Taken Away ~ Mark 4:3-20
And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. ~ Mark 4:4
And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. ~ Mark 4:15
Many individuals overlook the profound significance of this parable, yet it holds immense value for both new and seasoned believers in the teachings of the Bible. Merely possessing knowledge of scripture is insufficient; without being a born-again believer, one’s eyes remain closed to the transformative truth that the Holy Spirit reveals. It serves as a cautionary note for those who have read the Bible but have not genuinely repented and sought redemption through Jesus Christ. Until one turns away from sin and invites Christ to illuminate their understanding, they have not truly engaged with the Word of God in a meaningful way.
When in this condition Satan, represented by the birds in the sky, quickly pays attention to these individuals and works hard to distract them. He fills their thoughts with things that match their interests and presents them with different distractions. As a result, their focus shifts away from what they were just hearing, causing them to forget everything they learned and never think about it again.
It’s essential to immerse yourself in the Bible and understand its author to avoid being misled. Eternity is a long time, and discovering the truth during your lifetime is crucial. Take the time to explore these teachings; your future self will thank you.
Leviticus 7:28-9:6
Mark 3:31-4:25
Psalm 37:12-29
Proverbs 10:5
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I promise you that if I felt for one minute that anybody was going to go to hell because, somehow, I failed to make the necessary adjustments in the message to persuade them to believe, I would have a very hard time sleeping. That’s a pretty heavy burden to bear. I don’t think we own that kind of attitude. I believe that all of us who are here are here because we are not motivated by the emotional rhetoric of bad theology. We’re motivated by the Word of God, we’re motivated by Scripture. ~ John MacArthur
New Testament
Mark 3:31-4:25
Summary
Jesus’ Mother and Brothers
The Parable of the Sower
The Purpose of the Parables
A Lamp Under a Basket
The Parable of the Sower
Mark 4:24-25. And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.
When the gospel is not received, when a man refuses it, it becomes a positive loss to him. There is a way by which it so works that, what a man thought he had, disappears. Some have been made worse by the preaching of that Word which ought to have made them better. May it not be so with any one of us!
What is the meaning of the Parable of the Sower? – Mark 4:2-9
Click Here for the answer
Sow the seeds of the Gospel
Grace to You
Listen to John MacArthur on today’s scripture below:
The first soil – we’ll just call it the roadside soil – in verse 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.” They’re just hard-hearted. It just bounces.
And Satan is the birds – depicted in the birds back in verse 4 – that come along and see the seed and snatch it away. It never penetrates; it makes no impact at all. Hard, beaten path; nothing penetrates, nothing absorbed. Preached the Gospel again, and again, and again, and again. Give the Gospel again, and again, and again by continual self-destroying rejection. They go long past the place of grace, long past the hope of faith and forgiveness. And Satan just snatches it away.
It’s a powerful analogy. This is the condition of a human heart, the heart of man or a woman. In the case of the parable, Jesus is talking about the leaders of Israel. They’re the hard hearts. You might think that because they were religious, they were the soft hearts. No, no, not even close. They were the hard, impenetrable, apostate, unbelieving, God-hating, Christ-rejecting, hard ground. It’s the condition of the heart that corresponds to the smooth hardness of the footpath that crosses the plowed field. The heart is a thoroughfare, crisscrossed by the mixed multitude of sins day after day after day.
Read the entire sermon – Click Here
But nonetheless, somehow the – the fault must be ours. Maybe there are other ways to do this. Maybe we’re out of touch with the trends or the sensitivities or the style or the psychology of our time. Maybe we – we’ve got to find another way. Maybe we need to recognize that people are motivated psychologically, they’re motivated materially. They’re motivated emotionally, as we heard last night. They’re motivated intellectually.
It’s that kind of thinking, that kind of fleshly thinking that essentially is behind all evangelical adjustments in the gospel that, somehow, we’ve got to overcome the sinner’s resistance. And we do that by creating a message that the sinner doesn’t resist as much packaged in a style that is familiar to the sinner and with which he is somewhat comfortable. And by the way, the message needs to be both friendly and it helps if it’s also funny. So the church has always suffered from a sort of parade of entrepreneurial types who offer to change the results by changing the message. And I think that that must have been at least in the back of the minds of the disciples. Are we really going about this the right way? ~ John MacArthur
Mark 4:1 By Dr. J. Vernon McGee – Thru the Bible
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