The Anatomy of a Parable - The Story

Chris Pawlowski

Dishman Baptist Church

Mark • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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Transcript

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. If you have your Bibles with your please open them with me to , . It is such a joy to be with you all this morning whether you’re joining us in person or online. I know I say this often and so it may sound trite or forced but it really is such a privilege to pastor this church and to share God’s Word with you.

My son Hayden turns 10 today and one of his favorite types of books to read are graphic novels. The Gospel of Mark could be considered the graphic novel version of Jesus life. It’s a very visual book - you can easily picture the man possessed with an unclean spirit or Peter’s mother-in-law confined to a bed with fever. You can see the man with leprosy fall at Jesus feet or the dust falling from the ceiling as the men dug through the roof to lower the paralytic to Jesus. It’s much harder to picture the ideals of being poor in spirit or mournful or to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Despite the fact that Mark has said in every chapter thus far that Jesus was teaching the people, unlike Luke and Matthew in their Gospels, he has given us very little demonstrations of the content of His teaching. In chapter one Jesus taught in the synagogue and then preached through the countryside of Galilee. In chapter 2 Jesus speaks the word and then teaches the crowd by the sea. Chapter 3 presented gave us a small sampling of Jesus teaching and even for the first time tells us that He has been teaching in parables. In the entire book of Mark there are really only two chapters that demonstrate Jesus teaching in depth for us - chapter 4 and chapter 13.

Recognizing this truth should cause us to pause as we approach this passage. Why would Mark take the time to recount this specific teaching?

This week has been a challenging one as I approached the text for this morning. If you’ve been in Sunday school for any amount of time you will have been exposed to the passage we’re going to be looking through starting this morning. And so, the challenge for me has been how to divide this text up. We face the danger of being so familiar with the text that we might miss some of what God has for us in this.

Mark 4:1–9 CSB

Mark 4:1–20 CSB

Again he began to teach by the sea, and a very large crowd gathered around him. So he got into a boat on the sea and sat down, while the whole crowd was by the sea on the shore. He taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! Consider the sower who went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn’t have much soil, and it grew up quickly, since the soil wasn’t deep. When the sun came up, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it didn’t produce fruit. Still other seed fell on good ground and it grew up, producing fruit that increased thirty, sixty, and a hundred times.” Then he said, “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.” When he was alone, those around him with the Twelve, asked him about the parables. He answered them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables so that they may indeed look, and yet not perceive; they may indeed listen, and yet not understand; otherwise, they might turn back and be forgiven.” Then he said to them: “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables? The sower sows the word. Some are like the word sown on the path. When they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word sown in them. And others are like seed sown on rocky ground. When they hear the word, immediately they receive it with joy. But they have no root; they are short-lived. When distress or persecution comes because of the word, they immediately fall away. Others are like seed sown among thorns; these are the ones who hear the word, but the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. And those like seed sown on good ground hear the word, welcome it, and produce fruit thirty, sixty, and a hundred times what was sown.”

We’re going to take this text slowly - over the next three weeks (at least) we’re going to look at it in three parts - the Savior’s story, the Disciple’s question and the story’s solution. The key verse that we need to keep in front of our minds over the next two weeks is this

Mark 4:13 CSB

Then he said to them: “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables?

The parable medium will be Jesus’s preferred teaching method from this point onward in His ministry. There are a few things about parables that we need to understand before we progress further into this study. The first is that we have, in some ways, been guilty of looking at parables the wrong way. Historically we have taught parables as something that any child in Sunday school could grasp - that it is a simple little story that Jesus was using to illustrate something. And of course that is what a parable is to a point.

The Greek word for parable is actually a compound word that comes from para meaning alongside of and ballo meaning to place or lay. The idea of a parable is to take something common and lay it alongside a deep intellectual or spiritual truth to make it more understandable. But there is also an element to the parables that kept the true meaning of hidden from people. The hearers of most of Jesus parables simply didn’t get it. It is very rare in Scripture that we are told that anyone understood the parables that Jesus told except in the instances where His parable dealt directly with the Pharisees or religious elite and they understood that He was speaking about them.

So there is an element to the parables that, in our modern day with commentaries and years of dissecting and interpretation, were not immediately understandable to the hearers. And that is how we must hear this parable today - the way that they heard it. We need to understand the elements of this parable the way that they would have understood them so that we can grasp all that Jesus was teaching here.

And in so doing we’re going to see that even the smallest details that we might overlook are important to understanding the majesty of Jesus teaching through this parable. First we’re going to see that this was a sovereign setting, and then we’re going to understand the suspect soils through the eyes of a first century Israelite and finally we’re going to recognize the condemning sound of silence.

Sovereign Setting

Mark begins by saying “Again he began to teach them by the sea, and a very large crowd was gathered around Him.” Matthew illuminates us a bit further on the situation in his Gospel saying

Matthew 13:1 CSB

On that day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea.

Matthew implies that it was on the very same day as the events that both he and Mark have been describing. The Pharisees have just accused Jesus of completing His miraculous works by the power of demons and His own family was seeking to take Him home. What does He do? He gets up, changes His venue and goes back to teaching with His disciples and the crowd that was an ever present reality at this stage of His ministry in tow.

Even the simple phrase “by the sea” can be misleading for us. We think of Jesus striding along the sea shore with a massive crowd in tow - or maybe He’s stopped and He’s sitting on a rock and the crowd is gathered around Him.

Just south of Capernaum, about midway between that city and the city of Tagbha which lay about 2 miles to the west of Capernaum, there was a little cove that has come to be known as the cove of parables. This cove has some remarkable acoustic characteristics. Mark tells us that Jesus put out in a little boat and sat down on the sea. From this vantage point He began to teach the crowds. One significant point to His sitting down is not only would He have been more balanced in the boat but He also was assuming the standard position for a rabbi when they taught. He had been sitting in the house when He made the pronouncement that those who followed the commands of His Father were His true family, and He is sitting here as He begins teaching from the boat.

In the 1970’s scientists tested the acoustics within this cove and proved that a person sitting 30 feet offshore could be heard clearly over a distance of 300 feet away even talking in a normal tone. They then determined that if you drew a cone away from their starting point at a 30 degree angle that the resulting area could hold a crowd of nearly 5000 people.

In my 22 years in the Navy I had the chance to witness the ability of water to transmit sound over great distances. We could often hear conversations on ships across the way from us in port and even at sea due to the sound transmission characteristics of water. And you didn’t even necessarily have to have a raised voice. Normal conversation takes place at 60db. Modern requirements for being able to hear a speaker in an outdoor environment say that a speaker needs to project his or her voice at 75db (roughly the same level as a vacuum cleaner) in order to be heard clearly over environmental noise.

It has been reported that the 18th century evangelist George Whitefield could preach outdoors to crowds of over 30,000 people and that his voice could be raised to 90db. Ben Franklin, a good friend of Whitefield’s, is reported to have said he could clearly hear Whitefield at a distance of 500 feet and when he calculated the area and alloted a certain amount of space for each person that it was easily possible for Whitefield to speak to crowds approaching 30,000.

Why is all this information important? It shows that Jesus took into account even the most minute details in determining where and when He would teach. He wasn’t just out on some random seashore trying to shout over the fishermen and the birds but He knew where He was and knew that it would be possible for the people to hear and to register what He was saying. The topography in this cove is a soft and gentle rise from the shore up a hill. Scholars believe that the location where Jesus would preach His great Sermon on the Mount is located at the top of this cove.

During the experiment in the 1970’s the scientists reported being able to clearly hear comments coming out of cars passing both north toward Capernaum and south away from Capernaum during their tests. The sound characteristics worked well here both away from the water and towards it. It made this cove the perfect setting for Jesus to teach to the size of crowds who were coming out to see and hear Him.

And as He sits down to teach them He starts off with two words. Our translation downplays a bit what Jesus is saying here. He says Listen and Behold. Listen - listen up, pay attention because I’m about to tell you something very important. Maybe the crowd was still kind of milling about and getting seated on the hillside as Jesus began to speak. Kind of like a classroom of students at the beginning of the day and so Jesus words were meant to be like the rapping of a pointer on the desk of the teacher to get their attention. And then the NASB translates His next words as Behold. Our CSB translation downplays it a bit when it says consider the sower as if it is just another part of the sentence. I think instead the NASB has it closer to the import, the gravitas that Jesus is meaning to convey. This is like the verily, verily or the truly, truly sayings of Jesus. Pay attention to what is about to come because it is very important.

But what He starts off with doesn’t seem all that significant. He says a sower went out to sow. Mark doesn’t exactly tell us what time of year this is. Some commentators think it could have been in the spring or it could have been in the Fall. The rainy season in Israel runs from December through March so if Jesus looks up and sees a man out sowing his seeds in the fields above the cove as I think is likely it was most likely in what we would consider to be late fall. The people would have been used to see sowers out sowing I mean that’s what farmers did - it was sowing time and they were out sowing. So this would have been rather commonplace information to them. Of course that’s what a sower does Jesus - he sows.

We’ve often called this parable the parable of the sower but the sower really doesn’t play that important of a role in the story. He is mentioned only at the beginning as the vehicle that spreads the seed but then fades from prominence in favor of the seed and the soils on which they fall. Really this should be called the parable of the soils - and it is to these that we now turn our attention.

Suspect Soils

Farming in first century Israel was not an easy prospect. We live in a bountiful region with the Palouse just south of us and the miles upon miles of rolling hills covered in wheat and barley among other crops. It is a naturally fertile area. East of us we have the apple orchards of central Washington and I love the drive to and from Seattle with the miles of fields on both sides and the crop labels on the fences - seeing all the different crops that are grown. Despite the rolling hills of southeastern Washington we have a terrain that is naturally suited to farming in most cases. The terrain in Israel, and specifically in this case Galilee, is not that way. Israel is a nation of abrupt and extreme topographical changes. For instance the city of Jerusalem sits at 3800 feet above sea level while the Dead Sea, a mere 15 miles east, is the lowest place on earth at 1,410 feet below sea level. There are not the nice gentle rolling hills that are found here in eastern Washington or the long flat stretches of farmland that are the pride of our nation’s heartland.

In many cases fields have to be made by being cut into the sides of hills. There also weren’t many good sources of irrigation and so they would build stone walls to support the terraces that would create not only a flat surface for fields but also way to retain rain water in the soil instead of letting it run down the steep slopes. This is the picture that Jesus hearers would have had in their mind as they heard Him begin this story of the sower going out to sow his crops. Farmers would take their seed in a satchel that they would wear over their heads and they would dig their hand in and then fling the seed out but it wasn’t nearly as indiscriminate as our modern ears hear this story to be. They were very proficient at keeping their seed within the bounds of their fields. So if that is the case how do all these different types of soil come into play for the parable. Because each of these types of soil in particular were coexistent within the bounds of the same field.

The first soil is the hard packed soil of the path or road. We hear this and our minds naturally think of the nice straight roads that run alongside our fields but that are outside the boundaries of the field and we think how irresponsible of the sower to cast his precious seed in such a way as it would land out in the road. Yet in first century Israel paths crisscrossed the landscape and often indiscriminately ran right through the middle of a farmer’s fields. We’ve already seen in the book of Mark where Jesus and His disciples are crossing a field, they pick some heads of grain because they’re hungry and are chastised by the Pharisees for doing so.

These paths, especially if this is during the fall planting season, would be packed down by the feet of people walking on them and then would be baked by the harsh summer sun until they were rock hard. So as the farmer is traversing his field and casting his seed some would naturally fall on the hard-packed dirt of the paths and would be feed for the birds or, as Luke tells it in his Gospel, trod under the feet of people crossing through the fields.

The second type of soil that Jesus tells them about would have been equally familiar. Many of them at that moment were sitting on the rocky soil feeling it as it jabbed and dug into their legs as they sat and listened. The fields had the same natural rocky base many of them with just an unfortunate coating of topsoil overtop of a limestone base that made any true growth difficult. These were the natural rocks that occured as a part of the topography of Israel. There was something that the farmers could do about these rocks as they would traverse their fields and remove loose rocks before planting as much as possible. There was another type of rock though that occured that they couldn’t do anything about.

These were the rocks that made up the retaining walls that would keep the soil and the water of their fields in place. When we moved into our home in California our entire backyard so much so that before my kids moved to Spokane and were able to enjoy the true joy of snow sledding they were out in our backyard sledding down a dirt hill. In order to make our yard usable we had to pay someone to come in and dig out the hill and place a retaining wall. No matter how much I tried to keep it clean though that wall would always get a small layer of dirt on it and sometimes the plants that my wife would try and get to grow on the hill would make an attempt in that thin layer of dirt. It never really worked out well and the plants just became another addition to our green yard waste trashcan.

It’s not hard to imagine the same thing happening in these fields. As the winds swept the hills the dirt would be pushed out onto the walls and as the seed took root it would spring up only to be burnt by the sun beating down on it as the roots couldn’t find their way to the water that was trapped beneath the soil.

The third type of soil that Jesus talks of would be the most frustrating soil for a farmer. As you survey a field you can identify where the paths are and so calculate the seed that might be lost there. You can also recognize rocky patches or the locations of the walls and know that some seed might be lost there. What you can’t see is where the winds have dropped the weeds and the seeds of brambles that as the good seed that you plant grows these will grow right alongside them.

My research for this sermon said that it takes up to 8 months for a crop of wheat to mature. Other research said, and this is a sad commentary on our times and the quality of google searches, that it takes 2-6 months for weed to mature. I was actually looking for how long it takes a common weed - the type that Jesus is talking about in this parable - to grow to illustrate the point He is making. That the common weeds growing up quickly would sprout and steal water, nutrients and sunlight from the plants the farmer wanted to grow and would kill the crop.

Finally Jesus gives some hope for this poor farmer. He says that some of the seed falls on good soil and yields a crop. And not just any crop. These were agrarian people. They would have expected a crop yield of around six to eight fold. A crop yield of ten fold would be a banner year for the farmer. For Jesus to attribute a crop yield of 30, 60 and even 100 fold to this farmer would have been shocking. It would have been completely out of their ability to even comprehend a yield that great. And yet this is where He ends the story - that this farmer in the area of his fields that has good soil recieved this kind of production.

And then He stops.

Sound of Silence

Well not really - He says one more thing. “Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen.” Then He stops. And there is an eerie silence. Jesus may have at this point turned to Peter or whoever was in the boat with Him and asked them to pull up anchor and row ashore and walked home. The crowd is just left sitting there. Much like the end of a movie or a play where there just has to be something more. Wait - Jesus you can’t just leave it there. Let anyone who has ear to hear listen? We’ve been listening. What do you mean? Except this doesn’t come now. Maybe the crowd is too shocked that the story just ends like that. Maybe they’re holding their breath expecting something more.

Somewhere on that hill a husband or a wife turns to their counterpart and says you dragged me all the way out here to this hillside in Galilee for that? What am I supposed to do with that? And that is the question for each of us as we hear this same story - what does this mean for me?

Conclusion

And I’m tempted to leave it right there until next week when we look at why Jesus taught in parables and then the week after when we will look at Jesus explanation of this parable. But I can’t just leave it like that. You see there is something here that each of us who is listening with our spiritual ears should recognize - that only one of these soils represents someone who is saved. Those who’s hearts are hardened are already hardened before the Word even hits them and they will remain that way - so they are already closed off to the truth and it is easy for them to lose it. There are many who have rocks in their lives - both those that occur naturally and those that occur because of something either they or another person have done to place that rock there. They may hear the Word and respond with joy seeming to sprout a joyful relationship with Christ but it’s all built on shallow, false pretenses and so they seemingly fall away when their root was never grounded in truth to begin with. Then there are those who have cares - preexistent cares that even they didn’t see until they started to grow and prevent them from truly living out the life they thought they wanted. Again their faith is built on false pretenses and they fall away. But then there are those who are preconditioned to be good soil and there is the requirement that they are growing fruit. Whether that is the external fruit of converts or the internal fruit of spiritual maturity, if we have heard the truth and received salvation then there is the expectation that fruit will be happening in our lives. So as we continue to study this passage over the next few weeks the lingering question we should continuously be asking ourselves is what kind of soil am I? And if I’m not self-identifying as good soil what do I need Christ to do in me to get me there?

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