Now if you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 4 verse 21 through 34 as
we look at three parables that the Lord has given to His disciples and to us.
And as we look at these disciples, we need to take into account the world that we live
in.
And as we look up here, I can tell you what they mean.
I think what's really important is we look at these parables, then we look at the world
around us and what's in our hearts about the Kingdom of God.
And I dare say that there's a lot of people who, well, they're either suspicious about
what goes on in the Kingdom of God or they don't trust what's going to happen.
First reasons, current events, personal experiences, but let's look and see what Jesus says about
His Kingdom.
He said to them, do not bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or bed.
Instead, don't you put it on the stand for whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed
and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.
If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.
Consider carefully what you hear, He continued, with the measure used, it will be measured
to you and even more.
Whoever has will be given more.
Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.
He also said, this is what the Kingdom of God is like, a man scatters seed on the ground.
Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does
not know how.
All by itself, the soil produces grain, first the stalk, then the head, and then the full
kernel in the head.
As soon as the grain is right, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come.
Again he said, what shall we say the Kingdom of God is like or what parables shall we use
to describe it?
It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seeds on earth.
That when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big
branches that the birds can perch in its shade.
And with many similar parables, Jesus spoke the words to them as much as they could understand.
He did not say anything to them without using a parable, and when he was alone with his
own disciples, he explained everything.
Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading of his word.
Our Heavenly Father, we ask now that you inform our minds, move our hearts, so that
we will be your followers.
Help us to see your grace in all of this and your mercy.
I make this prayer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Now back in the glory years of the FSU Miami rivalry, national championships were often
determined by that game.
And for years, Florida State had a little bit of a problem, wide, wide, wide left.
And here's what one of the football players said from the FSU.
When we play Miami, we think we can win.
They know they can win.
Now what's he saying there?
He's saying the difference is not about physical ability, it's what's inside of us, the confidence
that we have in what we can do.
Now that is true in a lot of fields of endeavor.
It's true for the Olympians that we see.
It may be true for the businessmen as well or the teacher.
But it is also true in the kingdom of God.
It's what's going on inside of us.
And let me tell you, what is it that retards the growth of the kingdom of God?
It's often our own dispositions, the way we think and feel about what's going on in the
kingdom of God.
And you have people today who go to church, but they're just not concerned about the kingdom
of God.
It's something that is done out of repetition.
They do it because their parents did it.
They have come to put on a show so that they look like good people.
And this is true of people who say they're Christians, but they're really nominal Christians
because there is no desire for the kingdom of God.
It's like in education.
You can do all the fancy tricks of learning on computers, but yet if a child doesn't have
a heart to learn, he's not going to learn and truly love to learn.
Well, today, we want to look at three parables, three parables which expose what is going
on in our hearts and the reason we do not want to see the kingdom of God grow.
We're going to look at the problem and then what we need to think about.
So let's begin here with enemy number one that retards the growth of the church.
Apathy.
That's one big enemy that we have that can be within sight of us.
I remember growing up in high school.
We had pep rallies.
And you know, after about the third or fourth pep rally of the season, everybody's just
doing the same thing, rah, rah, all that stuff.
And what was the complaint?
You guys are apathetic.
Apathy can be true of the Christian too.
And that word apathy means lack of emotion, lack of interest, lack of a passion for something.
And one of the darknesses of our life can be a lack of passion.
This is what Helen Keller said.
Science may have found it cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of
them all.
The apathy of human beings.
There's an inscription on a Roman tombstone like this.
I was not.
I was.
I was not.
I don't care.
See that I don't care?
That's apathy for you.
And we think about why bad things happen.
It is often because people don't care enough to do anything about it.
You hear it with such words as these.
It's not my job.
Let somebody else do it.
I can't get involved.
I have other priorities.
Those are really other ways of saying you're really apathetic.
And when it comes to the church world, do you think we can have those attitudes too?
The church needs to get bigger, but it's not my job.
We need to do evangelism.
That's a pastor's job.
But notice what it says here.
It talks about being the salt and the light.
That doesn't seem very apathetic to me.
There's a Baptist evangelist named Bailey Smith.
He said, this is the last commandment of the church.
You heard of the 10 commandments.
He said, I guess this is the 11th commandment.
Thou shalt be seated because you're just sitting there.
And there's no desire to do anything.
And let me tell you the great darkness this can bring about.
Martin E. Mahler, he was a German Protestant during World War II in Nazi Germany.
And here's what he said.
In Germany, they first came for the communists.
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews.
But I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak up.
Next they came for the trade unionists.
But I wasn't a trade unionist.
So I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the Catholics.
But I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me.
But by that time, there was no one left to speak up.
There you see what apathy can do.
It's like being the frog who gets caught in the water and the heat is turned up after
a while.
You can't do anything apathy.
It's all around us.
And when you think of the church and the culture we find ourselves in, there's a lot of apathetic
people out there.
The great danger is that it creeps into our midst.
And when we think of what this parable says, I want you to notice what verses 21 through
23 says.
It talks about brightness.
It says, don't bring in a lamp and put it under a bowl or a bed.
Instead, don't you put it on a stand for whatever is hidden, is meant to be disclosed, and whatever
is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.
If anyone has ears, let them hear.
Now there's a debate here.
What is this brightness, this light referring to?
Some say it's referring to Jesus.
But if you look at other passages in the New Testament, it's referring to the Christian.
You are the light.
You are the one who's not to hide your beliefs, your actions, your attitudes.
You are the one who is to be out in the world, showing the world the way to Christ.
And here's the point.
Here's what he's getting at.
If you really are the light, and that light has some heat to it, you cannot be apathetic.
And listen to what Paul says in Ephesians.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light.
In the Lord live as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness,
righteousness, and truth.
And what is this world need today?
People who are wholeheartedly committed to the Word of God and to the kingdom of God.
There was a survey done of business majors and colleges.
By a two to one ratio, they said business is corrupt.
But for a Christian, there shouldn't be corruption.
We should fight against that sort of thing.
He's got to be passionate, not apathetic.
Nominal Christians are the ones who just don't care, but the Christian, they're the ones
who do care.
Think of it this way.
Years and years ago in New Orleans, all the lifeguards got together.
Why?
Because they had their first summer in quite a while in which there were no drownings in
public pools.
So there was like a hundred plus lifeguards and officials there and they were eating and
they were having a good time.
And as the party was breaking up, guess what they found in the deep end of one of the pools?
Someone had drowned.
Our passion should not be just about parties, but is what God has called us to.
As Whitfield, the famous evangelist from a different century said, I don't want to
get our rust out.
I'd rather burn out.
And that is a good motto for those of us at the Christian church.
Enemy number one, it's apathy.
But here's another enemy that we can find here.
It is impatience.
Patience is the mark of the world.
We don't have any patience.
That's what the world is like and I want you to think about all that we like.
There is now a minute right.
You've got minute oats, minute made.
You can have fast food, fast cars.
Fast.
Quickly.
Get everything in a minute and in the church it can be the exact same thing.
Do you realize at one time there was a church in Pensacola and it was considered the fast
church.
My 20 minute worship services.
The newspaper did an interview and here's what people said.
That I can go and I can get to the golf course quickly.
Hmm.
20 minute worship services.
We want it quick.
We want it over with.
We're impatient.
Sort of like the person who said in his prayer, dear God, I pray for you.
Pray for patience and I want it now.
That is not how the kingdom of God works.
It takes time and patience on the other hand is the mark of the kingdom.
And how do we see that in this parables here?
Well, look at verse 27.
It's talking about a farmer and it says night and day whether he sleeps or gets up, the
seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how all by itself the soil produces grain.
And what's he talking about here?
Well, a farmer does do certain things.
He's got to plant the seed, but the actual growth of the crop, well, that's not his control.
He may go days and nights waiting and waiting and waiting.
The farmer must be patient so that the earth takes its course.
And I guess it's the same with fishing too.
Hope you're patient if you go fishing.
Sometimes you may be in that boat or buy that pier for quite a while.
Here though, we have to wait on the word of God in the church of Jesus Christ.
We have to wait on God's timing.
I want you to think for example of a saint from the past, Augustine.
His mother prayed for him for years and years and years.
And Augustine had a sinful lifestyle, but one day those prayers were answered.
Why do we have to be patient because of God's grace?
What does it say?
In the Bible in 2 Peter it says God is patient, not wishing anyone to perish.
Patience.
Patience is a virtue of the kingdom of God.
So if I encourage you today, it would be this.
Be patient with what God is doing here.
Don't be apathetic.
We don't know what God is up to.
We do know what we are called to do and that is to labor for his kingdom.
And there is one more enemy that this passage exposes.
Skepticism.
Skepticism is also a mark of the non-believer.
Look at what's going on in the world.
What are we skeptical about?
For years the UN was supposed to wrote peace.
Has it done it?
No.
People today are skeptical about all of our institutions, whether it is the Supreme Court,
government, business, skepticism, skepticism, skepticism.
And why are we skeptical?
Because we can all see the failures, can't we?
We can see the people who promise to be good and righteous and upright and then what happens?
We see them fail and not live up to their promises.
And even in the Christian church there are ministers who will say, oh I'm for the people,
but yet they're ripping off the church or they're a bunch of philanders.
Right now in Dallas you've had about five or six mega churches where the head pastors
had to step down.
Why?
Because of infidelity.
And it would be easy for us to get skeptical over all of this.
And maybe at Warren DeCourts of the Church you could get skeptical too.
Little resources.
People don't change like we want them to.
When we look at our church in comparison to other churches we may say what's the use?
Notice what Jesus compares the kingdom of God to, a mustard seed in one of his parables
here.
A mustard seed which is so small.
It seems weak.
You could put 180,000 seeds in a pillow box.
But yet what happens to that mustard seed after a while?
It grows and grows and grows and becomes a very large plant.
And when you think of the way that God works, that's how he works.
I want you to think of the people of God for instance, it started out with Father Abraham
who couldn't have children so that he has one child and after years and years there's
more of the people of God.
They become a small nation.
Then there's the exile.
And then we get to the New Testament where there's just a handful of disciples but what
happens?
Christianity spreads out and now it's all over the world.
And in the United States you may say, oh, it's not growing but around the world it's
growing alright.
And we who have now become a tune to cross-cultural events and what's going on in the world, you
need to be looking at what the Christian church is doing all over the place.
Oh, it's growing alright because it's like a mustard seed.
And we think of our own church.
We don't know what God's sovereign plan is but we do know he uses smallness and he increases
the weak and the small.
In 1947 there was a professor of astrophysics.
He lived in Milwaukee but he was going to commute to Chicago to teach a graduate level
course on astrophysics.
You know how many people signed up for the course?
Two.
He was discouraged.
Yet those two students went on to win Nobel prizes.
Was it worth it?
I'd say so.
I should have been skeptical about it and we should not be skeptical about the kingdom
of God because here's what you don't understand.
God's sovereignty and wisdom is greater than our understanding and if we look at his track
record in history it shows his kingdom is growing and it's coming and it is here in
the midst of us.
So let me ask you, are you apathetic?
Be apathetic because you don't trust God and his grace.
Are you skeptical?
It could be because you don't trust God and his grace.
God wants his people to trust him and to labor for his kingdom and the key to doing that is
to never ever forget who our God is.
And that's exactly the reason you're here today.
To hear it over and over again, to pound it into our minds and our souls.
This is our God and we serve him wholeheartedly.
Let's pray.
Our Heavenly Father, we ask now our Lord and our God that you will be with your people
to invigorate us, to labor for your kingdom, to not be skeptical of the local church, but
to love the people of God and to labor for it.
I make this prayer in his name.
Amen.