SESSION 5
WEEK 2 of 6
Bible Course: Studies in the Gospel of Mark
Session 5: The Parable of the Sower
Welcome to Session 5 of our six-week course study on the gospel of Mark!
NOTEBOOK TOPICS: I’ll go ahead and give you your writing prompt for session 5 so you can work as you go along. I hope you are reading with your notebook and pen handy. There are so many spiritual lessons here in chapter four’s parable of the sower. As you read and study along, dig into some of the thoughts and respond to them, then share with me.
Also: If you need more prompting, think of both Bible characters and people whom you have known who you see fitting in these four types of soil: the wayside, the stony ground, the thorns, and the good ground. It is not to judge, but we learn a great deal from how different ones respond to the gospel.
Blessings to you as you read and study here in … SESSION 5.
Lecture and Discussion:
In chapter four, Mark records the parable of the sower, along with Matthew in chapter thirteen and also Luke eight. It appears to be one of the first parables Jesus teaches publicly, and for good reason. It covers the full gamut of how men will hear the word of God, both men of that time and men for generations to come. All of us will fall in one of the categories the Lord lays out.
It would take volumes to say everything we need to say about this great parable, but we can draw some great lessons in a relative short amount of space.
Just to refresh our memories on the parable, the Lord begins with the stoic “Behold, there went out a sower to sow,” v. 3, an image we can all see and one we have imagined a hundred times as good men have stood to deliver sermons on this classic story.
The seed falls on four types of ground:
It falls by the way side, where the fowls devour it;
It falls on stony ground; but it does not have enough depth of earth, so it springs up quickly and dies just as quickly.
It falls among the thorns, and it sprouts and seems to be doing well until it gets tangled up with the thorns, and the thorns choke out its life.
Then some falls on good ground, where it yields fruit – some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred-fold.
The parable could not have taken the Lord more than two minutes to present it, yet it is one of the greatest sermons ever preached. How much the Lord can say in a minute!
After some time of the Lord’s preaching from his pulpit which was a boat on the edge of the Sea of Galilee (note: Many places serve as good pulpits to share the gospel), the crowd scatters – much like the seed the sower sows – and Jesus finds Himself alone with His disciples.
“And when he was alone” with the disciples, Mark writes, v. 9, they ask him the meaning of the parable, and the Lord explains to them the type of listener that was to be found within each type of ground. His explanation sounds a bit like this:
For the ‘wayside’ hearer, the gospel will barely have escaped the lips of a preacher before the seed falls on hard, stomped-down ground and is devoured by birds.
The stony-ground hearers do better. They are eager, enthusiastic, and the seed producing a sprig; but when the sun comes out, and trials come, there is not enough root for the sprig to grow and be fruitful. They wither and die on the vine.
Then there are the hearers where the seed falls among the thorns. They get even further down the road of faith than the first two listeners. In fact, should you walk by a plant among the thorns you may see blooms and even a little fruit appearing. But come by after a while, and you’ll see that those thorns have begun to choke the life out of the plant. The heat of the day, the cares of this world, riches, and – in a statement unique to Mark – “the lusts of other things” cause them to wither and die as well.
But there also is the heart of a good hearer, a ‘good and honest heart’ as Luke puts it, and that hearer takes God’s word and never lets it go, clings to it, lets it produce both outward and inward fruit in his life. “All are not capable of producing the same amount of fruit,” our friend Carl Johnson writes, “The fruit is of the same kind—spiritual and good—but men do not have the same capacities for producing fruit. For that reason, God expects each to produce fruit according to his own ability (2 Corinthians 8:12).”
There is something else the Lord tells the disciples, and it may sound a bit strange:
“Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables; That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” – vs. 11-12.
‘How can this be?,’ we may think. The truth in this statement is that some people will be disposed to hear and obey God’s Word, and some will be more disposed to listen for their own entertainment or satisfaction. The Lord chooses men of the former nature, men who – though imperfect – have hearts comparable to a sower’s good ground.
During this study, my first Bible-student in this course, Seth, wrote and asked me what I thought verses 24-25 of this chapter meant. It is a good question:
Those verses read: “And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, 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 hath.”
I think I can give an answer (I hope a fair one) to the question succinctly: The Lord will allow us the more understanding as we desire to hear and understand – and the less we desire truth, all truth, the less understanding He will give, which explains why so many brilliant people cannot see simple truths.
That’s the short answer. We have seen this scenario played out over and over in the scriptures: The Pharisees, for example, well-studied in the law, cannot see simple truths right before them – and the poor man, the sinner, the woman who has been cast out, these can see the truth plainly.
“Blessed are your eyes for the see and your ears for they hear,” says the Lord in Matthew’s account.
I do not know if I have seen a truth played out in real time any more than this very one: Some truths are as simple as adding two plus two; and scholars can fill an entire chalkboard diagramming why the answer isn’t four. It’s one of the Bible’s greatest paradoxes (See 1 Cor. 1:18-31).
What a parable we have before us today! Behold, a sower went forth to sow.
P.S. Here are some BONUS thoughts to take with you and that you can explore in your NOTEBOOK.
I have explored in some depth Matthew Henry’s comments on the parable of the sower here in Mark’s account; and to add to what we have seen, I’d like for us to notice some of his really astute observations:
1: Of the many who hear the word of the gospel, there are “comparatively, but few that receive it, so as to bring forth the fruits of it” … It is a sad thing to realize how much of the “precious seed of the word of God is lost, and sown in vain; but there is a day coming when lost sermons must be accounted for. Many that have heard Christ himself preach in their streets, will hereafter be bidden to depart from him; those therefore who place all their religion in hearing, as if that alone would save them, do but deceive themselves, and build their hope upon the sand, Jam. 1:22” (p. 381b)
*Note: What a powerful thought that “there is a day coming when lost sermons must be accounted for.” I have to sit and think on that a moment.
2: Many who are affected with the word for the present receive no abiding benefit of it.
*The Bible, indeed, is full of the Felix’s and Agrippa’s who are affected for a moment, but no more.
3: “The reason why the word doth not leave commanding, abiding impressions upon the minds of the people, is because their hearts are not duly disposed and prepared to receive it: the fault is in themselves, not in the word.”
*Note this, and you may want to write on it: When you sow seed – sometimes to loved ones who have strayed away – remember that the seed seldom produces fruit immediately. It may take years before those words and the Spirit’s call (Revelation 22:17) take root and produces. So, we never give up. We sow carefully, and we sow humbly, but we continue to sow, sometimes just by the way we live.
4: “The devil is very busy about loose, careless hearers,” says MH. How true.
5: Many who do not throw off their profession readily – as those on the stony ground fail to do – “have the efficacy of it secretly choked and stifled” (p. 382 a).
6: “Impressions that are not deep will not be durable, but will wear off in suffering, trying times, like footsteps on the sand of the sea, which are gone the next high tide of persecution” (p. 382a).
7: “Many are hindered from profiting by the word of God by their abundance of the world. Many a good lesson of humility, charity, self-denial, and heavenly-mindedness, is choked and lost by the prevailing complacency in the world” (p. 382a).
*Note: I continue to be amazed by words written over three hundred years ago but sound as though they were written today.
8: For some, perhaps it is not the deceitfulness of riches or the cares of the world that lead them to lose their profession. It may be “the lusts of other things”(Only Mark). That list could be lengthy, no doubt.
9: Spiritual Fruit: “Fruit is the thing that God expects and requires from those that enjoy the gospel: fruit according to the seed: a temper of mind, and a course of life, agreeable to the gospel, Christian graces daily exercised, Christian duties duly performed. This is fruit, and it will abound to our account” (p. 382a).
Note, again, that we haven’t talked about what the fruit is: This point in #9 really expresses well for us the kind of fruit we should be producing—It is a ‘temper of mind,’ a ‘course of life’ that is ‘agreeable to the gospel,’ it is the exercising daily of Christian graces and Christian duties. Then I love the last point: When we produce these fruit, “it will abound to our account” – that is, the Lord will take note of those things on our behalf. Not only that, but these fruit will continue to abound and develop and grow.
After coming this far, I don’t know if there is a better point at all than this one. The blessings within God’s Word are so many and sometimes hidden, aren’t they!
10: One more note to serve as our conclusion:
“No good fruit is to be expected but from good seed. If the seed be sown on good ground, if the heart be humble, and holy, and heavenly, there will be good fruit, and it will abound sometimes even to a hundredfold …” (p. 382a).
You have many thoughts to draw from for your NOTEBOOK, probably more than you can possibly explore. I’m very glad you came along here for Session 5, the great parable of the sower. God bless!
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