Hidden Kingdom: Seeing What Others Miss | This is the Moment

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Kevin. Thanks for listening to our message. We strive each week to bring you relevant, practical, biblical teaching that meets you where you are. Hope you enjoy the message.

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We're continuing in our series of the parables in the Gospel of Mark. There are five of them, and today we are on number three. And uh I am uh I'm thrilled. I think that thing went off again. No, point it towards me a little bit more. I I like the flow of the shirt. If it is it on? Barely on. I wonder what's going on. Okay. We'll make it, we'll make it. Pray for me. Uh but um we have been uh we've been in the last several weeks, we've been talking about each of these parables. I jumped around a little bit because of Mother's Day last week. Uh I want to pick up, go back one of the on one of the parables, and uh it'll make sense why I think a little bit. Um if you have your Bibles, Mark chapter 4, verses 26 through 29. Mark chapter 4, verses 26 through 29. Let's see if we can't get this thing uh rocking and rolling here. Yeah, a little bit better. Um if you have if you have your Bibles with you, say amen. All right, good, good. I like it when people carry their Bibles. Uh I know, I know it's probably on your phones as well, but uh there's something about having uh something about having your Bible with you, I think. Uh Mark chapter 4. And he also said, what a what an interesting way to st to start a sentence, right? And he also said, this is what the kingdom of God is like. Remember, we're talking about secrets of the kingdom of God. And Jesus is talking to multitudes of people at this point, and he said, This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground night and day, whether that man, whether he sleeps or gets up, that seed sprouts and grows, though the man doesn't know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head, and as soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come. Only the Gospel of Mark records this parable. It's sort of forgotten by Bible scholars. They they kind of ignore it, they don't understand why Mark even put it in there. As a matter of fact, Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark to write their Gospels. So Mark was the first gospel, and and they they used Mark as kind of maybe a uh a reminder, it's Mark's smaller, shorter, and and uh not in height, but in book length. And and so they, Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their gospels. They didn't include this one. It's kind of forgotten. It's it's hidden because it's really only a few verses. But I have to tell you, as I was looking at this parable, I found these four verses fascinating this week. And I hope you will agree with me by the end of the message. Two weeks ago, I started talking about the sower and the soil. If you remember that, the focus was what on the parable was on the sower, how the sower scatters seeds, and it depends on the where those seeds land and the soil if they take root. And we we talked about all the things about the soil. The word for that wet day was just keep on sowing. You keep on sowing because you never know where that seed's gonna fall. You never know when when that seed is gonna take root in someone's life. Never give up. Keep on sowing. And then last week we talked about the plant, the mustard seed, and how it grows into a wide-reaching, influential uh plant. There's the impact of that. But I skipped this parable and I want to go back to it because I think it's so powerful. This is not about the plant. It's not about the sower. It's not really about the farmer who sows that it's not about the soil. This parable is about what the seed does in the soil. This parable, if those of you who are who are uh love to plant and garden, and this parable is not a botany lesson, all right? If you look at it, you're gonna say, if a farmer did that, he would not have a good crop. Okay, so this is not about botany, this is about theology. And it's a secret, as as uh Jesus says, it's a secret to the kingdom that we need to understand. So, you want to hear a secret? All right, here we go. The first thing, first thing I see in this parable are the words, he also said. Two weeks ago, Jesus said to the crowd, and then he talks about the parable of the sower and the seed. And then it seems like in the Gospel of Mark that the disciples and Jesus get alone. It's probably a different time, because he goes and talks one-on-one with the disciples, and he talks about a light of a lamp that shouldn't be hidden, but it needs to shine. Some of you remember uh singing, uh, hide it under a bushel. No, I'm gonna let it shine. You remember that song? Yeah, yeah, okay, got it. Four people do. But and it talks, he talks real quick to the disciples, but then he comes back, and that's why I noticed that that first word, the first words, and he also said, So it goes back to Jesus teaching in the boat, and he's and and I think that's important because the shift from inside outside to inside, back to outside, Jesus was teaching in public, and then he shifted into a small group where he could explain the parable. That's why life groups are so important, and small groups, discussion times where we can talk about the scripture is so important. But then Jesus goes back to the public teaching. And the reason that's interesting to me is because if you noticed in this text, that's the flow of the seed in the soil. I think that Mark is using some poetry here. The sower, it's it says the sower, once the sower plants the seed, the sower sleeps and rises. It's night and day. And then the seed sprouts and grows. And the point that Jesus is making is there is a normal rhythm of everyday life that unfolds for the sower and the seed. Catch this. So far, so far, the sower, which Jesus is a sower because he was spreading the seed, but he tells us the seed, he tells us the parable because we are the sower as well. And when we sow the seed of the gospel, we're we're fulfilling the mission of Jesus. We're working with Jesus to spread his word. When you're spreading hope to a neighbor, when you're spreading joy of what of what it means to walk with Christ, you're spreading the transformation that takes place when you give your life to Christ. If, if you're, if, if you, whether it's a neighbor or whether you're uh coaching or whether you're working or with family or friends, every every ounce of who you are, you're spreading that seed. Our mission here at Water's Edge is we are a church that is on mission with Jesus. You see, we we don't create mission. We sow with Jesus. We are on mission with Jesus. That that's the mission of this church, to get in line with what Jesus is doing. That's the mission of a church. On mission with Jesus, to proclaim the good news, to restore hope, and to make disciples. You see, the seed, it's working. It's working. You may not see it working, I may not see it working. I may go home on a Friday and say, I don't think anything is going right at the church. But the seed is working. The seed is working. And then the text says, but the sower doesn't know how the seed is working. We don't understand how the seed is working. We don't even know if it is working. You see, the shift goes away from the sower. I love this. Pay attention to this, especially for those of you who have a spouse that's not walking with Christ or a family or a friend. Pay attention to this. The sower doesn't know how the seed is working. We don't understand how the seed is working. But it's not about you. It's about the seed, it's about the soil in which it is planted. And so the story now shifts to the seed. The second thing, the scripture says, and all by itself, it grows. For those of you who have a garden or grew up on a farm, you know that the seed does not grow all by itself. Try planting a garden and then coming back two months later and trying to find your tomatoes or green beans or cucumbers. You will have a total mess. You have to weed the garden. You have to pick ripe fruits. You have to water the garden. So the point of this parable, again, is not botany. It is not gardening on a YouTube video. That's this is not the point of this parable. It's not a science parable. This parable is how the kingdom of God works. And the kingdom is like no other garden that we have known. If if my garden at home would be like this garden, I would plant a garden every year. I break up some ground and throw some seed on the ground. That's not the hard part of gardening. The hard part of gardening is when it's 95 degrees out at eight o'clock in the morning and the sun is beating on you, and you're pulling weeds and the mosquitoes are all over you. That's the bad part about, in my opinion. What do I know? I think I had a garden three times. This is about how the kingdom works. The kingdom is like no other garden. Because the seeds that we spread, you and I, the sower, we don't have to worry about it or tend to those seeds because it's not up to you. We just get in mission with Jesus and we just plant wherever we go. We just spread the seed wherever we go. I hope that's encouraging to you. It was so encouraging to me this week as I as I came to think about this. It's, I hope it's encouraged to those of you who are praying for someone to come to Jesus and it doesn't look like it's happening. Just sow the seed. Just get on mission with Jesus. Because the kingdom's garden doesn't require you to worry about it. It doesn't require you to fret about it. It doesn't require you to hit it, hit that person every day with a Bible verse. It doesn't require you to nag someone or beg someone or leave tracks around the house or around the office so someone finds them. What's required of us? Sow the seed. Just sow the seed. Let the fruit of the spirit overflow from your life and just sow the seed. Sow love. Sow joy, peace, sow confidence and faithfulness. Just let your light shine. Just sow. The focus of this parable is not on the sower. I'm so thankful for that. Praise God. It's on the seed and the soil that is working, according to Jesus, while you're sleeping. While you're working, while you're loving people, while you're being nice to people, while you're praying. The third thing. I love this part of this parable. Surprise. The earth reproduces of itself. The growth of what you have sown is not your win. It's the kingdom win. It's the kingdom's win. And it happens in God's timing. And it's God's gift. So what does this parable teach us? Where does it leave us, this teaching of Jesus? What's our role in all of this? We sow the life of Jesus into the world. Be like Jesus. Julie's teaching a small group right now on Wednesday nights, and it is think like Jesus, think like Jesus. Be like the second one is be like Jesus. And the third one is think, be, and I just ordered them this week. Think, be, and do, or something like that. What is it? Act. Act like Jesus. Um that that's our role. That's our role. And you won't get it right all the time, but our role is just to live a different kind of life. We we live a life that is, we're all in for Jesus. We love, we serve, we pray, we connect with others, we prioritize differently. We use our screens differently. We spend our money differently. We give differently. Why? Because we're spreading the love of God and the message of God. That's our life. And there is a there's a sense of urgency that comes in this parable at harvest time. You know, it it it's kind of like the farmer is just, he lets it go. He goes to sleep. It sounds like he can go on vacation, he can, you know, he can go down to the local diner because the seed is just growing. But then this sense of urgency comes in when it's harvest time. Prior to that, he sowed and he just waited. I'm thinking of different movies uh at this point. It's a movie that you're watching and you want the couple to fall in love. But there is this slow burning romance where you know that they're gonna fall in love, but they haven't fallen in love yet. You gotta think of some movies in your your mind. For me, and again, pardon my age. Uh, I think of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks and You've Got Mail. All through the movie, you're you know they're gonna fall in love. You just want them to kiss. Or how about this? This is one of Lisa and uh my favorite movies, while you were sleeping with Sandra Bullock. Do you know that one? You should go, yeah. If you haven't watched that one, that's that you know that you want them to fall in love, right? Or if we even go back a little bit further, when Harry met Sally is another one. You you know that the movies are ramping up to this urgency, and there's an impatience in you as you're watching this movie. You want it to happen. What this parable illustrates is that it's the swift moment that we don't understand how it happens, and we can't explain it. But it happens. We we we we we anticipate it happen, we, but we don't know when it's gonna happen. We don't know if it's gonna happen. We we don't, and then all of a sudden it's surprised. Someone, someone says, I want to follow Jesus. That's the urgency. Someone says, I I have some questions about the faith. I want to give my life to Christ. And you think, whoa, I've been praying for that. Or maybe somebody you've prayed for for years and years and years, and and and and they they they see you and you haven't seen them forever, and they say, Hey, I hear that we're brothers in Christ. Or, hey, I hear that you're my sister in Christ. I had phone calls many years ago from a high school friend of mine, and uh I answered the phone, and he was living in Oswego, and he said, Hey, Eric, um, you called me Livingston. Hey, Livingston, yeah. This is John Baker. Hey, John, how are you? I'm fine. Hey, we're brothers, and I just called to tell you. Just boom. Just a moment. You think, wow, when did when did that happen? What this parable illustrates is that moment that we don't understand and we can't explain it, but someone says, I'm in. In a memoir of Rosaria Butterfield, she writes in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. I put that up there in case any of you want to read the book. She never imagined herself ever becoming a Christian. She was a respected English teacher at Syracuse University, brilliant, articulate, deeply immersed in feminist theology, theory, and the LGBTQ activism. She despised Christianity, especially conservative Christianity. It represented everything that she distrusted. To her, the church was intellectually weak, politically dangerous, personally offensive. She wasn't searching for God, she wasn't attending church, she had nothing to do with the church. Here's the other thing: she wasn't dissatisfied with her life either. She was very successful. In many ways, you would look at her career and you would say, Man, she is thriving. In the early 90s, Rosario wrote an article criticizing Christians, specifically the organization Promise Keepers. After she wrote this article, letters began to flood in, and people were just cursing at her, and some were so angry, and they were condemning her, and some were dismissive, and you don't know what you're talking about. And she threw the letters away, but there was one letter that was different. It was a letter from a local pastor. His name was Ken Smith, and he wrote her. And he said, he wrote this letter, and it wasn't about attacking her or to or trying to fix her. He wasn't trying to win an argument against her. He simply asked her if she would be willing to meet he and his wife for dinner. Surprisingly, she said yes. And that dinner turned into many dinners. Around the table, Rosaria encountered something that she didn't expect. Christians who listened carefully and they spoke thoughtfully and they asked honest questions and they treated her with dignity. They didn't reduce her to a debate. The meals were not about them proving her right. She was not a project of this pastor and his wife. They welcomed her into their home. And slowly, slowly, almost against her will, her assumptions began to crack. She later said that before she became a Christian, look at this before she became a Christian, the church. Had felt to her like a community with locked doors. But this family opened their door again and again. And eventually Rosaria began reading the Bible, not devotionally. She wasn't reading it for devotions, but she was reading it academically. She approached it as a scholar. She thought she was studying the text, and then something happened that she couldn't explain. Notice the seed is working. The text began studying her. The words of Scripture unsettled her spirit, and the claims of Jesus confronted her. And she found herself wrestling with questions that she could no longer dismiss. She started asking herself, what if this is true? What if Jesus really is Lord? What if God is holy? What if grace is real? And the deeper she read, the more conflicted in her spirit she became. Because if Christianity were true, for her, it would not simply require a minor adjustment to life. If Christianity were true, it would reorder everything in her life. It would reorder her identity, her relationships, her worldview, her future. Do you see what's happening in her life? The seed is working. People who had who had dropped the seeds in her life, they didn't know what was going on. This pastor and his wife, I wonder if they ever said, I don't, I don't know, I wonder if this is worth it. But they kept on sowing. And the seed was working. She described those years that she was struggling in this as painful to her. Conversion for her was not easy. It wasn't a sentimental thing. It felt like she was losing control of the story that she had written for herself. She wrestled like this for two years. And then one day she surrendered her life to Christ. Not because she lost an argument. Not because someone shamed her. Not because Christianity suddenly became culturally comfortable for her. But because she became convinced the message of Jesus was true. And that truth changed everything. Rosario would later say that one of the greatest instruments God used in her conversion was ordinary Christian hospitality. A table, a meal, and a home that was open to her in the name of Jesus. A pastor and his wife made room for someone very different from themselves. They embodied the gospel before they explained it. My friend, we would do well with that. I'm going to say it again. They embodied the gospel before they explained the gospel. They loved patiently, they listened carefully, and they trusted the Holy Spirit to do what the Spirit and only the Spirit can do. And through these countless conversations and shared meals, God drew this skeptical professor to himself. This story is a reminder to me that the kingdom advances not first through a platform. The kingdom advances not behind a pulpit or a performance. The kingdom of God advances through faithful presence of you and me just being Jesus to people. A dinner table, a listening ear. You see, grace showing grace often enters very quietly. And sometimes the people we expect least to meet Jesus are the very people that he's already drawing unto himself. So I have a question for you today. I want to invite four or five people who have made a commitment to follow Jesus already. Would you just come up and stand in front of me? Just four or five people, just real quick. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gotcha. Yep. Good. Okay? Just kind of stand right and face me. Face me. I want to ask you: have each of you made a decision to follow Jesus? Okay. You sprouted. And in this story, the farmer, the farmer, he took a sickle and pew. Now you belong to him, right? You belong to him. You still continue to grow, but that's a different part of the message. You sprouted, someone sowed in your life. The seed went to work in your life. And it sprouted. And one day, one day, each of you said yes to Jesus. Would you kind of spread out just a little bit, a little bit more? Just a little bit more here. Don't block my fan. Okay. What I'm going to ask is if there is someone today that is feeling like this is your day to join these other plants that have said yes, I wanted you to know you are not alone. Have you ever wondered like if a flower, once that flower breaks out and it sees other flowers, it's like, oh, oh, this feels good. I'm not alone. Look how beautiful the other flowers are. Look, I'm not alone. But before that flower busts open, I wonder what's going on. And it's I know they don't have minds, but you know what I'm saying. It's like, is there a fear of like, oh, this is uncomfortable? And you're like, oh. Bam. That seems beautiful. A little loud, a little loud at the beginning. Especially that glorious day when you ran out of that grave. I want you to know if this is your day to break through the ground, you're not alone. I want you to know that you won't walk alone, you won't pray alone, you won't have to grow alone. Because these beautiful plants and others, they're going to stand with you. And they're going to keep you strong in storms. And that they're going to lift you up in times when you when you don't know what to do. And they will teach you how to lean into Jesus and how it's not up to you to work harder and harder and harder and try harder and harder to be good. But you just you just allow that soil to work in your life and you bust through the ground. Jeremy, would you would you come on up, buddy? I want to ask, I want to ask if if anybody today, and this is a little bit different and maybe a little bit brassy, but I it I want you just, I want the ground to break through today. I just wondered if there's one or two people that would say, This is this is my day. This is the day that I'm gonna say publicly, I want to say yes to following Christ. I'm gonna ask you to stand. I'm gonna pray. And then I'm gonna ask if anybody would like to join these six individuals. We're just gonna pray with you. I'm gonna I'll lead you in a prayer. And uh Father, I pray that your spirit would move in this place and that this, if if this is the moment, if it is, that that individual would burst through the soil and say, I'm his. He is mine, everything I am, everything I'm not, everything I've got, I'm his. If you feel like today is that day for you, would you just step forward? Anybody at all? Not gonna carry it out long or anything like that. I just want to know, is is it someone's day that says today is the day I'm following Christ? Today's the day. Anyone at all? You won't be alone. The seed is working. People have sowed into your life. Today's a day that you can break through the soil and say yes to Jesus. The worship team, you guys can come on up. Thank you, Father, for the spirit is moving in this place. As we continue now in worship, may the spirit continue to have his way. This is your time to work in our lives. In Jesus' name.

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Amen.

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