The Parable of the Sower
In Mark 4:1-9,14-20, Jesus relates the parable of the sower. He had again moved out onto a boat by the sea, because a great multitude had gathered to hear him speak. He could speak from the boat without getting crushed. Isn't that a problem most pastors would like to have today? Telling of the sower sowing seed, he says that some seed missed the field all together. Some fell on soil that wasn't ready. Some fell among stones, and when it sprouted it was scorched and withered away because its roots had no place to grow to in order to get water. Some fell among thorns and it grew along with the thorns which choked it out, yielding no crop. But some seed fell on good ground and gave tremendous returns.
This reality of the life of a farmer would have been familiar to all of the people He was speaking with. Today, city people might not immediately understand what He was saying. It is important that we take this away from this parable if we don't get anything else. When we're trying to spread word of Jesus Christ to the world and teach them the things He felt were important, it is necessary to speak at a level that those hearing you or reading what you have written will understand. That is one difficulty I have in trying to figure out what to say about some of the Bible chapters. Most of the people I know at church have been Christians a long time, and they've heard just about everything that can be taught about the parable of the sower to use an example. Trying to figure out what to say out of all that is difficult. Christ does a good job of explaining it in the verses which follow.
When you are witnessing, rely on the Holy Spirit to give you guidance on what to say and how to say it. Don't use big Christian words unless you are prepared to explain what they mean to the person with whom you are speaking. If you're writing like me now, I operate under the assumption that if I use propitiation, the reader can google it to see what it means. But I always operate without any way to tell if they've picked the right meaning out of all those offered. It's always good to help the search engines out if you're curious about something by tacking on the word Christianity. That will help percolate the right meaning to the top.
Why Parables?
Christ was a master at knowing what examples to use that would be understood by the people, but wouldn't necessarily get Him killed by the priests, scribes and Pharisees until it was His time. The ability to get a point across without raising up a rebellion against you is a lost art today, it seems. But we need to know when and how to speak our own parables today to those who are out to destroy us. God wants everyone to be saved. There is no sinner too black that God doesn't want to bring back to Him. Perhaps that person will have to find their own way back in the case of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But the Bible declares God does love everyone and wants everyone saved. And yet you have to accept that you may only be able to provide a piece of that salvation experience, and if God instructs you to relate a story instead of laying a precept out in black and white, He has a reason.
God knew the hearts of those who were listening, and He knew that some were there just looking for a reason to arrest Christ and destroy His ministry. In many parts of the world, that is still true today. Parables are a means of speaking the truth that allows the Holy Spirit in time to teach a hearer with a proper heart, without saying something that would directly destroy you and the work you are doing by those who are controlled by Satan. Those who are against Christ won't understand what is being said or won't be able to prove a spiritual intent, and their lives won't be changed. Parables have their place, even today.
Regardless, in Mark 4:10-13, Christ says that He wants the disciples to understand the parable, and seems somewhat surprised that they hadn't understood Him directly as He says that the mysteries of the kingdom of God have been given to the disciples. He implies that understanding the parables He was speaking should be second nature to them, but that He would explain so they could understand the higher meaning beyond the actual words of the parable.
I suspect that once they heard the meaning, they would be equipped to teach others who asked for clarification. The discerning of spirits would help let them know if the person asking was friend or foe. I don't think that God meant for the meaning of the parables to be hidden forever, or He wouldn't have allowed the meanings that Christ gave to be written down in the gospels at all. They were just hidden for a time to protect the speaker.
At any rate, Christ explains the parable of the sower relating to the seed being the word of God. He goes through all the ways that the words He and the disciples and others were saying or ultimately writing down would fail to have their intended purpose much of the time. Satan is clearly working hard to try to keep any word from being harvested. He especially opposes the word yielding multiple bushels from a single seed. Yet it is precisely those sort of returns that has kept Christianity going over the centuries. The seeds are spread liberally, but only a few stick with each planting. And yet those that do generate a tremendous return.
God calls on all of us to be sowers of the seed of the Gospel. He truly wants everyone to be saved. It would be nice if everyone could see the massive returns on the harvest. Sadly, some are called to places in the earth where everything seems to be stony ground or filled with thorns that crowd out the gospel, and that is increasingly true for the United States of America and other first world countries. Don't give up, wherever you are laboring. It may just take the next seed you're trying to plant to turn things around completely. You never know when the next person you talk to will be the one that goes out and brings in one hundred or more. That's the analogy. If you don't spread any seeds, you can be sure you won't have any harvest. That much is certain.
Other Teachings and Parables
In Mark 4:21-23, Christ makes a two-fold comment. You don't bring a candle into a dark room and hide it under a bushel basket or put it under a bed. You put it on a candlestick so that everyone can benefit from its light. Now clearly under a bushel basket or under a bed would be a bad plan for lots of safety reasons on top of not providing light to the room. But a candle's purpose is to provide light in useful places. It isn't to just burn up the wick and wax to nothing where nobody can see it, or to destroy the place were it is. The challenge to us today is to let our light so shine among men that everyone can see and benefit from it.
In the next verse, the opposite situation is presented. If we are trying to hide things that we have reason to ashamed of, be certain that eventually the truth will come out. Perhaps it won't happen until you get to heaven (either by the blood of Jesus or at the great white throne judgment), but it will still be brought to light eventually.
In Mark 4:24-25, Christ gives more advice. He says to pay attention to what you hear from God. And by extension, pay attention to what the Bible says. The more you pay attention to what God is telling you, the closer you will get to Him and the more He will reveal. For those that hear the word, but either don't water it or do allow weeds to grow up around it, are going to lose even the things that they know.
In Mark 4:26-32, Christ talks about the kingdom also in terms of farming. The farmer might not understand all the mechanics of how seeds produce fruit, but he knows that it does and that there is a time for harvest. When things are ripe, and at their peak, He starts the harvest without delay to get the maximum bounty for his crop. The kingdom of heaven is like this. It is also like a small mustard seed that starts out tiny, but grows into something disproportional to its initial size. Think of how relatively insignificant the early church was in size but how big it has grown today. Think of how small the Jewish faith started and how large it had grown by the time of Christ. And yet Christ warned, I think for both, that the fowls of the air had come to roost. We must make sure that we drive off all which would corrupt the church of Christ and keep its doctrines correct and true to the Bible and Holy Spirit's leading.
Dangers at Sea
I know that we all face troubles in our lives. And sometimes there are troubles that have no solution and will likely destroy us, given time, outside of a miracle. (It's good God is in the miracle business.) Mark 4:33-41 records one such instance.
When Jesus got done speaking with the people, and had explained everything to the disciples and sent the multitudes away, Christ decided that they should travel over to the other side of the sea. So His boat and other small boats headed out across the sea, and Christ took a nap. The boat was getting swamped and the disciples went to the back of the boat where Christ was sleeping and awakened Him, yelling that they were all about to die and what in the world was He doing sleeping - or words to that effect.
He rose, possibly yawned and stretched, looked around, and rebuked the wind and sea with a "Peace, be still", and it immediately became calm. "What are you all worried about? Don't you have any faith at all? I'm going back to bed!" - again I'm hypothesizing a bit. I truly wish I had more faith than I seem to have. We need to be just as close to God to know His will and have the faith to pray for whatever needs to be done and know that God will do it - just like Jesus.
The people who were sailing the boat or perhaps the disciples were afraid of the waves, and rightly so. But when Jesus told the sea to calm and it immediately did, they were just as afraid of Him. That was something that they not only had never experienced, but probably wouldn't even think could happen. And yet it did. I suspect that the other boats nearby might have also heard His words, and whether or not they did, they immediately benefited from the calm and at least at that point would have probably heard the conversation after the command from Christ to still the waves.
We need to understand that God hasn't changed. God probably won't fix everything in your life that you ask Him to fix. But like Christ in this example, if God has told you to go someplace and Satan throws up roadblocks, have faith that God will come through if you ask for help. If you know you're walking in God's will, then you can depend on His help to get that will done. That doesn't mean God will give you everything you can ask for. But if you ask for help in following His will and making His will come about, trust and have faith that God will come through. Just as when Elijah taunted the priests of Baal, our God never sleeps or goes on holiday or is deaf. He knows and cares about everything that is going on in the lives of His people when we are following His will.