of how sinful we are.
So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged” (vv. 5-7).
The live coal that this angelic being took from the altar indicates that a sacrifice had been just been made upon that altar. Isaiah’s sin had been atoned for. And now he stood clean before a holy God.
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”Then I said, “Here am I! Send me” (v. 8).
And that’s what happens to us when we understand how a holy God has purified us of our sin. We want to yield ourselves to Him in service. This marks the beginning of Isaiah’s prophetic ministry. But the thing to now notice is what a very difficult task it was that this mighty, majestic, sovereign God was going to send the prophet Isaiah to do. He was to go out and have the frustrating experience of declaring a message that his Jewish kinsmen would reject; a message that they would not hear; a message from God that, in fact, would actually harden their hearts toward God as the prophet proclaimed it to them.
And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed” (vv. 9-10).
As we read on, we see that Isaiah was to keep on preaching this message to his Jewish kinsmen, and keep on hardening their hearts by it, until the judgment of God came upon them. They would be almost completely destroyed. But a small portion of the people would remain. And it would be from that tiny remnant that the Redeemer would come.
Now; here we are today, reading about that very Redeemer this morning in Mark’s Gospel. And it was those very words from Isaiah that Jesus used to explain why it was that He Himself taught in parables—and why it was that many who heard those parables didn’t understand them. And it’s this theme from Isaiah that stands behind the important private meeting with Jesus that we read about in the Gospel of Mark.1
Jesus was letting His followers know that God’s revealed word—and particularly the message of the gospel—doesn’t have the same effect on everyone who hears it. To some people, it results in their hearts being opened so that they become hungry for more of God’s truth; and it draws them into a saving relationship with Jesus. But to others, the very same message results in their eyes being blinded and their ears being deafened; and they harden their hearts so that they do not come to the Lord to be saved by Him.
You could say that Jesus shows us in this morning’s passage why it is that—when it comes of our Lord’s teaching regarding the kingdom of God—some folks ‘get it’ and some folks don’t.
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Now; this morning, I ask that we simply look over the story of this private conversation Jesus had with His followers, and draw out some principles that we find about ‘getting it’ when it comes to our Lord’s teaching.
The first thing we see—and it’s a very important thing for us to know—is that . . .
1. THOSE WHO TRULY WANT TO ‘GET’ THESE TRUTHS MAY DO SO (vv. 9-10).
I believe that’s very important to stress. It’s not that God has arranged things so that some will simply never be allowed to ‘get’ His message—no matter how much they may want to. Far from it! Anyone who truly wants to hear the message of God’s word, and to understand what it says in a saving way, is certainly welcome to come and receive it.
We can see this in a couple of ways. First look at how Jesus ended His message to the crowd. He told them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (v. 9). That’s an invitation; and it’s an absolutely sincere one. Everyone has “ears”, of course; but unless someone has ears “to hear”—that is, a willingness to welcome and receive the message from God—then they can’t “hear” it. But whoever has a genuine, heartfelt attitude of ‘welcome’ toward the truth that God offers in His word, and a willingness to allow it to change their lives—whoever truly has, in that sense, “ears to hear”—they may hear and are invited to do so.
We see this also in the fact that some came to Him to hear more from Him; and they did so because they had “ears to hear”. Mark tells us that after speaking to the crowds, Jesus was alone. And I can’t help but wonder if His act of sitting alone wasn’t almost a visible invitation in itself. It was as if He was saying, “Here I am. Here I sit—waiting. I am available. If you want to understand what it was I said—if you truly want to ‘get it’—then come to Me. I am willing to teach you.” Mark tells us that “when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable” (v. 10). You might say that they saw His availability and took Him up on the offer. They made the effort; and they came to Him and asked.
May I just stress that to you? If you really want to know the mysteries of Jesus’ kingdom—if you really want to grasp the truths of His gospel—then you may! Just go to Him in prayer and ask. We have a solid promise from God’s word that applies to this:
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:5).
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Now; anyone who wants to get these truths may do so. That is a truth that we need to know on the human side of things. But there’s a related truth that we need to know on the divine side of things. And that is that . . .
2. THESE TRUTHS ARE ONLY ‘GOTTEN’ AS A GIFT OF GOD’S GRACE (v. 11a).
It’s absolutely true that whoever wants to ‘get it’ may ‘get it’. But if anyone ‘gets it’, it’s not simply because they studied hard and arrived at it on their own power. No one can ‘get’ the truths of Jesus’ kingdom at all unless they are given an understanding of them as a gift of God’s grace.
We see this through a couple of the things that Jesus said in verse 11. First, we can see that He said to those who came to Him, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God . . .” Notice notice that He called the truths of the kingdom a “mystery”. When we think of a “mystery”, we typically think of something from Agatha Christie—a ‘who-done-it’. Those are stories in which you pay attention to the details, and exercise your mental skills in piecing things together. It’s something that you ‘figure out’—a puzzle that you ‘solve’. But a ‘mystery’, as Jesus is using the word, isn’t something that you or I sit down and figure out. It’s something that cannot be known by human effort. It’s a truth that is beyond human reach; and that can only be known by God graciously revealing it to us. I think a good example of what a ‘mystery’, in this sense, means is found at the very end of the Book of Romans. Paul closed off his great letter to the Roman believers by saying this:
Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith—to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen (Romans 16:25-27; emphasis added).
So first, the truths of the kingdom are a ‘mystery’—only revealed by God and made known as an act of His grace. And second, notice that Jesus told those those who came to Him, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God . . .” They way that Jesus puts this in the original language of Mark’s Gospel is that it had been given to them in the ‘perfect tense’ of the verb. That means that, as far as the Lord Jesus was concerned, it had already been given to them as a permanent gift—never to be taken from them. They may not yet have understood it fully. They may not have completely ‘gotten it’ yet in their experience of it. But they will; because God had already given it to them as an act of His grace. They were proving that this was so—right then—by the fact that they were coming to Him to ask.
That’s the only way anyone can know the mystery of the kingdom of God. It is beyond human reach. It is something that can only be known by God’s grace. That was was something that the apostle Paul affirmed in 1 Corinthians 2:9-12;
But as it is written:
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:9-12).
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So; everyone who wants to ‘get’ these truths that are being proclaimed by Jesus may do so; and they can only do so by the grace of God. It may seem difficult for us to understand how those two things can be reconciled together; but both are nevertheless true, and they are reconciled perfectly in the mind of our gracious God and Savior.
But that leads us to another important principle that we find in verse 11; that . . .
3. THESE TRUTHS ARE NOT ACTUALLY PROCLAIMED FOR EVERYONE TO ‘GET’ (v. 11b).
Jesus spoke of those who didn’t come to Him in order to learn more—those who didn’t have “ears to hear”; those who heard His message with indifference—when He said, “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 . . .”
Now; when Jesus says this, He is answering a question that Mark doesn’t mention to us. It’s one, however, that Matthew, in his Gospel account, does tell us about. The disciples came to Him and asked, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” (Matthew 13:10). His parables, as we all know, are wonderful and memorable. But they sometimes left people scratching their heads. Many people along the shore of the sea, who would have heard His parable of the soils, would have left thinking that it was just a story about agriculture. They would not have ‘gotten’ the point. And His disciples wondered why it was that He did that—why He didn’t just speak plainly.
And it’s interesting—and I say this with the utmost reverence—that Jesus didn’t say, “Yes; you’re right. Perhaps I shouldn’t do that anymore. Perhaps I should speak more plainly; and not try to do it through obscure stories.” That’s not what He said at all! Instead, He said that it had been given to them to know the mysteries; “but to those who are outside, all things come in parables . . .”—that is, in stories that are hard to ‘get’; and that left some of the hearers scratching their heads.
Jesus seemed to do that often; didn’t He? I can think of one very remarkable example. Early in His earthly ministry, He went into the temple and drove out the money-changers. The Jewish leaders were angry at Him for doing this; so they confronted Him. They said to Him;
“What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said (John 2:18-22).
Jesus, it seems, often said things that were not designed for everyone to ‘get’. They were often things that His followers ‘got’ later—and that those who had hardened their hearts toward Him never got at all. And I believe that that’s true of the truths Jesus proclaimed about the kingdom of God. Not everyone ‘got’ them, because they were not really proclaimed for everyone to ‘get’. They were only proclaimed for those to ‘get’ that truly sought to ‘get’ them . . . and to whom it had been given, by a gracious act of God, to ‘get’ them.2
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Now; let’s be careful in what we do with that. I don’t believe we should take that to mean that no one has a choice in the matter. The next thing that Jesus said suggests to us that . . .
4. THE REASON WHY SOME PEOPLE CANNOT ‘GET’ THESE TRUTHS IS FOUND IN THEMSELVES (v. 12a).
I believe it’s important to remember that all of those people who were along the shore could have come to Him to learn more if they had wanted to. But most didn’t. They left with only half the story told to them. They were just like the three soils that did not produce fruit. Only a few came to learn the whole truth and to allow that truth to grow. Jesus said to this inner circle that, as it relates to those who were outside, all things come in parables . . . “so that ‘seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand . . .”
I believe that it’s very helpful to consider what Jesus goes on to say later on in this chapter:
Also 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” (vv. 21-23).
The truth is available to all who want to hear it. It’s set out to be seen and heard. But if they do not hear, the responsibility before God will always lie with them.
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” (vv. 24-25).
No one, you see, will ever be able to complain, “But how could I understand these things, God? You never gave it to me to do so!” No; the responsibility will always lie with them. Anyone can understand if they want to. They only have to come to Him and ask. They will not be judged on the basis of what had not been set plainly before them. Rather, they will be judged by what they chose not to do with what they had been given.
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And that leaves us with one more principle to notice; and that is that . . .
5. THESE TRUTHS ARE PROCLAIMED IN SUCH A WAY AS TO REVEAL THE TRUE DISPOSITION OF THE HEART (v. 12b).
Jesus said that all things were spoken to those on the outside in parables;
so that
‘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’” (Mark 4:9-12).
And there’s the real problem, isn’t it? Sin. I believe that this is explained perfectly in John 3:18-21;
He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God” (John 3:19-21).
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Now; what should we do with this? Well; if you’re a believer on the Lord Jesus—if you have heard the message of the gospel and are saved—then you ought to thank God that you ‘get it’. If you ‘get it’, it’s because—in love—He gave you the grace to ‘get it’. Thank Him for that! And don’t stop coming to Him for more! ’Getting it’ is a product of a relationship with Him. Draw closer and closer to Him, and read the Bible, and learn more! If you already ‘have’, you get more if you take advantage of what you have been given.
Second, when we share the message of the gospel to the people around us—both as a church, and as individual believers—let’s not be surprised or too terribly frustrated by the fact that people react differently to it. Some will not ‘get it’, and will be hardened by it, and will even oppose it the more they hear it. Others will ‘get it’, and believe it, and be transformed by it. Both reactions come from the same message—and that’s by design! Don’t let the various reactions keep you from declaring the whole message of the gospel. Be like the sower who sowed the word in Jesus’ parable. Throw it out everywhere; and leave the results to God.
And third—and I would say, above all—pray for those around us who hear the message of Jesus. Pray that their hearts will be softened; and that the devil will not snatch it away from them. Pray that the soil will be good, and that the seed of God’s word will take root and grow, and produce new life in them. Pray that, by the grace of God, they will ‘get it’.
1 This theme—that is, of proclaiming a message from God that God knew beforehand would harden the hearts of the hearers—is one that is repeated elsewhere in Scripture with regard to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In John 12:37-41, we’re told this amazing fact regarding the end of Jesus’ public ministry:
But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke:
“Lord, who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again:
“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts,
Lest they should see with their eyes,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.”These things Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him (John 12:37-41).
We find a similar statement made at the end of the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts is the great book in the Bible that describes the spread of the gospel; and it closes with that very passage from Isaiah.
2 There’s a sense in which we find the same phenomenon in the preaching of the apostles. The apostle Peter wrote about a particular doctrine of the faith; and then added;
—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15-16).
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