Gospel of Mark Study #12

“Pictures of the Kingdom”

Mark 4:21-34

Study #12 in Mark Series

INTRODUCTION:

If I were to hand you a drawing tablet and a pencil and ask you to sketch your idea of “love,” what would you draw? If I asked you then to draw a picture of “peace,” what would it look like? Or how about “home” or “friendship” or “beauty” or “justice”? These are all abstracts. They are mental constructs not directly tied to physical structures. It does not mean they are not real—these things are all very real indeed, but they must be experienced to be fully known. For that reason, they are difficult to represent on canvas with oils or acrylics or sculptures or music. They require examples of real-life situations to really be able to define them.

I will freely admit that I am a complete hayseed when it comes to art. I am about as unsophisticated as they come. For that reason, I find it funny when people throw oil on canvas and then give it a name that seems totally unrelated to what I see with my eyes. I feel like the little boy who just could not manage to see the emperor’s new clothes, and said so publicly, and loudly, much to the chagrin of all the grownups.

TRANSITION:

In 1964 an art exhibition was held in the Swedish city of Goteborg. The work of a previously unknown French painter, Pierre Brassau, attracted much attention there. Art critic Rolf Anderberg wrote in the morning “Postern” newspaper: “Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes but also with clean determination. His brush strokes twist with a furious fastidiousness on the canvas… Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” One private collector bought Brassau’s painting for a sum that would be equivalent to about $1,200 in today’s money.

After a few days the paper published a photo of the “avant-garde painter,” Pierre Brassau, working in his “studio.” To everyone’s surprise, Pierre turned out to be a 4-year-old common chimpanzee named Peter from Sweden’s Borås Djurpark (zoo). Yes, Pierre Brassau turned out to be an ape. Two pranksters, one a journalist and the other an artist, gave a brush and paints to the chimp and turned him loose. The ape took to art like a duck to water. The pranksters hung his work in a gallery under the brush-name of Pierre Brassau. When the hoax was revealed art critic Anderberg still insisted that Pierre’s work was the best painting in the exhibition.

You may be thinking, “What dummies, to be tricked so!” But it is not always so easy to figure out who did what. So, what does this have to do with the Bible, you ask? Just this... Jesus was constantly trying to get people to understand real yet abstract truths. However, He did not paint pictures on canvas; rather, He used word pictures, and stories, and parables, and metaphors, and similes. He came from Heaven to explain to us about genuine “love” and “holiness” and “mercy” and “forgiveness” and “Heaven” and “Hell” and “the Kingdom of God.” In our passage for today’s study, in Mark 4:21-30, you will see how He explained eternal spiritual truths in terms that people could wrap their minds around.

NOTES on the Text:

Verse 21: He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?”

·         This follows on the heels of Jesus telling the “Parable of the Sower and the Soils” in which He described 4 different seed-sowing scenarios with vastly different results. He ended the parable talking about the importance of us being prepared, plowed soil for the seed of God’s Word to be able to take root and produce spiritual fruit in us.

·         Now Jesus goes on and talks about letting our light shine before men. This passage is parallel to the Sermon on the Mount recorded in Matthew 5-7. Here Mark gives some of the high points of that message but in an abbreviated form.

Verses 22-24: “For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. ²³ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. ²⁴ Consider carefully what you hear,” He continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.”

·         Comparing this passage with the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels we can see that Christ’s purpose on this occasion was to emphasize the responsibility incumbent upon the hearer of the parables. Principle: He who has been enlightened must in turn enlighten others.

Verse 25: “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

·         The principle that Jesus is teaching in this statement is to be applied specifically to the realm of truth and its appropriation. He was not talking about material things. Rather, Jesus was saying that he who lays hold of truth and uses it will receive even more enlightenment, but he who refuses to appropriate truth will lose even the understanding of truth that he once had.

Verses 26-27: He also said, “This is what the Kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

·         Now Jesus begins to get to the heart of the matter. He is revealing to His listeners truths about the Kingdom of God. But what is the tool He chooses to use? It is a “simile.” A simile is a figure of speech using either of the words “like” or “as” to compare two things. Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is like...” Next, He goes on to say that the Kingdom is like seed that a man has sown on the ground and from which he then walks away. He goes about his business, working, sleeping, not paying any attention to it; yet the seed sprouts, and grows, and becomes a mature plant.

·         What is the point? The soil produces spontaneously, and the Kingdom of God is extended by sowing the seed of the Word of God (see v. 14).

Verses 28-29: “All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. ²⁹ As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

·         “All by itself...” This is the Greek word, automáte, and it means “of its own accord,” literally, automatically. Jesus is telling us that the seed contains life which, when placed in the proper environment, automatically produces growth. He described this good ground for us up in verses 8 and 20. The characteristic of the present, spiritual kingdom of grace, as set forth by this parable, is that the message of the Gospel, by its very nature, when sown in men’s hearts produces growth and fruit spontaneously. That is because the Word of God is living and powerful and it always has positive effects.

Verses 30-31: Again, He said, “What shall we say the Kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground.”

·         Jesus steps back and takes another run at explaining what the Kingdom of God is like. He says it is like a tiny mustard seed planted in the ground. Mustard seeds are little round seeds—nothing impressive to look at. Yet once they sprout and grow, they turn into good-sized bushes. Many of the people listening to Jesus that day had one growing in their back yard. They knew exactly what He was talking about.

Verse 32: “Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

·         The black mustard plant that grows wild in Israel does not become a tree but rather a large bush, big enough for small birds to build their nests in. The remarkable phenomenon of this variety of mustard plant is that, although it is really just an herb, it may grow to be ten or twelve feet high, with a stem the size of a man’s arm, and become a resting place for the smaller varieties of birds.

·         This parable is a further development of the characteristics of the present, spiritual Kingdom of God. The main point here is that the seed of the Gospel message will produce phenomenal growth. From small beginnings, the Kingdom, which had only drawn near in the person of Jesus Christ (1:14-15), will, by reason of its own inner and supernatural vitality, grow to tremendous proportions. This does not mean that it will result in world conversion, nor that man by his own efforts will bring in the Kingdom of God on earth as a Utopian development, or that the Kingdom and the Church are identical. The parable does, however, picture the Kingdom of grace as including multitudes of redeemed persons who through the years have come to swell it ranks to phenomenal size.

Verse 33: With many similar parables Jesus spoke the Word to them, as much as they could understand.

·         “…as much as they could understand.” There is an important lesson in this verse. Jesus, the Master Teacher, never gave people more than they were able to digest. He never used the firehose of truth on them. He was not just trying to throw heaps of content at them. He was not trying to bury them in a pile of facts. He wanted them to grasp the truth and apply it to their lives. That is usually best accomplished in small increments. Remember that James advises us to be “doers of the Word, and not merely hearers.”

·         According to the writer of Hebrews, spiritual maturity is measured not by how much we know, but rather by how much we do with what we know. Hebrews 5:13-14 says, “Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Jesus used parables, stories, and word pictures, not to obscure the truth, but to force people to think and to extrapolate from the principles. If truth is temporarily hidden in a parable, it is only that it later may be revealed; the ultimate purpose of the parable is thus not to conceal truth, but to reveal it to those who are willing to seek it out. 

Verse 34: He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when He was alone with His own disciples, He explained everything.

·         This verse sends us back to Jesus’ words to His disciples in Mark 4:10-12, When He was alone, the Twelve and the others around Him asked Him about the parables. ¹¹ He told them, “The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹² so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven!’” To explain why He taught in parables Jesus quoted them a loose paraphrase of Isaiah 6:9-10. In the original context that is a prophetic passage about Israel’s rejection of the truth brought to them by Messiah. Jesus is saying that the passage is being fulfilled.

·         His point also seems to be that spiritual understanding is restricted to those who have become “spiritually alive” by properly relating themselves to Christ and His message. Dead men cannot understand spiritual things. In 1 Corinthian 2:13-14 the apostle Paul explains it this way: “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. ¹⁴ The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

CONCLUSION:

What can we take from this passage to help us in our daily walk of faith and obedience? What lessons can we learn that will help us grow stronger in grace and in the knowledge of Christ?

1.       The Kingdom of God is not something that we do, or that we cause to happen. God is very able and competent to accomplish what He set out to do. He is building His Kingdom, and the Church is part of that greater Kingdom. The Lord’s disciples were always looking for the Lord to bring about the cataclysmic establishment of His Messianic Kingdom in their lifetime. They wanted it to happen “NOW!” The small beginnings and slow pervasive growth of the Kingdom were past either the patience or the understanding of the disciples. That is why Jesus pulled out the example of the tiny mustard seed that grows, and grows, unnoticed, until it is fully grown and fruitful.

2.      I also clearly see the principle that, “to whom much is given, much will be required.” Jesus made it plain that we are to let our light shine before men so that they can see the light clearly and be able to respond to it. That jumps out at me from verses 21-25. You and I will be held accountable for what we do with the light that has been entrusted to us. Light is of no benefit unless it can flow outward to chase away the darkness. We, who have been made light in Christ, need to let our light shine before men. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 5:14-16, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven.”