Mark 4:1–20
1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that “ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ”
13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
Now we come to a short section (4:1-34) where Mark describes some of Jesus' teaching. Most of this section is in parables. A parable is simply a fictional story meant to illustrate a spiritual truth. In most parables Jesus takes common everyday occurrences and uses them to illustrate complex theological principles.
The format of this parable is another example of Mark's sandwich technique with v. 10-12 being the middle portion which is the theological key to understanding the whole parable and all of Jesus' parables for that matter. In the second part of the A section (v. 13-20) we see an instance of the privilege given to the twelve disciples. They were privy to a private explanation of the parable that the rest of the crowd was not.
The purpose of the parable is twofold. First, it challenges the crowd to consider what type of soil they are—how they are responding to the words of Jesus. He is challenging them to be aware of Satan stealing away the teaching, tribulation and persecution causing them to give up on his word, and cares of this world overtaking his teaching. Instead they are to look for fruit in their life to determine whether or not they are good soil. The fruit (the virtues which characterize kingdom living) is the evidence of them hearing the word, accepting it and ultimately being transformed by it. The last soil is the only one of the four which represents authentic conversion and true discipleship. This is even seen in the the tense of the verb "hear". In v. 15-19 the tense implies an isolated event of hearing, whereas the tense of "hear" in v. 20 implies an ongoing hearing and accepting and bearing fruit. Those who are good soil hear continuously which leads to action of accepting and bearing fruit.
Secondly, the primary purpose of this parable is to explain the mixed response to the gospel message. The twelve disciples would have applied this to Jesus' immediate ministry and thought of this later as they were preaching the gospel all over the world. For them this would've explained why some people responded positively to the gospel message and some did not. It would give them comfort to know that perhaps it wasn't a fault in their delivery of the message. Perhaps it was that the audience just wasn't good soil at this time. It would have inspired them to continue preaching the word even when they weren't getting much positive reception or they were seeing an immediate response followed by a falling away soon after. And it would encourage them to know that the word was producing a massive harvest in the lives of some who heard. The evidence of which may not be immediately seen. This is a teaching that anyone sharing the gospel of Jesus would take great comfort in.
Remember with this sandwich technique the middle section will give us the core theological meaning to this parable. We will discuss that on Monday, but for now, we should know the main emphasis is on knowing who is on the inside with Jesus and who is on the outside. Those are very unpopular categories in our pluralistic culture but we cannot escape this obvious conclusion based on the text.