The Parable of the Lamp

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So tonight we’re going to go to the book of Mark, where we’ve been on Sunday nights. We’re going to go to the book of Mark. And Mark, in his record here of Jesus’ teaching, he deals a little bit with the idea of secrets and temporary secrets, secrets that were made to be revealed.

And I’ve shared with you before, probably a few times, that I have some difficulty in this area. because I don’t like to keep secrets. Don’t let that discourage you from coming to me for issues or counseling.

I mean my secrets. I don’t like to keep my secrets. I’ve told my wife, at least you know I’ll always be faithful.

Not that she’s in doubt about that, but at least you know I’ll always be faithful because I can’t keep my secrets. As soon as I walk in the door, I just spill my guts about everything I did or every thought I had. I don’t think I ever have an unexpressed thought in that regard.

But when it comes to Christmas presents or birthday presents, I want to tell her or the kids what it is as soon as I bought it. I have so much trouble waiting. When we found out Abigail’s gender, she had already promised the kids that they got to know first. But it needs to be all over Facebook.

Some things are meant to be revealed, but you hold on to them as a secret to be revealed, not because you want to keep it a secret forever, but because there’s a time and a place to reveal those things. I did really well this year on Christmas. We agreed that we were not going to buy each other Christmas presents because I’d already bought whatever I wanted, and she wanted a storm door, and I still need to order that.

So we weren’t going to buy each other Christmas presents, but I decided I was going to get her an I like you present. It wasn’t Christmas, but she got to open it when we did our family Christmas. And I’m not sure, she probably just thought it was a bag of trash sitting there next to the Christmas tree because she had put away all the tissue paper right before I put it together.

So I grabbed a bunch of Walmart sacks and stuffed them in the top of the bag. So I did really well. Not only did I not tell her what the gift was this year.

I didn’t even tell her she had a gift until the end, although she didn’t seem that surprised because she knows everything that goes on in the house. So you probably, you’d probably already looked, right? No, but we, we, we buy Christmas presents and, and there’s a time that those are supposed to be revealed and it works better when we reveal them at the right time.

Things like the gender reveal, it works better when we build up the suspense and we, we reveal it at the right time. And Jesus explained to his disciples that there were some things that were hidden at that time, some things that were obscured at that time, but it wasn’t that they were meant to be secret forever. There was a time coming when those things were going to be revealed and that he would show them the right time to reveal those things.

That’s what we’re going to look at tonight as we’re in Mark chapter four. If you would turn there with me to Mark chapter four, if you’re using a device, You can find a link to the passage in our bulletin or it’ll be on the screen. But if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

Mark chapter 4, and we’re going to start in verse 21 tonight, and we’re going to go through verse 25. It says, also he said to them, that’s Jesus speaking, is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set on a lampstand?

For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret, but that it should come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Then he said to them, take heed what you hear.

With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him will more be given, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And you may be seated.

I’ll admit to you, I wrestled with this passage a little bit this week. As I have with several of these passages, preaching through the book of Mark has been a challenge and has been a stretching experience for me. We look at some of these and when we take these passages as standalone passages or standalone stories, it’s easy to think that they mean one thing, but when we read them in correlation to everything we see around them, which we’ve done going through this bit by bit, some additional details come to light.

For example, when he talks about taking the lamp and putting it on a lampstand, don’t hide it under a basket, don’t hide it under a bed, put it on a lampstand. A lot of preachers and a lot of commentators have taken that and they have conflated it, they’ve confused it with what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew about letting your light shine before all men so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Now that’s true.

And if we were to look at this and say, well, it’s, this is saying that we are supposed to live in such a way that we glorify God. That’s true, but that’s not what he’s talking about here. See, Jesus appears to have used the story of the lamp in a couple of different, on a couple of different occasions to illustrate different things.

People keep coming to me saying, you know, I got so much out of the message from Mark last Sunday night, and I keep saying, and I don’t mean this to sound conceited, but I say me too, because not that my thoughts are so brilliant, but because taking Mark section by section is a new thing for me. And like I said, reading it and looking at this just happened and it led to this opens up so much more. We need to realize that him giving this parable of the lamp took place on the same day, apparently, as the parable of the sower, took place shortly after the parable of the sower.

This is not the next day or anything. And that means it took place later the same day after the scribes had blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And so we take all of these things in connection to one another.

And Jesus appears then to be answering a question that the disciples had that they may have asked, they may not have asked. We don’t know it doesn’t say. But we also know from elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus was really good at answering questions that people had that they didn’t ask.

Especially when those people questioned, who do you think you are? What do you think you’re God or something? And they’re not even verbalizing the question and Jesus is answering the question they’re thinking of in their mind.

I think that’s incredible that he answers not only the answers that he gives, but the fact that by answering their question when they haven’t even asked it, he’s demonstrating that he’s God and he knows what’s in their mind and in their hearts. And so let’s briefly look back at what’s happened over this same day. I feel like this is a soap opera.

You know, we studied the. . .

And hear what I mean when I say this. Because I realized when that came out of my mouth, that sounds like I could be speaking ill of the story. What I mean by that is we studied the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit back in early December.

And here we are mid-January, and it’s later the same day. That’s what I mean by it feels like a soap opera. You know, you can check out of one and come back six months later, and they’re still on the same day.

So what happened with the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? the scribes and the Pharisees and the elders, everybody, they had had front row seats to all these miracles that Jesus had performed. They had had front row seats for the teaching that he had done.

They had seen who Jesus Christ is right there on display in front of them. And in spite of that evidence that they were eyewitnesses to, in spite of what they had to have known from their studies of the scripture was true. In spite of everything that they had that pointed them to Jesus Christ, they knew that he was the son of God and still they did not want to believe it.

So rather than admit in light of the evidence that he was the son of God that he claimed to be, they said instead that he did these things by the power of Satan. That’s what Jesus said was the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because as he worked in the power of the Holy Spirit, as he was God the Son, working in the power of God the Holy Spirit to glorify God the Father, as he was doing this, they looked at it, and even though they knew better because the scriptures had told them better, they said, no, we are not going to believe it, and in fact, we are going to say it’s the work of the devil.

And so Jesus said they had come to a point where they were so hardened in their unbelief. They were so determined not to believe that they had actually passed a point of no return where it was just, it was not in the cards, so to speak, for them to be saved. They were to a point where they had made up their minds and Jesus knew that they were not going to change their mind.

Once you get to that level of unbelief, there was nothing left to change their minds. Just like when they came asking him for a sign that he was who he said he was, and Jesus said, the only sign you’re going to get is the sign of the prophet Jonah, meaning that Jesus was going to die. He was going to be buried for three days and he was going to rise again, just like Jonah came out of the belly of the whale.

He said, that’s the only sign you get. And looking at that, they still weren’t going to be convinced. And if they could be eyewitness to the fact that he was dead and he was buried and then he was alive again, and they still looked at that and said, no, I still don’t believe your God.

There was no evidence left. There was nothing left that was going to change their mind. They were just determined not to believe.

And so they had committed this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit saying, no, I don’t believe it. That’s the power of the devil. You’re doing that.

And Jesus said, you cannot be saved because if your mind cannot be changed by everything you’ve seen and you’re willing to go that far, you are just, you are never going to come back to me for forgiveness. And so as a result of that, he then turns to his disciples and he warns them in what we looked at last week with the parable of the sower. He says, your job is to go out and preach my word, but you have to go out and do it expecting some of these kinds of results.

Because they would do what we would do. We would get out there and if somebody just utterly, completely rejected the message of Jesus Christ, they would look at it. We would look at it and say, I’m really bad at this.

I’m not going to do this anymore. And yet Jesus himself, who was the best possible messenger of these things, they looked at him and said, no, you’re doing these things by the power of the devil. So Jesus warned them there were going to be times that the word was not going to produce any kind of response in their hearts at all.

He said that there were going to be times that they would appear to. . .

they would have y’all ever get tongue-tied because it happens to me a lot I I want to say my brain moves faster than my mouth but could be my mouth moves faster than my brain he said that there were going to be times that they would appear to make a profession of faith they would appear to have been changed by the word only for that to to go away because it got too difficult he would he said there would be times that they would set out to follow him like the word had changed them like the word had done something but their own desires would lead them in a different direction and folks we have if you’ve shared the gospel at all you’ve seen all three of those responses I mean unless you’ve just been really fortunate and every person you’ve ever point you’ve ever told about jesus has come to christ and has stuck with it but if you’ve spent much time evangelizing at all you’ve seen all of those things.

But he also talked about the good ground. He said, sometimes there will be people and the soil is going to be ready and it’ll receive that seed and it’ll grow and God will do something that only God can do. And it’ll just be incredible.

And so he was preparing them in light of what they had just witnessed with the Pharisees and scribes. He was preparing them. You still go out and spread the word, spread the seed, just like the sower did.

You can’t control what the soil is like. You go out there and spread the seed and you trust the results to God. And don’t be discouraged just because not every seed grows.

Now, it would seem reasonable then that their next question is, does that mean some people just never can receive the truth? I mean, he’s speaking in parables, talking about the truth of his word. And I shared with you last week that that was actually a judgment on the Pharisees and scribes.

When Jesus starts speaking in parables, we think, oh, these are nice stories. No, it means the truth is being hidden from someone for a purpose, and it’s a judgment on that person. The parables teach us spiritual truth, but a lot of times we look at the parables and say, oh, Jesus used these illustrations to help somebody understand.

He did, but at the same time he was using those illustrations to help somebody else not understand. And so it seems reasonable that their next question is, is the truth just limited to a small group of us? Is it just that a few of us get to know?

I mean, these guys over here that just blasphemed the Holy Spirit, they’re cut off. And you’re saying there’s all these groups of people that are in poor soil and it’s just never going to grow. Is it just supposed to be a small group of us?

And that seems to be the question that Jesus is answering. The disciples are wondering whether the gospel was for everybody or just for a select few. And so he answers them by saying, with a question, is a lamp bought to be put under a basket or a bed?

Is it not to be set on a lampstand? So he’s comparing the truth and the gospel to a lamp and saying just like that lamp is made to be put out on a lampstand, just like it’s made to shine its light, he said the truth isn’t made to be hidden either. So he asked this rhetorical question about the lamp.

Somebody doesn’t buy it to hide it, they buy it so it can shine. And somebody doesn’t hold the truth just so they can hold it close and hide it and obscure it. But when we know the truth, we’re supposed to want to share it and put it on display.

And what he’s illustrating to them there is that no, it would not be fitting. It would not make sense for Jesus to explain the truth to them so that they could have this knowledge and then go and hide it and just keep it to a select few people. There’s a group that sprang up shortly after the resurrection, or a variety of groups called the Gnostics.

And I’ve talked quite a bit about the Gnostics when I went through 1 John. Folks, there are still Gnostics among us today. I’m not saying among us in this room, but they call it different things.

There are some people who call themselves Gnostics. Gnosticism is still a thing though, but it’s all about this secret knowledge, or at least hidden knowledge. Knowledge that some people don’t get.

Or sometimes they’ll say knowledge that the rest of us are not intellectual enough to get because we actually believe the scriptures. It’s this idea that there’s knowledge out there that the truth is a secret and it’s only made for certain people to find. Jesus categorically rejects that idea that the truth is only available to certain people, that the truth is hidden from everybody else where they can’t see it.

He says, no, you don’t take the truth and hide it, just like you don’t take a lamp and hide it under a basket or hide it under the bed. You take it and you set it out on a table on a lampstand. You put it out in a prominent place so that the lamp can give light to everything around it.

You do the same thing with the truth. You take the truth out, you set it in a prominent place, and you share it so that the truth can give light to everything around it. And it seems to address those questions that arise from the parable of the sower about whether some people just never have a shot at the truth.

The truth is made to be revealed, and that includes the truth about Jesus. That includes the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. That includes the truth that Jesus is the Messiah.

It includes the truth that the Pharisees and scribes had so firmly and finally and decisively rejected. And yes, the truth was going to be hidden from them. They’d already had access to it and denied it.

But it didn’t mean that the truth was made to be hidden from everybody for all time. Because Jesus had a plan for revealing his truth. He said at some point the truth is made to come out.

And he had a plan for when he was going to do that. It says in verse 22, there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret, but that it should come to light. His truth is going to be revealed.

And it’s going to be revealed for all to see. Now, part of our job as Christians is to go and make that truth known. We’re supposed to be doing that.

Not everybody’s going to receive it. Some people are going to shield their eyes from the light. But our job is to take the lamp out at the appointed times and set it on the table, set it on the lampstand so it can give light to the whole world.

That’s our job. In their day, they weren’t sent out yet. And Jesus many times was telling them, don’t tell anybody yet.

Because there was going to be a time for all of these things to come out into the open. If they ran ahead of him, if they ran ahead of his plans, I’ll just say it this way, it wouldn’t fit with his plans if they were too open about who he was. Because Jesus’ plans took a very narrow path where he was giving people enough light and enough glimpse of who he was for them to understand and for them to trust him.

but not so much that they either swept him into power away from the cross or that they went ahead and killed him some other way before he could get to the cross. Jesus was headed toward the cross, and he had a very specific plan of how he was supposed to get there. And that involved the truth being revealed at the right time.

Now, when he talks here about the truth being revealed and nothing being hidden that won’t be revealed, no secret that won’t come to light, We’re not talking about accidental revelations by somebody who never intended their secret to get out. There are all kinds of stories that people have, things that they’ve done that they’re not proud of, or at least that they don’t want the consequences of. But things that they’ve done and they’re thinking, okay, I’m going to keep that a secret, I’m going to keep that under wraps, I hope that never gets out.

Sometimes it gets out. Actually, most of the time it gets out. Maybe years and years down the road, But those things are usually revealed.

We see it all the time in our elected officials. They do something, and I guess they think they’re the special one that’s never going to get caught until they get caught, and the truth comes out. And it’s one of those things that it was never part of their plan for that to be revealed.

But now that it’s revealed, they’ve got to figure out how to handle it. What Jesus is describing is more like the Christmas present gender reveal kind of secret. It’s one that was designed to be hidden for a brief time so that it could be revealed in a certain way.

There was a time to conceal the truth, not to lie. Jesus wasn’t saying, oh, if they ask who I am, let’s lie to them. But there was a time to not make it clear in the case of the scribes to not cast their pearls before swine.

and by the way that’s that’s the sort of thing jesus was talking about in matthew chapter 7 when he starts off that chapter and says judge not that you be not judged and then goes right on after that say don’t cast your pearls before swine and he’s talking about those who would reject the truth don’t continue feeding them more truth for them just to to reject it over and over there was a time at this moment to conceal the truth there were other times to conceal the truth again not to lie, but just not to tell everything they knew so that Jesus could fulfill his plans. He could fulfill the prophecies that had been made so that he could go to the cross. There is a difference between lying and not telling everything you know, right?

If you’ve ever had kids, you understand the difference. There are some things you wouldn’t lie about, but you’re not necessarily going to broadcast, okay? So I don’t want to give the impression that I’m teaching you Jesus was telling his followers to lie.

He was not. He was saying there’s a certain time and a certain place and a certain plan for the way that this is supposed to be revealed. And all of it would be revealed when the time was right.

It would be revealed leading up to the crucifixion. It would be put on full display at the resurrection and with the appearances after the resurrection. It would be put on full display when his followers were sent out to preach that message after Pentecost. It would be put on full display when you and I go and take the gospel to other people that we care about and that we know and that we encounter and we tell them about Jesus.

It’s put on full display all the time and it’ll be put on full display when he returns in power and glory and when the world sees him for who he is in that day that the scriptures describe when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. It’ll be revealed then too. It’ll be display, but it’s his plan, it’s his desire, it’s his commandment to us, it’s our marching orders from him to go out and make that truth known now, to put that truth on full display now, to take the lamp out from under the bed, out from under the basket, and put it on the lampstand.

And so he says, don’t worry about it. As they’re concerned about, is this just going to be kept among us? I mean, this is great news who Jesus is, and it’s inconceivable to them that it should be hidden, And he says, no, no, it’s just being hidden for a little while.

It’s part of my purpose. It’s all going to come out. My truth is going to be revealed and it’s going to be preached.

But he also tells them in the next breath to pay attention to his truth. For them to pay attention to his truth and for others to pay attention when it’s revealed. Because the more attentive we are to his truth, the more of it we’ll receive.

What are they supposed to do? Pay attention to his truth. Pay attention to his word.

Pay attention to the things that they learn from him and that they learn by watching him. It says in verse 23, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. If God has allowed you to understand truth, pay attention to what he’s revealed to you.

Sometimes we will understand something of God’s word and we’ll say, no, I don’t think so. I’m just going to put that on the back burner. Because honestly, not everything, I understand we’re in church, we’re supposed to love God’s word, but everything in God’s word is not convenient, right?

Everything it tells us to do is not easy and pleasant and convenient. And so sometimes we’ll take his truth and we’ll put what we know of it on the back burner. But he says, if he’s given you ears to hear, hear.

Let him hear. Pay attention to what God has shown you. And when he shows you something, learn it and apply it and continue paying attention.

He says in verse 24, take heed what you hear. Pay careful attention to what Jesus teaches. Take careful attention to what he says about himself and what he says about his father and what he says about the father’s will for us.

by the way and that’s not just limited to the words in red because if you believe that every word of scripture is inspired by God then it’s all his word whether it’s in red or not whether it’s a direct quote from Jesus or not pay pay careful attention to what he teaches because it says in verse 24 with the same measure you use it will be measured to you now this is a this is a phrase that’s used a few times in the gospels it’s a phrase that they would have been familiar with that basically we could say the same measuring cup you use is the same measuring cup God is going to use. It fits right in with what the Apostle Paul says about us reaping what we sow. But in this case, in this context, it’s about our handling of the word.

If we just pay attention to a thimble full of the word, God’s only going to give us a thimble full of truth and understanding. On the other hand, if we’re taking in God’s word by the barrel and we’re learning it and and loving it and applying it by the barrel, then God’s going to give us a barrel full of truth to deal with and a barrel full of understanding. He’s going to use the same measure we use in our handling of the word.

And he says here in verse 24, and to you who hear more will be given. Now this word hearing is in line with our, what we know of as listening. To you who listen, to you who pay attention, to you who actually take in the word, because we can hear things and not actually listen to it.

Right, men? Right? Just me?

Okay. I did not just admit that. And you cannot go back on the stream later.

I’m sorry, it’s gone. You can’t go confirm that. We hear things and don’t listen.

What he’s talking about here is listening, taking it to heart. To you who hear, to you who absorb this word, to you who take the truth to heart, he says more truth will be given. Doesn’t mean he’s going to give us additional revelation.

It means he’s going to show us more things from out of what he’s revealed. To you who hear more will be given. The more faithful we are in our attention and our application to the word, the more he’s going to illuminate its truth for us.

I hear this from time to time that people will say, well, I’m just not getting anything out of the preaching. I don’t know if it, I don’t know, maybe people are saying it about me. I’m not hearing it if they are.

But I hear people say that about preachers. Or I’m just not getting anything out of church. Well, what are you putting into church?

What are you putting into the preaching yourself? What are you putting into the study of God’s Word? Because let me tell you, I can tell a difference when I’m going and sitting in somebody’s class or I’m sitting under somebody’s preaching.

I can tell a difference in my outcome and what I take away from it when I come in prepared and when I come in attentive and ready to listen and take something away from it versus when I don’t. And there have been times I’ve been at a conference, for example, and one of the preachers there is just somebody I don’t particularly care for. It’s not that I dislike him.

It’s not that I think he’s a heretic. And I don’t have a particular one in mind. I just know this has happened from time to time.

But I may think, I don’t really like this guy’s preaching style, and he’s kind of a goober, honestly. Yes, we do think these things. We’re human too.

I just don’t care for this. Oh, Lord, is it lunchtime yet? And I go in with that attitude.

Guess what God’s going to show me out of His Word during that while I have that attitude? Not much. Now, there have been other times that I start out thinking, I don’t want to listen to this guy.

And the Holy Spirit will get a hold of me and say, it’s still my word. And I’ll marshal all my powers of focus and say, maybe his voice and his mannerisms are annoying. Maybe his accent’s distracting.

I don’t know what it is. But I’m going to focus anyway, because whether I’m impressed by him or not, and by the way, lots of people probably think those things about me, but whether I’m impressed by him or not, he’s preaching God’s word, and I’m going to listen to it, and I’m going to see what I can take out of it. Guess what God shows me on those instances.

Now, has the man’s sermon changed at all? No. The difference is the way I’m treating the word.

Am I there to hear and listen and absorb it? the more we pay attention to God’s truth, the more we apply it, the more truth He’s going to show us. Verse 25 says, for whoever has, to him more will be given.

Those who receive glimpses of truth from God and latch on to those pieces of truth, they’re going to receive more. Because we all have to start somewhere. Sometimes we get so discouraged because we start out in the scriptures and we read it and we say, there’s so much I don’t understand.

Then start with what you do understand. pay attention to that take that to heart apply that obey that in your life what little you do understand and God will show you more because we all start out with just glimpses of truth but he says at the end of verse 25 but whoever does not have even that he what he has will be taken away from him this is not a contradiction he’s he’s speaking in extremes here saying those who receive those glimpses of truth and they start out with those just those little glimpses and they ignore what little they have, they’re not going to get anymore. And they’re not even going to hold on to the truth they’ve already glimpsed.

God can take that understanding away as well. You see, it’s not our job to make sure I understand everything. It’s our job to take what little bit he’s already shown us and do something with that.

It’s our job to take the truth we’ve already seen in here and take it to heart and let it change us and apply it and obey it and do what God says. It’s up to us to take those little glimpses that he’s already given us and do something with it, and then he will show us more. Jesus said, when we are faithful in small things, we’ll be given bigger things to be faithful in.

That’s what he’s talking about here with this truth. He says, yes, the truth is going to be revealed. My truth is going to be revealed, but you know what?

When it’s revealed, be ready to pay attention. Be ready to pay attention to any little glimpse you get, because how you treat that little b