Mark 4:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

Navigator

Mark 4:3

Comments

Here we come to the first major parable in Mark’s Gospel, the one that used to be called the prince of parables, mainly because it seems to be almost four parables in one. Unusually, Mark’s account of this parable is the longest in all the synoptic Gospels. We think first of the sower himself. Sowing is quite a lowly occupation. He is a farmer, but he is sowing. He has got a bag, or in those days, more likely, a large basket full of seed. He walks up and down the field, scattering the seed. He wanted to cover the entire field. He is very indiscriminate in the sowing of the seed, and so as he scatters widely, some falls where, if he were more economical, he wouldn't bother to sow. Some falls on the pathway. No point in sowing there; the seed will never take root. Some seed falls on ground which has very little soil; there is an outcrop of rock coming up just there. But he throws it everywhere; he's very liberal with the seed. That was the way it was done in olden times.The parable is about levels of hearing – those who hear nothing, those who hear a bit more and yet it doesn’t benefit them, and those who hear and bear fruit. It starts with a bare field. The earth cannot produce seed; something has to be sown. By nature we have no relationship with God. None of us has any hold on God. We are like that field that couldn’t produce a crop. Something has to be given to us; God has to give us his message. The gospel is his only message to a lost world; if we will not hear it, he has nothing else to say to us.

Application

‘Behold, there went out a sower to sow’ – it took labour and effort. Of course the sower played a small part in the overall process, in the final outcome. He didn't manufacture the seed; he didn't design it or make it; it did not come from a factory. So much of what happened was completely out of his hands, and was beyond his understanding even. He need have no knowledge of the biology of growth. So too, the preacher doesn't invent the message of salvation. He hasn't created it; it is all given to him. He is a most unoriginal person. He may try to find different ways of expressing it to catch interest and to summon attention, but the essential message is all given to him in Scripture; he is a most unoriginal man. The way of salvation revealed through Christ! What can any preacher devise that will change our character and give us life? Only God can design the manner of entrance into life, and bring us to know him. God saw the need: how we would fall and come into condemnation. He sent a Saviour at the chosen time to be our representative and to take our punishment. No man would ever have thought of it. The preacher is a lowly creature, he, like the sower, is sowing a given article.

The sower is indiscriminate, profligate, in the sowing of the seed; that illustrates the universal tender of salvation, the free offer of the gospel. Here is Christ setting us an example in how to preach. He is the original sower, and his disciples followed him, and we follow them. But Christ was the first; his is the example we follow. Some people say, ‘You can't preach the gospel indiscriminately. Does not your doctrine tell you that only those in whose heart there is a movement of the Spirit will respond? Should we not preach the gospel only to people who are earnest seekers with enlightened hearts?’ No, the gospel is to be preached indiscriminately, even wastefully, if you like, to all. The old-fashioned term for the free offer of the gospel is ‘the universal tender of salvation’, and here you see it in the parable of the sower where Christ, who speaks of himself first and then all his followers, depicts himself as a sower spreading the seed, on the rocks, on the pathway, among the thorns, as well as on the good ground.

How many people may receive a call from God to that lowly and yet glorious occupation of being a sower, a preacher of the word of the gospel, a sower of the seed? The sower was a lowly individual. He wasn't special; he wasn't clothed in glorious robes; carried about in a chair, surrounded by articles made of gold, wearing expensive rings and all that sheer blasphemous nonsense. He was simply a preacher of the given word of God, the way of salvation. May there be those who are called in surely this last age of the world to preach the gospel of redeeming grace, and to make a free offer as widely as possible. If the Lord should uproot you and move you to another place, to another town, in his will, don't go to a church, even if it's a church where there are believers, which doesn't preach the gospel frequently, constantly. That is the highest calling: to be a sower of the seed. Oh, l but some preachers will say, don't I sow the seed whenever I expound the word? Well, the context here is conversion and forgiveness of sin. The sowing of the seed is about the sowing of gospel seed, that portion of the preaching which appeals to souls, which persuades sinners to come to Christ, that presents Christ and his redeeming love and the work of Calvary. God is calling sowers of the seed who will be first and foremost preachers of the word of salvation.

Some churchmen feel a need to decide what the message means – it is no good preaching the same message as was preached a hundred years ago. We should use our religious acumen to decide what is needful for our society, and to screw something new out of this old book. But no, God’s message never changes. There are really only two kinds of religion: the message of salvation through Christ’s atoning death and faith in him, or another which simply replaces this with something else. A seed produces an intended, specific, predictable result. If we preach that Christ came and died for sinners, and if you believe, then you will be converted and a work of God’s power will take place in your life.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Mark 4:3 Commentary and Bible Study