Mark 4:10-12 – I wonder, if his teachings were in parables that went over the heads of most, why did the crowds come? The simple answers, I suppose, are that likely not everything was in parables and that many were there to see healings or be healed.
\nMark 4:13 – Mark paints a more frustrated and less understanding Jesus here than Luke did. From Luke I have a picture of a patient Jesus, confident that they will eventually ‘get it’ although they don’t know. Here, Jesus seems frustrated and less patient.
\nMark 4:26-28 – My first thought on this was it is so contrary to the ICOC way of thinking. We believed that we could produce the fruit, the crop. We could make it happen. Here Jesus says that the Kingdom doesn’t work that way. Just as a farmer doesn’t know how a seed turns to a plant, we can’t produce disciples from the seed we sow. All we are called to do is sow, God makes it grow. So what we ought to be concerned with is planting, that’s all, God’s concerned with the growing.
\nWe were always focused on the growth. If it didn’t happen, we’d work furiously to produce something.
\nMark 4:34 – So much for the ‘not all his teachings were in parables’ theory. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"