one, if you don't have a Bible with you, you can find it in the order of worship as well. I'm just going to read through verse 25, right now, and we'll look at the rest of it as we progress in the sermon. So I'd say, do you hear the word of God? And he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand, for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear. With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given. And from the one who has not even what he has, will be taken away. Let us pray. Father, I pray this morning that you would come and as we look at these parables of Jesus that you would open our eyes to be able to discern the truth behind them. And I pray that you would open our eyes to discern the person behind them. Even Jesus himself, I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart, and in my understanding, and in my mouth, and in my speaking. In Christ's name, we pray these things, amen, and amen. For the past month or so, we've been looking at the gospel of Mark. And if you were here last week, remember that Jesus made a significant turn last week. And at least in the text here, at the beginning of chapter four, and if you weren't here, I'm getting ready to tell you anyway. At the beginning of chapter four, Jesus makes a significant turn in this gospel, and got Mark's gospel, but he makes the same turn also in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. And then in the significant turn is just this. At this point in the gospels, he decides that he is only going to teach in parables and nothing else. In other words, he'll teach in from this point, it's parables and not, you know, not sermon on the mount, not you've heard it said, but I said, it's only going to be parables, these stories. And the question is why? You see often, if you've been in church for a while, if you've read the Bible, we tend to take the parables for granted. We tend to just think they're part of Jesus' teaching. We don't really think of where they fit into the big picture. But unless you understand when they were told and why they were told, you really don't have as deep an insight as you might otherwise have had. So the question is when were these parables told? When did Jesus begin to tell them? And in all the gospels, Jesus began to teach in parables at the point in his ministry when the people, especially the religious leaders, had become so hard-hearted that not only had they refused to believe his teaching, not only did they refuse to deal honestly with what he taught, but they were beginning to seek how they might murder him. So in other words, the religious authorities and people were not only just hard-hearted, but they'd become proactive in their hard-heartedness, and they decided that they were going to kill Jesus. At this point, he says, from now on, it's just parables. And the question is why parables? And the easy answer is just this, is it's really hard to argue with a parable. Remember when he taught the sermon on the Mount, they became very upset because he said, you heard it said. In other words, all these jokers are saying this, but I say it's this. You can see how that might be frustrating. And now they're plotting to kill him, now they're plotting together, and he teaches only in parables, and the beauty of parables is they're just stories and they're nearly impossible to argue with. So they wouldn't be able to argue with the parables because they weren't sure what he was talking about. On the other hand, if you're on the inside, if you had ears to hear, you did understand what he was talking about, or at least you were able to ask him later, hey, what were you talking about back there? But the parables on the other hand, they weren't told just to be a sort of Bible code. You know, if you're on the inside, you understand on the outside, there's a sense in which the parables were given not to conceal, not to hide from the religious leaders, but in fact to reveal Jesus, in fact to draw them in. In other words, imagine if someone has slammed shut the door of the front door of their heart, that Jesus wants to come in and they slam it shut and they bolt it and they lock it and they slide the bolt and they put the catch on, Jesus will not enter this place. Well Jesus talks in parables and parables are a way for Jesus to come in through the back door, or they're a way for him to come in through the side door. In other words, they're a way in because when people hear the parables, they're drawn in. In the hope is they ask questions and to the extent that people are able to hear, they understand them and they are helpful and fruitful to them in revealing to them the gospel. Last week, the first parable in all the gospels, again, it's the parable of the sower. We looked at that last week on one hand, it's very famous and it's very simple. On the other hand, Jesus says it's the paradigm for the rest of the parables, or it's the starting point. And the reason in some ways it is is because what it teaches, remember, he says that the seed of the sower throws is the word or the message of the gospel. And we saw last week how four different groups of people respond to it, right? There's one group of people who, it's as if the seed were thrown on a path and birds immediately snatch it away. And he says, that's what Satan does with some people. Some people, when the word is sewn in them, they rejoice and immediately receive it, but eventually, that wears off and they like the plants that grow in rocky soil, they have no roots and eventually they die. He says, other seed falls among the thorns and while it grows on one hand, the worries of this world and the deceitfulness of wealth eventually choke out and they are not fruitful. On the other hand, some seed falls on good soil and produces a crop of 30, 60, a hundred bold and that would have been amazing to them, to hear. So they ought to be encouraged by that. On the other hand, if you're one of Jesus' disciples back then or even today, you had to spend a lot of time wondering, what is this guy talking about? I mean on one hand, that sounds good. On the other hand, he's telling his parables and he's talking about some seed falls on soil and it's going to produce a crop of 30, 60, a hundred bold and you look around and it's just still just you and Jesus and Peter who can't keep his mouth shut, sons of thunder, who Jesus keeps telling to be quiet, all these things, what in the world are you talking about? What harvest is coming? You keep talking about the kingdom of God. In fact, you said you're the king. If you're really the king, why don't we just get on with it? If you're really the king, why is the response to the gospel so slow? If you're really the king, why do all these people hate you and the prostitutes and tax collectors follow you and what in the world could they ever accomplish? Well Jesus answers those speculative questions with the three parables that we're going to look at today. We're going to look at three things today and basically three parables. One of them, it's technically not a parable but I'm going to call it a parable. It's parable the lamp, the parable the growing seed and the parable of the mustard seed. So Jesus teaches them after the parable the sower, what I'm going to call the parable of the lamp. Let me read it to you. In verse 21, it says, and he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand, for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light. Okay. Jesus asks a question which on the surface is just a rhetorical question, right? If you light a lamp to put it under a bed, you light a lamp to cover it and if you've been in church, you've all sung the song, right, light it under a bush, oh no, I'm going to let it shine. Right? We think in terms of letting our own light shine, do we light something in order to hide it? He asks a rhetorical question. But then he sort of catches you off guard because what he says next really makes no sense compared to the rhetorical question. He says, you light a lamp to hide it and the disciples are probably sitting there going, oh no, and he says exactly, everything is hidden, you do hide the lamp in order to reveal it. You can seal the lamp in order to make it manifest and that's when you can imagine the disciples like looking at each other like, you have any idea what that guy is talking about? Or nudging one another? They did it all the time. What is Jesus talking about here? On one hand, it's common sense. You light a lamp to put it under a bush, absolutely not. You light it and you set it out in the house and it gives light to everything around it. But the reason I think this is actually a parable and not just a rhetorical question is because if you remember the definition of parables at some level, they refer back to the parable teller. At some level, they can trace the origin back to the teller of the parables. And unfortunately, in the version of the Bible that I just read to you and the translators decide, every translator has to make a decision, am I going to translate something this way? Am I going to translate something that way? And most translators translate it that way, which I think is the wrong way. You see, if you look at the Greek in this text and I'm going to give you, this is going to be a lesson for those of you who weren't English majors, see if they hang in there with me. If you take this text, lamp is the subject of the sentence, not the object of the sentence. And when you think about it that way, it changes everything, right? Now you guys are just like the disciples nudging each other, what is he talking about? In other words, you bring a lamp, subject, or I mean object, you bring something, but really what the Greek says there and it's awkward, which is why they probably made it smoothed it out. It really asks this question, does the lamp come in order to be hidden? The lamp is the subject of the sentence, does the lamp come? The lamp is the thing that is moving, the lamp is the thing that is arriving, it's not brought by anybody, it says does the lamp come in order to be hidden? It's almost as if the lamp were a person because the lamp is personified in the Greek. The lamp comes. Now does that imagery have any place in the Old Testament, New Testament, and in the life of Jesus? And the answer is absolutely yes. When you look at the Old Testament and you begin to hear language about a lamp, it generally refers to one of three things. It either refers to God himself, it either refers, or it refers to God's Word, right, remember Amy Grant? I wear it as a lamp into my feet, right, it's God's Word, or it's the Messiah from the line of David, it's when the Old Testament talks about a lamp coming, it's one of those three or all three things. And if you want to know what the New Testament says about Jesus being the lamp or Jesus being God or Jesus being the word, the only place you have to turn, the first place you turn is the gospel of John, correct? Let me read you the first few verses of the gospel of John. John says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made, in him was life, and the life was the light of man. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. In verse 9, the true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. And if you remember later on in John chapter 9, Jesus stands up at the festival of lights in which it would have had lamps lit and all over in Jerusalem, and what does he say? I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. And then Jesus says, so Jesus says here, does the lamp come in order to be hidden? Know the lamp comes so that whoever would follow me would not walk in darkness. And the question is, why why doesn't everyone embrace you? Why doesn't everyone, you know, grab the, why, what's the deal here? And Jesus would say, well that's the next, that's what the next verse means. Let me read to you verse 22 again, for nothing is hidden except to be made manifest or anything secret except to come to light. Why would Jesus, if he is the light of the world, the Lamb of God, why would he have to be hidden in order to be revealed? And the answer is actually pretty simple, is because God in all of His glory and all of His power, we know like when you look at the prophet Isaiah, when you, when people come into the presence of God's awesomeness and His glory and His power, what happens? They're simply crushed. They say, whoa is me, I am undone, we can't stand to bear the weight of the glory of God. If somehow he can seal it, if somehow he can put us in a rock and only show us his, his hind parts, right, Moses, what he does in the person of Jesus is he takes on flesh, not to conceal himself, but so that we finite beings might understand him, that he might reveal himself to us in the person of Jesus, why does he do that? Because nothing else worked. We're through the Old Testament, God sent and told Israel of redemption and the forgiveness of sins throughout the whole Old Testament and He sent prophets and dreamers to them and how did Israel treat the prophets? They killed them and then you know, if you're disciples, they killed the prophets, but what if you just like wrote it in the clouds, what if you just sent it and wrote the message of salvation in the clouds or at least wrote your attributes and who you are in the clouds? God did that too. He Romans 1, it says, all of his invisible attributes, everything was made plain to them and yet they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. So the prophets didn't work, just revealing himself and creation doesn't work. What is he going to do? Hebrews chapter 1 tells us, it says long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom he also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God in the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power after making purification for sins. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. In these last days God has sent us his son, full of grace and truth, full of glory and majesty and yet to the disciples sitting there, completely incarnate, completely able for them to embrace him and understand and see and hear him, at least for those who have ears to hear. And that's where Jesus goes next with this because this is the kind of passage where people, it's either really confusing or you can sort of try and make it real simple and notice in verse 23, Jesus says, if anyone has ears, let him hear. And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and still more will be added to you for the one who has, more will be given and from the one who has not, even what he has, will be taken away. The first thing you need to notice there is if you think that the parables are given to conceal things in the gospel of Mark in this one chapter, chapter 4, Jesus exhorts people to hear or listen or pay attention ten times. Whenever Jesus repeats something, it's probably important. Ten times he says, listen, pay attention, he who has ears, let him hear with whatever measure you use, it will be measured to you and then what he says next almost sounds harsh because what he says basically is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If you have, you will be given more and if you don't have, even what you do, will be taken away from you. Now, in order to understand this, you've got to realize he is speaking theologically, not economically. He's not talking about capitalism, he is talking about theology. What does he mean? For those of you who have ears to hear, if you see Jesus for who he is, some people see him as an out of work carpenter, some people see him as a myth, but some people look at him and they see the savior of the world, they see the one who has taken away their sins. And those of you who see that, who have that much, more will be given unto you. You embrace Jesus as carpenter from Galilee who died for your sins and eventually you will have him as king of the universe, coer with him, reigning side by side with him. Those of you who have him, more will be given to you. Those of you who look at Jesus and say, I don't buy any of it. Jesus says, those of you who don't have, even what you have will be taken away. One of my professor Steve Brown used to always say, and I think he's quoting C.S. Lewis, but he would say that hell is the ultimate demonstration of free will. In other words, for those who say, Jesus, I want no part with you. For those who say, Jesus, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Those of you who have none, even what you have will be taken away, ultimately the destination is hell, because hell is ultimate separation from God. In other words, God says, you don't want me, then I'm going to give you exactly what you want for all eternity. You choose freely. Those of you who have more will be given, those who have none, even what you have taken away. Jesus continues with two more parables, because he goes back to what is the kingdom of God like. On one hand, he's the lamp comes, and the lamp gives light to the world. If the lamp gives light to the world, why don't things change quicker? If you ever thought about that, if Jesus really is the king, if Jesus really does reign, why in the world is there so much suffering now? Why in the world is there so much hardship? Why isn't he just get on with it? I think that all the time wouldn't it be great if Jesus just came in glory and everything was done with, and we worship forever in the end, or in the beginning, whatever you want to refer to it as. That's got to come to your mind, especially when Jesus says this, well, he tells two parables to sort of set us straight. The first parable, he tells us, is the parable of the growing seed, verse 26. And he said, the kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows. He knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, but when the grain is ripe at once, he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come. So that's what the kingdom of God is like. If you understand that parable, you got it. You could sleep soundly tonight. On one hand that parable is not rocket science, every point in his audience of those days would have understood it. You plant seeds, the seeds grow, you harvest the seeds, end of story. And yet somehow Jesus says this is what the kingdom of God is like. In fact, in this passage is one of the two great mysteries of all of theology are wrapped up in this one little parable. And those mysteries, the tension between human responsibility and God's sovereignty or God's being in charge of all things. Because did you notice here what the farmer is supposed to do? The farmer is supposed to do something, and the farmer in this parable isn't Jesus that we know of, it's just a farmer. The farmer sows the seed, and then he goes to sleep night after night, day after day, and somehow, while after he sows the seed, boom, he goes out and do his field and there are plants there. He has no idea how that happened. In the ancient Near East, that would have been especially true, but even now, with all the science we have, no one exactly knows why what happens happens. They can explain to you how it happened, you know, all of the different cell structures and all that. They still don't know why it functions like it functions. But what you do know is after it's grown, the farmer then has another responsibility, he goes out and harvests it. So what's the point of this parable? The point of the parables on one hand, the farmer is responsible for sowing and for gathering. On the other hand, God is responsible for everything else. God is the one who's responsible to make things grow. That our responsibility, once we have sown the word, remember that which is sown in these parables is the word, once we have sown the word, it's simply to wait. We can't force God's hand, and yet we try and do it. In fact, through the church history and even into the Old Testament, you could read it as one big story of people trying to force God's hand. In Jesus' day, there were three groups that are very much like three groups that exist today that were impatient with the coming of God's kingdom. They were impatient with God's work. The first group, I'm going to say there's three, the first group as the zealots. There were others, but the zealots were the main one we know about. In zealots, basically, they thought that what we need to do is we need to impose God's kingdom by force. We need to impose God's kingdom by way of military power and by way of legislative action and all these kinds of things and taking over the government. We need to force God's hand, and that didn't work, and it still doesn't work. We need to meet lots of people today who think the primary way, if we want God's kingdom to reign on Earth today, is to get the right laws passed in Washington, D.C. Today's sanctity of life is Sunday. We think if we could just change the laws, we just make the laws right, there would be no more abortions, and you know what, it's just not the case. Now, I'm pro-life, and I would love to see the law change, but the only thing that will change the number of abortions in our country is if people's hearts are changed toward that. So just legislating doesn't work, it didn't work for the zealots, it doesn't work for us. The other group of people in Jesus' day, and we have them today, if you've ever watched religious television as we grew up, I'm going to call the apocalyptic's. What are apocalyptic's? The people who sit around looking for signs, and everything that happens is a sign that the end is near. I can tell you how many emails and things I get, you know, the talk, it war in the Middle East, the end is near Jesus is getting ready to come back. Newsflash, there has been war in the Middle East forever, and on top of that, even if you recognize the signs, and somehow you are right, how is that actually helping the kingdom of God expand, unless it's motivating you to go out and share the gospel because you're so worried that people are going to get caught, unaware, who cares? In the third group, it's the one we know probably most intimately, it's the Pharisees. The Pharisees thought that they could usher in God's kingdom if they could just get people to be good. If you can just get people to obey God's law, then everything will be copacetic, and you know what, that didn't work back then, and guess what, it doesn't work now. You can be as obedient as you want. You can try and be as good as you want, but two things will happen. You will inevitably fail, and secondly, inevitably won't give you the results that you want. Because your own goodness isn't going to necessarily usher in the kingdom of God. What is it that will usher in the kingdom of God? The only thing that will usher in the kingdom of God is sowing and gathering. Have you ever heard the word gathering around this church? It's part of our vision. Our job as this church is to gather and grow. In other words, our job as Christians is to simply share the gospel with people to sow the word, if you will, and then wait on God. When the time is ready to harvest, we harvest. We gather. We invite people. We bring them. Or all those other things important at some level. They all have their place, but the most important thing, if you really want to see the kingdom of God usher in, is to make sure everyone knows about the kingdom of God, and you would be surprised how many people don't. I didn't know a thing until it was 18 years old. So that's the parable of growing. The reason it takes so long is because God is patient, and God is at work. God is doing things in his own good time, not willing to any shaperage. And if that discourages you, then Jesus has another parable for you. You see, you can't be patient and wait on God the parable of the growing seed unless you actually understand the parable of the mustard seed. Because the parable of the mustard seed is an inherent promise, but also it's an inherent challenge. Let me read to you the parable of the mustard seed. It says, and he said, with what can we compare the kingdom of God or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all seeds on the earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shape. In verse 33, with many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. So, he moves on. He says, with what shall we compare the kingdom of God, and he says it's like a mustard seed? Now, some skeptics have said, you know, Jesus says that we know the New Testament wrong because Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed and it's not the smallest seed. And you know what? And all of Jewish literature mustard, the mustard seed was proverbial for the smallest seed in the garden. He wasn't trying to be scientifically precise, he was trying to help people understand. They would have understood the mustard seed, to be the smallest seed in the gardens, with all the rabbis talked about. And what is his point here? His point here is you, if the smallest seed in the garden eventually becomes the biggest plant in the garden. The most insignificant thing in the garden or apparently insignificant thing, at some point becomes almost an incomprehensible thing. The thing that you can barely see on one hand eventually will become something that all of the birds of the air can build a nest in. That's pretty big. So, in other words, Jesus, both of these parables are parables of surprise in a way. The first parable is the farmer is surprised because he wakes up and the plants have grown. He knows not how. In this parable, there's surprise at the contrast between the meager beginnings of the mustard seed and the ultimate outcome. It's the biggest plant in all the garden. And Jesus says, this is what the kingdom of God is like. In other words, Jesus is saying, you know, what this means, disciples, I'm going to use Peter, who's going to deny me, and the sons of thunder who think they're a little bit too big for the bridges. And all of these prostitutes and tax collectors to change the world. That eventually, some day, the gospel will cover the face of the earth. And even before my reign, my followers will outnumber anyone else. There will be the greatest faith in all of history. Do you think the disciples would have believed that? I don't think so. Do you and I believe that? Not really. I don't think otherwise we'd live a little bit differently. You see that you can't understand the kingdom of God going from being almost insignificant to being something that's incomprehensible until you understand that that very thing happens in your own life. To the extent you understand that, principally, being applied to yourself is the extent to what you'll begin to see it apply to the kingdom. And what do I mean by that? You know, one of the favorite, my family's favorite movies. And I qualify this by saying, it's one of my family's favorite movies. The vote we're taken in one by majority, four to one. And the movie is, I'm also ashamed to say, Princess Diaries. Yeah, oh, you know, everyone loves that, almost everyone. But I've seen it enough times. What is Princess Diaries about if you've seen it? Basically, it's about a nerdy, frankly, relatively unattractive, frizzy-haired, poke-bottle, bottom-wear, glasses wearing, 15-year-old girl named Mia Thermopolis, completely insignificant, even in her own eyes. And then one day, out of the blue, Julia Andrew shows up. You know what the big one, Julie, shows. She's the queen of Genovia, and she shows up to tell Mia that she is the crown princess of Genovia, that in fact, she is a princess. And you spend an hour and a half trying to convince Mia that, in fact, she is a princess. Because when she looks at herself, she's not a princess. When she thinks about what she knows, she's not a princess. When she thinks about her manners, she's definitely not a princess. What eventually convinces her that she is a princess? It's not what she did or how she looked. It was by being persuaded of who she was. She was her grandmother's granddaughter. She was her father's daughter. And once she understood that, she was able to embrace her princessness. And the point at which she embraced her being a princess, at that point, she began to change and she was gorgeous. What's it got to do with this? What's it got to do with the gospel? So the gospel says just this, that you and I, by nature, are not just insignificant, but we're simple and depraved and, in fact, odious in the sight of God. Our sin makes us ugly. And yet, what Jesus does is he comes and he takes our sin from us and gives us all of his glory, all of his righteousness, all of his beauty, for those who would trust him. And at the moment you trust Jesus, you are now co-air with Jesus. You are a king or a queen or a prince or a princess. And if you spend your whole life trying to figure out how to be good enough to be a princess or a prince or what are the right things to do in order to show that you're a prince or princess, you'll never get it. As soon as you realize that you are a prince or princess or king or a queen because of what God has done for you, that you are his son or daughter, at that point, you begin to realize something insignificant can become something incomprehensible. And as soon as you realize that, you look out onto the world and say, the whole world could be different because if I can be changed, anything and anyone can be changed. Think about that. Let's pray. Father, I pray that as we look at these parables, that you will continue to teach us, that you continue to apply the gospel to our heart, that we would see ourselves not as we are and in and of ourselves, but because of who we are in you. We are as righteous as Jesus and we are pleasing in your sight. And I pray that we would live that, we will be who we are. Christ's name, we pray these things, amen, and amen.