My wife, Susan, works at a local greenhouse during the spring, summer and fall when they need some extra help. She loves gardening, the people there are great to work with, and she enjoys the work that she does there. Sometimes she brings home plants that would otherwise be thrown away and gives them some tender loving care. Some of those plants rejuvenate and thrive, but others don’t.
That brings up two questions. Why does the care Susan provides at home have a rejuvenating effect on some plants? It’s because the quality of the environment matters, and extra individual care at the right time can bring a plant back to life. But why do some plants, who get the same tender loving care, die instead of springing back to life? It’s because the condition of the individual matters, and if they are not in a state where extra individual care can make a difference, they are going to end up on that trash heap they were destined for, regardless of good their environment is.
Why does this matter to anyone who is not a gardener? It turns out that the quality of our environment and our individual condition are just as important for human beings as it is for plants. Have you ever gone through a season where it feels like your faith has become stagnant and dry? Do you long for a richer, deeper spiritual life with God, but feels like you are only skimming the surface of what could be? Do you ever wonder why some people seem to flourish in faith while others fall away? Individual condition and environmental quality are likely playing a role. However, unlike plants, human beings can play a part in their condition and environment. What can we do to help ourselves thrive? That’s the question that I am inviting you to reflect on with me in this post, and and to help us as we do that, we are going to dig into Mark 4:1-20. If you have a Bible or a Bible app, I invite you to turn there now.
Jesus declares, and is, the Good News that Transforms Us
As you do that, here is some info that will help you. This biography of Jesus was written in the first century by John Mark, a close associate of Peter’s. So Peter was probably Mark’s source of information as he compiled his Gospel under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Mark was likely writing for a Gentile audience he often explains Jewish customs and translates Aramaic words. Mark’s Gospel is fast-paces and action-driven because he wants his readers to see that Jesus is not just a teacher but the very power of God at work.
Mark states his purpose for writing his Gospel right away in chapter 1 verse 1 with these words, The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, (Mark 1:1). Mark wants his readers to know that God has good news for them, good news that comes to us in the person of the God-human, Jesus Christ. Jesus not only declares the Good News, he is the Good News. As he said in Mark’s Gospel, “The time has come… The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) By coming into this world, living a life of perfect human goodness, suffering and dying on a cross to pay the full cost of our forgiveness, and rising from the dead on the third day that followed, Jesus has opened the door to the kingdom of heaven to broken, sinful people like you and me. And each time any human being has an encounter with Jesus, whether it is through the reading or preaching of God’s Word, the Bible, through one of Jesus’ followers, who carry Jesus around with them in their heart wherever they go, or in the sacred meal of Holy Communion, that encounter is a defining moment, what the Bible calls a kairos moment, which has the potential to change the trajectory of our life forever. Just as Susan rescues plants, Jesus is the ultimate rescuer. He doesn’t just give us better soil—He transforms dead hearts into living ones by giving us the gift of faith in him.
Jesus’ words have the power to bring to life a new person within us, a new person who loves God, trusts in God, and desire more of a deeper relationship with God. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes… (Romans 1:16)
Jesus not only opened the door to the kingdom of heaven to everyone who believes in him. He also taught what life in the kingdom of heaven was like. This is important information for us to know because the kingdom of heaven functions very differently from life in this world, and we need to understand those differences so that we can fully embrace the life in God’s kingdom that Jesus has given us.
A powerful method that Jesus often used to teach people about the kingdom of heaven was to use short sayings or stories called parables. Jesus was a master at using parables. No one else in the New Testament even tried to use parables. Jesus had this incredible ability to take some ordinary earthly object or activity and use it to illustrate what the kingdom of God was like. Those who heard Jesus tell a parable were give a great gift. Some would open that gift right away, understand its meaning and receive it with great joy. Others wouldn’t get the point of what Jesus was saying, but because his parables were so memorable, they would stick in a person’s mind. And perhaps later, when they were sowing their crops, harvesting their grain, or tending their sheep, they would remember the story that Jesus told, and realize what it meant. But the greatest impact of Jesus’ parables came when people took what they meant and applied it to their own lives. That was when they saw their life in a new way and realized that they were living in the kingdom of God right now.
The Parable of the Sower and the Seed
Today, we are reflecting on a parable that is often called the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. In it, Jesus highlights four types of ground on which the seed falls, but only one yields a bountiful harvest. Later, when the crowd Jesus was teaching had dispersed, and Jesus and his closest followers were alone, he explained the parable to them. The seed was God’s Word, that message of life, forgiveness, and salvation from God, which Jesus taught. And God’s message always carries God’s power to give life with God to those who receive and believe it. But there are times when the condition of the individual or the quality of the environment will hinder the life-giving power of God’s Word.
Maybe we have had some tough experiences in life, things we never want to happen again, and our heart is hardened against anything from the outside coming in. We are skeptical and perhaps even a little bitter towards anyone promising us “good news.” We’ve heard good news before and got burned by it. We resist the Good News message of Jesus when we hear it, and evil forces that mean to harm us snatch it away before it has a chance to germinate in our heart.
Or maybe we receive the Good News with joy and a seedling of faith germinates, but it never matures. There are hard areas in our heart, issues that need to be addressed for us to grow and mature in our faith. But we always turn away when the Holy Spirit tries to dig out the rocks in our heart, so there is no depth to our faith. Then when tough times or persecution comes, our immature faith wilts and dies under the pressure.
Or maybe we readily let the Good News into our heart, and it germinates, takes root and grows. But we also readily let the cares, worries and temptations of this world come into our heart. All those other things distract us from God and what he has for us and, as a result, our life does not produce any fruit for God. The “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…” that we would expect to see are missing and no one is being brought into God’s kingdom through us.
But some people hear the Good News, accept it, and it grows within them to produce a bumper crop of fruit for God, thirty, sixty or a hundred times what was sown. Back when Jesus first told this story, harvesting ten times what you had sown was a good crop. Reaping a harvest that was a hundred times what you had planted was absolutely incredible. Yet, this is the kind of fruitfulness that Jesus wants to bring to our lives. How can we help that to happen?
Turning Towards Fruitfulness Begins with Some Tough Questions
We need to begin by asking ourselves some tough questions that get at what is going on inside of us, like: What type of soil describes your heart today? What distractions are choking your faith? Are you willing to allow God to remove the hard places in your heart?
The world of marketing can help us as we probe what is going on in our soul. There we find that the receptivity and the filtering of your audience are two key factors in communicating a message. Receptivity refers to the degree to which your audience will take in your message and respond as you would like. Filtering refers to the likelihood that your audience will evaluate your message and intellectually block it, so it has no impact on them.
The Good News message of Jesus always has power. It is a light from God which is guaranteed to brighten up the darkness of our lives, if we let it. But we have a part to play in determining whether that happens or not. Is our heart receptive to the Word of God, not only when we hear for the first time, but also when the Holy Spirit uses it to break up and remove those hardened areas in our soul? Do we use our God-given filter wisely, letting in God’s Word, but keeping the distractions and temptations of the world at bay so that God’s Word has freer reign in our hearts to mature and grow? These are not easy things to do. We need God’s help to do them. But God is faithful, and he will help us to do the hard work of being receptive to the good things of God and filtering out unhelpful things of the world. And the result will be a life for you that will produce godly fruit in ways that you never even imagined.
The Power of God’s Word to Transform Lives
In 1790, nine mutineers from HMS Bounty, along with the Tahitian men, women, and children that were on the boat, settled on Pitcairn Island. Within nine years, because of fighting and alcoholism, only two men remained, Ned Young and John Adams. They turned to the ship’s Bible from the Bounty, and their hearts were changed through faith in Jesus. Though Young died in 1799, Adams used the Bible to teach the other islanders to read and write, and they became followers of Jesus. Instead of drunkenness, violence and murder, the small island became a place of faith, peace and love. This is the power of God’s Word to transform lives.
Therefore the challenge that I want to set before you today is this: First, receive God’s Word and let it have its way in your life. Second, actively filter out anything from the world that might distract from God. As we read in Ephesians 3:20-21, “[God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!” (Ephesians 3:20-21) Amen.
Farewell to Shadowlands 