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Mark chapter 4, beginning in verse 1.

Actually, I'm just going to read verse 1 to start with.

It says, And he began to teach beside the sea.

And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea.

And the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land.

So as we open up Mark chapter 4, we see a really familiar setting.

Jesus is once again being crowded by the crowds such that he has no place to go.

You know, we read, twice we've read where the house is so crowded that they can't move.

The guys in chapter 2 couldn't bring the paralytic to Jesus so they had to unroof the roof to get the paralytic to him.

And then in chapter 3 we just read where there were so many people crowded into the house

where Jesus, they couldn't even move around, they couldn't eat and so that's how tightly it was packed and now they're outside and the crowd has pressed Jesus so tightly to the shore he decides the only way that we're going to be able to teach these people is for him to get out into a boat and remove himself from shore a little bit and which would essentially create like a natural amphitheater if the people are on the ground as it slopes towards the shore and he's out in the boat and he's got the ability to sit in the boat and to teach them

And what we're going to read here is the beginning of four parables.

We're going to read the first parable today.

There's four parables in Mark chapter 4, verses 1 through 34.

And this is a little bit of a unique section in Mark's gospel, because Mark only has, unlike the other gospels, Mark only has three times where he gives us any extended teaching of Jesus.

Here in chapter 4, Mark chapter 7, and in Mark chapter 13, we get sections of Jesus' teaching.

You know, this is just totally unlike the other Gospels where we think of Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount, three chapters, 5, 6, and 7, and several other teaching sections of similar length.

John has the Upper Room Discourse, three chapters, 14, 15, and 16, followed by the High Priestly Prayer, which really is still more teaching, in chapter 17.

So, usually the Gospel writers give us huge amounts of Jesus' teaching,

Mark shows us mostly Jesus's actions and will tell us that he's teaching and will maybe give a snippet here and there of what he says.

But here in Mark 4, we have one of the three times he slows down to tell us what Jesus had to say.

And which means, if it's so unusual for him to do this, he thinks it's really important for us to understand it.

He thinks it's really important for us to hear what Jesus is going to say in these four parables.

And this parable in particular, Jesus will say, is the key to understanding the other parables.

If you can understand this parable, the other parables will come with it.

Almost all of Jesus' parables have to do with the kingdom of God, either how to get into the kingdom, the nature of the kingdom, or how to live as a citizen of the kingdom.

And this parable is going to help us understand all of those things.

So what does Jesus say in this parable?

Verse two, he was teaching them many things in parables.

And in teaching them, he said to them, in his teaching, he said to them, listen, behold, a sower went out to sow.

And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it.

Other seed fell along rocky ground where it did not have much soil.

And immediately it sprang up since it had no depth of soil.

And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.

Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.

And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a h