Receptive Ears Bear Fruit - Audio
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Let's open in a word of prayer. Shall we? Heavenly Father, our Lord, we recognize today our great great blessings. In this time of thanksgiving Father, we look back at the things that you have blessed us with and we are awestruck. Father, we live in a country that is free to worship you. We live in a prosperous nation, one in which even the poorest of us are among the richest elsewhere. Father, we are not deserving of your blessings and yet we just say thank you. We just say thank you, Lord, for your goodness toward us, most especially your goodness to us and Jesus Christ, our Savior, by whom we have eternal life. Father, our hearts go out to those who are less fortunate, who live in parts of the world where governments do not promote freedom and where Christianity is persecuted and where Christians experience tribulation. Our hearts go out to places like Bangladesh today where thousands of people have died from their cyclone, this terrible storm. Father, we ask, Lord, that you would just show us ways to demonstrate our gratefulness to you. Show us ways in which we can give either monetarily or through our resources, our time, our gifts, so that we can benefit those less fortunate than us. For that is truly the response of grateful people. Father, today as we approach your word, as we continue in the Gospel of Mark, I pray that your spirit would be upon this study. I pray that we would learn from your word today that we would grow thereby, that your spirit would take the word, implant it in us, and bring it to fruition. Bring it to good works and to faithfulness. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well one of the things that I could not do this week in my message preparation was come up with a witty and humorous and fun illustration. And so all I have is this picture. Take a look. Ready for it? It's coming. Three, two, one. Anybody know what kind of dog that is? That's a Basset Hound. There you go. Very nice. A Basset Hound and the title of my message today is Receptive Ears Verfruit. So I want you to look at this dog today, the big, huge ears, and I want you to think in your mind throughout this entire sermon that we're talking about hearing, listening, listening intently, using our ears to hear what Jesus is saying because that's precisely what he's asking us to do in the parable of the sower or the parable of the soils as we will read today. Jesus is going to begin this section of Scripture and end this section of Scripture with a focus on listening intently to him and by listening you will bear fruit. Take a look at Mark chapter 4 verses 1 to 20. Turn in your Bibles, Mark chapter 4 verses 1 through 20. Now before we read this, I do want to make mention that this passage has actually been spoken of two occasions in the last three years at coast. And so while we're going through this again, some of this might seem a little bit familiar to you. Pastor Arch spoke on it. Dr. Bob Wilkins spoke on this previously. But I want to highlight some things in here that perhaps we haven't seen before and also especially focus on the aspect of hearing, hearing the teaching of Jesus, which I believe is the epitome of this passage. It is the main theme of the passage to listen carefully to what Jesus is saying. Take a look at Mark chapter 4 verses 1 through 20. It says this. And again, Jesus began to teach by the sea and a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. And he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching, "Listen, behold, a sewer went out to sow." And it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have 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. And some seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no crop, but other seed fell on good ground and produced and yielded a crop that sprang up increased and produced some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred. And he said to them, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." But when he was alone, those around him with the twelfth asked him about the parable and he said to them, "To you, it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God. But to those who are outside
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Jesus teaches the parable of the four soils, which describes the various responses people will have to the Kingdom of God.