The Kingdom of God is Like... Part One

The Kingdom of God is Like… Sowing Seeds

In this first episode entitled, The Kingdom of God is Like…, I'm talking about understanding the value of God’s word and how the kingdom of God works in our lives. Using the parable of the Sower and the Seeds, this lesson depicts and creates a picture of how the kingdom of heaven works, especially concerning sowing the seeds of God's Word in our hearts if we desire a fruitful Christian life. Natural laws are used as examples of spiritual truths and laws.  Without understanding of this parable, Jesus said, "How can we understand all other parables?" Mark 4:13.  This is an important and foundational lesson.  

Important verses to have as you listen: Mark 4:1-9, 13-20,  John 6:63 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, this is John Strazza. Welcome to the Sower's Seeds podcast.

: 0:21

Today it's a special episode that we're calling The Kingdom of God is like dot, dot, dot, and those, dot, dot, dots means there's more to come. So we're talking about The Kingdom of God is Like, and um, we're going to be spending some time in Mark 4... where Jesus is talking about the parable of the sower. Um, but this goes beyond just the parable of the sower, this is a foundational teaching and it depicts how the kingdom of God works. You may hear the words, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven in the scriptures, and it's the same thing. Or at least for our purposes today, it's the same thing. We're talking about a spiritual kingdom where our God lives and is surrounded by a heavenly host of angels. And just this amazing place that we find it hard to even picture, understand and full.

Speaker 2: 1:27

But the kingdom of God came first. Anything that you see in this world or in or whether it comes to the land or mountains or trees or people or anything, that was created. And anything that's physical, was created by the spiritual, and God's word is spiritual, and he functions in spirit. He is spirit. It says they that worship the Lord must worship him in spirit and truth, because God is a spirit- and we have to understand that that's a foundational thing and Jesus uses the parable of the sower to start showing us with natural examples like farming and seeds, ground and all these things. He's teaching us spiritual laws by showing us natural laws. One being, if we sow a seed in the ground, what happens? And he goes through a pretty lengthy description of a sower who goes out and sows seeds. And we're going to go over this in more detail. I actually want to get into something in front of that, but I want you to know that we will be talking about the parable of the sower. But he's showing foundational truths that are so critical that really, brothers and sisters, without it, you're gonna m iss an awful lot of how the kingdom of God works. That's why I called this one, The Kingdom of God is Like, a nd he even starts one off by saying, the kingdom of God is like a man who does this and the kingdom of God is is like a sower who goes out. He's, he's showing us that this is how the kingdom works and that's really important. It's important for you as a natural person who g rew up in a natural world, who has now become born again, which is a spiritual experience to understand how the spiritual kingdom in your life works. We're also talking about the word of God here when we're talking about a sower who's going out and sowing seeds, we're talking about God's word because when Jesus tells us about this parable of the sower and what what's going on, he's saying he's, he's sowing seeds. Those seeds are the word. So that's really important for you to know. So we will get to the, the sour and the seeds in a minute. Um, but there's, there's a verse in Mark for us. I want you to get your Bibles out and you should know that this parable was given in Matthew chapter 13 and Luke chapter 8 and we are in Mark chapter 4. All three depict this, this story and this example. And each one brings out some different details. I'm using Mark because there's a, there's a important statement that Jesus makes in here that he just not making the other two. And it's a key point to what we're going to talk about in this particular episode. I don't think this is going to be a one episode teaching. I think we're going to go two or three and maybe even more that I want you to really understand that this is a critical teaching for every believer to understand. And if you understand it, everything else shifts and changes for the better. It's, it's, it will clarify your Christian walk and your relationship with God and his word. Okay. So this is one of those lessons you got to listen to very carefully and I would suggest listening to it a few times so that this just gets in you. So anyway, if you get your Bibles and you want to look at all this with me, uh, we are in Mark chapter 4. I've introduced already to you that this is a foundational teaching and that we're going to be talking about the parable of the sower. And we're also going to be talking about the parable of the seed, which starts in verse 26 but before we even get to that, and I'm not even sure we're going to get to that too deeply in this episode, um, there is something that I have to bring about that I think just goes in one ear and out the other often... that's what this parable is about, by the way, the word going in one ear and out the other. In some cases... not at all, but that is certainly part of what this, uh, parable is about. But in verse 13, we see something happening here. Jesus had already the parable and to make a setting here, to set the stage a little bit, Jesus actually was on the beach here and saw a huge crowd coming. So he got on a boat and went out a little ways and had the boat anchored there so he could just turn and face the people who are on, on the coastline there. And it was a massive crowd. It was huge. And so he's talking to a lot of people and he knows that this is one of the most important teachings that he's going to give and He goes through the parable and the people didn't understand it. That was often the case. When Jesus gave a parable, did the people just didn't really understand it, and they didn't. And his own disciples. And you can see in verse 10 look at Mark 4 and verse 10 now this is really something you you've got to look at and see and take in. It says, but when he was alone, this is verse 10 when he was alone, those around him with the 12 asked them about the parable. They didn't understand it. And he said something else after that. And I want you to just skip over right to verse 13 and he said, and he said to them,"do you not understand this parable?" That was a question. So do you not understand this parable? And then he says this, and look at this. This is shocking."How then will you understand all the parables?" And what he was saying was, if you don't understand this parable, how would you understand any other? That's how foundational this is. He's saying, how would you understand all the parables, meaning any other that he would give? Because he said you won't understand the others unless you understand this one. And when I say this is foundational and necessary and important, believe me, Jesus right here is saying it,"if you don't understand this one, the others are going to be troublesome." You're not going to get it. So that is a key thing. When I saw that scripture, it really hit me hard to say, man, you've got to understand what he's saying here because I'm not going to understand a lot of other things if I don't. That's how foundational it is. So again, uh, I'll read that thing again. He says in chapter, sorry, chapter 4 verse 13 of Mark. And he said to them,"do you not understand this powerful? How then will you understand all or any other parable?" So that is a key key point in this teaching this morning, that this is just something that is so basic to your Christian life and it's not something you want to put a small amount of value on. You want to put a high degree of value on this. Okay. So that's, that's just laying just some groundwork and we're talking about the laws of the kingdom of God. There's the natural laws and there's spiritual laws. So first law that you have to understand here, and Jesus is just trying to bring that about, is that the kingdom of God is a spirit realm. It's spiritual, it's not physical. And we are made in three parts. We have our physical man, we have our soul and we have our spirit. And when we're born again, it's our spirit that was made new. And we have to understand that. And when we are talking about anything to do with the Lord, it's spirit because he is spirit. I want you to skip over, right now, just hold Mark 4 there. And I want you to see something that Jesus said. In John, because again, he was trying to to show his disciples that, that this is a spiritual thing that we're dealing with here where our life, spiritual life. So in John chapter 6, we have an amazing verse. It's, it's, it's verse 63. John six 63 remember that? That's one of those verses you're just g onna w ant t o remember. And Jesus is talking to the disciples and he's saying"it is the spirit who gives life the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life." He's saying that his very words, are spirit. That's amazing. And I want to say too, even though he says the flesh profits nothing, he really means in regards to what he's saying here, the flesh isn't going to give you spiritual understanding. He's not saying that your body is, is worth nothing and that you're nothing. That that would be a poor way to look at things. God created your body. He created this natural realm. It's perfect and it's important to him. So he doesn't devalue it. He's not devaluing here. He's simply in comparison to somebody trying to understand God, but they're just their own natural mind. Their natural mind is going to profit them Nothing. That's what he's saying here. He said, this is spirit and he said, it's the spirit who gives life, your real life. This kind of when you were born again, that's life. You're born again spirit became alive. When you receive Christ, the spiritual thing happened and that's important because he's talking. When we go back to the parable of the Sower, you're seeing that we're going to be sowing seeds and those seeds are going to grow a crop and it's a spiritual crop right inside of you. That's just what we're talking about here. You're a new creature and you're going to be bearing fruit and that fruit is going to come from the seeds that are sound into your heart, so this is critical and that's why Jesus is here. This is why this verse in John 6: 63 is so critical. He's saying that the words he speaks our spirit and those words are seeds. You will see that when we go back to the, there's the sower and the seeds. So keep that in your heart. That God's Word is spirit and truth. It gives life. It bears fruit. It transforms our life from the inside out. So what we want to do, we want to put value in God's word. We want to understand how God's word works. The kingdom way, God's way. It's like the sower going out and sowing seeds, and those seeds are God's word. So we're going to look at that. I'm going to read this, the parable, now, I'm not going to go way into it right now, but I am going to read it. Um, so just go right back to the beginning of a Mark 4 and we're going to look at this.

: 13:10

And he began to teach again by the sea. And such a very large crowd gathered to him and he got into a boat and the sea and sat down and the whole crowd was by the sea on the land. And he was teaching them with many teachings and parables and was saying to them in his teaching, listen to this. And you know, folks in verse three there, he starts out by saying,"listen to this, behold"... He was placing value on this.

Speaker 2: 13:38

Everything he said was incredibly valued, but he points out here,"listen to this." You know when somebody sits you down and says"I want you to listen." They're saying that this is really, really important. So,"listen to this, behold the sower went out to sow and as he was sowing some seeds fell by the road and the birds came and ate it up. And other seeds fell on Rocky ground where it didn't have much soil. And immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of the soil. And after the sun had risen, it was scorched. And because it had no root in it, it withered away. Other seed fell among the thorns and the thorns came up and choked it and it yielded no crop. Other seeds fell on good soil and as they grew up and increased the yield did a crop and produced 30 and 60 and a hundred fold. And he was saying he who has ears to hear, let him hear." Now that's just the parable in and of itself. And again, after he spoke this parable, they pulled him aside and asked, you know... What is it? What, what are we talking about here? What does this parable mean? And he's, and he says, if you don't understand you, do you not understand this? Do you not understand what I'm saying? And if you don't, how will you understand anything else? That's what he's saying in verse 13 how would you understand any other parable? So what he's saying is you've got to take these words that I just showed you, this example of a sower going out and sowing seeds. And you've got to understand what happens to people in the world in which we live, when those seeds are sown in their hearts. So the explanation he was started to give them was that the parable itself was about a sower sowing seeds. And the seeds are the word of God. This is the word of God. You need to know that God's word functions like a seed. And this is one place where I thought I would say one of the conditions or problems, issues I see in the church at large... that's a common thing is, you know, we'll go to a meeting, we might go to conferences. It's very common for people to go to conferences today and they, they go and hear something and it's really great and they're excited. Or they'll be spending time alone with God and they'll read a scripture and they just know the Lord put that scripture in their mind and they're excited about that too. And they might even share,"Oh, the Lord was showing me something!" But what they don't understand, and this is why Jesus said, if you don't understand this parable, how will you understand anything else... Is that the word of God functions like a seed and your heart functions like soil. And when you receive or read or hear something that you know is just good for you to hear in the word of God, you have to allow that seed to stay in place and grow. It needs to be watered and nurtured. But what happens, and this parable points this out, is it all sorts of things get in the way and basically those things are either a hardened heart that doesn't really find itself sensitive to God's word or you love God's word, but you are very distracted by your surroundings so you don't allow the word to propagate- grow- inside of you. You don't allow it to sit and be nurtured and start to grow root and start to, to grow. You know when a seed grows, most kids do this in school. They'll put seed in a shallow thing of, of soil and they'll put seeds in a deeper thing of soil and they, they notice that the shallow soil, the above ground starts to grow much more quickly, but the roots are not very deep and those plants tend to do poorly. Where in the deeper soil, what happens above ground takes more time. You don't see a sprout, it takes more time, but by the time you do see a sprout small though it may be there's a good root system. The same happens with us. It's identical. Anything you see in the natural when it comes to farming is the same thing you're going to see in the spiritual, in your life. The seed needs to grow. It needs to be put in ground where there's some depth and the depth means that there's no distractions. There's nothing taking its attention away from from that word. The Lord gives you a word of any kind in the scripture, a promise, a thought of something that you're reading, that you're going through. It needs time to develop in you. And we as Christians often wonder, why isn't my life bearing more fruit? It's because we sow seeds sometimes gladly, but we don't allow them to grow. The word needs time to grow and so he gives an explanation. It's in verse 14 again, right after he says, if you don't understand this parable, how would you understand any other? But he says, the sower sows the word. So he's basically saying the seeds are God's word and these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sound. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. And it's amazing to me that the word was actually sown in their hearts, but for one reason or another because their attention isn't on God that much. Or because their heart is not sensitive to God. Satan is right there and he takes that word away immediately. So that is one experience that, that people out there have, they hear the word of God and within seconds or a minute it's just gone. But interestingly it says it was actually still sound in their hearts. Their hearts heard it. But even at that, the heart was so shallow. And this is somebody who's really just not that sensitive to God at all. That's really that, that what kind of person that is. And you don't want to be that kind of person that we're so insensitive and uh, you know, oblivious to, to God that, that whatever you hear on the words just instantly taken away from you. It's in literally one year and out the other. Um, but it says,"and these likewise are the ones on Stony ground who when they hear the word immediately receive it with gladness and they have no root in themselves and so endure only for a time and afterwards when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they stumble." And again, this is, this is a person who's very shallow in their heart concerning the Lord. There's just no depth there and they're happy to receive God's word. It says here, they receive it with gladness, but there's just no effort or anything taken to hold onto that word. They just go on about their business. They're very shallow in heart and they stumble and fall as well. They may be believers, but they stumble and fall because there's just no root there and they don't allow the word to take root. And now this is one among thorns, verse 18"and now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things enter in and choke the word and it becomes unfruitful." Now that can be a lot of us are like this where we received the word and we have it in our hearts. And this is why I sometimes say we go to a conference or we go to a study and we hear something great, but the minute we leave that situation, we get distracted by this world one way or another, and we allow the cares of this world that that is, I think one of the more predominant issues in the church today that the cares of this world choke the fruitfulness of the word of God in our lives. It's really important that when you have the seeds of God's word sown in your heart, you want to guard that. You want to guard it against the caresof this world, the worries... you don't need to go far to be inundated with fear and worry and concern. All you need to do is turn a TV on or a radio on or just simply go to a coffee shop and listen to what people are talking about. It's, it's out there in abundance and you can't allow those things to override the word of God in your life. You have to value God's word so much so that when it's something you've read or heard or a message that you've heard that's important to you and you know God's talking to you, guard it. The scripture says to guard your heart for out of it flow the issues of life. Your heart is critically important and God's word is sown in your heart like seeds are sown and soil and if we don't allow those seeds to stay there, we tend to pull them right back out and we wonder what happened. I heard this great message, I heard this and it's just gone. We don't, we don't bear any fruit from it. This is why Jesus said,"if you don't understand this parable, how would you understand any other?" He's saying, if you don't understand the parable that says you need to allow the word of God to be sown in your heart, one, but keep it there, number two, and not let it be distracted or stolen or taken away or just sit in shallow ground. It has to sit in rich soil of your heart, which you open up your own heart and say, yes Lord, this word is in my heart and I'm going to hold it and I'm not going to let it go and I'm going to nurture it and I'm going to allow it time. I'm going to allow it to be watered. I'm going to allow it to grow and I'm going to give it time. People don't give God time to work in their lives, and in doing so, they miss out on the fruit they can be bearing in their own lives. The word of God isn't growing in their lives because we don't give a time, and that's what this parable is about. So the word becomes unfruitful because in verse 19, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and take the word and choke it. It literally chokes it right off. It chokes the life source right out of it because other things take precedence. And that's what this is about. Uh, but in verse 20 it says,"but these are the ones sown on good ground. Those who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, some 30 fold, some 60 and some a hundred." Now that's a short explanation right there. But what he's saying is accept it. It means you receive an into your heart wholeheartedly and you, you know, and understand its value. You know, a Christian's life is only going to be as fruitful as you allow it to be. And it will always be in balance with how much you value God's word. I often sometimes am amazed that I'm sitting reading and then I realize God is actually talking to me. Sometimes we can just take it in a cavalier way. So yeah, I heard some of that. I read something, it was great. You know, the Lord was talking to me and we just kind of go on about our business. We don't understand sometimes it's the God of the universe here. The creator of the entire universe is taking the time. And like David said, you know, what is man that you're mindful of him? And he's talking to us, showing us something because he loves us as individuals and he's telling us a message showing us something and we don't realize just how incredible that is, because we don't value God's word as we ought to. So this is this parable, this teaching, the value of God's word. And I'm going to leave it here for now. We're going to go on into a second episode for sure. I've gotten longer than I usually do, and we're going to get more into The Kingdom of God is Like... and how it works. And I appreciate you coming in and listening today we'll meet you next time and we will continue this message. God bless you. See you next time.

Speaker 1: 28:05

[inaudible].