WWUTT 2152 Understanding the Path and the Rocks (Mark 4:13-17)

Jesus gives the parable of the sower, and his disciples come to him and want to know the explanation, the meaning of this parable.

And so Jesus says to them, some will believe, but their faith will not be genuine, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, that we may press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of Mark chapter 4, we've been reading the parable of the sower.

We heard Jesus give the parable yesterday, speaking to his disciples and to the crowds.

Today we'll read the explanation of this parable, where a sower goes out to sow seed, and some of that seed falls on the path, some in the rocks, some in the thorns, and some in good soil.

Why did Jesus tell this parable? What does it mean? Let's come back to the text, Mark 4, beginning in verse 13, and I'll read through verse 25, out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. And he said to them,

Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables?

The sower sows the word, and these are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown.

When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. And in a similar way, these are the ones being sown on the rocky places.

Those who, when hearing the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves, but are only temporary.

Then when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

And others are those being sown among the thorns. These are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for anything else enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

And those are the ones which were sown in the good soil. They who hear the word and accept it and are bearing fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.

And he was saying to them, Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed?

Is it not to be put on the lampstand? For nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor is anything been secret, but that it would come to light.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. And he was saying to them,

Beware what you listen to. By your standard of measure, it will be measured to you, and more will be given to you.

For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.

So to recap, once again, the parable as it was first given. At the start of Mark 4,

Jesus is speaking to the crowds, specifically to his disciples because they are his learners.

That's what the word disciple means. And he speaks this parable. He says, A sower goes out to sow, and he's casting seed from his bag, and the seed flies into the air with the intention of it falling into good soil, but some of that seed falls on the path that the sower is walking on.

It is packed down dirt. There's nowhere for the seed to go. It just sits there on top of the ground.

And so birds come along and will devour up the seed. Some of the seed falls in rocky places, and then the sun comes out.

The plant immediately springs up because it doesn't have any root. But then because of the sun, it withers away and dies.

So there's something there for a time, but it doesn't last very long. Then some of that seed falls into thorns, and again, a plant springs up, but the thorns choke it out, and it proves to be unfruitful.

But then some of that seed falls in good soil, and it produces a harvest, some 30, some 60, and some 100 -fold.

Now after giving this parable, Jesus said, He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

And you'll notice that at the end of the explanation to the parable, Jesus said the same thing.

So following the speaking of the parable, the disciples come to Him and ask Him, why are you speaking to the people in parables?

And so Jesus says in verse 11, To you it has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, everything comes in parables, so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, lest they return and be forgiven.

So they see, but they don't perceive it. They hear it, but they don't understand it. And here the disciples are asking for an explanation.

So do they not understand? And that's why Jesus issues kind of a rebuke here at the start in verse 13.

Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables? Now just as Jesus gave kind of an understanding of the parables at the end of speaking the parable, so He's going to come back to that again after He gives the explanation, and He'll expound on it further.

We have the same sort of an outline here in the speaking of the parable and the explaining of the parable.

And in both places, Jesus saying, Let him who has ears to hear, may he hear.

So here is Jesus explaining to His disciples the meaning of the parable so that they would understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven that are contained in the parable.

So Jesus says in verse 14, the sower sows the word.

What does the seed represent? The seed represents the word. The seed is the message of the kingdom of God.

The seed very specifically is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That the people may hear and know the works that Jesus has done and all it has accomplished what

He did by His life and His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Now granted, none of that's been accomplished yet.

Jesus is still living His life in obedience to the will of the Father. He is going to go die and then

He will rise again from the dead. So those things haven't happened yet. But as Jesus is speaking these parables, once all of that is fulfilled, then the disciples will understand the responsibility that they have to speak this message.

Some will hear the message and believe. And there are others that will hear the message and will not.

So this parable is about those who will hear and those who will not.

Those who believe and those who did not believe it. Just as Jesus said that there are some who see and won't be able to perceive.

They will hear, but they will not be able to understand it. And those who don't perceive, those who don't understand are represented in the first three soils.

The path, the rocks, and the thorns. Those whom God does mean to understand is represented in the good soil.

And then Jesus will give the weight of understanding this and communicating it to others in the illustrations that we read in verses 21 to 25.

So let's come back here to the understanding of the soils, where Jesus says in verse 15, these are the ones who are beside the road when the word is sown.

When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them.

So let me read that to you again. Remember that the sower is casting seed, some falls beside the road, and the birds come and eat it up.

That was back in verse four. So Jesus explains here that these are the ones who hear the word, but Satan immediately snatches it away.

It doesn't have a chance to take root. And this is most of the people that are going to hear the message of the kingdom.

Most of the people that the disciples will preach to when they deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, as Jesus commissioned them in Acts chapter one.

Most of the ones that hear this message are going to be like the path. The seed hits the path.

It just sits there until birds immediately come away and snatch it up and nothing ever happens with the seed.

So most of the people that hear the gospel, they'll hear it. They'll hear it with their ears.

They'll externally hear what it is that is being preached. There won't be an internal effectual call, as we call it, but there will be that external hearing of the word.

Everybody who hears the gospel will hear it with their own ears, their own physical ears.

But though they hear it, they won't be able to understand it because Satan comes along, snatches the word away before it has any opportunity to take root and demonstrate anything.

If you were to have two people standing and listening to an evangelist, let's say an evangelist is preaching downtown and he's standing on the corner with a

Bible in his hand. Maybe he's got amplification of some kind. His voice is going out.

There are two people standing there listening to him. And one person, when he hears about his sin and need for a

Savior, and Christ is that Savior, when he hears that he has broken

God's law and what he deserves for that is death, and not just death, but eternal punishment in hell forever.

But God sent a Savior so that those who believe in him will not perish, but they will be forgiven their sins.

They have fellowship with God and they will have everlasting life with him in glory. That man, when he hears that message, he is cut to the heart.

He is convicted over his sin. He mourns over the fact and is even fearful of the fact that he has betrayed

God and what he deserves for that is judgment. Maybe the evangelist asks a question like, if you were to die today, where are you going to go?

And this man realizing that he doesn't know that answer becomes fearful of what's going to happen on the other side when he dies.

Like every single person that has come before him and that is alive today and will come after him.

Everybody who is everybody dies. And so he recognizes, I too am going to die. What's going to happen on that day?

So he hears that question from the evangelist and then the evangelist goes on to explain that there is a way to live.

God has provided it through Jesus Christ who died for us in our place, taking the penalty upon himself that we deserved.

And then he rose again from the dead, conquering death itself so that whoever believes in him will not perish.

Our sins will be forgiven and we will have everlasting life. However, this man heard that message said by the evangelist, he's cut to the heart, realizes his sin and comes to understand through the preaching of the gospel that Jesus is the solution to these problems.

The forgiveness of sins, the life after death, resurrection from the grave.

We can only have those things by faith in Jesus Christ. So this man hears that he's cut to the heart.

He is moved in faith. He puts his trust in Jesus. But the other man that was standing right next to him doesn't care for the message that he just heard.

He finds it ridiculous. It's silly, more of this religious mumbo jumbo and his heart is even more hardened to it than it was before he listened to it.

So how is it that those two men in proximity of one another, hearing the same message at the same time, one is cut to the heart and believes and the other does not believe because the spirit moved in the heart of one to change his heart.

We call this regeneration. He regenerated his heart from being a hardened sinner to one who is convicted and a conviction that leads to repentance, that he would hate his sin and desire

Christ who would forgive him of his sin and give him new life. This is being born again.

And as the Holy Spirit has moved in the heart of this person to understand it, so he has received it just as what is said in Ezekiel 36,

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.

In other words, I will change your hard heart into a soft heart that you may hear the word and understand it where previously you were rebellious against God.

Now, you know, you are convicted in heart and now you love

God and seek him and desire him because of the transformation that has happened in your heart by the work of the

Holy Spirit as you heard the gospel. Now, the other man that is standing there that doesn't believe, well, he had hardened his heart to these things.

And so what has happened is just the opposite. Instead of having the Holy Spirit come in and transform his heart that he may receive the message that he has heard.

Instead, he heard the message just like the guy next to him. Same words, same delivery, same cadence, same everything, same offer.

But what has happened is what Jesus has described here in Mark chapter four is that Satan came along and snatched away the word.

And there was never the opportunity for anything to happen to it in that man's life because it was taken from him before he had any interest or care in it.

And that man is like the path. So the soil of his heart, like the path, the seed fell on it.

The message of the word came to him. But then the birds came and snatched it away. Satan came and snatched it so that this man would not understand it, would not believe.

That's what Jesus is explaining by the first soil. Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them and nothing ever happens with it.

So there's the first soil. The first soil is the path. Second soil, verse 16,

Jesus says right along with this in a similar way. These are the ones being sown on the rocky places.

Those who, when hearing the word, immediately receive it with joy and they have no root in themselves but are only temporary.

Then when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

So there are some that will hear the word and they even receive it with joy.

Now consider again what Jesus said about the seed that falls in rocky places when he first told the parable.

He said, other seed on the rocky ground or fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil.

And after the sun rose, it was scorched. And because it had no root, it withered away. So therefore a time when the seed falls on the ground, it looks like something's going to happen.

The seed breaks open and a plant comes out. So, oh, look, it is going to produce something because there's a plant coming out of this seed.

But then the sun comes and scorches out the plant. It doesn't have any root. And so it just withers away and dies.

But for a period of time, as you're looking at it, it looks like something real is about to happen with this seed.

And so as Jesus explains this soil here, these are the ones sown on rocky places.

Those who, when hearing the word, immediately receive it with joy. This is a person who has heard the message of the gospel and they say they believe it and in their life.

It looks like it is absolutely genuine, a real confession of faith. They have enthusiasm for it.

They have zeal. They're wearing the Christian T -shirts. They're wearing the WWJD bracelet.

They're listening to Christian music now. Maybe they don't even swear anymore. I got to watch my language. That would be really bad.

They do things in their lives. It looks like a moral, upstanding Christian person. And you think of that man or that woman.

Well, there's a genuine conversion. We can see the fruit. It's right there in the person that they are a true believer in Jesus Christ, but they have no root in themselves.

It says verse 17, but are only temporary. And then when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

I heard John MacArthur just recently, whether this was an older message, but it was on a recent edition of grace to you.

John MacArthur said what the church is in desperate need of today is a little bit of persecution because that'll show you real quick who is genuine in their faith and who is not.

When it somehow becomes hard to believe, like when, when you are being persecuted, made fun of ridiculed, when it's starting to cost you something, are you going to remain steadfast in the faith that you say that you have?

Or when the going gets tough, you're out of here. Hey, it was good for me for a while, but this ain't worth it.

And I'm not putting up with this. And then immediately they fall away. Perhaps they get made fun of by somebody.

Maybe someone ridicules them. Oh, you believe in Jesus that, that, that zombie that rose from the dead, you believe in zombie

Jesus. And that argument sounds convincing, and it's not real fun to be made fun of by other people.

So I don't want to be made fun of, maybe I'll just change what it is. I believe a little bit. So they'll change the doctrine.

They'll make it sound a little bit softer. Like, you know, I'm not against gays.

I'm not opposed to, uh, to people sleeping outside of marriage. It's okay. If you do that, as long as you genuinely love each other, you know,

I really don't like the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Yeah. God putting his son to death.

Yeah. That doesn't sound great, does it? So you know what? Maybe that's not what it is that the Bible teaches.

It teaches something else. Oh, I have to take up my cross every day and follow Jesus. I don't even know what that means anyway.

So what do I have to sacrifice? I can continue to live just like the world, just like I was doing before.

And as long as I say that I believe in Jesus, that's enough, right? So here they have realized the difficulty of living what it is that they believe.

And so they changed the message into something that's actually not biblical Christianity. It's something that is more palatable to the world.

They make a God in their own image, one that I can worship and get along with, not the

God of the Bible. And so this is a person who for a period of time in their life, it looked like that they were a genuine believer.

You would have even said how on fire for Jesus they are. But as soon as things got a little bit difficult, they fell away.

They fell away from the truth. Maybe they left it all together. Maybe you had the whole exvangelical thing happen.

Exvangelical is the modern word for apostate. It's a person who professed faith for a little while, but now they've run away from it or they've changed it into something else.

Or they will say that they're the true Christian, which looks completely liberal. They are accepting of all of the world's abominations.

They think abortion is OK. They think same sex marriage is OK and all these other kinds of things.

And then they'll say that the people who are the true biblical Christians are actually the unfaithful ones.

Those are the ones that aren't the real Christians. They're legalists. They just love their law. They try to impose it on other people.

They're so judgmental. On and on it goes. And then there are others that will leave any confession of faith whatsoever.

They'll just say, you know, religion is bupkis. I was into it at one point, but then I saw the light or something like that.

These are those who had fallen into the rocky places.

For a little bit of time, it looked like they were a genuine Christian. But then through testing.

Through the struggles and trials and things like that, that they had to go through, it was eventually revealed that it was not really genuine.

As said in 1 John 2 19, they went out from us, but they were not really of us.

For if they were of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be manifested that they are not really of us.

Now, those that fall in good soil, when the word falls in good soil and produces a harvest, they endure to the end.

It is a genuine confession of faith, and they never leave it. But what's being demonstrated here in this parable is that those who heard the word and said they believed it, but then eventually it was revealed that they didn't really believe it.

They showed that they were false converts. Now that's the rocky soil. It's going to be the same with the thorns.

We'll look at the thorns tomorrow. We'll see the similarity between the thorny ground and the rocky ground.

But in the meantime, recognizing that in this example of this soil, you've got a person who for a period of time shows themselves to be a believer.

But after a time, it turns out that they were not. They were a false convert. Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear and understand the meaning of the parable.

Now, what do we do with this? If we have this information, if we understand that is the meaning, what are we supposed to do with this?

How do we apply it? We'll get to that tomorrow, especially with what Jesus says in verses 21 to 25, for nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.

We'll pick up in the explanation of the parable of the sower tomorrow. Heavenly father, we thank you for what we've read here.

And I pray that we would, in light of what we have read, examine ourselves as the apostle

Paul says in second Corinthians 13, test yourselves to see if you are really in the faith, what we believe.

Is it biblical Christianity? Is it actually what the Bible teaches about our faith?

Or do we have a faith that somebody else has dictated to us? This is what it really means.

This is what you really have to believe. And are we listening to the world or listening to false teachers and false prophets instead of listening to the word instead of having the

Holy spirit change our heart and illuminate to our eyes, the meaning of the word that has been given.

So it in our hearts and may it be genuinely there. So we wouldn't fall into the trap of for a season.

We make this confession, but then when things get hard, we fall away. Keep us steadfast in your embrace.

And may we look to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith in Jesus name.

We pray. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word.