Listening Like Your Life Depends Upon It (Mark 4:1-25)
Group Guides | Sharing the gospel, sharing our lives (1 Thessalonians 2:8)
By way of introduction: What are things that we depend upon, in life?
Read Mark 4:1-25
1. As Jesus teaches us, the immediate context for this parable can be seen in chapter 3 of Mark’s Gospel. It is a context of people not accepting Jesus at his word.
Why is Jesus speaking about this parable of four soils to his first hearers that day? How does the parable make sense of what they are witnessing?
2. As we continue to be discipled by Mark’s Gospel in this season, the big question is: “Who is this?”
What do we learn about Jesus from this parable?
3. John Calvin said that one of the marks of a true church is not just that the word is preached, but that it is received and has fruitfulness in the listeners of the preached word. (Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapter 1, Section 10).
What is Jesus’ teaching Reforming Church to do in response to the preached word from Mark 4:1–25?
4. What are the very real thorns in our lives (Mark 4:18–19) that can grow up and choke the word sown into our hearts?
5. In what ways can we get more of God’s word sown into our lives, so it’s power can work in our hearing, accepting and bearing fruit?
Pray for one another, that we would be a church where the word of God is precious to us.