Light on the Hill

Guest (Female): Next on Light on the Hill, we'll focus on a parable that speaks volumes about fruitfulness related to your willingness to take responsibility for the knowledge you've received.

Guest (Male): What you will hear in Mark Chapter 4 is one of the most consequential parables ever told by Jesus for several reasons. Perhaps the most significant of those reasons is truly eye-opening. Hearing and applying the truth will absolutely change your life. Hear how it all works as we join Pastor James Kaddis for Light on the Hill.

James Kaddis: Mark Chapter 4. Let's get into this and we're just going to jump right in. This is really beautiful because Jesus is still in the Galilee. As he is in this area, there's a lot of remarkable things that are happening. By the way, Jesus's base of ministry is prominently in the Galilee. The most recording that we see in his ministry from the accounts of the Gospels happen to be in Jerusalem and in the Galilee, and more so in the Galilee, especially as you get closer to this area of Capernaum and some of these other cities that surround the body of water.

This gets really cool and the picture that's being drawn here is remarkable because this really shows you how much Jesus was desired of the people. How much people wanted to be around him, how much people wanted to hear from him, how much people wanted to just develop insight and understanding from the things that he said. It's funny because there's an aspect of Jesus that I so admire and that I think is just so remarkable and something that I just—there's a certain part of me that just can't relate to it.

I'll just explain this before we kind of get into the text here, but the best way to do this at the expense of maybe people thinking I'm a really bad guy, let me give you a personal illustration here. When I first started in the ministry over 30 years ago, there was always a part of you that kind of believed that if you had the opportunity to be well-known by people while serving the Lord, that that might be a cool thing. You see pastors that have a certain level of notoriety because of their faithfulness to the Lord.

We saw lots of those pastors in the Calvary Chapel movement early on, and as a younger guy who's aspiring to be in the ministry, you think in your mind, oh, that would be nice. That would be great. I sort of was one of those guys that wanted all of that stuff to happen very early on. For me, that was not the case. I was a very fast mover, but in some cases a slow bloomer, for lack of a better term. In other words, I was one of the last guys amongst my circle of peers to start serving in the ministry full-time, even though many of the people in my circle of peers were much older than me.

Undoubtedly, I was the youngest, but there was a lot of things that just didn't happen in the same type of timely fashion that things have happened with all of the people that were around me. So there was always this thought that went through my head that said, oh, it might be nice if people knew my name or if I was one of these guys who just had a little bit more weight to carry, not physically speaking, but had a little bit more weight to carry in terms of the words that he said. It might be nice for a large crowd to come and listen every now and then.

I had somebody come to me who I really truly believed was a prophetic man. He really, really loved the Lord and he was very in tune with the Lord and with the Spirit of God. He said something to me that actually bothered me. He said, "Pastor James, I just want you to understand something." By the way, there was a pastor who told me this as well, who was a man I really respected and still do and was very prophetic. He came to me and he said, "Pastor James, I just want you to understand something. You need to take what I'm about to tell you to heart. You need to enjoy what you are calling the days of small things.

Because what you are calling the days of small things will be the days that you will wish you could go back to one day because there will come a point in time where the small things will no longer be and you will experience a new dynamic that you are not going to completely enjoy." I didn't like that. That just sounded very like, what am I going to do? Become an infamous person where everybody hates me? There's a lot of ways you could interpret a word like that.

It's interesting because the longer and longer and longer I started or the more and more I was serving the Lord and teaching and so on and so forth, and especially with the modern technology that we have and all the tools that we have available, that changed quite a bit. The Lord—it was almost like the switch was off, and then all of a sudden the Lord turned on a switch and then God exposed me to a whole bunch of people.

For whatever reason, I tend to be very polarizing. People either really hate me or they really love me, and the people that really, really hate me really, really, really hate me. The people that really, really love me really, really, really love me. There's no like in-between. People don't think that way about me. It's either a really love you or really hate you kind of a feeling.

As time began to grow and God began to grow the ministry, I almost got to the point—and I still have to fight it to this day—I almost got to the point where I became somewhat despondent over so many people desiring your attention and wanting to talk to you and wanting your time. Then you find yourself in a place like the place that I'm in today where my sheer busyness keeps me from being able to spend the kind of time with people that people want me to spend with them. That can be a very difficult thing to have to go through.

In the moments—and I do have these moments, I'm just being honest with you—in the moments where I just feel like, you know what, you all tell me I need rest, you all tell me that I need to take a vacation, you all tell me that I need to take a break. Okay, great. I want to be in a room alone and I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't want to see anybody's faces. I don't want to have conversations. I just want to be alone. That's my idea of a great vacation. I just want to be alone for a while and I just want to be able to collect my thoughts and I'm just not a fan of just talking to people, especially when I'm just completely tired and I don't have any energy to do so.

Then I look at passages like this and I read what Christ was and what he did and I just think in my heart, what an extraordinary example for me. What is wrong with my heart if I'm a man who's filled with the Spirit of God that detests people intruding in my own personal space when indeed the reason why they're doing so is because they're hungry for something that has nothing to do with me? They're hungry for the Lord. That's what they want. They don't want me. They want the Lord.

If they see somebody that can provide a gateway for them to experience God, of course they're going to seek to want to be close to that person. So when I get resentful when things like that happen and I get stopped at every corner and everybody wants to talk to me and they give me their business cards and will you call me and can we do this? Hey, can you come over here and can you—I get that all the time. It's easy to get frustrated. Then you read a passage like this.

By the way, the point that I'm making right now really truly isn't the main point of the study that we're getting into, but it feeds into the main point. You're not going to appreciate what the main point of all of this is if you don't understand the heart in which this is coming. I think that's why this is very important. Look at this in verse 1 of chapter 4. It says, "And he began again to teach by the seaside. And there were gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land."

Think about that for a second. He gets to the shore of the Galilee. That's what he's talking about. This isn't the Mediterranean we're talking about here. He's at the shore of the Galilee, and as he plants himself there, people are literally just hoarding him. They want to be by him, they want to hear what he has to say. They're very interested in him, and so they go and they basically come up right at the edge.

Jesus has no place to go. Like, literally, he doesn't have a place to go. He is forced to be able to—or he's forced in essence to give them the speech that they're wanting unless he does something that I would do. Unless he gets in the very boat that he got into and he takes off. That's what I would have done. I would have got that boat and I would have said, "Bye guys, God bless you, I love you," and then I would have just taken off. I'd have gone to the other side and then I would have made a plan to anticipate the thousands of people that might be waiting on the other side and I'd go hide somewhere.

Or I might like park myself in the middle of the sea, especially if it's very glassy in the lake there, Galilee. And just take a nap in the boat. That might actually be a very relaxing sort of a cathartic experience. The little rocking—I have done that by the way. I have fallen asleep in a boat in the Galilee before and it's a very, very beautiful experience, especially when the sea, what they call the sea, is literally like glass. There's nothing like it. There's just a beautiful breeze. The smell is just so fresh. You can hear the birds. You can hear people talking from on top of the area that people would oftentimes refer to as the space that Jesus spoke to when he gave his Sermon on the Mount.

It's such a remarkable thing. But that's what I would do. But Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus gets in the boat and he backs up in a way that he can still address everybody that's standing on the sea, and then he shares his heart with them. Now, look, there's a lot that I can learn from that. I can be convicted by the love that God has for his creation. I can be convicted by the love that God has for the people. I can be convicted by the level of self-denial that Jesus exemplifies in what he does.

I can be convicted by the fact that God is genuinely concerned about seeing the people be loved on and ministered to. It really checks my heart. It really makes me think, man, where is my heart and where is my mind when I get that way? Like, what's wrong with me? What is it in my heart and in my mind in that moment that just makes me want to avoid people? And the Lord makes it very, very clear. We're supposed to have a loving heart and a loving mind. Jesus had all of that.

But look what it says in verse 2. It says, "And he taught them many things by parables and said unto them in his doctrine." By the way, this is interesting. I used to get people that would come to me on somewhat of a regular basis and say that I am watering down the Gospel and I am watering down the Bible when I teach by using illustrations and while I teach by sharing things that might not be directly found in the Bible but rather things coming from life experiences or life circumstances.

It's funny because my answer has always been the same and that is, somebody that I admire and worship did the exact same thing, so I'm fine with doing it. Jesus was always good at communicating very important, very deep, very powerful principles using parables because parables were tools that would oftentimes be able to help people make connections in their mind's eye about something so critical.

Because if you were to sit down and you were to have a deep, involved conversation about psychoanalyzing somebody who makes a commitment to the Lord and doesn't do so well versus somebody who makes a commitment to the Lord and does fantastic, that could be a very boring conversation and in many aspects it might be something that will go straight over a person's head. But Jesus here chooses to use very simple terms to describe a principle here or a series of principles that are radically impacting, that are life-changing.

One of the things that I would encourage you to do anytime you learn about a parable or you're reading a parable or you're hearing something that Jesus is saying where he's seeking to demonstrate a matter by illustrating it for you and helping you to better be able to relate to the concept, I would recommend that you study it deeply. I would recommend that you spend a lot of time analyzing the story that he's telling you. Not reading into it, but analyzing the story that he's telling you because if Jesus saw it fit to bring it to its most simple terms so that you can understand a very complex situation, the reality of it is you have to be dedicated to understanding it.

You should master it. You should get to the point where you recognize how that works. Why? Because although so many people don't think that this parable makes any sense to them or doesn't apply to them—that's probably the better term, doesn't apply to them because I'm a committed Christian and I've been committed to the Lord for a long time—this parable might be one of the most critical parables that you've ever learned and may very well be one of the most critical parables that you have ever chosen to commit to understanding because if you understand it the way God intended for you to understand it, then it will serve as a remarkable tool to keep you not only accountable, but a remarkable tool to keep you moving in the direction God intended for you to move.

It's going to help you be able to identify the distractions that would keep you from seeking God, the distractions that would keep you from knowing God, and it's also going to help you to be able to identify those distractions in other people. It's a pretty useful tool and it's something that we could stop for a moment and meditate on and contemplate and then really bring as a significant application to our own lives. By the way, it's interesting because as you begin to read this story or this parable that Jesus tells, you'll realize that even the most committed of his followers didn't completely understand what it meant.

They had to go to Jesus and say, "What's up with this?" and then Jesus of course explained it. So you have to stop for a moment, contemplate what's being said, and then understand where the practical application of it really comes into play. I'm telling you, next week as we get into why this really applies to us—we're going to get into a little bit of that today—it will completely change how you look at things because this is the way people look at Christianity oftentimes.

They look at Christianity as a very passive thing. You come, you receive insight, maybe you read your Bible and you sort of expect something to happen to you. But what you don't recognize is the responsibility that is bestowed upon you as you learn these things to act on what you learn. The responsibility that's bestowed upon you to do the things that you've learned well and not allow any slipping to take place. It's this thing of when you learn something, when you are aware, you are given more responsibility.

To whom much is given, much is obviously going to be required. The reality of it is when God begins to give us deep-rooted insights that are significant and powerful, God doesn't want us to take those things and throw them away and bury them like that foolish servant did. He wants us to take it and multiply it, not only in our lives but in the lives of other people. This parable specifically speaks about that. This parable speaks about fruitfulness directly related to your willingness to take responsibility for the knowledge you've received.

That's a very important lesson to learn here. So look what he says here. We'll start in verse 3. "Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow." By the way, there is one thing that I do want you to pay attention to and that is the end of verse 2. Notice a descriptor that Mark throws out here and it's really important. It says, he said unto them, notice this, "in his doctrine." I think doctrine is a more appropriate word to be used here. Some of your translations may say "teaching". It may bring it up, but again, doctrine is a very appropriate term.

In other words, he is explaining something to these people because he wants their way of thinking to be adapted or conformed to the way that God thinks. That's what he's doing here. So it's all about a lifestyle. It's all about a methodology. It's all about a process by which we go through in order to seek out what God has given us. Look what it says. "Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow. And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth."

Now, if you are a farmer and you're listening to this right now—which this was on many levels a very agrarian culture—these people would not have a hard time listening to this. They would not have a hard time understanding it. As a matter of fact, most people listening to this right now would be like, Jesus, okay, you're talking about something really basic. Okay, we all know what happens when seed falls in different places.

Even us as kids when we conducted these science experiments as kids, we watched—some of you did this, I know we did when we were young, maybe in the newer days today they're not doing it because of lack of funding or whatever—but we would be given this seed to plant and then we would be told to plant them in extreme circumstances. Sometimes you'd put them in good soil and watch it grow that way. Sometimes you'd just put it out in the open and see if it even grows. Sometimes you just allow it to grow in a modified circumstance.

The whole idea is for you to observe how the elements on the outside affect what you're doing. How many of you have done the whole avocado seed? Remember that? Where you used to take an avocado seed, you put a toothpick through it and then it turns into a plant? I remember those days. Okay. So the idea here that Jesus is talking about with respect to how seeds get planted and what those seeds do, to these guys it was like, this is ridiculous. Like, Jesus, this is basic. We understand this.

Israel has always been a culture of people that have done that. As a matter of fact, so many of the farms that exist today—an overwhelming majority of the farms that exist in the state of California would not be farms, they wouldn't exist if they did not learn from the agricultural tools that were developed in Israel, specifically as it relates to irrigation. It's actually remarkable because as the governor has taken away all of our water, these farmers have to learn how to farm land without having the tools that used to be so abundantly available to them.

Of course, we learned those tools from the Israelis. The Jews are the ones that have actually perfected this. They teach you, show you how to irrigate your farm with such little water and how to recycle all of that. There's a lot of people that are eating right now and eating healthfully and eating well because of Jews. It's another reason why we should love them and thank God for them.

These people understood this. The farming culture knew this. Any of you have any background in this, this is going to seem pretty basic. If you do, then you would understand what this is all about. For those of you that don't, you have a limited understanding. This parable is still going to make a little bit of sense. Like, let's just go over the first part. When it goes on the street, basically, it's not going to grow. You would suspect that the birds will come and eat the seed. You know how that works.

In reality, if the seed isn't protected, it's going to be subject to being eaten by the birds. So this is basic. Like, this isn't really, really hard. So Jesus talks about the fowls of the air coming and devouring it, and then some fell on stony ground where it had not much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.

By the way, ever wonder why Jesus says it immediately sprang up because it had no depth of earth? You guys understand how that works, right? If a seed is planted in soil, then that seed is going to spring up immediately, but it will not spring up above the ground. You know how that works, right? It works through the soil and it's actually beginning to develop strongly until it begins to develop roots, and then once it develops roots, it goes deep down deep under, under, under, and then finally you begin to see it spring up.

As a matter of fact, there's plenty of trees that work that way that literally you plant them in the ground and they will literally not show even so much as a stump for years because it's working down, down, down, down, and then finally it springs up. So when Jesus says there's no earth and the seed springs up, well, you understand what's going on. The seed is doing what it would normally do underground, and it looks like it's a huge fast spring up because what it's doing is it's creating the tentacles, so to speak—I'm using non-scientific terminology—to be able to grab the nutrients around. If it pops those tentacles out and there's no nutrients for it to grab and the sun is beating down on it, guess what? It's going to die. It's not going to be a good situation. And I think that's like a very, very important thing to understand.

Guest (Male): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and on the weekends we're going through the Gospel of Mark together. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James Kaddis's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at oneplace.com. Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts too. When you have a moment today, send us an email. We'd love it. It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at the website lightonthehillradio.com. If God is leading you to support this radio outreach, there's also a place to make a secure donation at lightonthehillradio.com. Throughout the week, you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you see current events through a biblical worldview. Look for those at jameskaddis.com.

James Kaddis: Just recently, in anticipation of the Christmas season, we planted a bunch of poinsettias in front of our house, which I have grown quite concerned over in the last few days because it's sort of going past its life cycle. I made it last a lot longer than they said they would be able to last, but because of the season that we're in, all those leaves are going to fall off and they're going to look ugly. But the point is, when you put seed on stone, that's what's going to happen. It's going to spring up and it's going to look "Wow, this is cool," and then it's just going to die because the sun is going to just destroy it. That's something that you should expect.

By the way, it is funny how God works these things out. It's such a remarkable thing how God designed our plants and how it all works out because when these seeds grow in the soil, the soil also serves as not only a protector from the damaging effects of the sun, but the soil soaks up many of the vitamins that the sun provides that is able to transfer into the plant that's growing. It's pretty remarkable stuff. You'd be surprised with how much you could get carried away with learning about this stuff in preparation for a Bible study like this.

There's some interesting, really cool lectures on this and how it all works and there's one guy who lectures on this who uses the biblical model to be able to show people scientifically what happens to a seed at every stage. He goes so far as to tell us what seed Jesus may be talking about and how it characteristically behaved at that time versus how it behaves now and how it would behave on a dirt road that the Romans had built versus a tar road that we would build or a concrete road that we would build. Very interesting stuff, by the way. Really cool stuff. Nerdy stuff, but interesting nonetheless.

Guest (Male): More from the book of Mark is coming up next weekend on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This program is listener-supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.