MARK 4 (PART 1)
Read Mark 4:1-29
Mark now gives us a whole series of Jesus’ teaching in parables. What is a parable? A parable is a story about everyday events in everyday language which illustrates spiritual or moral truths. Jesus lived in a rural community so his parables were often expressed in the terms of farming or nature with which his listeners were familiar.
The first parable was the parable of the sower. We are familiar with this; the sower distributed his seed across a variety of ground and the crop varied according to the ground on which it fell. This would make sense to people who raise crops every year, but what is the spiritual truth that Jesus is demonstrating? The disciples struggled to understand him so Jesus explained it to them (vv12-20); people hearing the words of Jesus are like the seed on various kinds of ground and respond differently. Some flourish and grow, some do not. The lesson is that not everyone will respond to the gospel, there will be resistance – and we can see that in our own time as well. Many people dismiss the whole idea of Jesus as saviour and will have nothing to do with him, and much as we would like everyone to be saved we must accept that this will not be the case.
The second parable (vv21-25) is about having a lamp. Why do you put a light on? So you can see things! You don’t bring in a lamp and then cover it up. That would be pointless and defeat the object. The idea here is that there is something that has been hidden in the past, kept in the dark, but God is taking the cover off that light to let it shine out (and remember how Jesus is described by John as the light of the world).
We tend to look at these parables in isolation, but really they are often connected and follow on from one another. In this case the parable of the light follows on from the parable of the seeds. The seeds that do flourish are the people that accept the word of God and grow in the faith. Having done that then their faith should be there for all to see, like the lamp giving off light; and not hidden away. It is a bit of a mixed metaphor, moving from seed to light, but Jesus’ meaning is clear. There is a responsibility for those who have faith is Jesus to make that faith public and not keep it to themselves.
The third parable of the chapter goes back to the image of seed growing and maturing and producing a harvest. The picture is of the sower sowing seed and then the plant grows. But the sower has nothing to do with the growth; that is the product of the soil and the weather. The implication is that God has a big part to play in the growing of faith; it is not something that you can do on your own. Paul picked up on this image in 1 Corinthians 3:6 when he said, ‘I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow’.