Mark 4
v.10
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables.
v.13
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”
The inability to properly cultivate the soils of our hearts prevents us from being able to understand everything else Jesus says. The meaning was supposed to be straightforward.
He implies that the meaning of the parable of the sower is clear and understandable. If the disciples could not understand this clear parable, how would they understand more obscure ones?
v.24-25
“Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. 25Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
The parable of the measure begins with an exhortation to spiritual perception. The more one listens to the word of Jesus with spiritual perception and appropriates it, the more the truth about Jesus will be revealed. Furthermore, the more one appropriates the truth now, the more one will receive in the future. On the other hand, whoever does not lay hold of the word now, even the little spiritual perception that person has will be taken away.
v.26-27
He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
The central point is that it is God who accounts for the kingdom growth, not us. The account is deliberately unnatural; no farmer would fail to work the ground or weed the plot. The point here is that in the final analysis the farmer’s activity cannot cause the growth of the plant. It is nature/God that determines the final outcome. The detailed description of the sowing and the step-by-step growth of the plant (the stalk, the head [the grain appearing], the full kernel [the ripe grain ready for harvest]) means that every stage of the proclamation of the gospel is sovereignly controlled and guaranteed by God. This does not mean that God’s people can stand by and do nothing. In the action of the farmer the saints are part of the process. The point is that we sow the seed and wait for God, who superintends the process, to produce the harvest. “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow” (1 Cor. 3:6).
v.38
Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
The disciples’ rebuke of Jesus indicates that they did not know who he really was.
Our questions reveal our revelation of who Jesus is in our lives.
v.39
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.