Let's take our Bibles now and
turn to the book of Mark. I know it's been a little while
since we've had our study in Mark, but we're in Mark chapter
four, and this morning we'll be looking at verses 26 through
33. And in these verses, Our Lord tells us very plainly
that these are parables. Now, one of the most famous writers
on the parables is Benjamin Keech. And Mr. Keech said in the foreword
to his book on parables that a parable is nothing in the world
but an illustration. That's what it is. It's an illustration. And in Mark 4 verse 33, our Lord
said, and with many such parables spake he the word unto them as
they were able to hear it. And he goes on to say in other
places that without a parable spake he nothing unto them. He
used illustrations for everything he taught. Parables and Allegories, they
take in words, they take in sentences and doctrines containing matters
of faith and manners, and they're used for illustration's sake. To open and explain some hidden
mystery that lies covered in the verse. Our Lord, they asked
him, said, why speak thou in parables? And the Lord knew what they were
saying. Why are you speaking in such
simple terms to these Pharisees? These are learned men. These
are doctors of the law. These are teachers. These are
well-educated men. And he said, I ain't talking
to them. I'm talking to you. That's why I'm speaking in prayer.
In John chapter three, our Lord declares the necessity of the
new birth. You must be born again, says
it more than once. He uses an earthly term and process
that we're all familiar with, birth. A seed enters into the womb,
a period of time and process takes place and a new being comes
forth into the world. But Nicodemus, being an intellectual,
he's trying to figure that thing out intellectually. And he says,
I don't know how to take what the
Lord said. And so our Lord answers and he
said, or he answered and said unto the Lord, he said, how can
a man be born when he's old? Can he enter the second time
in his mother's womb and be born? And even when the Lord explained
it to him, he still didn't get it. He said, how can these things
be? And this is what I want you to
see here in John chapter 3. In verse 10, our Lord answered
and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these
things? Is that what I saw on your paper
hanging in your room, master of theology? Are thou a master
of Israel and you don't know this? Verily I say unto thee,
we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen and
you don't receive our witness. If I've told you earthly things,
things that you can relate to, Things you can identify with,
things you're familiar with. If I've told you earthly things
and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly
things? What if the Lord were to just
throw out pure divine wisdom, just throw it out in heavenly
terms? Right over your head, that's
where it'd go. We wouldn't understand anything
he's talking about. Turn with me to Matthew 13. Let me show
you something over here. In Matthew chapter 13 and verse
34, it says, all these things spake Jesus unto the multitude
in parables. And without a parable spake he
not unto them. Now watch this. That it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will
open my mouth in parables, I will utter things which have been
kept secret from the foundation of the world. And this, of course,
is talking about Christ. And most of what our Lord preached,
he preached in parables, earthly things, illustrating these heavenly
mysteries, opening up these heavenly mysteries. And so our Lord here
in our text begins to talk to his hearers about the kingdom
of God. Now if you go back to our text
in Mark chapter 4 and look down here at verse 26, And he said, so is the kingdom
of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground. Now he's
not changed his subject. He's still talking about hearing.
He's still talking about believing. He's not changed his subject. And he said, so is the kingdom
of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground. The seed which is Christ, that's
the seed. That's the heavenly seed. And then in that seed is all
the seed of his elect. Now the Lord's gonna tell us
about this seed. So is the kingdom of God as if
a man should cast seed into the ground. Now watch this, verse
27. and should sleep and rise and do it again. Night and day. Night and day. A period of time passes by. And the seed suddenly springs
up. Now this is talking about the
guy sowing the seed. He knoweth not how. I've seen it all my life, or
most of my life, and I still don't know how. I don't know
how, it just does. You plant that seed, and the
first garden I planted, I was out there every day. Sometimes
I'd even dig down. I want to see, is that thing
really growing or not? And I'd dig down there and usually
ruin whatever was growing. He planted this seed. And then he went to sleep. And
he woke up and he went back to sleep. He sowed some more seed,
went back to sleep. Rose up the next day, planted
some more in a different field, and he just kept planting every
day, planting seed. That's what he did. That was
his occupation. He planted the seed. He cast
it into the ground, and then he went home and went to bed. And when it comes up, it says
he knoweth not how. We know in part. I know in general. But I don't know how it comes
to pass. That's a mystery. That's a mystery. It's just another miracle of
God, that's all you can say about it. The new birth, we don't know
when it just comes. The spirit of God comes like
the wind, it comes and you feel the effect of it and it leaves
and you don't know where it's going. And same with this, these miracles
of God. We preach the gospel. I preach
the gospel to everybody that comes through these doors. Everywhere
I go, I preach the same message I preach here. I don't change
my message when I go out to preach. Been preaching this for a long
time. But I can go home and go to bed. at night. I'd go home and go
to bed. I did what the Lord instructed me to do. I planted the seed. Is it going to come up? It always
has. Why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't
it? And then he tells them all plant
life has in itself seed which produces after its kind. Animals, fish, humans, same thing. And so he says in verse 28, for
the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade,
then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear. This
thing of the kingdom of God is about speaking and hearing, which
he illustrates to us in the parable of a seed cast into the ground. Well, that seems simple enough,
don't it? Well, let's make some applications then. Where there
is no seed cast into the ground, you gonna go out and look for
a cabbage? You gonna go out there and expect
to find onions growing in a row? But isn't that exactly what religion
talks about? They talk about plants growing
and fruit bearing where there's never been any seed. That can't
be. It just can't be. Every illustration,
every parable that our Lord gives has to do with that seed. Even
the ground that it goes in has to be prepared ground. It has
to be ground that's been turned over, it's prepared by the Lord. And then I want you to notice
this. I tried to emphasize this when I read it. The planter lays
down to rest. What's that mean? Well, he rests
in the full confidence that what he's doing will produce what
God intends for it to produce. Paul said, I'm not sufficient
of myself to think anything of myself. All of these things that
I'm doing, I'm not sufficient of myself. He said, that's not
how I think. I did this, and I'm going to
do this. No, he said, I'm not sufficient
of myself to think anything of myself. But my sufficiency, his
sufficiency, was of God, who made him an able minister
of the New Testament. What he's doing will produce
what God intends it to produce. That seed will produce after
its kind and it'll bear fruit of the same. And this parable's
not here dealing with the power of God in the gospel, only with
speaking and hearing and that gospel seed. He said it is as
if a man cast seed into the ground. Is that what's taking place? This is a man, Christ Jesus.
He's casting out the seed. This was the master preacher,
if you will. The apostle, the priest, the
king, the planter. And he's casting seed into the
ground and his disciples will be men casting seed into the
ground and preachers of all ages shall be men casting seed into
the ground. Now if we do what God has instructed
us to do, we can rest in the fact that the heavenly seed will
spring up by and by. It's gonna do it. When it falls
on that ground that God has prepared, it's gonna produce fruit. I don't
have to run out there every day and look. I can go home and go
to bed. I can rest in that. But it ain't coming up where
you don't plant the seed. Seed has to be planted. Seed
has to be watered. Paul tells us that. So we go home and rest, next
day we plant in whatever field God leads us to and so on. And
then in God's own time, He said, a tiny blade begins to unfurl. You look at it, and it looks
like an old automatic choke or something. It's all wound up,
and it's starting to come up, and it pushes itself up through
the ground. Pretty soon, there's a blade
there. And pretty soon, that thing's up pretty good. And then
all of a sudden, you start seeing the ear come on it. It's absolutely
amazing. And he says, we know not how.
Paul said, we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency
of the power might be of God and not of us. And as the creation was given
seed in itself, so in the kingdom of God, he reveals Christ in
us that we might preach him among the heathen. But it says here in verse 29,
but when the fruit is brought forth, Immediately he putteth
in the sickle, because the harvest is come. When all the seeds planted
and all the fruits manifested itself in time, it's time for
the harvest. And Christ tells us this about
this. He said, till then, till that time comes, the enemy is
going to come in your little garden and he's going to sow
in tares. You got a beautiful wheat crop out there, but the
enemy comes in, he sows some tares right along with the wheat. And our Lord said, don't you
go in and start uprooting tares, you're gonna pull up the wheat.
Just let them grow together. Because I have experts that's
gonna come along, and they know how to harvest that wheat and
get rid of those tares. He'll take care of that. I'll
gather my wheat into my barn. And this whole gospel age is
a time of planting and growing and fruit producing. The whole
of time, I suppose, could be included in this parable. Casting
seed into the ground, watching the seed come up, watching it
produce the fruit, and watching the harvests. And then he moves on to another
parable. He said, where unto shall we
liken the kingdom of God, or with what comparison shall we
compare it? It's like a grain of mustard
seed, which when it's sown in the earth is less than the seeds
that be in the earth. Now, I'm gonna go against the
grain of some of the old writers, and I just ask you to consider
it for a minute. Every time I've ever read or
had anything to do with this parable and read about it or
heard it expounded, it has to do with faith. It has to do with man's faith
and that tiny seed that's planted in him and it comes up and all
of these things. But I got studying this parable
and I don't think this parable's talking about you or your faith.
He's talking about Christ. Just think here for a moment
when we go through this. It's like a grain of mustard
seed, which when it's sown in the earth, it's less than all
the seeds that be in the earth. Now if we compare the gospel
seed to all the other seeds, it seems pretty small. It went all the way up to Hendersonville.
There was an old church. It was just a spitting image
of the old run-of-the-mill Southern Baptist Church, the old First
Baptist churches that you used to see years ago. And there were
just a couple handfuls of people in there, not a whole lot of
people. Seemed kind of small in comparison.
You look out around and there are big churches taken up two
or three blocks in the city and all these things. Now eventually
it's going to be a number that no man can number. It's going
to be like the stars in the heavens and the sands of the seashores. but it's not there yet. And when Christ came, think about
this, that seed, a human seed, when it enters into the womb,
is almost microscopic. How tiny a seed is that? It's a smaller seed than The
corn that you plant or the beans that you plant out in your garden,
it's way smaller than that. It's the smallest of all the
seeds. And it was planted in the womb
of that virgin. Tiny, insignificant seed. But this seed is gonna grow. And it's gonna mature. And it's
gonna be the greatest of all the herbs. Who could conceive that that
tiny seed in Mary's womb would produce such a thing? The Holy Ghost goes on and on
in Hebrews chapter 1 and 2, telling us of the preeminence of Christ
and his glory and majesty. And then he turns to us and says,
but we see Jesus. Now watch this. Made a little
lower than the angel. made for the suffering of death
and then crowned with honor that he, by the grace of God, should
taste death for every man. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul speaks
of the foolishness of preaching being the way that pleased God
to save sinners and to expound on that subject. He tells us
in verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and
the weakness of God is stronger than men. And he said, now you
see your calling? How tiny and insignificant were
you in the overall scheme of things? Not many wise men after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and soul. And he did it that no flesh should
glory in his sight. He that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord. And in comparison, Jesus was
but a tiny seed, almost microscopic, but he was a, and that tiny babe
came into this world of the poorest, poorest beginnings. They couldn't
even offer a sacrifice when they came in. They had to offer the
sacrifice of a poor person, not really a beggar, but at the
very bottom, the poorest of the people. They couldn't afford
to bring in a lamb, so they were told they could bring in a turtle
dove or a pigeon. When the mustard seed was sown,
it was less than all the seeds. that be in the earth, verse 32.
But when it's sown, it groweth up and become greater than all
the herbs. Shooteth out great branches so
that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.
And this to me has to be talking about Christ. There's nobody
lodging under my wings. They're lodging under his wings.
This to me is talking about Christ himself. There's no kingdom, he's talking
about the kingdom. There's no kingdom apart from
the king, is there? Verse 33, and with
many such parables spake he the word unto them as they were able
to hear it. But without a parable spake he
nothing unto them. And when they were alone, he
expounded all these parables to his disciples. He said, here's
what I meant, and he told them. When I think about how valuable
these parables are to the preaching of the gospel, I'm more and more
determined in myself to find such illustrations that's just
commonly understood to men when I try to preach these things.
If Christ was so moved to do this, and he's wisdom, he's perfect,
eternal, And if he chose this in his wisdom to do it, why would
I want to go a different direction? Huh? Why don't I come back and
find these illustrations and read about these illustrations
and use them when we're preaching the gospel to me? May the Lord give us all an understanding
of this parable. Thank you.