Chapter # 4 Paragraph # 3 Study # 1
March 3, 2020
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(148)
1901 ASV
13 And He said to them, Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables?
14 The sower sows the word.
15 These are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown; and when they hear, immediately Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them.
16 In a similar way these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky [
places,] who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy;
17 and they have no [
firm] root in themselves, but are [
only] temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.
18 And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word,
19 but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
20 And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."
- I. Jesus' Questions.
- A. Are rooted in "saying" (lego in the present tense).
- 1. The questions and the explanation of the parable are "doctrine" (lego) and "significant" (present tense instead of historical narrative).
- 2. These questions are the beginning of Jesus' revelation of the "mystery" of the Kingdom of God.
- a. Thus, we must consider this "intentional revelation".
- b. According to 4:11-12, the intention of this revelation is to impart "sight" and "sound" along with the ability to "grasp" and "see the linkages between the details".
- B. Are two.
- 1. Have you not come to know this parable? [The translators of the NASB, by using our word "understand" in both questions, and the translators of the Authorized Version, by using our word "know" in both questions do us a disservice by hiding the fact of Jesus' switch of verbs as the major issue of the questions. Here is where "translation theory" comes deeply into play in conjunction with a most fundamental error called "synonyms".]
- a. The verb is oida and it is in its "typical" form: Perfect Tense of stem eid - but used as a Present Tense (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature), Active Voice, Indicative Mood.
- 1) Mark's first use is 1:24 where he records the unclean spirit's claim, "I know You, Who You are, 'The Holy One of The God' ".
- a) This descriptive title is, at its heart, a declaration of the absolute moral superiority of Jesus of Nazareth because "The Holy One" means "without any imperfection of any kind" at both His essence of character and His precisely legitimate words and actions. This is directly tied backwards to Mark's introduction of Jesus through John's words in 1:7 where John said of Him, "I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose the latchet of His shoes". This was said by John who was "filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15) and who "leaped" in his mother's womb at the sound of Mary's voice (Luke 1:41) and points to the thesis of Jesus' absolute moral superiority, upon which our redemption absolutely depends.
- b) That this "knowledge" did not gain any good for the unclean spirit is a strong assumption in this record, but it is "knowledge" of some kind.
- 2) Then, he uses it again in 1:34 as a part of his summary of Jesus' evidence of His identity. In this text, the oida is in the Pluperfect Tense, Active Voice, Indicative Mood. In this case the verb is used to explain why Jesus refused to allow "demons" to "speak" (laleo). He did not want their "revelation" of His identity to complicate the thinking of the people.
- a) The pluperfect tense indicates a "knowing" that had once existed in the demons, but did no longer. This is not to say that they "did not know" (as in 1:24), but it is a significant (pluperfects are not common in the New Testament) revelation that the prior "knowing" had been stripped of its "core" as a part of true learning.
- b) Given the pluperfect tense, any "speech" that came out of their mouths would carry the now-faulty "knowledge" to any hearer who gave it heed.
- c) Clearly, Jesus did not wish for the people to "hear" what the demons had to say for some reason (most likely the "outcomes" of former knowledge now stripped of its proper content: if "demons" can "know" Jesus and retain their demonic character, so also can people).
- i. There is this probability: the "unclean" spirit saw "holiness" in the powerfully negative sense of "absolute bondage to the will of 'The God' so that a "holy" person has completely lost his/her identity in God and cannot, therefore, be "his/her own person" (something highly valued by sinners of all kinds).
- ii. Thus, any "speech" from an unclean spirit was going to convey the strong aversion/distaste of the speaker regarding "holiness".
- d) This is a "hint" that Jesus is not interested in "revelations" that do not produce "Love" directed outcomes.
- 3) His third use is 2:10 where Jesus pointedly declared that the oppositional scribes would "know" that He, as "The Son of The Man", has (Present Tense) the "authority" of "forgiveness of sins" upon the earth.
- 4) There are 31 texts in Mark's Gospel where this word is found and the fourth of them is the text under our present consideration (4:13).
- b. Jesus is asking of the disciples if they "had come to know" the meaning of this parable.
- 1) Clearly, they had not "come to know".
- 2) This means that His "speech" had entered their brains but they did not have the required "associated facts" so as to be able to grasp the "connections" within the "mystery". The words and sentences were not "hard" to understand; what was "hard" to understand is their "setting" as a parable: What did a farmer planting his fields have to do with the Kingdom of God?
- 2. How shall you "know" all of the parables?
- a. He switches his words for "knowing": ginosko instead of oida.
- 1) This verb's use in Mark's record begins here (no previous references). After this one there are eleven more.
- 2) The strong implication of this verb for "knowing" is that it has roots in experience (as in 5:29, the very next use by Mark: the woman's "healing" was "known" by her as she experienced its sensations in her body). This implication is reinforced in 6:38 because the disciples "knew" how much food was available because they searched it out, and in 15:45 where Pilate got his "knowledge" from questioning the centurion.
- 3) This switch indicates that Jesus wants His disciples to go beyond oida by moving into gnosis.
- a) As we have already seen, oida can be stripped of its "inner core" of data links so that a "truth" may be known, but its relevance cannot because of the absence of "links".
- b) God's goal for finite creatures of sensibility is ginosko because, in a most technical sense oida is going to forever be deficient (finitude in respect to knowledge means that some "necessary data" will be missing). Matthew 7:23 and John 17:3 both insist that "experience-based knowledge" is what God seeks for men.
- b. The "parables" are, thus, to be "known" for their ability to enable the disciples in their task of "preaching" (3:14 and 6:12).
- II. Jesus' First "Revelatory" Statement Regarding The Parable's Revelation of The Mystery.
- A. The "sower" is a "minor" entity: the "point" is not about the "sower", but rather about the results of his action..."The sower...sows".
- 1. This is not a "minor" observation: in the Kingdom of The God, the "minor" players become the "major" players (Mark 9:33-35).
- 2. That the "sower" is "insignificant" is absolutely "the" bone of contention between God and all who have rebelled against Him in the heavens and on the earth.
- B. The "seed" that is sown is "The Word".
- 1. It is at this point that the "connections" between the "known" activities of farmers and their seeds come into play in regard to the Kingdom of The God.
- 2. The "parallel" between the known and the unknown as the essence of "parable" is the identity of the "known" seed and the "unknown Word".