Discuss: Which of the following do you think parables are most like and why?
Note: Of the parables so far in Mark’s Gospel, the parable of the four soils was the first parable of the kingdom (4:1-20). Previously Jesus has told parables in answer to questions (Mark 2:21-22, 3:23-29). However, in Mark 4 parables become the main vehicle for his teaching of the crowd—although of course the disciples are there listening. Unlike the case with the parable of the soils, Jesus' explanation of the parables in Mark 4:21-34 is not recorded for us. That means we will have to 'consider carefully what we hear'.
1. Who is Jesus speaking to in this section? (vv. 21, 33-34, cf. 10-13)
2. What is Jesus revealing when he tells parables? (cf. v. 11)
3. Are the outsiders supposed to understand the parables? (v. 33, cf. vv. 11-12)
4. Are the insiders supposed to understand the parables? (v. 34, cf. v. 13)
5. What are the parables in our passage describing? (vv. 26, 30)
Discuss: “The rich are getting richer and the poor get poorer”. Is it fair that those who have are given more, and those who do not have, even what they have will be taken away? Why or why not?
6. What are the hidden things that are meant to be disclosed? (vv. 22, 34, cf. 11, 13)
7. What sort of hearers does Jesus want? (vv. 23, 24, cf. v. 9)
8. What will those who already have be given more of? (vv. 25, 33-34)
9. What will be taken away from those who do not have? (v. 25, cf. vv. 15, 16, 19)
10. If the hidden things that Jesus is talking about are meant to be disclosed (v. 22), why does Jesus say things in parables, so that the crowds are hearing but not understanding (v. 2)?
For reflection: What value do I give to listening to the words of Jesus? How can I make sure that I get even more out of what Jesus is saying?
Discuss: Are you ever discouraged by the small size of the church, the hardness of people to the gospel, or the lack of response to the word of God? Why or why not?
11. What does the seed represent? (v. 26, cf. v. 2)
12. What credit can the man take for the seed's growth into grain? (v. 27-28; cf. 1 Cor 3:5-9)
13. Whose job is it to grow the kingdom of God?
14. Is there a specific job for the citizens of the kingdom? If so, what? (vv. 26, 29; cf. 6:7)
15. What is it about the beginnings of the kingdom of God that make it like a mustard seed? (v. 31, cf. 1:14, 38, 3:14)
16. What is the destiny of the kingdom of God? (v. 32)
17. What is the difference between being an insider with Jesus, in the inner circle, and a member of the crowd? (vv. 33-34)
For reflection: How do the parables we have just read encourage you in your ministry of sharing the good news and seeing the growth of the gospel and the church?
Jesus has a topic that he wants to teach about and a method of teaching that topic. Jesus’ topic is ‘the kingdom of God’ and Jesus’ method is ‘the parable’. And to understand Jesus’ teaching, we need to understand both his method and his topic.
First, we will deal with Jesus’ chosen teaching method, the parable. Jesus deliberately and purposefully adopts this mode of teaching: We see this in verses 33-34:
33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything. (NIV)
The parables look to us like homespun, rustic illustrations. Many are drawn from life by the sea, life on the land, or life in the marketplace. They are set in situations familiar with the hearers. They have ‘homey touches’, if you like. They illustrate eternal spiritual matters from everyday life. And clearly many of them at least have this quality as an aspect.
But if we think that’s all that the parables are, we haven’t understood what Jesus is doing, because the parables don’t just make clear—they also make foggy. The parables make Jesus’ message harder to understand, at least at first. The meaning of the parables doesn’t come easily for anyone, and for most, they are too hard, and those people walk away. So the parables divide Jesus’ hearers. That is why Jesus says in verse 34b: "But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything." The parables do require explanation.
So the parables work as riddles or cryptic puzzles, like crosswords or soduku. Some people give these puzzles a go and get hooked. The harder the cryptic crossword, the more they like it. They will buy books about them, and study them, and get into them. And other people, like me, think, “Life’s too short. I don’t have brain space to spare on this. It’s too much like hard work.” And they leave them alone.
That’s what the parables do. They suck some people in, who ask and receive, seek and find, knock and door is opened. They solve the puzzle and become disciples. And for others, well, it’s all too hard. “I don’t have the brain space. Life’s too short.” And they walk away from Jesus. And that is Jesus’ intention. Look at what Jesus says about parables in chapter 4 verses 10 to 12:
10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you [i.e. disciples]. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12 so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” (NIV)
The secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been revealed. Jesus has spilt the secret. The parables are meant to be understood by the disciples. It is as if Jesus is saying to his disciples, “Think about what I’m saying.. And if that’s too hard, just ask me. If you have, you will be given more.” The disciples are meant to understand everything that Jesus is communicating by the parable. They just have to stick with it. That’s why Jesus still uses parables to teach about the kingdom, even in private with his disciples. This shows that the parables as a method do indeed help understanding—its just that you need to be a disciple and come to Jesus for the answer. Jesus expects that his disciples will understand his parables. And the disciples do in fact “get it”. But none of this comes to the crowd, nor the casual hearer. It is not received by the one who goes to the beach on a hot sunny day and happens to stumble upon Jesus sitting in a boat. Neither does the religious expert from head office in Jerusalem get the secret, for their brief it is to keep a dirt file on Jesus, so they can get rid of him when the time is right. Ones like this who hear Jesus’ parables just get a story about farming, or a story about fishing, or a story about the market place. All they get are little bedtime stories, told by Jesus to lull them into spiritual sleep. And they will walk away. And what little insight they happened to have casually picked up from their incidental connection with Jesus will be taken away. And the next morning, they will be no different for it.
The parables are sieves. They keep the crowds from the knowledge of the kingdom, but they let the disciples into the secret. So the parables function differently for outsiders and insiders. For the crowds, they exclude and conceal. For the disciples, they explain and reveal. For the insider, they illustrate and illuminate. For the outsider, they frustrate and obfuscate.
So how will you leave these parables? Will you leave them lulled to sleep? Will they become for you little bed time stories which leave you no different the next day. Or will you leave them as a disciple, with understanding, equipped to bring new things out of the Old Testament. That’s Jesus’ method, the parable.
Second, we turn to Jesus’ topic, the kingdom of God. Jesus’ parables are all about and give insight into the kingdom over which Jesus is the King.
Previously, we have seen the big mamma parable, the mother of all parables, the ‘parable of the four soils’. There’s one seed, but four soils: one word of God, one gospel, but four responses to that gospel. But even of those four responses, three of them are really the same. So the ‘parable of the four soils’ really talks about the two responses to the gospel, the two ways to live! Hey, there might be something in that. There is the fruitless response and the fruitful response. The fruitless response has three varieties: immediate rejection; falling away under persecution and trouble; and choked by worldly worries and deceived by money. In the case of each, there is no fruit. But the fruitful response comes from in first instance from understanding.
The parable of the soils is a parable about how the kingdom of heaven grows. The kingdom of God does not grow through the sword, as Mohammad’s kingdom did, nor through invasion or free trade, as the US kingdom does, nor through sea power, as the British Empire once did. But the kingdom of God grows through the word of God. We need to expect rejection of the message. It will come in three types. But there will also be fruit, abundant fruit, as we saw in the parable of the soils.
Jesus is explaining the purpose of the parables by the parable of the lamp on a stand. Jesus has lit a lamp by revealing the secrets of the Kingdom of God. And he wants his disciples to understand it. He hasn’t said the parable to be obscure or to not reveal things. Rather, it is said for those who have ears to hear. Jesus tells them the parable so that it’s meaning will come to light, verses 21 to 23:
21 He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? 22 For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. 23 If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.” (NIV)
Notice that Jesus is not intending the parables to be un-understandable. Any lack of understanding does not stem from the form of teaching, the parable. It stems from the type of soil the person is. As in many things, it’s not what you know but who you know. And because the disciples know Jesus, they have the key to unlocking any parable. They have the light which can illuminate the parable But the parables do also conceal. They come in an 'hidden form', not because of their nature as 'parables', which will eventually illuminate, but because the rest do not hear right. So for some, indeed, for the majority of the crowd, the parables have a hardening effect.
24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. 25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
In understanding the secrets of the kingdom of God, Jesus says, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If some do understand the parable, if they do have ears to hear, they will be given more understanding. But if the rest don’t understand, don’t get it, and don’t really care, then they get nothing. Even the thing that they think they have, they lose.
But hey, this is not fair! Doesn’t God want all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth? It is all a bit exclusivist ‘The spiritually rich getting richer, and the poor get the picture’. Well it is true. It is a bit exclusive. But the process allows for self-selection. For Jesus casts out no one who comes to him. But the problem was this, that most people didn’t come to him for the Kingdom of God. Most came to be healed, to be relieved, to be amazed, to wonder. But only a small circle came to understand the secrets of the kingdom of God.
This of course raises the question for each of, "What value do I give to listening to the words of Jesus? How can I make sure that I get even more out of what Jesus is saying?" It challenges us to be carefull hearers of God's word, at Church, at Bible Study, as we read the Scriptures.
Are you ever discouraged by the small size of the church? Do you find when you do share the gospel that people are hard? Do you observe people not responding to the word of God? Even if our own observations didn't show it, the parable of the sower tells us that many, even most, of the hearers of the word of God do not respond properly and savingly. Again using an agricultural image, in a parable that we only find here in Mark's Gospel, Jesus likens the preaching of the gospel to a man scattering seed on the ground. But now he focusses on not the receptiveness of the soil to the seed, but the dynamic of growth and the relationship of the one who scatters to that growth, verses 26-28:
26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. (NIV)
While the farmer sows and harvests, he cannot make the seeds grow. He cannot give the seeds the power or the dynamism to grow. He cannot make seeds of grains of sand, or the dust of the earth, for example. From the perspective of the sower, 'All by itself', automatically, it grows. The farmer does not know how or why it grows. And even now, with all our scientific knowledge and observation, we must say that the principle of life, that life force, remains a miracle, even as we observe more and more of its processes. The growth is a miracle. The seed is alive and living. Only God can enliven and give such a dynamic principle, though its growth takes an observable pattern. But from the perspective of the farmer, the seed does it 'all by itself'.
This is true of the gospel. It truly does have a dynamic of its own. We know from elsewhere in the New Testament that the source of that dynamism is the prevenient work of God, it is God the Holy Spirit working in the heart of the hearer, granting faith and repentance. As Paul says later,
6I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth, 7so that neither the one planting is anything, nor the one watering, but God, the one causing the growth." (1 Cor 3:6-7, my translation).
This demarcation of responsibilities frees us from the burden of seeking to manipulate responses to the gospel. Since God is the one who gives the growth, but we simply scatter and water, we are relieved of both the ability and responsibility of making someone else respond properly to the gospel. We can let God through his gospel do the work. Martin Luther colourfully expressed an application of this truth when he said:
In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept [cf. Mark 4:26–29], or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything: 'The Second Sermon, March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit', in J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann (Eds), Luther’s Works, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 51:78.
If you, like me, like grainy mustard, you know what a mustard seed looks like. Apparently those grainy mustard seeds are much bigger than mustard seeds look when they are dried, too. A mustard seed looks like one grain of ‘hundreds and thousands’. At the time of Jesus, the mustard seed was the common symbol for smallness. We see that where Jesus says that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains.
It is said that “good things come in small packages”. Well, it is the same with the mustard seed. Apparently, it produces a large, bush like plant. Try letting that grow in your mum’s herb box on the window sill! Apparently, it grew up to 10 feet in height. That’s not all that big when you compare it to the gum tree in the front yard. But when you compare it to parsley or basil or shallots, other herbs, it’s a monster. Birds could gather in it, take up residence in its branches, and gather in its shade.
What does the mustard seed say about the kingdom of God? It teaches us that Jesus’ kingdom has humble, unimpressive beginnings. But its small beginnings belie the mighty power and potential within. The seed is inconspicuous and insignificant. Yet it is destined to become something that will take over your herb bed. And the kingdom’s mysterious growth is the work of God.