A Blossom Bible Podcast
A Blossom Bible Podcast
Mark 4: 1-20 the Parable of the Sower the Rocky Soil : Cultivating Deep, Lasting Faith
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What happens when the seed of God's word lands on different types of soil? Join us for a profound journey through Mark, Chapter 4, as we unravel the Parable of the Sower and explore the varied reactions to Jesus' ministry. We'll confront the hardened hearts of religious leaders who, gripped by fear and jealousy, accuse Jesus of demonic influences, and contrast that with the superficial excitement of the crowds and the sometimes misguided enthusiasm of the disciples. This episode sheds light on the deeper truths Jesus conveyed through His parables, emphasizing that while the seed is pure and powerful, the condition of our hearts determines its growth.
In our discussion of the types of soil, discover how rocky, shallow soil symbolizes hearts that can't sustain long-term spiritual growth. Drawing from my experiences in youth ministry, I share stories of temporary, emotion-driven conversions that, despite initial excitement, fail to take root and endure. We discuss the necessity of engaging both mind and heart in our faith journeys, and the importance of cultivating a deeply rooted faith capable of withstanding life's trials and tribulations. This episode is an honest conversation about the spiritual resilience needed to nurture lasting faith.
Finally, reflect with us on the beauty and challenge of genuine spiritual transformation. Inspired by Psalm 1, we liken true growth to a tree planted by rivers of water, flourishing and bearing fruit through deep roots in God's word. You'll hear personal accounts of overcoming loss and striving for a life that bears meaningful fruit, and join us in a heartfelt prayer for strength and spiritual depth. As we break through the hard ground of our hearts, we seek to trust God's guidance and emerge stronger, more fruitful, and fully anchored in our faith. Don't miss this rich and transformative discussion.
Here we are, mark, chapter 4, and we are taking it really slow here now in chapter 4, verse 1. 4, verse 1. We've been seeing the ministry of Jesus. We've been seeing, as is always the case, various receptions to that ministry. We've seen the religious leaders. We can, you know, boo and hiss over, of course, but their hearts are becoming hardened. We've seen that as Jesus performs miracles and teaches and loves people, the religious leaders, because he threatens them, they criticize. They say, well, he's doing all these things by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. So Jesus casts out a demon and they say, well, he's casting out demons by the prince of demons. And every time Jesus does something, they say, well, a demon, that's a demon, that's a devil, that ain't God, that's the devil. And their hearts are becoming hard, a dangerous place to be. We also see the crowds, right, the mobs that are coming to Jesus, and they're seeing the miracles and they're seeing all these things, and the crowds are excited. There's this electricity, but God knows that their hearts are rather superficial. Jesus knows that they're following him for all the wrong reasons. There's no depth we'll even look at today, and for them he's a little bit of a passing fad, right, you know, he's kind of a trend that they're following. Then there's the disciples. Now the disciples, we could oh, we could say they're the. You know, they're in a good place and they are, but they're somewhat oblivious to who Jesus is in reality. They definitely don't have it all down. They're unsure. We seeing the whole picture, we go, you guys are missing it. What are you getting wrong here? But Jesus is working in their lives and he's teaching.
Speaker 1:Now in chapter 4, we see, see in parables for a time. Parables Jesus is telling, giving earthly pictures of heavenly truths, and the people would hear him but they wouldn't understand. But his disciples would come to him Clarification, jesus, what is that all about? Why are you telling this? What is this about? And Jesus actually tells them.
Speaker 1:Now the parables are a little bit daunting as we look at it, because parables can be misused. Parables can be kind of obscure in some ways and a little bit uncertain. Generally, just for reference, don't build theology on parablesables, because you can use them to prove and point to a lot of things that just aren't biblical. Be careful with parables. But this first parable in Mark, chapter four, the first part here, the parable of the sower, we're safe on. We can use this all day long because Jesus explains it in detail. He tells us what each part of the parable is about, and so you cannot really go wrong with this parable, and that's why we're taking it so slow, because, well, we might as well dig everything we can out of it.
Speaker 1:The parable of the sower, jesus spells out, and the sower, the planter, we could say plants, seed, and this exciting, thrilling story here the sower goes out to throw seed out on different soils. You know, you can tell, as Jesus is telling this story, maybe the people are kind of like they're getting closer for the what's the punchline of this and they're probably disappointed. It's about soil, about seeds. Some plants grow, other plants don't. Three bad soils, you could say, and one good, right Bad soils, you could say, and one good, right Now. Not a very exciting story, but the meaning to it Jesus gives, starting in verse 13. And he said to them do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables the sower sees? So sorry, right.
Speaker 1:So Jesus starts us off in this by giving us a huge part of it, by saying the seed is God's word. Now, I'm sure we've all heard this before, but let's track as best as you can. The seed is God's word, the soils we see in the next verse in verse 15, is our heart. Very simple the seed is God's word, the soil is our hearts. And the thing that we want to understand here is that there's no other seed that can grow in our life than God's word. That's something to look for in your life. The only thing that's going to bring real spiritual growth is God's word, not books, not opinions, not politics or philosophy or any of that. The only thing that's going to bring fruit, real spiritual fruit, in our life is God's word. Look for it, find it, be in it. But we see here, it's not the seed's fault that growth doesn't happen. The seed will grow if it's put in the right heart. It's not the seed's fault, it's not God's word that is weak. It's our hearts that receive it.
Speaker 1:Our hearts can be rather messed up. In fact, three out of four hearts seem to be messed up. If you want to look at this in statistics, right, that's probably even more than that. All of our hearts are messed up and like planting, spiritual planting of God's word involves preparation of the soil, our hearts, preparing our hearts. And we saw last week, the first heart that Jesus pictures is a hard heart. It's like hard ground, it's like a hiking path, a trail. It's packed down and we could put this as pride, hardness of heart, stubbornness.
Speaker 1:We can all have a hard heart, and especially as God's word right, as somebody goes sowing God's word, as God goes sowing God's word, as God goes sowing his word in our hearts. The more travel there is over our hearts and the resistance to receive it, the harder our hearts can get. We just ignore God's word. It doesn't mean anything to us. And notice in the parable you might have to go back and reread the parable but the birds come and eat that seed up on the hard heart that doesn't receive God's word. It just bounces off and the birds representing the devil. Here Jesus says the birds come and gladly feed on God's word, chew it up, take it away. It doesn't produce anything. We don't want to have a hard heart through resistance, through pride, through just apathy, not even caring about what we're hearing. And it can be all of our hearts.
Speaker 1:But I want to say in this story, the hard hearts are these religious leaders who every single day Again, it can be all of us, so apply it to your own life. But the hard hearts of these religious leaders are not bad to start with, necessarily. But in resistance they just keep saying that's the devil, that's the devil, oh, that's the demon. He's not the devil, and before long it's just the instinct of their response. You know what I mean. They say it without even thinking it, and that's what a hard heart is. A hard heart is very and and that's what a hard heart is A hard heart is very, very dangerous.
Speaker 1:But here is something I think when we look at somebody who definitely had a hard heart, saul, who was breathing threats against the church there in the book of Acts, god busted him up right through difficulty and just knocked him to the ground, you know, pricked his heart there. With Stephen's martyrdom, god had his way of getting a hold of that hard heart of Saul. And God can, god can. But it takes that breaking up of that heart. Now here we are, breaking up of that heart. Now here we are.
Speaker 1:We're looking at the second one, the second soil, it's those sown on the stony ground. Let's go back to the beginning and let's read, let's just read the parable. We should have done that to begin with. Verse three, chapter four Listen, behold, check it out. A sower went out to sow and it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where they did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched and because it had no root it withered away. So we're looking at this second soil here, the stony ground, and we see some qualities about this, just on the surface.
Speaker 1:Here we see some qualities of this soil. Notice in verse 5, immediately it's spraying up. So in the stony ground, something we notice is there's an immediate response. That's one of Mark's favorite words immediately, immediately, it sprang up. So it sprang up. Notice Jesus' explanation of it in verse 16.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the clear stuff here. These, likewise, are the ones sown on the stony ground who when they hear the word immediately, they receive it with gladness. So you can say about this soil that they immediately receive it with gladness. Immediately it springs up. That's a seemingly good quality of this soil there's immediate response, there's excitement, it springs up. Right.
Speaker 1:But let's look at the negative qualities. Back in verse four I'm sorry, verse five. They did not have much earth. They had no depth of earth in verse five. And then when the sun was up, they're scorched because they had no root. So these are negative things no depth of earth, no roots. They didn't have much earth and and they're withered and they died.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not the kind of planting you want to do, right? I think we said last time the sower's hope. I guess if you could say the sower's desire, what you want when you plant stuff is you want it to grow, right. That's why you do it. You want it to bear fruit. This is not the ending we're looking for here withered and died, right. That's not the story we want.
Speaker 1:So what does this look like? Now? Mark explains this, I think in a little different way than I've always seen in Matthew, and it's interesting. He says there's no depth, there's not much soil. So picture it maybe a little differently than we presented it before. There's soil, but it's not very deep, right. It's just that it's top. It's the top, we can see. It's soil. Below that there's still rocks. We could say it's hard ground, right?
Speaker 1:So you know, it's that kind of thing when you're trying to dig a hole for a post or something and you're like this is going to be good, you know, and you're, you're, you're digging out soil and then there comes that point it happened especially, I think, in California. You would hit granite, you know what I mean Decomposed granite or whatever. But you would hit like rock. And you know people who want to pool. They get to that point it's like no, bring out the dynamite, let's see if we can do this. You know, and that's the picture we're getting here Not enough soil, it's just a shallow thing.
Speaker 1:So you look at it and go this is pretty good ground, I guess. But right below the surface it's hard, it's rock, there's no room for roots. And so the seed hits that soil and it does grow. Three of these four soils do grow, but only one of them lasts and produce fruit. So there's growth very quickly, it springs up a lot of hope and this temporary growth is followed by death. That's not what you want, but that's what's happening. The problem is there's no death, it's superficial, and Jesus says our hearts can be this way, can be superficial. Now, I don't, I probably. Well, let's just say it A lot of experience in youth ministry.
Speaker 1:Love it. I talk about it a lot, I know, but one of the things that used to get me and you know, take this how you want, because I have become pretty cynical in my life it's not a good place to be, but every year we would have a revival here in town and and people get saved. People do get saved, but every year it almost started to drive me a little nutty because every year kids would come to me and go I got saved last night, you got saved last night. You know the night before that, you know you got saved last year and I would get this packet of papers. You know 200 people came forward, 200 kids got saved. And again, I know I'm cynical, I know I am, but I saw the big picture of it Because I knew how it went.
Speaker 1:I grew up in a situation like that. You know where the gospel is put out. Now, when the gospel is put out, god can work and God will work, and you know I don't want to badmouth it in that sense. But then it would be a few stories and it would be some emotional tugging of you know, and I knew a kid that you know left a thing like this and went on the road and they died. You don't want to die tonight, do you? What, if you died, would you go to heaven? I mean that's logical, but the emotion would come, then the music would go and then they would have an altar call and people would come forward and you know again, god works in that. But it's the springing up and then it was. You know, 200 salvations, 300 recommitments. Look what we did.
Speaker 1:And I go, wow, good job everybody. You know I got cynical, what can I say? But I hate to say it. But this is the picture that we get here. There's excitement and there's emotion, but there's no root. Now check this out.
Speaker 1:God has made us emotional beings. Aren't you glad we're not just robots? You know what I mean. You don't feel anything. Aren't you glad that you know?
Speaker 1:God gave us emotions to love him and love others. It's great, but we can't just live our life on emotions. God wants more than that. God wants us to love him with our heart. And interesting in the ancient mind the heart. We see this. We go heart, we go the heart. It's right here and I go love God with all your heart.
Speaker 1:The ancients would have said love God with all your guts, right. Your stomach, your intestines, oh, I just love you with all my intestines, because you know, when you feel in that feeling, you go oh, I'm so in love, I'm sick, I'm going to throw up, you know, and they would say that. But we get it right the emotions. Love God with all your heart. But Jesus extends it there later on and Mark says love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Right, I don't even know what all those things are, but your mind too. God wants you to love him with your mind.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the point where we need to have some depth, not just emotions. We need to engage our brain, right, and as we look at this, we understand that God's given us a brain and God has given us the ability to ask questions about life. And and here's something I think we should all know God's not afraid of questions. There's a lot of questions we can ask, but God is definitely not afraid of questions because in the end, he's always gonna come out to be true, right, he's not afraid of them. He wants us to study and ask questions and say well, why. He wants us to see what his word says about his nature and qualities, about salvation and how it goes down, what it's about, what's faith, for goodness sake? And God wants us to dig deeper, not just loving him with our heart, but loving him with our mind. And that really is what we see here, that God Jesus says.
Speaker 1:The problem with this soil is that it's superficial, it's just emotional. Now then we see in this that something horrible happens to this growth that's going on. The problem here is the sun comes out. In verse 17,. I know I'm hopping around a lot, but this is the passages that we're looking at. Notice verse 17, jesus explains the Wendy's have no root in themselves, so they endure for a time.
Speaker 1:Afterward, when not if, when tribulation and persecution arise for the word's sake, that's kind of important immediately they stumble. So Jesus paints this picture in this shallow soil, the plant starts to spring up through the ground. Yay, excitement for sure. But then the sun comes out and scorches it and it dies. Jesus defines these scorchings as tribulations and persecutions. For the word's sake. Now consider these words for a second Tribulations that's one of those high and lofty words.
Speaker 1:Tribulations right, we don't want it. Whatever it is, we don't like it. But tribulations the word means squeezings, pressure. So picture a vice. It's starting to come together, isn't it? You know your picture of vice and there you are in this vice and it's just squeezing.
Speaker 1:It felt that way sometimes, I gotta be honest, these last few weeks and you know, there's times like this in life. For sure these last few weeks with death and sickness and visiting people in the hospital and Lila's dad, which we're going to pray at the end for him, it's part of life, right. But you know, when you feel like there's like a belt maybe I have health problems myself there's like a belt around your chest and it just keeps getting tighter and tighter. And I'm not, you know Lila's probably even, and I'm not, you know leela's probably even more. But you know that's how it feels when tribulations and difficulties come in. It just squeezes. A lot of different ways we could look at it, but it squeezes you and you just go, okay, okay, I can't breathe, you know. And then know this is kind of inside to bring a little hope to the situation. Brayden and Libby came over a couple days ago and they brought Gunner and isn't that good medicine For just a minute. You know, I'm looking at this little guy and his little you know blobbyness and just squishiness and I just go, I can breathe. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And yet tribulations are part of life. Persecutions we don't experience too much of that. But the picture here behind this word persecutions, is somebody chasing you, right? I mean? I know we're all going to start hyperventilating here, but you know you've got those nightmares where somebody is chasing you and you're just. But you know you've got those nightmares where somebody is chasing you and you're just, and you know they're getting closer and closer. Right For us it's a nightmare. For the early church it would have been a daily thing, as people like Saul chase them from place to place and persecuted them and were gonna take away their lives. And Jesus knew for these guys, tribulations and persecutions because of the word were gonna be a part of their life. But tribulations, squeezings in our life and chasings in our life, they're part of life, and the sun pictures that here, right? So the sun comes out and it just beats down on these little plants and they just shrivel up and die because they don't have any root.
Speaker 1:Now think about this for a second, though. The sun is not bad. I don't know how else to say it. The sun isn't bad. The plant would not grow without the sun. We know that right, you've got to have the sun. In fact, with the right circumstances and nutrients and water, a sunny day we see it right in our seasons here makes the grass grow faster and then we have to mow it Right. But you know, the sun isn't bad. If you have roots, the sun is good.
Speaker 1:And then we hear our friend James again in the back of our head. James, consider it all. Joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces good things. Come on, guys, be quiet. James, I don't want it. But the son, the trials, they produce real health in our life. That's what God wants to bring out of it. Good, but without roots, without depth, they don't. We die, god. Let me just one more time. Yeah, god produces good things through trials.
Speaker 1:Hebrews talks about the chastening of the Lord, the training of the Lord, that he does it because he loves us, and it's true. But here, with no depth, there's only this superficial response and they waste away. That's not what we want. We want to have some depth in our life, we want to have some root. We have to take time to get into God's word. Right, we have to take time to realize what God is really like. You know. I mean that takes some digging, that takes some work to see that God is faithful, right, that God is just and he's gracious, right, he judges sin but he also forgives us because of what Jesus did for us. He's all those things, he's all powerful and all present in our life. He's eternal, right.
Speaker 1:And you look at this and you go, wow, this is God. And when tribulations and stuff come, we take all those things we know about God and we, we rest on Right, we rest on his faithfulness. God, I know you can't be anything but faithful, because that's who you are, god. I know you have all power. You're not working right now, but God you're loving. I have to trust that you're loving in my life right now, that your ultimate goal is for good in my life and you trust in those things. Man, or else you wither and die right. So you gotta have this anchor of roots in your life.
Speaker 1:I think another thing we see here when we look at this plant, this poor little plant, and we look at a good plant let's be encouraged and look at a good plant. A good plant grows but it puts down roots. But check it out, the best work of the plant, the most important work of the plant, happens below the surface, where you can't see it. It happens in private, right, and there's all the show and that's all great. You know what God's doing in your life. You know somebody comes up to you and goes, wow, I've really seen a change in your life, man. I've really seen God growing you and the way you love people. Wow, it's just amazing. You know, I see how you used to lose your cool and now, oh, you're patient. Wow, I see that. But you know, there's that work that God does below the surface and that kind of hurts, doesn't it? But it's so real. Right, it happens in suffering. But here's where it happens for me.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I can say this happens for everybody, but it happens in private. It always happens with me when I'm about ready to go to sleep and there you are with the stresses of the day and you just say, god, I don't know what to do. You know you're trying to cast all these things just so you can get a little bit of peace and fall asleep or whatever. You know, and it's you and God, you ever have those things where everybody else is asleep or doing something else, and it's you and God and you ask him the hard questions like God. I don't understand why this is happening. God, if you're here, how come I don't see you? God, this is really worrying me my kids, right. This is really stressing me out with sickness, worrying me, my kids, right, this is really stressing me out with sickness. And it's you and God.
Speaker 1:I look at Abraham and I relate a lot to Abraham and I see the work, you see the work from a distance that happened in Abraham's heart and I understand it a little bit His desire, sarah, probably even more so desire to have children. And I flop back to you know my past not being able to have children, big old deal in my life, and how many times I went to sleep going God, all I want to do is have kids and he gave me this heart. I don't get it. Why isn't this happening? And you can put your own thing in there, right, everybody's got their thing, everybody has their thing that they're going through, and you go to sleep and you go, god. I just don't get it and I think about Abraham and Sarah and I just think about that was like a decade or more. I think it was like 13 years maybe. I mean, don't quote me on that, but it was a long old time that they had the promise of Isaac but didn't see it, and I could just imagine them, those quiet times between you and God.
Speaker 1:I think about Rachel, one of Abraham's grandkids no, it wasn't really related, anyways involved in the family tree, and Rachel says something very similar to her husband's. She says if you don't give me children, I'm going to die and you go, whoa, but I get it. I get it Because you're like this is the one thing I want to see right now. And you know she was saying it to Jacob, but I think she said it to God plenty too. I mean, that's where the real work happens.
Speaker 1:When we come to God with those things and we say this is where I'm at, where the real work happens. When we come to God with those things and we say this is where I'm at. And you realize, in a healthy plant where God wants us to be, the best work happens below the surface, the place where nobody else can see, the place where it's just you and God and some tears, and you're like I don't think I can do this anymore. And you know I can't say that. God always says well, here's Isaac. You know it happens at the right time or maybe it doesn't, and God just sees you through it. But you just go, god, I got nothing else to hold on to. I got no other roots in my life. You're going to have to be my roots and that's where God really wants us to be.
Speaker 1:You know you read Psalm 1, and that's kind of where we'll end. Psalm 1, david says this you can turn there. Psalm 1. It doesn't hurt to turn right. We've got two and a half minutes left, psalm 1,. It doesn't hurt to turn right. We've got two and a half minutes left. Psalm 1, verse 1. We won't read the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Blessed is the man or woman, of course, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. That doesn't seem like a nice place to be sitting in the seat of the scornful. That doesn't seem like a nice place to be sitting in the seat of the scornful. You don't want to do that. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, god's word, and in his law he meditates day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bring forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither and whatever he does, prospers. So here we see, the one who's got roots planted by living waters God's word right, just trusting God with everything, like a tree, right, we've got our sad little plant here in shallow soil that's going to wither away and die because of the sun. Then we got this tree that's like, rooted and strong, and it bears fruit in season and seasons come and season go, and here's some fruit in your life and you go wow, god, that's amazing fruit you bring in my life. And you just look at it and it's so refreshing, right. I could sit in a place like this and just sit by that tree and go, rooted, grounded, getting water when it needs it, healthy, strong, and everybody looks and goes, wow, look at that. And you go that's what God wants us.
Speaker 1:And it's not easy. A lot of that painful stuff happens below the surface. We may need to break up some of that hard ground in our hearts still, but that's what God wants us to be fruitful. And when we get there in the end and I thought. You know, with the passing of Evelyn and the passing of Miss Melody, I've been thinking a lot about what I want that day to look like for me. But you know, I want to get there and be like fruitful man.
Speaker 1:God, look what you did in my life, look at the people that you affected, or love that you showed God. Look at these things and you did it. And you know, to God's glory, god steps back and goes, and that's what I wanted, that's what I always wanted you to be. It is fruitful, crazy fruitful. God.
Speaker 1:I know that it's not positive thinking that's going to get us there and it's not a pep rally that's going to make that happen in our life. But, god, I know that you've to make that happen in our life. But, god, I know that you gotta work that in our hearts. God, absolutely none of us want that deep work because it hurts. But god, whom you love, you train and chase and you take us through it. And God, you produce a crazy depth in our life that our life can be more about just making it. It can be about fruitfulness to your glory. So, god, whatever you I don't even want to say it Whatever you need to do in our lives to bring us deep. I just pray you do it, god. Help us to just find our anchor in you through the difficult things. Help us to hold on to you first, god. You never let us down. You're faithful, you're good, you're kind. God, make us something that we're not. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.