Mark 4

Sunday, 22 February 2009

The following is really just the notes I used to teach on Mark 4. I haven't tidied them up as I should ( I will one day!) And they're a long way out of order now... sorry :-s 

Shallow soil – These are the people who receive Christ quickly, but only on a very superficial level, then if something more convincing, more interesting, more fun appears, they bound off after that, like a terrier after a rat. Or trouble comes, and they deny Christ. Were they even saved in the first place? It’s hard to say in general – possibly not. You have to look at each person individually.

This is where ‘baby Christian’ comes in – if you’ve just become a Christian, excited about God, etc, but haven’t put in the time to learn about God and really get on your walk with Christ well, and then a pretty girl bats her eyelashes at you, you may get distracted. I’ve known people who have received Christ, then wandered off but still stay in contact with me, because they feel God prodding them – they think that by staying in touch with me, that they’re somehow still being a good Christian, and they can ignore the prompting from the Holy Spirit. I generally use these times to encourage them to come back to church, grow in God and also challenge them about what it is that’s primary in their lives. This gets mixed responses.

 

Thorns – these are the people who receive Christ, but don’t really have the faith built into them that allows them to overcome the obstacles that the flesh, world or Satan will put in their way. Perhaps they have past sin they haven’t dealt with yet – pride is a terrible sin for people in this category, because pride is a monster all its own – people who suffer from this as unbelievers can become believers and then be proud of the fact that they’re believers and better than other people. In that case, the simply don’t understand salvation by grace. There are so many issues that are thorns in peoples lives that they may well need help to get over. This is why pride is so damaging for people in this category – they need help to get over past hurts, sins, damage etc. but think that they best way to be a Christian is to ignore the sin in their lives and pretend that they’re perfect – this is where Christian hypocrisy drives unbelievers nuts!

Thorns in our lives can also be unhealthy/unhelpful friends/relationships, spiritual warfare issues, cultural strongholds, bad mindsets – this is why Romans 12:2a says do not be conformed to the ways of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind – it’s a call to go thorn-cutting!

People with thorns in their lives can be the sort of people who regularly go forward on a Sunday morning for prayer, but never move forward in their lives. They say ‘God forgive me’ then sin, then say ‘God forgive me’ always repeating the same sin, because they don’t actually believe that they are overcomers, they don’t believe that in Christ, they are actually free to not sin.

The plants in amongst the thorns do not bear fruit – in Matt 7:15-20, Jesus speaks about how by a tree’s fruit, you may judge the tree, and in another scripture, He talks about trees that bear no fruit will eventually be torn up and thrown into the fire. Bearing no fruit is useless, it’s being stuck in neutral, it’s like being a eunuch – it’s the ryvita of spirituality, the celery of life – we’re not called to be fruitless, tastless, and useless, we’re called to be overcomers and soldiers in Gods army. Soldiers that don’t win battles end up dead!

 

What is sin? Often, sin is good stuff that has been twisted by Satan to make it bad. Food is good, unless you go overboard, in which case you’re in love with it and caught in gluttony, women are good unless you go outside God’s rules governing relationships, where pain, hurt and damage are caused, possessions are (usually) good, unless you make an idol of them, and make money your God. Even the internet is a good thing, used properly – but there are vast sections of it that just aren’t healthy for us to be looking at.

 

Thorns in our lives are simply things that have got out of control and end up damaging us. We are called to go out thorn-killing. Go weeding, find people in your lives that you can talk to about the difficult things, that you trust to answer honestly, and not to go around telling everyone. Never stop weeding. As C S Lewis points out in The Screwtape Letters, the second you think you’ve got it sorted and now you’re a good person, free from sin and generally pretty darned good, then you need to go weed that thought-pattern. After all, only one person in history was (is) free from sin.

 

The good soil is what we should aim to have in our lives. A heart that is pure, careful and considerate, judging what we hear and perceive by the Word and Spirit, able to learn, given to good government, holding an understanding and a love for the church and for God, desiring all the good things that Jesus wants for us, and not evil. We should always be open to doing a little more weeding, we can always grow a little more.

 

The good news about the 4 main groups is that what you are today is not what you are always. Otherwise, what we call sanctification would be a complete waste of time – you are on a journey, and if God is in your life, if the Holy Spirit is in you, counselling you, directing you and growing you, then maybe the path will be broken up, the soil deepened and the thorns removed, giving you the deep soil that God wants for all of us.

 

Some take the parable of the sower as a purely evangelistic message – that we will meet 4 types of people in our lives, and what we’re actually doing is looking for type 4 to talk to. Types 1-3 are a bit of a waste of time really. If this were true, why would Jesus bother engaging the Pharisees in the first place, or go to dinner with tax collectors and sinners – they weren’t all diamonds in the rough, He would have had every type of person in every crowd.

 

Parables.

 

Jesus spoke in parables, because they were a way of engaging the people whom he was speaking to on their own terms. The parable of the sower is apt, because the society in which Jesus was preaching was largely agrarian, and they would have been able to relate to the concept of sowing seed. The difficulty that we often face in these days is that we look at what we now consider an ‘obvious’ message, because it’s only been taught to us as a ‘Parable of Jesus’ with the halo around the term, which we always take to mean ‘something meaningful and deep will now be said’. The people Jesus was addressing largely didn’t know who He was, and so they may well have thought that in the particular case of the parable of the sower, that He was simply giving good gardening tips!

 

Once again, we have Jesus meeting people where they are, understanding their culture, their identity and what they understand, and talking to them on that level. He doesn’t get out of the boat, and go and pray in tongues for people, he talks on their terms, lovingly and with grace (which I’ll talk on more in a little while). Some will have gone home, looked at their smallholding and thought ‘you know what, I really should look at a way of making my soil deeper – after all, 100x crop would be darned useful!’ Others may have felt patronised – ‘yes, Jesus, we actually do know how to plant things, duh.’ This is an especially valid point when we look at verses 9 and 23.

Earlier, I spoke about the evangelistic side of ministry - if we’re actually going to be Christian and do what Christ did, then we should consider that if Jesus bothered with groups 1-3 then perhaps we should. Perhaps we should speak truth in a meaningful way that our peers understand whenever we have the opportunity.

 

I feel that some people become engaging Christians only when God tells them to. In reality, we are called to have a response to why we have hope at all times, and are instructed to give it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). We are called to be salt and light at all times, not when it’s convenient, and not just on a Sunday.

 

Or perhaps they feel that once they’ve tested for soil number 4 and found that this person actually appears to be type 1, then it’s okay to not bother any more. This is where another balance comes in. We are called to be salt and light and to have an answer for our hope and faith, but we’re not to go around banging people on the head with it all the time. We’re called to be real, but really loving too. We’re God’s ambassadors – and ambassadors are given the authority of the government they represent to make decisions for that country and act as though they are that country’s government. If we’re to be that, then we have to know what our government wants and needs – and in the Christian context, that means we’ve got to know Dad.

 

So this means we’ve got to know our father in heaven, act like Jesus did by being gracious towards those that don’t get it – he repeated some parables in different ways several times just to try and drive the point home, but did so lovingly, encouraging people to ask questions, not simply giving them answers.

 

If you find that all you’re getting is path, path, path, path, then don’t presume you know God’s plan and that this person will forever be type 1. Maybe something happens in their life or God talks to them, and something that you say, maybe for the 11^th time now, breaks through the path and finds soil underneath. We are called to be Christian all the time, to everyone.

 

Similarly, the same is true for those of types 2 and 3 – perhaps even more so! I’ve said before that Christians can be really unforgiving toward other Christians – after all, if you’ve got a fish on your car, you should know better, right? The problem though is that if you harbour resentment and bitterness toward other believers, Satan can get in and destroy churches. James 3 speaks of how the tongue is dangerous. I talk a lot, and I really know what he means!

 

If our brothers and sisters in Christ lack character or deep soil, then we should encourage them how they should go, as prescribed in the bible – recognising that they have problems, help them by graciously loving them and if you feel you should speak into their lives, then explain why you believe that their behaviour is unacceptable and from where you draw this belief. Back to 1 Peter 3:15, do it with respect, and in 1 Timothy 5, look at the best ways of addressing people in love.

 

The church is made up of people. They aren’t perfect and are all growing. If you’re a step ahead of your brother, then encourage him with what you learnt, without being patronising. If you have a problem with your brother, lovingly sort it out! If we can’t love one another, how can we love the world?

 

I don’t always get this right, but I’m really trying to. We let stuff get in the way, and we can really hurt people if we’re not careful. This is where prayer, petition and asking God to make Romans 12:2a come alive in us really changes our hearts, and we grow.