Kingdom Parables

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All right, so let's read beginning at verse 21, and our goal is to read 21 to 34.
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And that is the three parables we're going to look at.
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Beginning at verse 21, it says, And he said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.
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If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.
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And he said, Pay attention to what you hear.
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With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.
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For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
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That's the ending of the first parable.
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Then we begin verse 26 with the second parable.
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And he said to them, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.
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He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows.
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He knows not how.
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The earth produces by itself first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the air.
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But when the grain is ripe and once, he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come.
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And then we come to the third parable.
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And he said, With what can we compare the kingdom of God or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all the seeds of the earth.
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Yet when it is sown and when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.
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Verse 33 says, With many such parables, he spoke the word to them and they were able to hear it.
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He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples, he explained everything.
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And so ends the reading of God's holy, inspired and inerrant word.
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I just want to pray one.
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Father, thank you for this night.
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Lord, keep me from error.
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Thank you for these folks who have come to hear your word.
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May you bless this time in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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So we have here three different parables that we're going to be seeking to understand.
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And really, this is the first of our of our series of parables that we've come across in Mark.
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What we've seen up until this point, we've seen a few times where Jesus has given us a few small likenance or what we call similes or parables.
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But these are the first ones that really come to us in a shot.
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And what we've seen so far really has been a series of miracles in opposition, miracles in opposition.
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Jesus has a miracle.
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He faces opposition.
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Sometimes he gives a parable.
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But in general, that's what we've seen.
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But now we've moved into a section where we see more of his teaching about the kingdom.
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And that's the thing that I want us to understand is that's why I call these kingdom parables, because what we're going to see tonight through these parables is that is that Christ is teaching us something about the kingdom.
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And what's interesting about this is is right as soon as these are over after verse thirty four, it goes right into a series of miracles.
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So we have kingdom teaching and then the king is put on display.
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He calms the storm.
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He heals the demoniac.
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He heals the woman with the issue of blood.
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He heals Jairus's daughter, raising her from the dead.
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So it's like here's the kingdom.
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Here's the king.
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Right.
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So so Mark is strategic and how he's giving us this information.
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And what I've been doing is I as I study each one of these texts, I've been comparing it to how the other gospel writers deal with this.
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And a lot of times it's the same order, but sometimes it's not.
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And I like to I like to see why Mark does some of the things that he does, because, again, their gospel writers are all none of these men are doing this haphazardly.
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They're all doing this led by the Holy Spirit for a purpose, putting these things in the order that they're in for a purpose and indicating to us something grander than just what we may see at first glance.
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So keeping that in mind, that's the the thing that I want us to see, because all of these parables are found in other books.
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We see them in the Gospel of Luke.
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We see them in the Gospel of Matthew, not in John.
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But the synoptic gospels all have the parables, except for verses 26 to 29.
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Verses 26 to 29 that we just read is the is one of the only parables that is only found in Mark.
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It is a single parable that's only in Mark, not in any of the other gospels.
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And so tonight we're going to spend a little bit of extra time on the second one just to indicate why this one, this unique parable sits where it does in this narrative.
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But if you wanted to see where these are in the other gospels, the parable of the candle, which is the first one, shows up in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verses 16 to 18.
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And the parable of the mustard seed shows up in Matthew 13, verses 31 and 32, and in Luke 13, 18 and 19.
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And see how what I was saying is they're not all put together the way Mark does, putting them in an order the way that he does.
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So let's quickly look at the first parable, which, again, there are three.
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There's the parable of the lamp on the stand.
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There's the parable of the growing seed.
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And there's the parable of the mustard seed.
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So let's look first at the parable of the lamp on the stand.
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And he said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? Now, that is a that's a that's a basic question with a basic answer.
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The lamp that he's referring to here would have been something that was very common in a household in the first century.
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It would have been a vessel that held oil, and there would have been a wick that came out of it, and the wick was lit to give light to the home.
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It was an oil lamp, and it would not have made any sense if the purpose of that lamp was to light a room.
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They didn't have LED lights.
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They didn't have fluorescent light bulbs.
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That was all they had.
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And if you took a lamp and you lit the lamp and then you put it under a basket, then that wouldn't make a lot of sense because you don't light a lamp simply to hide it.
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And if you put it under a bed that would dissipate or hide the lamp, the light.
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It wouldn't make any sense.
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And and Jesus said, Is a lamp to be brought or excuse me, is a lamp brought in and put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand? Now for just one moment, I want you to think about another passage before we even get to the rest of this.
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Now, this is not a parallel passage, because I do think this is two different times.
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Jesus is talking about something similar.
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But I want you to remember the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
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You remember at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, Blessed are the meek and blessed are all those.
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He gives all the beatitudes right after that.
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He says, You are the light of the world.
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A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all the house.
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So this is a the reason why I point that out is, again, I don't think it's a parallel passage, but it shows that Jesus used the same illustrations at different times.
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He's using this illustration as something that's intended to give light being covered.
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And so the question becomes in verse 21, what is he talking about? And there are two different ways that this has been interpreted.
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I've heard it interpreted at least, I'm sure there are multiple ways, but there's at least two different ways.
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One is that this specifically is talking about the gospel.
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And so in that sense, the idea would be that the gospel is not to be hidden, but the gospel is to shine.
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And that would be certainly reasonable.
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That would be certainly something that we would say is true.
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We don't put the gospel under a basket, but we let it shine.
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But there is another way of reading this.
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And that is that if you tie verse 21 back to the previous parable, and what was the previous parable? The parable of the soils.
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He says that there are four different types of soil.
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And the first three, we said last week, were all examples of unbelief.
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The first was the rampant unbeliever who doesn't even hear the word.
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The second is the one who hears the word, receives it with joy and then departs.
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The third one is the person who's choked out by the cares of the world, right? He said, but then there's the one who bears fruit.
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And they bear fruit, some 30-fold, some 60-fold, some 100-fold.
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And that's where we ended last week, right? He who has an ear to hear, let him hear, right? That's where we ended at the end of that parable.
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But you'll notice if you look at your Bible, verse 20, it says, but to those who were sown on good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold.
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And he said to them, is a lamp brought in and put under a basket.
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There is a sense in which if you didn't have verse markers and you didn't have divisional markers in your Bible, little chapter headings, you might see this as tying to the previous parable.
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And I do think there's a sense in which we could read it in that way.
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And this would be the way that I would see the connection.
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If we are, in fact, bearing fruit for the kingdom, then that fruit will be obvious.
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You see, he said, you're going to bear 30, 60, 100-fold, and you can't put this lamp under a basket.
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A person who is a child of God, a person who is a member of the kingdom of God is going to show it by virtue of their life.
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And I think that's a reasonable understanding based on the fact that this is where Mark puts that.
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And by the way, that's also where it fits, I believe, in Luke as well, is right after that other parable, which is the parable of the soils.
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So it seems to me to be a connection point there.
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And then he says, verse 22, For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.
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If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.
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OK, so what would that mean? He talks about things that are hidden that are going to be made manifest, secret that are going to come to light.
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What did he just talk about? He talked about three different people, two of which look like believers.
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But what happened after they'd gone through the trials? They showed themselves to be unbelievers, the thorny soil and the rocky soil, because eventually that's going to come to light.
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If someone is an unbeliever pretending to be a believer, one day that's going to show itself.
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One day that's going to be demonstrated and it's going to be demonstrated by virtue of what it said.
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They're going to be choked out by the cares of the world or they're going to show themselves to have no root, right? And so I think it's reasonable to connect that to what he said previously.
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So in that sense, it wouldn't be a standalone parable, but rather it's a parable that ties to the previous parable.
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And then in verse 24, he says, and he said to them, pay attention to what you hear with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you.
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For to the one who has more will be given and the one who has not even what he has will be taken away.
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I'm going to tell you something that I used to not get that at all.
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When I first read that, it just didn't make sense to me.
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For the one who has more will be given.
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That doesn't sound fair.
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It sounds more fair.
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The one who doesn't have more will be given, right? But in this sense, what it's talking about is faith.
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For the one who has faith, he will, in fact, be given more.
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But for the one who doesn't have belief, the one who doesn't have faith, even what little he does have in the end, in the final analysis at judgment will all vanish away.
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And there's a sense in which if you have faith, that's like the Bible talks about the spirit in you being like a down payment.
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And one day there's going to be the blessing of the full fullness of heaven.
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But if you have not faith, then even what we think we have.
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In fact, if you read Luke's account of that same word, he doesn't say what you have.
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He says what you think you have, even what you think you have will be taken away.
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And I do think that that is a more full expression of what Mark is trying to get across in the words of Jesus here, because it's not that they truly have it.
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They think they have it, but they really don't.
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How many people do you know think they have eternal life for some other reason than Jesus Christ? I mean, I can point you to people in my own family who think that they have eternal life because they do good works.
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And they'll tell you, I have a very close relative who will tell you if anybody's going to heaven, it's me.
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Because I give to poor people.
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I take care of sick people.
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I help people.
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I'm generous.
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And he is generous.
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This man that I'm referring to, very generous man.
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And he would be the first to tell you if anybody's going to heaven, it's me.
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And he has even said to me, if you're going, I know I'm going.
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So and it's sad, but you understand what he thinks he has.
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If he doesn't trust Christ, even what he thinks he has is going to be taken away to the one who has more will be given.
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If you have received the gospel, then you have what to look forward to heaven and you have God's kingdom and being a member of God's kingdom forever.
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I think sometimes about Pilgrim's Progress and about Christian finally getting to see the Celestial City, finally getting to see what he had he had on his pilgrimage all this way for.
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And having gone through all of the trials of Vanity Fair and Law Mountain and all these different things that he faced when he finally got there, it was more than he could have imagined.
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And that's another thing this peril tells us.
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This is to those who have more will be given.
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Sometimes this world can be really tough.
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It can chew us up and spit us out.
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But if we have faith, what we have now is just a small piece of what we will have.
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The Apostle Paul says, these present sufferings are not to be compared to what? To the glory that is to be revealed to us.
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That's a beautiful thing to remember when you are suffering.
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When you are struggling, when you are hurting, that these present sufferings are not to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to us.
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And so that's how I understand that first parable.
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And again, Jesus doesn't give us interpretation of these.
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So we do have to sort of step back and use the interpretation.
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The first interpretation is sort of a guide.
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And we want to be careful not to over interpret parables.
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Some people make every single part of the parable some type of reference point and get really wild with their interpretations.
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I think if we do what we just did and look at it simply, I think we can draw an important truth out of it.
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Now let's look at verse 26.
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Did you have something, brother? No, I was thinking about something.
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Go ahead.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Yes, sir.
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He doesn't, I will.
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Please.
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Just a question.
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If you think that ruler who had servants and he gave him talents and the one who had more and produced more versus the one who had little and produced nothing.
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Yes.
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I just wondered.
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No, I see a tie in there.
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Absolutely.
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Sure.
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And what do we, you know, that parable all by itself, I mean, is a lot to consider.
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Because you know what happens to that guy who produces nothing? He's cast in the outer darkness, right? I mean, so the idea here does say something about what our lives look like when there are lives of faith.
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Lives lived for God versus a life that's lived seeing God as a tyrant.
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Remember what the man in that parable said? He says, I hit it in the ground.
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Why? Because I knew you were a mean, harsh manager, right? And the way that he saw God.
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And it wasn't, you know, again, we can't push too far into the analogy and drive too much of an allegory.
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But we can say there's something to be said for the way that man saw God.
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And I do think, again, going back to faith, I think faith is sort of the driving force here.
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The one who has faith or the one who doesn't.
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And I think that even that parable falls in with that.
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Okay.
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So when you look at verse 23, 24, that word here is repeated.
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And if you go back to the parable of the sower, all four here.
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Yeah.
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And so to me, and I agree with what you said, but that to me is the key, is the one who doesn't hear is the one who doesn't have.
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Yeah.
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So when you put that, that's why I think this one is connected right after that.
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Because that's, the parable of the seed and the soil, the soils, they're all here and then we have more in the basket.
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And it's really an explanation of hearing and not hearing.
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Yeah.
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No, I agree.
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And again, what does hearing produce? If it's true, it's faith, right? It's hearing and believing.
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Yeah.
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And that goes to Romans 10, right? How can we believe if we have not heard? So absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And that's a good point.
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Yeah.
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So again, all of these, there's so much we can draw from this.
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So absolutely.
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I definitely agree with that.
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Well, let's look now at the second one, because this is the one that is not in the other gospels.
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And in one sense, I would say in that, and because of that, I would say it's somewhat disconnected.
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But at the same time, Mark puts it here for a reason.
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And one of the reasons could be simply that it is an agricultural parable.
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Agricultural in the sense that he uses the same analogy, seed, growth, and all that.
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But this might become my new favorite.
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Because of what he says in this parable.
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And I think we miss this so often.
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Hear it again when he says, he says, he said, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.
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He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows.
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He knows not how.
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Right away, I just thinking about this.
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And again, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but the point that he's making is God is the one who is doing this.
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And if you don't remember 1 Corinthians 3, 6, where Paul says, I planted and Apollos watered, but God brought the increase.
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I would say, make that parallel in your mind.
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Because that's what this parable is about.
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When it comes to the kingdom of God, we plant the seeds of the word of God.
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But how God makes that word come to life is an absolute miraculous thing that we really cannot fathom.
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Two years ago, we tried to have a garden.
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It was a spectacular failure.
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We're going to try again this year.
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At least this time, we're going to try it with someone else's help.
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With somebody else, you know, we tried.
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And some folks tried to help us the other time.
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We didn't listen real well.
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You know, it just is.
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But one of the things that would just never, never, never not amaze me.
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We started with these little egg crate things in the house, where you put a little bit of soil and you put one seed in each one and you set it by the sun coming through the window and you spray it with water every day.
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And it never ceased to amaze.
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I go to bed at night and it was nothing but dirt.
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And I'd wake up the next morning.
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I'd walk in and somehow in that seven hours, something had sprouted up.
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And then I'd go to work and I'd come home eight or ten hours later and I would walk in and it was this high.
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And it was overnight.
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And I was just amazed.
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Because nothing I could do could make that happen.
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I can't make a seed become a plant.
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All I can do is put a seed in the ground and it has to do it all by the sovereign work of God.
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And that's all that he says here.
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He says that the man scatters seed, he sleeps, he rises, night and day the seed sprouts and grows.
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He knows not how.
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The earth produces by itself.
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First, the grain or the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
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And when the grain is ripe at once, he can put in the sickle because the harvest has come.
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So he really only plays two roles.
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He plants and he reaps.
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God does it all.
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And again, going back to the idea of this being a kingdom parable.
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What do we see here? There are things going on in the kingdom of God that we do not know until we see the harvest.
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And I want to tell a story.
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Years ago, we were having a Bible conference, actually.
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Now that I think about it, we were.
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We were having a Bible conference.
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And a young couple contacted me through email or something and said they wanted to come to our Bible conference.
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And I had known the man.
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I had seen him online and we had sort of interacted some.
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Well, he came and he brought his wife, probably 22, 23 years old, very young couple.
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And I was sitting down with them after the conference was over.
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And the young girl was very familiar looking, but I didn't remember from where.
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And come to find out, many years before when she was in high school, so many years, maybe five, six years before, I had worked at First Coast High School and I did.
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I worked for First Coast High School and I was in seminary.
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And when I was in when I was at First Coast, I led a Bible club.
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Because I wanted to be a godly influence on the kids, I was in seminary.
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It was an opportunity to get to know the kids.
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And I was I was a paraprofessional, which means I was an assistant teacher with children with special needs.
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So I would meet the kids and a lot of them would come to the Bible club.
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Well, anyway, this young girl came up to me and I said, you look familiar to me.
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She said, yeah, I was at First Coast where you used to work.
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And I said, well, that's nice.
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And she said, you're the first person who ever shared the gospel with me.
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And I just wanted to weep.
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Because I didn't think anything about that in six years since I had seen her.
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Because I worked there 2001, 2002.
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This was about 2007, 2008.
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So it's about six years.
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And I hadn't thought about her at all.
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Not that I didn't care about her, but I shared the gospel with all the kids that I met.
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But she remembered.
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And I just thought that's God is working when we're asleep.
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God is working when we're not thinking about it.
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There was a man who, and I've told this story before.
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Some of you may have heard it.
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But there was a man who stood on a dock over in England.
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And he handed out tracks as people got on a ship to board to come to the United States.
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And he stood in the same place all the time.
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And he would just hand out tracks as the people got on ship.
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One of the men he handed a track to read the track while he was on the ship to the United States.
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The track cut him to the heart.
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He opened the scriptures.
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He began to read.
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And he got saved.
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And he began to...
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Come to find out he was one who traveled back and forth a lot.
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He began to talk to other passengers.
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And come to find out there were dozens of other passengers that had had the same experience.
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That this man had given them a track.
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That the track had affected them, saved them.
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Or through the gospel had saved them.
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And they were able to point back to, yeah, that man who handed out this track on this dock.
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Finally, the man made his way back to that place.
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After many travels and meeting people, he finally made his way back to that place.
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And he went to that man.
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And he said, I want you to know that I heard the gospel through you.
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And I was saved by believing the gospel.
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And I wanted you to know that what you're doing has value.
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And that man began to weep.
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And he said, I had no idea that anyone had ever believed the gospel because of what I had done.
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He said, no one has ever come and told me that ever.
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But he still had been doing it for years.
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Because he believed this.
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He believed that the seed itself by the power of God is going to do the work.
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See, that's what this is.
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The man goes to sleep.
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He doesn't know what's...
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He knows that this is God's way.
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Plant the seed and it's going to grow.
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And that's Jesus's point here is the gospel itself is working even when we don't understand how.
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As I said, this is only in the gospel of Mark.
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And I think it's a beautiful, short parable.
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Well, let's finish with the last one.
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And that's verse 30, the parable of the mustard seed.
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Now, this one here is a little bit more controversial.
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Controversial for two reasons.
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One, the parable of the mustard seed is one that is often attacked by unbelievers as an example of the Bible's unscientific nature.
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And here's the reason why.
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Jesus makes a statement in this parable.
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He says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
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And I'm no botanist.
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I'm no agriculture expert.
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But I know that there are smaller seeds than the mustard seed.
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And therefore, there are people who would hear Jesus say the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.
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And they would say, see, Jesus is ignorant of these things.
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And it's even hard to say that.
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As a believer, I say something like that.
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It just makes my my cackles raise because I don't even like to say it.
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But that's what the unbeliever says is they say, see, Jesus didn't even know that this wasn't the smallest seed.
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What they are forgetting is something called hyperbole.
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And it's used all through the Bible when they say things like all Judea went out and was baptized by John.
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Well, nobody thinks every single person was baptized by John.
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But if you read, that is what it says in the early part of Mark.
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It says all Judea went out and was baptized by him.
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And people get offended.
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Well, that's wrong.
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No, it's it's an example of of language.
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And we use it all the time, even today, if you watch the news.
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And they say all of Jacksonville turned out for the Jaguars.
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That doesn't happen.
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But let's just say they did.
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That's something we say.
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And it's not intended to be taken in a crassly, literal way.
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Now, there have been some who have tried to argue that what Jesus meant was that this is the smallest seed that was used at the time for planting.
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There is a possibility that that is so, that there is a sense in which this is the smallest seed that was used for planting.
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And if that's the case, then that just further illustrates that Jesus isn't wrong.
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He's simply making a point.
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But I think understanding this in a hyperbolic way is not a problem.
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I don't see Jesus not understanding that what he's saying here isn't meant to be taken crassly, scientifically, literally.
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But that's the first of the controversies.
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The second controversy deals with the interpretation.
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Because what it says, it says the mustard seed is sown in the ground, smallest of the seeds.
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Yet when it's sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.
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Now, here's where the controversy comes in.
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It's over the meaning.
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This is the second controversy.
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It's over the meaning of this parable.
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And there are two ways to interpret this parable.
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And I'm convinced of the second way, but I'm going to give you the first way first.
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The first way to interpret this parable is that what Jesus is saying is that when the gospel grows and spreads, that there will always be evil people who try to infiltrate.
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And the reason for that interpretation is they go back to the birds that were in the parable of the soils.
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The birds represented the devils coming and stealing the word away.
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And in that sense, they want to make this a parable, like the parable of the wheat and the tares, where the wheat grows up and the tares grow up with it.
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And they say the birds here represent evil people infiltrating the kingdom of God or infiltrating the church.
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That's not the position I take, but that is one interpretation that some people take.
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And they base this also upon if you go to Luke's gospel and Matthew's gospel, you'll find that what comes after this is the parable of the leaven.
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A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
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And they say leaven represents evil.
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Birds represent evil.
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And what this is saying is it infiltrates the kingdom and makes things bad.
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Again, I don't take that interpretation, but that is one interpretation.
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That's why I said the somewhat controversial.
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If you remember Richard Taylor, Richard Taylor was one of our elders.
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He was convinced that that was the meaning of this parable because he believed that birds represented things that were bad in parables.
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And so that's how he interpreted this parable.
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I disagree, but I love my brother.
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You know, we can disagree on things.
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This is a small difference.
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But I do think that the second interpretation is the more appropriate one.
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And that is that the kingdom of God begins with this small seed of the gospel and it grows to encompass people of every tribe, tongue, and nation of the world.
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And that's the victory of the gospel is what Jesus is referring to here.
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And the birds then are not representing the evil, but rather representing the fact that the gospel grows into this kingdom that is so large that it overcomes other kingdoms.
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And people come into the kingdom because of this massive growth.
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And where I would get that interpretation, beloved, would be from the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel.
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Remember Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel where there were all the different...
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You had the head of gold and the breast of silver and then the stomach of bronze, right? What happened? It says there was a stone cut without hands that crashed into that statue, destroyed the whole thing, and filled the whole earth.
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And that stone represents the kingdom of Messiah.
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That's really not up for debate.
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And therefore, the kingdom of Messiah, when it destroys the other nations, it expands.
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Now, here's where I'm going to throw you for a curveball.
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We only got seven minutes, so I don't want to start a fight.
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But for those who do take a post-millennial view, they love this parable.
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Because post-millennialism believes that before Christ returns, there will be an expansion of the gospel in the world that will be on such a scale that Christ will come back to a world that has been overtaken by the gospel.
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Okay, that's the post-millennial view.
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I would say this about the post-millennial view.
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It's very, very, very optimistic.
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And I like optimism.
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So I'm not post-millennial.
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I'm all millennial.
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I think all of our elders are, brother, aren't we? I say we.
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I mean, I guess Mike's too.
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But I can appreciate the optimism of the post-millennial view.
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And this is one of their parables that they will say, see, the kingdom is going to expand and going to encompass all of the world.
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And you know what? Wouldn't it be awesome to see? And so in that sense, I think that there is some positive that we can see.
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Whether you're not a post-millennialist or a non-millennialist, I think either way we can say this.
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The kingdom of God will not be overcome.
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Jesus said that I will build my church and what? The gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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So there is some optimism to be seen in this parable.
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And I want to read one passage, if I could, regarding the birds.
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Going back to the birds.
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Ezekiel chapter 31.
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It's rare that I go back into Ezekiel, but I thought it would be nice to pull something tonight out too.
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Because I want to understand Jesus is using imagery in his parables that sometimes mirrors the prophecies of the prophets of old.
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And listen to what Ezekiel prophesied concerning Assyria, which was a powerful kingdom.
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And this is what he says.
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Behold, this is verses 3 to 6.
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Ezekiel 31, 3 to 6.
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Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches and forest shade, and towering height, its top among the clouds.
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The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place of its planting, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field.
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So it towered high above the trees of the field.
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Its boughs grew large, its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots.
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All the birds of the heaven made their nests in its boughs.
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Under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth to their young, and under its shadow lived all great nations.
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See, the picture here is this nation that's growing up large.
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And the picture that Ezekiel uses is birds come and nest.
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And that's a picture of a nation expanding and making a place for birds to live and animals to shelter and shade.
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And it's just a picture of growth.
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It's a picture of expansion.
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And so I think Jesus, in one sense, may be borrowing this same image to talk about the growth of the kingdom of God.
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And in that sense, giving us a very positive way of thinking about what's going on.
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Again, we don't know all that's going on in the kingdom of God, do we? We tend to focus on the negative.
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In fact, this is one way our eschatology can be sometimes very much our downfall.
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Because if all we ever think about is end of the world and things are going to get worse and tribulation and antichrist and things like that, if that's what we focus on, rather than focusing on the kingdom is growing and God is winning and Christ is coming.
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See, we can focus on the defeat or we can focus on the triumph.
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And so many people focus on the defeat and not on the triumph.
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And I think that these parables, these kingdom parables, should remind us God is always working, even when we're asleep, and his kingdom will not fail.
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So I hope that was an encouraging way of looking at this.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word, for your truth, for all that you give us.
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I pray that now, as we get ready to leave this place, that you keep us safe.
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Our elders are going to be meeting tonight.
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Lord, help our elders to have clear minds.
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Help our decisions to be in keeping with your word.
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May you be glorified in all these things.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.