Parable – from Greek paraballo (I place beside)

A parable uses a physical example from everyday life (at least everyday for the Jews who were hearing it) and compares it to something involving spiritual matters

Mark 4


The Parable of the Sower

¹Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. ²He taught them many things by parables,

[For the first time here, Jesus strings together several parables here.]

and in his teaching said: ³"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. ⁷Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. ⁸Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times."
⁹Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
¹⁰When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. ¹¹He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹²so that,
   " 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
       and ever hearing but never understanding;
   otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'^[1] "

[It's very strange that Jesus should say this. Why would he speak in such a way that the public couldn't understand him? One reason might have been that he could teach openly this way without anyone hindering him. But Jesus was also quoting a passage in Isaiah that I'd like to read.]

Isaiah 6
Isaiah's Commission
¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
⁵ "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
⁹ He said, "Go and tell this people:

" 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'
¹⁰ Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes. ^[1]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed."

¹¹ Then I said, "For how long, O Lord?"
And he answered:

"Until the cities lie ruined
and without inhabitant,
until the houses are left deserted
and the fields ruined and ravaged,
¹² until the LORD has sent everyone far away
and the land is utterly forsaken.
¹³ And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste.
But as the terebinth and oak
leave stumps when they are cut down,
so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."

[This was a prophecy of terrible things that were going to happen to Israel. Because they refused to listen to God and do his will, they were to be given over to a long period of evil and desolation. It's still a lesson for us today. There are many today who refuse to listen to the news about Christ, and yet there are some who choose to listen...a remnant. God's kingdom is everlasting.]

Paul warns in Ephesians 4

¹⁷So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

That's the way indulgence is. Paul is talking about addictions to pleasure. Living for pleasure. He warns that it can only lead to more. Our hearts become hardened and we lose sensitivity. People can become accustomed to almost any sort of behavior and it can even become an accepted part of society as we see happening with many evils today.

Back to Mark 4...
¹³Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴The farmer sows the word. ¹⁵Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.

These are the people whom Paul mentions later who harden their hearts. There are those who harden their hearts because they just refuse to listen to the word. There are those who are so entangled in evils that they can't listen to the word and there are those who are bogged down in traditions of men or those who are just going through the motions and refuse to hear all of the word about Christ.

¹⁶Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

[When that persecution comes, it can reveal those whose faith is real and those whose faith is fake or just for appearances.]

¹⁸Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

[From what I understand, goatheads (the thorny plant that's so common here in New Mexico and the southwest U.S. may have come from the Middle East area. Perhaps they even had them in Israel. Near where I live, I've seen a huge vacant lot just taken over by goatheads. There were very few other plants or weeds in the whole field. This is how the world is today. There are so many thorns that will try to choke us after we begin to follow Christ. We can get caught up in idolatry, sexual immorality, slander and all kinds of dishonesty. They are all there, thorns waiting to choke us. These thorns in life are the ones that all of us must fight every day.]

²⁰Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop--thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown."

[This is probably the parable I've heard the most. I've heard this parable many times. Is it any less important? No. Am I perfect in the way I talk to others about Jesus and sow the seed? No. In a way, we are God's farmers down here working on his crops. We want to have a nice harvest to present to him, but it isn't easy. We might be laughed at or mocked for sowing the seed. We might find those who won't even hear it in the first place. We might find those who hear it but then walk away, in part because we didn't encourage them as we should have. That's part of our duty as members of the body of Christ...to encourage one another so that nobody withers. When someone withers, it's a loss to us all. Jesus had just told about all the possible situations where something could go wrong so that a Christian doesn't develop. There are many challenges and things that can go wrong. But what happens when you have a faithful sower, good seed and an honest hearer? Everything is just right and a Christian is born.]

A Lamp on a Stand

²¹He said to them, "Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand?

[This was a reference to the bushel which was a common unit of measurement.]

²²For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

[We've seen in Jesus' teachings that he kept things hidden from the people that he explained to his disciples in private. We might mistake that to be hiding his light under a bushel. But this was only temporary, because eventually everyone had the teachings of Jesus and the apostles available to them after Jesus' death.]

²³If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."
²⁴"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."
[This can happen in several ways. The more concentration and focus you give to God and studying his word, the more knowledge he will give to you. Also, the more you take advantage of the opportunities God gives you to spread his word, it may be that the more opportunities you will be given to do it more. Many people have seen this happen. Talking to one person about Christ may open doors to talk to others that they know about Christ.]

The Parable of the Growing Seed

²⁶He 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. ²⁸All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. ²⁹As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."

[This idea of a plant growing from a seed is like the situation between us and the work we do for God. We might teach and talk to others about Christ, but we cannot force them to believe. They must have faith and then God causes growth. This would certainly go against trying to make people to believe in Christ through physical force of some kind as though I have the power to force someone to have faith. I can't threaten someone with a weapon to make them believe in Christ. In the end, they must have faith themselves. And then God will make the seed grow.

We read more about this relationship in

1 Cor 3

⁵What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe--as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. ⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. ⁹For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

We don't plant and water the seeds in God's kingdom for our own glory, but for the glory of Christ. It would be for this reason that we don't call ourselves after some man like Paul. We don't call ourselves the Paulites. Paul was an admirable example of a Christian, but everything we do must be done in Christ's name, not Paul's name. One interesting thing about the planting of seeds is that we might sometimes plant seeds without knowing it. Perhaps I might talk to someone about Christ and they don't believe and I think that no seed has been planted. But maybe someone nearby was listening and they later become curious. Or perhaps the person you originally talked to eventually changes his mind and begins to believe. What a wonderful surprise that could be.]

Back to Mark 4]
The Parable of the Mustard Seed

³⁰Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. ³²Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."
³³With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. ³⁴He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

[A mustard seed is about 2 millimeters across...very tiny. And yet it grows into a tree about 10 feet tall. This is what the kingdom of God is like. It grew from the size of a mustard seed as it was at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, to a large tree with huge branches of thousands added by the apostles we read about in the book of Acts. Again Jesus was using parables to talk to the people. At this point he used only parables to talk to them. That might be pretty confusing sometimes. If you read some of Jesus' more complex parables without any explanation, you probably wouldn't understand what they meant. But Jesus explained everything to his disciples and that's very important for us today. This is how we know the disciples knew how to do things according to Christ's wishes even after his death and resurrection. It was mainly important that Jesus' disciples learned what the parables meant so that they could pass it on to us. It's how we know what Jesus wants us to do even today.]

Jesus Calms the Storm

³⁵That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." ³⁶Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. ³⁷A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. ³⁸Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
³⁹He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
⁴⁰He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
⁴¹They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"

[There could be no doubt that this was the son of God. This was one of the largest scale miracles that Jesus performed. And it is amazing. Weather and storms are very complex. It takes very powerful computers for us just to try and guess what they're going to do. If you have a bucket of water and you dump a bunch of peas in it and then you dump it over a wedge, can you guess how many peas will go to the right and how many will go to the left? Not very accurately. But predicting weather is like that. And so it's beyond us to guess what the weather is going to do with complete accuracy. The weatherman isn't always right. And what about when they are right? On the east coast this past week, they knew the hurricane Isabel was coming. What could we do about it? Get out of the way! And yet Jesus with a few words commanded this storm to be still. This was amazing! This was the Son of God.]