The Sower (Part A)

You cannot have a nonchalant relationship with Christ. You cannot be so-so with Him. You cannot go, He's okay. That's your response. He's not your Lord, but He will be your judge. Your heart's got to be on fire, even at slow points when things are not good. He gives and He takes away.

It is a prerogative of God Almighty to give and to take away, and it is up to us to go through it. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Gospel of Mark chapter 4 with a new study called the Sower. Welcome to the house of the Lord and if you are listening or joining us online, we are in the Gospel of Mark chapter 4 verses 1 through 20, 20 verses in under three minutes. And again, he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. And the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea.

Then he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching, listen, behold 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 it 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. And some seed fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no crop.

But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. And he said to them, he who has ears to hear let him hear. But when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parable. And he said to them, to you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside, all things come in parables so that seeing they may not perceive, and hearing they may not hear, not understand, lest they should turn and their sins be forgiven them. And he said to them, do you not understand this parable?

How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown when they hear Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. These, likewise, are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness. And they have no root in themselves and so endure only for a time afterward when tribulation or persecution arises.

For the word's sake, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word. The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires of other things enter in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

But these are the ones sown on good ground. Those who hear the word accept it and bear fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. The sower, that is the title of this message, the one that sends out the seed. And of course, it is the hope of this pastor that as we consider this passage of Scripture, we reacquaint ourselves with what is involved in sharing the Word of God and what we face. Going back to this story, in the previous chapter, Jesus did not budge off of ministry because of family concerns that really were not justifiable concerns. And having put family interference in its place, he continues to do what he had come to do, among other things, and that is preach the Word. He goes lakeside to continue to build up the people, to give them things that they need desperately that they've not heard before, and they've never heard it coming from one such as him. And so looking at verse 1 again, and again, he began to teach by the sea, and a great multitude was gathered to him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea.

Well, with the lake behind him, it provided a natural amphitheater for him, and the acoustics being as remarkable as they were, he needed no microphone, everyone could hear him. And this is something that when you go to Israel, Bible teachers like to point out when you get to the lake of Galilee. Verse 2, then he taught them many things by parables and said to them, in his teaching, and we pause there. Mark, of course, emphasizes the Lord's emphasis on teaching, because the alternative to not being taught is ignorance, and ignorant Christians are delicacy for Satan and a tool in the hands of the world to attack Christ. And so we have this opportunity in this country, in many countries, where the Word is plentiful, but not all places on earth can just find a Bible at their fingertips.

Do we avail ourselves of this blessing? Well, his parables, sort of like window panes, you can go up to it and you see a reflection, you can see your reflection, you can see the reflection of others. And as you move closer, you see beyond the reflections, and you see actually into the inside, and there God's vital truths are more visible. What God has to say about himself, and what God has to say about people, are clearly seen in the parables if the Spirit be guiding you.

If you don't want to know what it's saying, if you are resisting, then you will not receive it. What we discover about parables is that we don't judge parables, they judge us. They get very personal, and the interpretation of parables, all of them, must be consistent with what the whole Bible is teaching, and that will help us as to understand what Christ is saying. Now here the Lord, he intended that his listeners see themselves in the story, and he's going to do this whenever he gives a parable, that we see ourselves in life, and we begin to ask ourselves, who am I in this story? Jesus, for example, telling the story about the Pharisee who was very proud and self-impressed with himself, I tithe, I fast, I do everything right, unlike this tax collector. And then the tax collector he mentioned, of course, was so ashamed of himself he couldn't even look up, and he just prayed, Lord, forgive me. And so in that little story, you say to yourself, who am I?

Am I the Pharisee, or am I more like the tax collector whom the Lord said went to his place justified? Blessed by God, you might say. And so we consider what role we play.

Is it good or not? If it is not, what do we do to get it right? And if it is good, we praise the Lord and we work hard to protect that. So here we have this truth and story format that's like an x-ray, gets to see something that's on the inside. Another nice thing about parables is that they retain doctrine, teachings, for every age.

They don't fade. Here we have one concerning a farmer. So many people know nothing about a farmer, but they know about just throwing seed out and some of it growing and some of it not growing, and so it speaks to everyone.

And again, we look at this and we say, if I'm in this parable and the Word of God is falling on me, how am I responding to that Word of God? Am I the wayside path beaten down, or am I, you know, the rocky soil that for a moment there I get it and I'm happy with it and I begin to show life, and then I wither away and die? Am I a weed, a patch of weeds and thorns, and the Word falls on me and I choke out the Word because I've got other interests? Or am I the fertile soil? There's nothing wrong with the seed. In all of these, the seed is fine. It's the soil.

It's the ground, which is metaphor for the heart, the human heart. And so in this parable, who am I? Am I the devil plucked soul, hard-hearted, refusing to allow God's Word in? Or am I just a shallow one under pressure? I just am scorched and that's the end of life for me and in Christ?

Or is my faith choked out because I'm too occupied with things in this life to have any real interests in the next life? Or am I the recipient of God's Word? That 119th Psalm, which is an ode to the Word of God, there in verse 140, the psalmist, who I believe is David, nobody writes like David. I mean, if anybody else could write the 119th Psalm, we would have other psalms by them.

His name is not on it, but his personality is all over it. Your word is very pure, therefore your servant loves it. You've got to love it. You cannot have a nonchalant relationship with Christ. You cannot be so-so with him. You're gonna go, he's okay.

That's your response. He's not your Lord, but he will be your judge. Your heart's got to be on fire, even at low points when things are not good. He gives and he takes away. It is a prerogative of God Almighty to give and to take away, and it is up to us to go through it, but we love him nonetheless because there's something very real about the presence of God in our lives, and others are missing out on this. Unbelievers can go through life. They can face hardship, loss, grief, pain.

They can face those things relatively courageously without Christ. We have to say, I don't want them to outlive me. I have the truth.

I know where this is going. This would mean I don't suffer. It doesn't mean I do not weep. As James said, you weep with those who weep.

You laugh with those who laugh. Your word is very pure, therefore your servant loves it, and if you love God's word and you live long enough, you're going to have to fight to continue to love God's word. The flesh and the world and just time and things and gunk will pile up on you and try to diminish the word. I'm in this 119th Psalm in my own devotions. I've been there for nine years trying to finish it. I've not been that long, but there is there's a section to that Psalm that just, you know, didn't minister too much to me in years gone by, but recently I stopped at it, and it was just yes, Lord, and I just hope I can find it by a memory.

Here it is. Remember the word to your servant upon which you have caused me to hope, and then he says, this is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has given me life. The proud have me in great derision, yet I do not turn aside from your law, and going back to that 49th verse, remember the word to your servant upon which you have caused me to hope. I have hoped so much. I had so much hope in God's word to do so much more in my life, and it hadn't happened, and yet I still love his word.

I still have the hope, and I'll settle for what has happened. What can Satan do against that? Not much. Well, Jesus continuing here now after we finish here in verse 2 where it's being set up, and he taught them many things by parables and said to them, this is the teaching, verse 4, listen, behold a sower went out to sow. Well, the listen is, it's emphatic. He's saying, this is serious.

I want you, I don't want you to miss this, and then the behold, okay, always the drama music that is given to what is about to be said, the background music. The initiative is on the sower. The sower is the one that creates this story.

We have a sovereign God, and he is the one that initiates. It's a familiar picture for his audience, not so much for us, but we know enough to be able to follow the story, verse 4, and it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. We'll find out in verse 15 that the birds of the air are symbolic of Satan in this parable. Incidentally, Mark is not big on parables. He has parabolic illustrations. You know, who puts new wine in an old wineskin? That's parabolic illustration, but these are parables.

They're whole stories, and he only really has three or four in his gospel, but they're all concerning farming, bringing things to life. Well, the ground again, and metaphorically, it's the heart. Now, the wayside, that's, you know, people would all often make a trail through the farm fields. They were so big. Well, you couldn't walk around them, so people just cut through them, and enough traffic, you would mat down that section.

It would be compacted. That would be the wayside. Sometimes they were on the perimeter of the field. We're accustomed to that. Drive out into the country, and the road is right between two fields oftentimes, one on the right, one on the left. We just use asphalt nowadays.

They just use their feet. So here, where the word lands on a compacted heart, a hard heart, Satan's going to snatch it away. Verse 5, some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. When the sun was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root in it, because it had no root, it withered away. The stony soil is that, you know, the heart that's just shallow. There's no depth.

Everything's on the surface, and that's it. There's nothing deep down, and as a result, nothing can get down deep where it needs to go to lay its foundation, and in this case is the root so that they can feed. Can't grow a crop on rocky ground.

The seed germinates. It shows that it's fine, and yet nothing more happens after that, nothing good, nothing in the way of life. Still the ground is not suitable, and without that depth cannot survive. How true is that? If you just have the Word of God brush up against you, if you're happy with it just for an hour or so, but after that, whatever truths were given to you, they die because you're shallow. Well, my audience this morning, I would think that there are few, if any, who are shallow when it comes to the Word, but we engage those outside of these walls. We engage those who are shallow, and it helps to be able to point that out because there are things that someone can do to change the inability to receive God's Word, and we are supposed to help them with that. In verse 7, Jesus continues teaching. He says, and some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.

Well, the goal was not achieved. The crop did not come from this part of the farm field. Of course, the thorns, we hear thorns in Scripture, and it is the emblem of sin. It goes back to the curse. The curse is on the land.

It takes plowing and planting and hard work to produce it by the sweat of the brow. Genesis 3, verse 17, this is of course at the fall of man into sin. Free will had to be tested. Maybe again, you younger Christians, you have to be tested. Right now, it's mom and dad's religion, and Satan's going to come along and say, is it yours? Do you really love the Lord?

Is he yours or not? He's going to do that by bringing things your way that Christ condemns. Well, Genesis 3, 17, this is a microcosm of what happened, what happens even now. Then to Adam, he said, God speaking to Adam, because you have heeded the voice of your wife.

Pause there. Men, I don't ever listen to my wife because it's biblical. And have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake and toil. You shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will bring forth for you. And of course, the crown of thorns placed upon the brow of our Lord, emblematic of the sin and the curse that fell upon him for us. So in Scripture, emblems of pain are thorns because of sin.

It's not random. Why do I hurt? Why do people die? Why do people get sick? Sin, that's why.

That's too simple for some, but the fact remains. Some affliction by Satan, be it physical, be it mental, be it emotional, sin. Paul writing to the church at Corinth says, and lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger from Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. God has left in my life something to stabilize me and it hurts. That's what Paul was saying.

That thorn in the flesh. Sin was involved, not personal sin. I don't believe that was the case that Paul was talking about here, not that he was sinless.

I personally believe, since we're always on, when you're on such a topic, people are curious, well, what do you think it was? And I believe that it was his apostolic calling, being rejected, being in opposition by the Jews, the people he loved so much. They wouldn't listen to him. They wouldn't accept that he saw Christ. And even the ones who had become the Judaizers, the one who had claimed Christ as Messiah but still wanted to adhere to the law, they hounded him, they troubled him, and he had to live with this stuff. And it comes out in his writings, I believe. He wanted to reach them so badly.

He had all the evidences, all the proof, and all the love, and yet still they hounded him. Well, you may have a different view, but the weeds can grow anywhere, it seems, though the crop cannot, tall fescue cannot grow anywhere, and wiregrass can. Anyway, the thorns, they suppress the crop. Sin suppresses the fruit, robs it of its space and resources. It's militant.

The thorny ground, sin, it's militant. It is aggressive. It is dangerous. It will hurt you.

It will stick you. Verse 8, pause there, I remember in boot camp being taught what is the most dangerous of wounds is a puncture wound, and that's why they encourage you not to get bayonetted. Verse 8, but other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. You study this so hard, you want to hurry up and get to the points, and the words are getting in the way. Again, the ground, metaphorically, the heart, the seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop.

It's responsive, and it's responsive in various degrees, and so we are patient with one another. Some will have more fruit than others, and it's not for us to brag or boast. It's us to rejoice in the Lord that there's fruit at all, because it's one in four if you go with, you know, the ratio here.

The good seed was fertile, not hard. The soil, the ground, not hard, not shallow, not crowded, but hungry, receptive, and good soil finds Jesus to be true and also others to be false. That is part of the conversion experience.

I would question your conversion if you said, Jesus is true, but so is, and you start naming other false gods, which is something that plagued Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus said it this way in John 10, most assuredly, and when he says that, it's emphatic, I say to you, he who does not enter by the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same as a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture, and so the others are thieves and robbers. He's, I'm it. I am the door. I am the entranceway to eternal life, to heaven, to truth, and so you come to Christ, you say Christ is true, and others are false. They are not in agreement with him.

A hard, shallow, or weeded heart would not receive this or would receive it only for a moment. Verse 9, and we're going to get back to all of these incidentally because he's going to get back to them, and he said to them, he who has an ear, let him hear. He felt they were smart enough. Of course, he wouldn't be saying these things. He felt they could grab it, they could figure it out, they applied themselves, if they opened their hearts.

We believe this to this day. For our teens, I think you're smart enough to be in the sanctuary. I think that what is preached from this pulpit is good for you, and that you're able to get enough of it. Oh, you might not get it all, but you'll get enough, especially if you laugh at the jokes. You got to learn that. Well, what would you rather say? What would you rather me say? Well, you know, teens are a little dumb. We don't let them in the sanctuary. They're a little dense.

Not at all. Not only do we think you're smart enough, we know you're loved enough, and you're loved big, whether you get it or not. You'll get it later, for sure. You want your pastor to push you a little bit with truth from Scripture, with love, and you want to be blitzed by preaching from time to time, because your flesh needs to be smacked down. Where else are you going to get it?

Texting each other? That ain't going to happen. So you come into the house of God, and you sit with us. We don't want you isolated away from us, where you can just acting like you love it. We want you here with us. We want you to be on the wall with us. We want you to be in formation with us, now and forever. You got to work by the sweat of your brow, just like the rest of us.

You think life is hard? Wait till you get my age. Well, you don't have to wait that long. So be honored that the God of heaven has put you in a place where you can receive the word. Now, how's your heart going to respond to that? He who has an ear to hear, let him hear. Verse 10, but when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked him about the parable.

You see, so let's go back in teens. I'm not picking on you. I am rooting for you and fighting for you, because I know what that punk, the devil, wants to do to you. And the only way to intercept him is to intercept him with truth in the spirit. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.