The Savior, Stuff, & Your Heart
Part 4 of The Sower & Soils
The world loves you, and it wants to give you everything it has. You just have to give up one thing: your soul. Two posts ago, we considered Satan’s hatred for your soul. He strives to steal away any seed that is sown. Last week, we took note of what suffering says about our hearts. Now, as we carry on with Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, we watch certain lives being destroyed not by lack but by abundance, not by suffering but by prosperity. Jesus explains what happens to the seed sown among thorns, “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). Mark warns us of this lust for the world by highlighting four people.
The Rich Young Ruler
Mark 10:17-31 contains the famous interaction between Jesus and the rich young ruler. The young man is the poster child for what happens when you’re gripped by gold and not by God. Jesus’ words to the man call for loyalty to the Lord, not to the world, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor…” (v. 21). The sound of the man’s departing steps rings in our ears as a sober warning, “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (v. 22). In talking further with his disciples, Jesus remarked, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!” (v. 24). This young man could not loosen his grip off his money long enough to hold onto the Messiah. For if he had, he never would have looked down at the coins falling from his fingers. His riches deceived him into thinking that his money was his Messiah.
Judas Iscariot
Not wishing to lose the competition for most worldly, Judas most tragically tops the rich young ruler. In Mark 14:10-11 we read of the betrayal of our Lord by one of his own disciples. Judas “went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money….” The son of perdition was never a true son of the Son’s Father in heaven, for he loved the riches that his father from below acquired for him. Deceived by riches, his heart gave into Satan’s temptation, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). He loved the world and not the Word that was sown in his heart every single day for three years as he walked with the Sower.
Pontius Pilate
In the following chapter, Mark puts the spotlight on the man who could have silenced the crowd’s cry for crucifixion. We learn from John’s Gospel that Pilate did not find any guilt in Jesus (John 18:38). We would assume, therefore, that Pilate would have released Jesus, the true Son of the Father, instead of Barabbas, a murdering rebel, a son of the father the Devil (Mark 15:7; John 8:44). This assumption would be wrong, because it fails to take into account the clutches that the cares of the world have on its own. Pilate, caring more for himself and prioritizing power and reputation over the Potentate and Ruler, instead aims “to satisfy the crowd” (Mark 15:15). Pilate gives into the temptation from his father the Devil to be gifted the governance of the kingdom of Judea in exchange for the Son who receives the nations as his heritage, the ends of the earth his possession (Psalm 2:2, 8).
Soldiers
Finally, and close at hand to the narrative of Pilate, Mark illustrates a group of soldiers sold out to the world (Mark 15:16-20). As the governor goes, so go his men. Supporting their man, the soldiers mock the Messiah. They happily prepare him for crucifixion. Before nailing him to the cross, they crown him with thorns, blaspheming yet prophesying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” (v. 18). An irony of this account comes to the fore when we collect the thorns from Jesus’ parable and the soldiers’ conduct. In the parable, the seed that is sown is choked by the thorns. And here it is the Sower who is crowned by thorns. They are the world staring the Word in his face, and instead of bowing in reverence, they slap in rebellion. This is what the world does. It deceives. It denies the Sower. It rejects the seed sown in exchange for other grains…grains of gold, silver, and bronze.
Fourfold Warning
A common denominator in these four accounts is that they all take place after Jesus foretold his death (8:31ff). The end of Mark 8 is the turning point in Mark’s Gospel, a major division. As Mark rushes Jesus to the cross and spends the second half of his Gospel with eyes on the crucifixion of Christ, he associates suffering with the Savior. What a contrast between the world and the Word. The world loves riches, but the Word loves redemption.
Mark illustrates what Jesus teaches. Where our hearts are reveals our treasures. Do we care more for the stuff of the world, or the salvation from the Word? Have thorns choked the seed, looking for more attractive bushes watered by the world? This water looks clear but will kill when quaffed. All that glitters is not gold. Jesus is asking us, “Where is your heart? Nestling in a world of thorns and thistles, or resting in the Word planted by streams of living water? What has your heart? Money or the Messiah? Gold or God?”
The beautiful irony in God’s story of redemption is that the Son will return. As we speak, the King, whose Kingdom is not of this world, is covering creation with his Kingdom of glory, with eternal riches of redemption. By God’s grace, and not to be outdone by the false god of this world, the Son will return and restore this entire earth, joining heaven and earth, his glorious creation. We are, as Mark’s apostolic mentor writes, “waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).
In a tragic turn of events, Jesus, speaking of the rich young ruler to his disciples, tells us that when we care for the world, we won’t get the world. But if we pursue the Kingdom of God, we get the earth, too. Pursue the earth’s riches, and they die with you. Pursue Heaven’s Redeemer, and you get him who died for you, and his entire world. Mark 10:28-31 says, “Peter began to say to him, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’”
So, reader, what’s it going to be? What’s a little (or a lot of) suffering in service to the Sower? What he sows, you will reap!
Rev. Dr. Michael Mock is the Pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fresno, CA and an ACBC-certified Biblical Counselor. He’s the author of Hey, Dad, Why Do We…?: Kids Ask the Greatest Questions, Old Testament Introduction and Workbook, New Testament Introduction and Workbook, Comfort from Corinthians: A Devotional Walkthrough of 2nd Corinthians for Sinful and Struggling Saints, and A Confessional Marriage: Marriage Based on the Firm Foundation and a Faithful Confession. You can find his books here: Amazon.com: Dr. Michael D. Mock: books, biography, latest update.