Mark 4:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Mark 4:20

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I am not a farmer and I know nothing about farming, but I do read that there are some experts who say that this is a fantastically higher than usual yield. Well, if that’s so, I can well imagine the Lord saying something along those lines. When you truly come to Christ, the Christian life is a wonderful life. There is so much assurance and blessing. You prove him, and you prove him again, and you prove him yet again, and he helps and strengthens you. Then you have communion with him, and he uses you in his service, and you bring forth tremendous fruit. And when you stand at the end of time, and you see what the Lord has done through your life, insignificant though you may have felt you were, you will be amazed and you will see your life worth so much more than it ever would have been, if your soul had never been saved and you had never been brought to him.In the three Synoptic Gospels the words are the same except that the writers add a word here and there to explain the sense. Matthew says they understand it; Mark, that they receive it. You must do both: I cast my soul on Christ. Luke tells us that these ‘are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it’ (Luke 8:15). They understand it, they receive it, and they keep it, hold on to it. We will not let him go. It means so much to us. It is so real. No one can get you to give it up. The stupor of spiritual death has been disturbed. The prejudices you held have been removed. The rationalistic deadness of the world is seen to be wrong. No matter what you have done, or how long you have been doing it, Christ will take you up, bless you, and never let you go.Not that any are good, but God gives you the gift of repentance and faith. This ground is good because it has been properly prepared. The rock has been broken up and the thorns removed. God knows our hearts. He sees when we have become receptive to the message. One day, for the first time in our lives, the gospel makes sense to us. It is God that has prepared the soil so that we wanted his message. He makes us willing, and he gives repentance, but he commands to us is repent and believe the gospel. The good ground hearer is made a realist.

Application

The good ground hearer – people with receptive hearts, who have become weary and heavy laden, who seen through the false promises of this world, and the shallowness of its entertainment and its ideas; who have seen their inner corruption, and their own need of forgiveness, and come to Christ for new life. They listen with great reverence; they hang on every word. How can I find Christ? As you listen, pray, ‘I long that God would reach out to me, even tonight.’

So, three categories of hearer: the hardened unresponsive heart, the eager-for-something-good-for-myself heart that will respond but it's not real conversion, and the person who feels a need, desires conversion, but doesn't turn away from the old life and the world and yield wholly to Christ. These are wrong ways of hearing, and in each case we may recognise them in ourselves and pray to God to help us avoid them. May God’s word bring you to the Lord wholeheartedly, in true desire and true repentance, and yielding to him.

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Mark 4:20 Commentary and Bible Study