Let us turn in our Bibles again
to Mark chapter 4. Mark chapter 4. I finished the
message last time from this chapter in verse 23. with the words of
the Lord Jesus, if any man have ears to hear, let him hear. The verses that I'm speaking
from today are a continuation of the Lord Jesus declaring the
meaning of the parable of the sower. He's declaring the meaning
of the parable of the sower to his disciples. If you look back
in verse 10, We read, and when he was alone, they that were
about him with the 12 asked of him the parable. And we saw,
I'll just remind us of this, we saw that he, speaking in parables,
fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy. That prophecy is found in Isaiah
chapter six. And that prophecy foretold the
judicial blindness that would come upon the nation of Israel. And that's the reason that I
mentioned and emphasized, again, if you look in verse one, that
he was speaking, he spoke that parable to a great multitude
of people. And he began again to teach by
the seaside, and there was gathered unto him a great multitude He
spoke the parable of the sower to a great multitude of people. And I emphasize the point that
in that great multitude, there were all kinds of hearers. There were stony ground hearers.
There were those hearers that the seed was sown among the thorns. And there was other hearers there
that came out of curiosity. That's the only reason they were
there to hear. But there were also in that great
multitude religious folk, religious leaders of the nation of Israel
who had accused, we saw this several weeks ago, but they had
accused the Lord Jesus Christ of casting out demons by the
power of the prince of the demon spirits, that is Beelzebub. They
were in this crowd. And no doubt many of them, judicial
blindness came upon them. They heard, but they didn't hear. And there came a day when they
couldn't hear. And I emphasize the point of
how serious it is. to hear the gospel preached. It's a very serious matter. He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Now this morning, beginning
with verse 24, I have three divisions to the message. First, to the
disciples is promised greater knowledge. Verses 24 and 25. And he said unto them, Remember, he's still speaking
to the disciples. He said unto them, take heed
what you hear, with what measure you meet, it shall be measured
to you, and unto you that hear shall more be given, for he that
hath to him shall be given, and he that hath not from him shall
be taken, even that which he seemeth to have. With the exception
of Judas, With the exception of Judas, these men to whom the
Lord was speaking, these men to whom the Lord explained the
parable of the sword, these men were the ones who would be sent
out to preach the gospel in all the world. These men would be
those who would hear his command, all powers given unto me, both
in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore into all the world
and make disciples. And so it was to these men that
the Lord promised even greater knowledge. If you look back to
verse 21, he had mentioned the fact that a candle That's the
kind of lighting, of course, they had at that time. When a
man lights a candle, he doesn't light it and stick it under the
bed. He doesn't put it under a bushel. He lights it so that
it may give light unto everyone in the house. So the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the light of the world, is meant to be
preached, disseminated the seed sown all over the world among
all men. The scripture says, for God so
loved the world, not just the nation of Israel. That is what
they believed. That's what they thought. We
are God's people. We are God's elect. God loves
us. God loved our father Abraham.
And because And only merely because we are born physical descendants
of Abraham, we are shared for the kingdom of God. No, no. Well, God so loved the world,
not just the nation of Israel, but he has his elect among all
the nations of the world. God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son that whosoever Jew or Gentile believeth
in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. These disciples
were to let their light, the gospel, shine before men. They would be given greater knowledge,
especially when God the Holy Spirit came upon them on the
day of Pentecost. They would receive greater knowledge. But like all men, like you and
me, Peter, James, John, no different, in the sense that we all have
a responsibility to diligently hear the Word of God. When we
hear the Word of God, we've got a responsibility, not to let
it just go in one ear and out the other ear. We've got a responsibility
to do the best we can to understand the Word of God, to receive the
Word of God. As I said, they would be given
greater knowledge when God the Holy Spirit came upon them, but
still they had this responsibility that you have and that I have.
The Lord Jesus Christ said unto them, take heed what you hear. People tell me sometimes, well,
I can go into these other churches and they don't preach the gospel,
they don't preach the sovereignty of God, They don't preach the
truth about Christ's effectual redemption, but that doesn't
hurt me. Take heed what you hear. And not only take heed what you
hear, but in Luke's gospel, I believe he said, take heed how you hear. How you hear. The knowledge and the talents
that God gives men are meant to be used. Talent that he's
given you. And every child of God is given
a talent, a gift of some kind. And the talent that God gives
you is meant to be used. It's not meant to be put under
a bushel and to be hidden. As Kevin sang just a few minutes
ago, you may not be able to pray like Peter. You may not be able
to preach like Paul. But all of us can tell others
of the love of Christ, that he paid it all. He gives us a talent,
gives us a gift, and it is to be used. And the point is, these
disciples were responsible. You know, some people have the
idea if you believe in the sovereignty of God, you do not believe in
the responsibility of man. But that's not true. At least
it better not be true. We know that man is responsible
unto God. All men are. And yet we know
that God is absolutely sovereign in all things. Let me read you John Gill's comment
on verse 25. You see it says, for he that
hath to him shall be given and he that hath not from him shall
be taken even that which he hath or seemeth to have. And I quote,
he that hath the gospel light and knowledge and makes a proper
use of it, he shall have more. His path shall be as the path
of the just, which shines more and more to the perfect day. Here's the second part of the
message, this parable. in verse 26 through 29. And he
said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed
into the ground and should sleep and rise night and day, and the
seed should spring and grow up. He knoweth not how. For the earth
bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear,
after that the full corn in the ear, But when the fruit is brought
forth immediately, he put it in the sickle, because the harvest
is come. It's only in the gospel, according
to Mark, that we find this parable of our Lord. And it is a parable,
like all of them, that is especially useful to God's children. This parable especially outlines
the work of grace and the souls of those who are saved. And I
have no doubt that many of these people who originally heard this
parable, they understood a lot about planning and reaping. They were familiar with this
process. Some have suggested even that
when our Lord was speaking that day from that ship and the people
were on the multitude was on the on the shore side that probably
there was green fields that he could point to because of the
plants that were growing, the barley plants that were growing,
the wheat that was growing. But these who originally heard
the parable, no doubt they were familiar with planting and reaping. He used some obvious truths,
some obvious truths about planting and reaping that Those who heard
him were sure to know. And truths which teach about
the work of grace and the heart of God's children. Here are four
truths. Number one, those who heard him,
and I trust all of us here today, they would know that there must
be a planter. There must be a planter. The
earth of itself brings forth weeds. If you don't believe that,
well just look around. Because they can take one of
these bulldozers and scrape off a piece of ground and just leave
it and it won't be long. It'll be green, but it'll be
green with weeds. That's what the earth will produce. They would have known that You
must plant, there must be a planter if there's going to be a harvest.
And the heart of man is like the earth in this sense. It will
never, man's heart will never in and of itself bring forth
the fruit of repentance and faith. And men must repent and men must
trust in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to eternal life and
the natural heart will not produce the fruit of repentance and faith
of itself. The natural man is spiritually
dead. He's spiritually dead and cannot
give himself life. There must be a planter. The
Lord Jesus Christ, by his spirit, must give a man a new heart and
plant the kingdom of God or the gospel seed in his heart. No
fallen son of Adam will ever, apart from the grace of God,
seek the Lord. When a person begins to seek
the Lord, you may know this, that God has always been first
with that person. We love him because he first
loved us, and if we seek him, it is because he first sought
us. For the Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which is lost. There must be a planner
if there's going to be a harvest. No fallen son of Adam will ever,
apart from God's grace, seek the Lord. This is God's work,
and yet we know that God has chosen men in teaching and preaching
the gospel. He's chosen men didn t choose
angels. We have this illustrated to us
in the case of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. An angel appeared
unto him, this Gentile centurion. An angel appeared unto him, but
that angel did not bring the gospel to him. The angel told
him, No, you send a Joppa, and there s a man there by the name
of Simon who s in the house of another man named Simon, and
he will come and tell you what you must do. In other words,
God uses saved sinners, redeemed sinners, to preach the gospel
to sinners. There must be a planner. A second
thing that they would know, and you and I should know, that there's
much about planning and reaping that we cannot explain. You just
cannot explain. We do know this, that if you've
got a barn full of seed and it stays in the barn, it's never
going to produce a crop. We do know that, that the seed
must be put into the ground or it will never produce a crop.
But then here comes some things that we can't explain. The farmer,
he plows up his field, he makes those rows ever so straight and
sharp, he comes along with the planter and they drop seed in
the rows and goes on, you know, and some of those seeds come
up. He can't explain why, as to why
some seeds come up and here's a row over here, it looks like
20 feet, nothing, didn't even plant there. There's things about
planting and sowing that we can't explain. We just cannot explain. We don't know why some seeds
come up and why others don't. That's the reason we are told
to preach the gospel to every creature. We don't know where
the seed is going to find a place and where it's going to be received.
That's God's business. That's the part that our Lord
said this man here in the parable, he goes to bed at night, he gets
up in the daytime, he's just day by day, goes on about his
work, he's planted the seed, it's there, but he cannot tell
you, he cannot explain why some seed is going to come up. There's
a process there, I understand that. There's a process that
goes on below the ground. That seed must die. But as to
why, Some seed sprouts and some seed doesn't. We can't, we can't,
the man can't tell you that. And not only can he not tell
you why, but he cannot tell you when. It's not gonna help a bit
for him to sit out there and watch the field, you know, keep
looking at those rows and seeing if, he cannot tell you. One seed
may come up at night, one seed may come up in the morning, evening,
he cannot tell you wind. He sows the seed and goes about
his life, night and day. The farmer plants his seeds and
he leaves the growth to God. That's what the Apostle Paul
said in 1 Corinthians. He said, I planted, Apollos watered,
God gave the increase. That's it. I planted, This other
preacher named Apollos, he watered, he preached also the same gospel. But apart from God prospering,
that seed that was sown, no one would have been saved. I planted,
Apollos watered. Yes, there's an increase. In
Corinth, there was a large increase. But it was God who gave the increase. We don't know why, we don't know
when. I thought about this again this
past week, this story I read several years ago. A true story,
but there was a pastor, I've got his works, John Flavel. He was a Puritan in England,
lived in the 1600s. Very useful man of God. And he preached the message one
time, there was a young boy in the congregation. I believe he
was 16 years old. At least he migrated from England
to the United States of America. This was before it was the United
States of America, the colony. I think he lived in New Hampshire. When he was 85 years old, his
name was Luke Chart. When he was 85 years old, he
was still physically able to work and do his his planning
and all of that. But one day in the field, he
just stopped and kind of relaxed and started thinking back. And
that message, that seed, think about this, all those years before,
that seed that had been sown, God brought it back to him. And
the Lord saved him. And he lived on into his 90s
and gave a good testimony the rest of his life, that he truly
was a child of God, a worshiper of Christ, and a servant of the
Lord. We don't know why, we don't know
when. That's God's work. The third
thing, they would know that the harvest is not immediate. I mean,
you go out and you plant the seed, You don't know when it's
going to come up, but one day it comes up. But you know that
day it comes up out of the ground, that's not the day you're going
to reap the harvest. No, no. There's other things. There's a time that's going to
take place. One thing he sees that it begins
very small. A plant just pushes itself up
out of the ground. Begins very small, but listen,
because it's living, It will grow. Everything that lives grows. That's just so. You say, well,
preacher, how are you growing? I'm growing old. Every day I
grow older. But everything that has life
grows in some fashion, some form. And the farmer knows that. He
knows that the harvest First of all, he sees the little seed
and then, this is the way I think of this, he notices one day there's
some blossoms. And I like to plant tomato plants,
you know that. And I like to see those blossoms
come out, those yellow blossoms. But that blossom, I can't eat
that blossom. I can't slice that blossom and
put it on a sandwich, no. But first, you see, there's the
plant, Then there's the ear, then there's a full ear. You
can't bake bread out of wheat when it first comes, that plant
first comes up, or even when it puts on the blossom. But in
time, it becomes harvestable. And you harvest that wheat and
go through that process in order to make food. The picture is,
of course, of growth. And the Apostle John, in 1 John,
he wrote the same letter he wrote to little children, young men,
and fathers. But now listen. This is what he said about all
of them. The little children, the young men, and the fathers. This was true of all of them.
Your sins are forgiven you for Christ's sake. No other reason. Not because you've grown and
become a father. No. At the very beginning, your
sins are forgiven you for Christ's sake. And no matter how much
you grow, that truth will always be so. Your sins are forgiven
you for Christ's sake. We shouldn't expect young converts
to be Theologians, be like the Apostle Paul. I like that story
of that man who, I think Charles Spurgeon told the story, but
his testimony was, I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all. Jesus
Christ is my all in all. And they couldn't, the church
couldn't budge him from that testimony. That may be all a
person knows. I'm a poor sinner and nothing
at all. That's something good to know. And Jesus Christ is
my all and all. That's something good to know. One important thing to see in
this parable is that when the fruit is brought forth, that's
what our Lord says here, if you will, when the fruit is brought
forth, verse 29, immediately, immediately, he put it forth,
the sickle. J.C. Ryle commented, God deals
with his people in the same way. He never removes his people from
this world until they are ready. He never takes them away until
their work is done. They never die at the wrong time. Talking about God's children.
They never die a minute too soon or a minute too late. Just like
their births, he goes on to say, they never die at the wrong time,
however mysterious their deaths appear sometimes to man. We shall
see in the resurrection morning that there was a needs be. All
was done well about their deaths as well as about their births. The great husband never cuts
his corn until ripe. Immediately. Immediately. God's time, right? When God sees,
when God knows, it's ripe. Third, this final parable in
verses 30 through 34 about the kingdom of God. He said, He said,
Where unto shall we liken the kingdom of God, or with what
comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard
seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all
the seeds that be in the earth. But when it is sown, it groweth
up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great
branches, so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow
of it. And with many such parables spake
he the word unto them as they were able to hear it, but without
a parable spake he not unto them. And when they were alone, he
expounded all things to his disciples. I believe that this parable is
different from the one that we just considered. That parable
spoke about the work of God in our heart, the work of God the
gospel, the gospel of the kingdom of God in the heart of an individual. This parable speaks about the
work of the gospel in the world, in the world. And I think you
could look at this parable as a prophecy. When the Lord Jesus
Christ spoke this parable, it was a prophecy. But now after
2,000 years, we can look at this not only as one of his parables,
which was a prophecy, but also as a history. Because what he
said has come to pass, and we see it after these 2,000 years. The Lord uses a seed. which they
at least thought was one of the least seeds of, and it was one
of the least seeds. It's very little, but it grows
and becomes very large. It's a herb, so you don't think
of herbs as producing a large plant, but evidently this one
did. A small seed is very insignificant. And so the kingdom of God appeared
in this world. Everything about the Lord Jesus
Christ, beginning with His birth in a stable, His followers being
fishermen and publicans, His death upon a cross between two
thieves, everything about Lord Jesus Christ seemed to this world
ever so insignificant, just like a small seed, insignificant. When on the day of Pentecost,
there were 120 followers, they had one message. They had all
the world before them, and yet they only had one message, and
that message was Christ and Him crucified. And that message was
to the Jews, that's where they began in Jerusalem, that message
was to the Jews a stumbling block. And when they spread out to the
Gentile world, to the Greeks, that was foolishness. That's
foolishness to believe that one man dying a ignominious death
on a cross outside the gates of Jerusalem, that that's God's
Savior for sinners. That by trusting in Him, believing
in Him, all our sins are put away, that we are washed as white
as snow, that we have a relationship with God. Now He's our Father,
we are His children. That's foolish. It's foolish. Insignificant. Everything about
Christ and the gospel being preached was insignificant. But now you
and I, 2,000 plus years later, what do we see? We see that this
gospel's encircled the globe. That God has his people all over
this world. There's no continent on this
planet where the Lord hasn't, at some time or other, called
out some of his people. It's like a mustard seed cast
into the ground, but when it grows up, it becomes very large
and has become very large. You know, on the day of Pentecost,
there were 3,000 people saved. Day or two later, there was 5,000
saved, and on and on and on until today. The Lord is still saving
sinners. He's still calling out his people. We believe from the scriptures
when that last sinner that was chosen in Christ before the foundation
of the world and redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ on
the cross of Calvary, when that last sinner is regenerated, the
Lord Jesus Christ is going to come again. That same Jesus,
this same Jesus, the God-man, in whose hands is the world and
the ruling of this world, that same Jesus is going to come again. Maybe today. That'd be wonderful,
wouldn't it? It'd be wonderful if he were
to come today. It'd be wonderful for his people. If you do not know him, it wouldn't
be wonderful for you, that's for sure. What a hope we have. What a hope and confidence and
assurance we have today because of Christ. I trust the Lord will
bless