The Parable of the Ground by John.

The Parable of the Ground
Mark 4: 1-20; Read 1-12

1. As we study Mark, we need to remember there a young man (Mark 14:1,2) was almost arrested along with Jesus. They grabbed his "linen garment," but he fled away naked.
(1) Mark is the only writer who mentions this.
(2) That makes it fairly certain it was Mark himself.
(3) The significance of it is that he was still a young man when he wrote this book since it was obviously the first Gospel account to be written.
2. It's written from an active young-man point of view. He majors on actions rather than conversations and teachings.
(1) These things are there, but usually as a part of the action.
(2) Matthew 13:3ff and Luke 8:5ff give the same parable in greater detail.
3. The latter part of this reading is a quote from Isaiah 6:9,10. You probably have a footnote in your Bible that tells you that.
4. The Septuagint is a Greek version of the O.T. possibly made for Ptolemy II of Egypt.
(1) This passage in it is slightly different.
(2) The Septuagint translation says, "You will be ever hearing, but never understanding; You will be ever seeing, but never perceiving. This people's heart has become calloused; They hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes."
(3) That changes the whole picture from the one given in the NIV New Testament.
(4) We will get to that in a little bit.
5. Most Bibles title this parable "The Parable of the Sower."
(1) A good friend of many years ago suggested to me that the main emphasis of this parable is not on the sower, but on the ground.
(2) I think he was right, the sower is vitally important, but the ground is what it is about.
6. To the Israelites of that day, mostly farmers, herdsmen, or merchants who dealt with them, they understood the basic story, but they missed the spiritual message, or maybe some did guess at it.
7. I do not believe Jesus intended to mislead anyone, but to understand His parables, they had to be spiritually ready.

I. The Sower Sowed by Hand, and He Covered the Ground with Seed!

1. Saying "He covered the ground with seed" might seem like overkill, but it is important to see it.
2. The sower represents God, and God makes sure that every person has an opportunity to know Him.
3. That is the reason every human being is without excuse when he disobeys and otherwise refuses to acknowledge God and worship Him.
4. I've sowed seed by hand, and it is extremely easy to miss some good ground in the process.
5. You don't avoid areas that won't grow anything.
(1) If you were seeding your lawn by hand, wouldn't you make sure your grass grew all the way up to the sidewalks?
(2) If it didn't, what would you do with that expensive lawn edger?
(3) Wouldn't it be disagreeable to see those bare spots next to the walks, ladies?
(4) The remedy is to overlap the walks with the seeds. (That might seem like a waste, but really it is being sure that the usable ground is covered!
(1) The paths in Hebrew fields were made by people walking across the fields. Plowing was not done until the sowing was finished.
(2) Plowing covered the seed with soil, and that wiped out the paths, but the soil was still packed and not good for growing anything.
6. Don't you think God knew all the time that many, many human beings would reject every offer of love He made to them?
7. Don't you think God was aware that even the gift of His Only Born Son Jesus would not sway some people?
8. But God is loving, and He is fair! He gives every disbeliever the same opportunity to spend eternity with Him that He gives us.
9. He gives each one of us all we need to decide to give ourselves to Jesus!
10. That's the reason the sower sowed seed on both good and bad ground!

II. Once the Seed Is Sown, the Ground Becomes Responsible for Growth.

1. The seed is the Word of God, and it does not grow in a hardened heart!
2, Seed sown on the pathway can represent hard hearts, and I believe it does represent hard hearts. That's the first kind of ground mentioned in this parable!
(1) Pathways are not generally planted, are they?
(2) On hard ground, birds pluck up the seed greedily! It's an easy meal for them. Haven't all of us seen birds along the roadways at harvest time getting that easy meal?
(3) The pathway, hard as it is, is not changed by the seed!
(4) But they can be! One of the things Dennis Quigley told us about Moldova is that they have no lawns. Their lawns have become gardens, and they live out of their gardens.
(4) Hard hearts are not changed if they cannot, or do not, let the Word of God get inside of them!
(5) When the Word of God comes in, bad ground changes into good ground!
(6) That's the reason Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has passed over from death to life." (John 5:24)
3. Rocky ground does not produce much growth either, does it?
(1) Particularly in parts of Tennessee and in most of the New England states, farmers cannot get a good crop until they rout out the rocks!
(2) That's why you see so many rock fences and old rock houses and barns in those areas.
(3) Crops do not grow well in that rocky soil, and it is still almost impossible to harvest anything until those rocks are gone!
(4) Rocks tend to hold water, and seed spring up quickly but with little root. When the sun comes out, the seedlings wither and die as quickly as they shot up.
4. There are rocky ground people that we love, and we want them to know Jesus, right?
(1) Witnessing to them may seem like a total waste, like tossing your pearls before swine, but we never know how soft their hearts will become as God's Word begins to sink into their souls!
(2) We need to be careful because hard rock in our eyes sometimes is really good ground.
a. We think we know people, but we don't really even know ourselves as well as we should.
b. I waded in a stream one day down in Mississippi. I saw some mud colored rocks about the size of bars of soap on the bottom. I picked a couple up, and smacked them together in my hands. They crumbled to pieces. The bits that fell into the clear water stained it brown! I thought they were rocks, and they may have been on the way to becoming rocks, but they were just hard balls of clay!
c. Don't take people for granted! Give them the Word! Only God knows what kind of ground they are, or what kind of ground they will become!
5. The third kind of ground is the kind covered with weeds, thorns, briers, and shrubs.
(1) I'm sure all farmers in all ages clear the ground before they plant it, but we know weeds and briers grow faster than wheat and rye, right?
(2) Seed sown into such ground will be choked out before it can grow.
(3) The plants that come up have to fight for water and minerals, and because of the shade the sun usually can't hit them at all.
6. This kind of ground is probably the best picture of modern-day lost people.
(1) We have the ACLU supposedly non-partisan, but obviously anti-Christian fighting against the Gospel message.
(2) They've helped outlaw Christianity in our schools.
(3) As much as I love sports, sports occupy a major portion of our children's and young people's lives. In fact, so much so, that now it is hard to get Christians to do anything that interferes with sports!
(4) When I was growing up, preachers said the same thing about moving picture shows. Yep! That's what they were usually called.
(5) Now, it's TV programs and concerts that seem to call for so much of our time.
(6) These things are not necessarily bad except for the large amount of time we give to them, and the small amount of time we give the Lord!
7. People, we are responsible people, aren't we? Then why do we let everything around us have more time than we give to the Lord?

III. The Fourth Kind of Soil Is Good Soil.

1. Only good soil gives a good harvest!
2. Something may come from the rocky ground, and something may come from the thorny ground, but the only worthwhile harvest comes from good ground.
3. Rocks can be removed. Thorns can be cut and burned, and that poor ground can become good arable soil, but it will not bring anything good until it is good ground!
4. When God's good seed falls on soil prepared for planting, healthy plants spring up and grow into maturity.
5. These mature plants bring forth much fruit. Jesus said, "multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times."
6. Let's take the best for example. If you plant 100 bushels of corn, you can expect 10,000 bushels in harvest!
6. In John 15:5, Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."
7. We can be sure, we don't work for salvation, but when we have salvation, we produce! It is our new nature!

conclusion:

1. God's Word is the seed. Our human hearts are the ground.
2. Without Jesus there will be no harvest!
3. Hardness, rocks, snags, and thorns keep us from coming to Jesus for salvation.
4. Hebrews 11:6 says, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
5. If you don't have faith, it sounds like all is lost, but there is time right now for us to plow up the hard ground of our hearts, to root out the rocks that cause us to refuse Jesus, to cut and burn the thorns in our lives that choke out spiritual life, so that we can trust in Jesus and be saved eternally!
6. Are you ready to do what it takes to grow up in the Lord and to become a worthwhile child of God?
7. We are going to pray. As we pray, you pray for yourself. Tell God what you see your problem to be. Ask Him to remove it! Then ask Jesus into your heart and life.
8. He will save you forever! Let's pray!

Emmanuel Community Church 11/19/2006

How Close Are We to Committing the Unpardonable Sin? by John.

How Close Are We to Committing the Unpardonable Sin?
Mark 3:20-35 (Other pertinent Scriptures Matthew 10:32; Luke 12:10, I John 5:16)

1. People constantly are concerned about the unpardonable sin.
2. Just how close are we to committing it?
3. By this location in the third chapter, the hate toward, and the fear of, Jesus was growing strong.
4. Hatred of anything pertaining to God is either sin, or very close to it!
5. The teachers of the Law got into the act in v 22.
6. Apparently without hearing Jesus, these
"grammateis." Greek used for "teachers" here, have already decided that Jesus cast out evil spirits by Beelzebub, the prince of demons!
7. They mixed with the crushing crowd in a house where Jesus and His newly appointed apostles were trying to have a meal.
7. People, evil never strikes any of us at a time convenient for us! It's always happens when we least expect it and are most vulnerable!
9. These teachers of the Law were very close to committing the unpardonable sin.
(1) I said, "close," because Jesus did not accuse them directly although they were in the process.
(2) I believe He told them they needed to change direction before it was too late!
10. In a moment, we are going to look at what constitutes the unpardonable sin. People have all sorts of ideas about what the unpardonable sin is.
11. Jesus nailed that down in black and white for us, but too often we misinterpret what He said.

I. Note that the Teachers' Reasoning Was Foolish.

1. They accused Jesus of casting out demons by Bezel Baal, Beelzeboul, or Beezeboul, the prince of demons.
(1) We aren't sure because the translation of these heathen gods names could have been any one of them.
(2) What we are sure of is that they labeled him "The Prince of Demons!" You can't get worse than that! And they accused Jesus of being demon-possessed!
a, The Greek actually uses a little word, "hoti" to introduce the two parts of their statement. It added emphasis to what they said. With that in mind, they said, "Hah! Beelzebub he has! Hah! By the prince of the demons, he casts out the demons." (The use of definite articles shows they named specific events and entities).
b. In saying that, they attributed the work of God to the devil! And that is very close to being unpardonable!
2. In v 23, Jesus told them their accusation was illogical.
(1) He caught their attention with a question, "How can Satan drive out Satan?"
(2) Then He interjected real logic. "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself, and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come."
(3) In 27, He gave them a short parable: "In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man." He concluded, "Then he can rob his house."
3. How important are the words that come out of our mouths?
(1) The Hebrews believed that a spoken word is like a pebble tossed into the ocean. Sooner or later, a ripple will reach the furthest shore! Every word has a history of its own!
(2) Jesus said in Matthew 12:36, 37, "I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."
(3) People, words are that important!
4. So often we try to prove we are right by running someone else down. (Our recent election campaign was an excellent example of mud slinging!)
5. Like those teachers, we are on sinful ground with the Lord even when we tell the truth IF we color it to suit ourselves!

II. Jesus' Mother and Brothers Were Misled.

1. V 21 says "his family..."The Greek text says, "Those belonging to Jesus" heard about what was happening with Jesus, they immediately decided that He was "beside himself." (We still use that to mean "crazy!"
2. They set out to get Him and take Him home where they could tend to Him.
3. Reading the original, we might never know His kinsmen, unless we read to v 31.
(1) There it tells us it was His mother and brothers.
(2) V 32 reaffirms that it was His mother and brothers.
4. Mary is venerated today and people are in trying to elevate her to the status of God, but Jesus did not.
(1) Jesus asked, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" (v 33)
(2) In v 34, He looked at those seated around Him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!"
(3) He respected Mary as His earthly mother, and so do I, but He did not elevate her to the position of "Mother of God!" In fact, in John 19:26,27, from the cross He said to Mary, while looking toward John, "Dear woman, behold your son, and to the disciple, Here is your mother." Mary lived with John from that time on!
5. In v 35, Jesus gave all of us who trust in Him the highest position we could ever hope to have! Listen to this! "Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and brother."
6. Whatever position Mary, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas has, and whatever position His apostles hold, all of us who do the will of God have, too!

III. The Unpardonable Sin Is a Manmade Doctrine about a Spiritual Reality.

1. I suspect some of you may be so dead-set sure you have the unpardonable sin doctrine down pat, that I will ruffle your feelings today. If I do I'm sorry. I have to tell it like I see it in the Scripture.
2. In the original language, this is v 29: "Whoever shall be blaspheming into the Spirit the Holy, has not forgiveness into the eternity, but is subject to eternal judgment."
3. "Shall" is future tense. "Has not forgiveness" is present tense and so is "is subject to," and "subject to" means "possible" even in our own language.
4. Let me paraphrase what Jesus said: If someone blasphemes by attributing the works of God's Spirit to the devil, he is not saved! He does not have the forgiveness that will allow him to spend eternity with God!
5. What it does not say is that there is no hope for such a person! Think about it, people, Saul of Tarsus had people killed for saying Jesus was God! For saying Jesus is our Savior and Lord!
6. He said the very things these teachers of the Law said, and Jesus singled Saul of Tarsus out and saved him! Which one of us would dare say Paul was not saved?
7. It took me years to work out the details of this doctrine, but I always believed that anyone who could trust Jesus would be saved no matter what he had done in the way of sin! I didn't understand how, but I did believe he would be saved!
8. Now, I understand. In Mark 12:34, Jesus said to a lawyer, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."
9. If some are close, others are far away, and any who attribute God's work to the devil, to chance, or any other source, are in danger of dying without Jesus!
10 If you turn to Jesus, you haven't committed the unpardonable sin, but if you die without Jesus, you will never be pardoned!
(1) Again, remember Paul! Jesus told Paul, (Acts 9:5, 26:14) "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads." (The King James has "It is hard for you to kick against the pricks." but most of the early manuscripts do not have that in v 5. It does appear in 26:14).
11. God's Holy Spirit works with every one of us! Those feelings you have, that maybe you should believe God, come from Him. If you refuse to listen to your feelings, if you refuse to listen to God, you are in danger of eternal loss!
12. A lot of the teaching about the unpardonable sin is incorrect, folks! Let's stay with God's Word!

Conclusion:

1. It is so easy to be misled if you don't read God's Word for yourself, if you don't read it in prayer asking for God's guidance.
2. As frequently used, the unpardonable sin does not exist, but anyone who refuses Jesus as his or her Lord is in constant danger of an eternity in hell! And once you die, no change will be made!
3. If you have already taken Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are eternally safe from eternal damnation. There is no unpardonable sin for you!
4. If you have refused Jesus, like the teachers of the Law, you are in constant danger every day you live!
5. God has only promised us the moment we have right now. Tomorrow may be too late.
6. The time to receive Jesus and stop worrying about your future is now!

Emmanuel Community Church 11/12/2006

Mark 2:23, The Sabbath Day by John.

The Sabbath Day
Mark 2:23-3:2

1. This text starts out, "One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields..."
2. The word Sabbath appears four times here in six verses, the four verses we read and in chapter 3, v 2 which we did not read.
3. Some time after God instituted it, people changed the Sabbath to suit themselves.
3. The Pharisees watched Jesus!
(1) They hoped He would do something they could use against Him
(2) The fact that they were there immediately tells us the Pharisees broke their own law!
(4) They accepted the Ten Commandments, but as well as I remember, their the scribes added many things to them. For instance, it was a sin to travel more than 150 steps on the Sabbath day.
4. An acre is 43,560 sq. ft., and if the acre is square, each side will be about 207 ft in length.
(1) If a person walked around a square acre of land, the trip would have taken more than two Sabbath Day's allotment of steps!
(2) 150 steps is an awfully short walk, isn't it?
5. Since this portion of Scripture deals with the Sabbath, let's go back to Genesis 2:2 for a moment and look at how the Sabbath began: "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."

I. You See, The Sabbath started with God! Jews Changed It.

1. The Sabbath started with creation, but God included it in the Ten Commandments. The first words in Exodus 20:8-11 are: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy."
2. It continues saying no work should be done on the Sabbath day. That refers back to the Genesis account.
3. How long it took for people to change the Sabbath we do not know, but as soon as the changes were made, the Jews worked out various schemes to get around their own Sabbath Law.
4. The Scribes and Pharisees evaded the Law just like the common people did.
I1) Can you imagine a grain field no bigger than a half-acre? (Their fields were not large, but probably none were that small.)
(2) Jesus and His disciples were "going through the grain fields!" (v 23). ("Fields" is plural)
(3) The Pharisees went with Jesus and His disciples! They broke their own Law!
a. They were going more than their own prescribed Sabbath Day's journey.
b. It's true that if they wanted to go across Jerusalem on the Sabbath, they could. They could make 150 steps, stop and visit a moment, and then go another 150.
c. Eventually they could go all the way across town!
5. I could condemn the Pharisees for that, but I shouldn't because I know that we do a lot of the same kind of thing with our own laws.
(1) We don't consider ourselves to be breaking the law if we drive 65 when the speed limit is 60! Isn't that true?
(2) If you think about it, you'll find a lot of other things you do to get around one law or another.
6. The Jews changed God's law of the Sabbath to fit into their own desires.
7. It is also just as wrong to make God's Law more stringent than God intended it to be. They did that, too, when they put a 150-step limit on a Sabbath journey.
(1) Early in the history of our nation, our citizens were almost Pharisaical in their closing everything down on Sunday! And we have always known Sunday is the first, not the seventh day of the week! Not the Sabbath of Jewish Law!
a. Jesus arose on the first day of the week.
b. As far as we know, that is our reason for worshiping on the first day of the week.
c. In essence, Sunday is a Christian Sabbath.
(2) The Pharisees went to the extreme in keeping the letter of the Sabbath while breaking the spirit of it.
(3) Today most of us have gone to the opposite extreme!
(4) Anything goes on Saturday and Sunday.
8. Oh! I haven't forgotten! Gentile Christians have never been under God's Law!
9. We need to understand, all of God's Laws were given for our good, not as an arbitrary limitation of our rights.
10. Perhaps some of the things we consider to be religiously questionable really fit into God's intent for the Sabbath.
(1) Serving dinner at a restaurant is certainly a questionable thing. On the Sabbath housewives in Israel were not even allowed to cook! But I'm in favor of restaurants being open on Sunday.
(2) Suppose hospitals today said, "Everybody out! Go home! Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and we will be closed! If you make it, you can come back Monday!"
11 Let's not lose sight of the fact Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath.
12. Let's remember He indicated it is righteous to do good on the Sabbath! (I think feeding people in restaurants is good, and keeping hospitals open every day is necessary and good!)
13. You see we need to consider all the Scripture together in thinking about this. Now what did our text say?

II. "The Sabbath Was Made for Man, Not Man for the Sabbath." v 27.

1. People need a certain amount of rest. God made us, and He says we need to rest one day out of seven.
2. The government in Scotland only allows their doctors to work 48 hours a week!
(1) That's six eight-hour days!
(2) The one day they have off may not be a legal Sabbath.
(3) They work only six out of seven days: Does that meet God's requirement for human beings?
3. We fill our minds with recreation on Sabbath days:
(1) Does that meet God's requirement of us?
(2) When God made the Sabbath day holy, that meant it is set apart for Him!
(3) We need to make sure that we talk to God about what we do on the Sabbath and find out whether it pleases Him or not! We are children of the King!
(4) We should not depend on anyone else to tell us what pleases God unless it is clearly delineated in the Scripture. (I've never seen pro-football mentioned in the Scripture for instance. I call what they do [and get handsomely paid for] work, don't you? But it is not for me to say the right or wrong
of Sunday football. That is God's area. I have no expertise in that area at all! They need to settle that issue with the Lord themselves.)
4. What I need to do is remember, "The Sabbath day was made for man, nor man for the Sabbath."

III. There Is a Sabbath Rest for All in Jesus.

1. Hebrews 4:8-11 says, "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience."
2. Here the Sabbath-Day takes on a whole new meaning, and one that the Jews should have recognized, but did not.
3. The Sabbath Day is a picture of heaven.
4. It tells us at least 7 things:
(1) Heaven is a place, a time, when we will stop doing all the things that occupy our waking thoughts and time on earth.
(2) We will have wonderfully new things to do in heaven that will take their place.
(3) We will be in the presence of God Almighty, and we are not now able to even see Him.
(4) Our lifespan on earth is short, but the Sabbath rest of heaven will last forever.
(5) We sometimes wonder what we are doing here, but that will never enter our thinking in the Sabbath rest of our Lord. (We know we are there because we put our trust in Jesus while we were here!)
(6) Some of us go to political rallies, some to concerts, some to football games. I believe we are looking for the glorious joy we cannot experience until we are in our Sabbath rest with Jesus.
(7) There will be no crying there, no sorrow, because all of these things that hurt so much on earth will be swallowed up in the victory we experience in Jesus.
5. Did you notice that last verse from Hebrews? "Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience."
6. If Jesus is not your Savior, you have no hope of the Sabbath rest. Give yourself to the Lord Jesus, and you will have no fear of death, but rather a certain expectant hope of that final Sabbath when that we will spend with the Lord Jesus forever!

Emmanuel 11/5/2006