The Secret of the Kingdom

Mark 4:1-34
Introduction

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Millions of people will spend their evening watching the game. Many will watch because they like football, some because they are interested in the commercials and some because it is such a big deal. And when it is all over, either the Ravens and their fans or the 49ers and their fans will celebrate. This is a major event for a lot of people.

            Do you remember three years ago when the Winter Olympics took place in Vancouver? Remember how proud we were when Canada did so well? Remember how we cheered when both the Canadian men and women won hockey? Many across the world watched the Olympics and celebrated the victory of the medal winners. For Canada it was a great celebration, a significant event in our history.

            Jesus Christ has conquered death and been raised from the dead and established a new kingdom and most people in the world shrug their shoulders. Compared to the Super Bowl or the Olympics what Jesus did is so much greater, and yet fewer people actually get excited about it. If God has such a great kingdom, why does it seem like it is a small thing? Why isn’t it celebrated with trumpets and banners around the whole world?

            Mark 4:1-34 answers that question. Jesus was on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and there was such a large crowd that he used a boat from which to speak. The themes which Jesus spoke about were the nature of the kingdom of God, the secrecy of the kingdom of God and the need for true hearing. In this context, he answered the question “Why is the kingdom of God not recognized by everyone all over the universe?”

I.                Why Secrecy?

A.              The Kingdom Is Meant To Be Disclosed

This is the kind of oil lamp which they used in the time of Jesus. They put oil in the bowl and a wick in the spout and that is where they lit the lamp. In Mark 4:21-23, Jesus asks, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?" It would not make sense to do that. When we light a lamp, its purpose is to give light. What is the point of this image? What Jesus was communicating was that God’s intention is not to hide the message of the Kingdom of God. It is God’s intention to display that kingdom for all to see.

B.              Yet Seeing, People Are Not Seeing

But the passage seems to confuse us on this issue. In the verses which precede this we find that God seems to deliberately hide the message of the kingdom. In fact, in 4:11 Jesus actually speaks about “the secret of the kingdom of God.” We also read that Jesus spoke in parables. In vs. 2 it says, “He began to teach them many things in parables.” In verse 34 we also read, "he did not speak to them except in parables” As we see, however, the parables were not used to help people understand things, but they had the effect of veiling things. After Jesus told the first parable in Mark 4:3-8, the disciples came to him, in verse 10, and “asked him about the parables.” They did not understand why He would use such cryptic language. And it is true that Jesus used parables to deliberately hide the truth about the kingdom of God. In Mark 4:11, 12, Jesus quoted a verse from Isaiah 6:9, 10. There we read, "And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven."

Similar ideas are found in Jeremiah 5:21which says, "Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear." They are also found in Ezekiel 12:2 where we read, "“Mortal, you are living in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, who have ears to hear but do not hear; for they are a rebellious house.” These verses help us understand that parables are hidden to those who listen to Jesus with unbelieving hearts. Parables give them the message of the kingdom, but they don’t hear with believing hearts and so the message of the kingdom is veiled to them. Two words for seeing are used in Mark 4:12, so that what it says is, they see, but don’t see. The Message puts it this way, “These are people—Whose eyes are open but don’t see a thing, Whose ears are open but don’t understand a word, Who avoid making an about-face and getting forgiven.” There is deliberate irony in this verse. God wants them to turn and repent, but their hearts are not in the place to believe so they listen to all the messages, but they don’t get them. They see, but they don’t perceive. They hear, but they don’t understand and so the message of the kingdom remains a secret to them. Jesus was teaching and healing and casting out demons, but some, like his family and the Jewish religious leaders mentioned in the previous chapter, did not understand what this meant because their hearts were hardened against Jesus.

C.              The Call to Listen!

Thus the explanation for why the victory of Jesus is not celebrated by everyone worldwide is that God intends it to remain hidden from those who do not come to him with hearts of faith. The message of Jesus is that the evidence of the kingdom of God is clear enough, but only to those whose hearts are ready see it.

The intent of this message, however, is not to judge, but rather to call people to pay close attention and see with eyes of faith. He begins the parable of the soils with the word “listen!” in Mark 4:3. When he has told the parable, he concludes, in verse 9, with the words, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” After the parable in Mark 4:21-23 about hiding the light, Jesus once again says in verse 23, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” So it is clearly evident that Jesus wants people to understand what He is about, but the message of the kingdom of God is revealed only to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and so the appeal is to listen with eyes and ears of faith.

God is always at work. His Word is available to all. He speaks through His Spirit. But if our hearts are hard, we will not understand or perceive what God is saying or doing. Each of us must ask, "Is mine a heart of faith, open to God?"

II.             Whoever Has Ears Let Them Hear

A.              Why People Don’t Listen

In spite of this appeal, not every heart is open to God. Why is that? Why don’t people get it? Why are they not able to hear the truth about the kingdom with open hearts? The parable of the soils speaks about that question.

As Jesus stood on the shore of the lake, he could look out on the surrounding hills and perhaps in the distance he saw a sower casting seed. When a farmer sows with a discer or air seeder he can determine where every seed lands quite accurately, but if a farmer has a small field and uses the broadcast method of sowing, it is inevitable that some of the seed will fall on the path where the ground is hard and birds may come and take it away. Other seeds will fall on soil that has rocks underneath the surface. These plants sprout, but they have no depth of soil and don’t last long when the sun gets warm. Still others fall among the thorns and when the weeds grow up they take all the nutrients and moisture and the plant does not do well. But many of the seeds fall on good soil where they sprout and grow and produce a harvest.

When Jesus was together with his disciples, he explained this parable. Although he did not indicate why different people’s hearts are in different places, the reality is that they are.

Some people hear the word but the problem is, as Jesus says in Mark 4:15, that their hearts are hard. They are totally closed to the message of the kingdom and Satan is there quickly taking away any hope of hearing. Their hard hearts and Satan’s enmity combine to prevent the message from penetrating their hearts. This was the condition of many of the Jewish religious leaders.

Some people gladly hear and receive the word, but the truth of the kingdom does not penetrate deeply into their hearts. When things get difficult because of persecution, which the Bible tells us is inevitable for the people of God, they do not have roots deep enough to keep them faithful. We have heard of believers in North Africa who are being arrested for their faith and churches which are being broken up by enemies of the faith. If these believers have no depth of soil, they are in danger of falling away. If their faith is shallow that will be revealed when the pressures of persecution come. If the message of the kingdom has not penetrated deeply enough into their hearts to fully grasp the truth they will not remain faithful.

Still others are like the seed sown among the weeds. They receive the word, they understand it, but there is so much other stuff in their life that the word of God has little chance of deeply impacting their life. Jesus mentions three “thorns.” First of all he mentions the thorn of worry about this life. If we are filled with fear about all the things that could happen in life, then we will not allow the message of God's love and care to penetrate into our hearts. The second thorn he mentions is the thorn of the deceitfulness of wealth. The Bible has a lot of warnings about the danger of the desire to get wealthy. If this desire is rooted in our life, it prevents us from hearing the message of God's mission. The third thorn he mentions is the desire, or lust for other things. Anything in our life that is more important than the kingdom of God will not allow us to truly hear the message of Jesus. All of these thorns will choke out God’s word in our life. It is no wonder that so many people don’t understand the message of the kingdom. When I read this, I have to admit that it hits really close to home, particularly the part about the weeds.

Yet there are those who do get it, whose hearts are ready to hear the message. Jesus says three things about these people. They hear the word. They accept the word and they produce a crop.

Jesus asked the disciples a question in Mark 4:13, “How will you understand any parable?” The answer, given by this parable is, “By correct hearing.”

This helps us understand why people don’t accept the message of the kingdom. God wants the message known, but he wants it revealed to those whose hearts are in a position to receive it. So the message of the kingdom is a secret revealed only to those who are ready to hear it.

When Jesus completed the parable he said in Mark 4:9, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” So once again in this parable we hear an invitation to listen, to desire to understand it and to hear with hearts of faith. Is your heart in a place where you can hear the message of the kingdom?

B.              Whoever Listens Will Be Given More

This invitation to hear is repeated in Mark 4:24, where we read "And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear…" To this call to hear, Jesus attached a promise when He said, "…the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you." In Mark, these verses are not a strategy for getting wealthy, but about hearing the message of the kingdom. Those whose hearts are open to hearing what God is saying will increase in their understanding. Those who refuse to listen to the message of the kingdom, will have even the little they have understood taken away from them.

So the message is a very serious one. It affirms the need for careful listening to the message of the kingdom of God. It warns us that we cannot neglect or ignore the message. Basically it says that the understanding of the message of the kingdom will increase for those who receive it and decrease for those whose hearts are hard. Cole says, “…failure to apprehend will lead us further and further into the fog.”

C.              A Hundred Times More!!

In fact, for those whose hearts are good soil in receiving the message of the kingdom, God promises to produce a harvest which is amazing.

I have asked farmers and have found that normally wheat is sown at the rate of about 1.5-2.25 bu./acre. In today’s farming conditions with the way soil preparation is done, the way fertilizer is used and weed and disease control is possible, it is not unusual to get a crop of about 50-60 bushels per acre. That is a harvest about 20-40 times as much as was sown. Now, we need to remember that this was spoken to a much different farming situation. At that time, they did not have the same kind of weed control or disease control and a harvest of 20-40 times what was sown would have been an amazing crop. If that is the case, what does it mean when Jesus says that the fruitful soil will produce 30 times as much, which in that day might have been possible, but certainly was an extremely good crop. What does it mean when He goes on to indicate that the good soil will produce a crop 60 or even 100 times as much which would even be a huge yield today?

There is a deliberate expression of excess here. Jesus is saying that soil which receives the message of the kingdom of God and produces a crop will produce a crop that is ridiculously good. This is a marvelous promise. It tells us that because of the power of God, the kingdom of God will come in a way that is much greater than expected. The people who receive the message of the kingdom will do stuff that is way beyond the expectation of what is normal. God will multiply the harvest in amazing ways.

So once again we have an encouraging call to hear the message of the kingdom with open hearts and ears and eyes and rejoice that God will take that and multiply it greatly!

III.           What Is Really Happening?

Mark 4:1-25 is a series of sayings which explain the secrecy of the kingdom. These verses help us understand why every home doesn’t have a “Super Bowl” Party for Jesus. Although God wants the message of the kingdom revealed, there is a deliberate secrecy about the kingdom of God because the understanding of the kingdom is given only to those whose hearts are ready to receive it. People refuse to receive the message of the kingdom because their hearts are hard or their hearts don’t take the message into any kind of depth or because they are distracted by many weeds. Those who do receive the message will grow in their understanding more and more and by the miracle of God’s grace their understanding will produce a harvest that is way out of proportion to what would normally be expected. So we are invited to hear the message of the kingdom. In the rest of the chapter, Jesus gives two more parables which encourage us to seek God’s kingdom because in the end it will be worth it.

A.              The Kingdom Is Growing All By Itself

In Mark 4:26-29, Jesus tells another parable about seed. He speaks of a farmer who sows the seed, but then what does the farmer do? I know what farmers in Manitoba do. They go out and regularly check their crops. They go to Regina for the Farm Progress Show. They take their kids to the lake for a week. They go to bed every night and wake up every morning and go to the coffee shop and talk to other farmers. But what they do not do is make the crop grow!! The phrase “of itself” in Mark 4:28 comes from the Greek word, “automate.” In other words, “automatically” the crop grows – “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” In the end, there will be a great harvest.

The kingdom of God is like that. The message of the kingdom is sown. But we don’t make it grow. In fact, we hardly even see it grow. In spite of inauspicious beginnings, in spite of the fact that we cannot see the kingdom of God mightily displayed in the world at this time, in spite of being hidden among the small pockets of believers scattered all over the world, the kingdom of God is growing. We don’t see it grow; we hardly see it present in our world, yet quietly, secretly, the kingdom of God is growing all by itself and it will continue to grow until Jesus returns and the final day of harvest comes.

So we are encouraged to listen with open hearts to the kingdom message because in the end, God will reap a great harvest that is now hardly visible in this world. This encourages us not to give up on God, on His kingdom, on the church, on doing God's work, on continuing to learn to follow Jesus because God's kingdom is growing and in the end there will be a great harvest!

B.              The Kingdom Will Become the Largest

The final parable, in Mark 4:30-32, is also about the kingdom of God. It compares the kingdom to a mustard seed. A mustard seed is a tiny seed, but when it grows, it spreads out quite a bit and becomes one of the largest garden plants. We are not that familiar with mustard plants, but if we think of a plant we are familiar with, we may understand. Although we mostly plant tomatoes as bedding plants, we know that they actually start with a very small seed. Yet that seed grows and late in the season if we don't have an adequate stake to hold it up, it can easily fall over because the plant has grown into a heavy and bushy vine.

If we can imagine such a picture, perhaps we can get what this parable is all about. In it Jesus promises that even though the kingdom of God has a small beginning, it will become the greatest kingdom on earth. This would have been a mysterious saying when Jesus spoke it because at the time they were a very small band of disciples. Today, we know that God's kingdom extends around the world, yet when we compare it to what is popular in the rest of the world God's kingdom does not seem that great. We see the influence of Hollywood around the world. We see the influence of the United States all over the world. We hear about the United Nations. But how often do we hear the story about God’s victory in the world? Yet the promise of God is that this little kingdom will grow to be an amazingly large kingdom which will be greater than “all the other plants in the garden.” Once again we are called to hope in the message of the kingdom and to hear it with open hearts, eyes and ears; for in the end, the kingdom of God will be the greatest and in fact the only kingdom.

Conclusion

The intended audience of Mark 4 isn't only the disciples. Jesus was also speaking to the Jewish religious leaders. Their hearts were hard and Jesus invited them to hear with faith so that they could understand the message God had for them. Some today still have hard hearts which reject Jesus, but Jesus invites them to also hear.

Jesus was also speaking to what one writer calls "the arounders." They were people who were hanging around Jesus, but were not yet following Him. The nature of parables is that they catch us off guard and so are able to penetrate our heart. He spoke to them in parables hoping that something in the parable would awaken a heart of faith so that they could hear and understand. Today there are some who observe Jesus and are interested. The words of Jesus invite them also to respond with a heart of faith.

Because their hearts were in the right place, most of the message of this chapter is for disciples. We who follow Jesus are encouraged to keep on proclaiming the message, or as the image says to sow the seed, even when it doesn't seem to get a response because we never know when it might fall on good soil. We are encouraged that God's kingdom is growing. Although it is hidden from many, it is growing and in the end will be the greatest kingdom of all. This encourages us to continue to be faithful in all kingdom work and not to become tired of serving God.

As we listen with ears of faith, may we continue to serve in God's eternal kingdom.