The holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Mark
and he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a
basket or under a bed, and not on a stand, For nothing is
hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything sacred
except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let
him hear. And he said to them, pay
attention to what you hear. With the measure you use, it
will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.
For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one
who has not even what he has will be taken away.
And he said, The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter
seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and
day, and the seed sprout and grows.
He knows not how the earth produces by itself fast the
blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
But when the grain is ripe at once, he puts in the sickle,
because the harvest has come. And he said, With what can we
compare the Kingdom of God, or what parable should we use for
it? It is like a grain of mustard
seed, which when sown on the ground is the smallest of all
seeds of the earth. Yet when it is sown it grows up
and becomes larger than all the garden plants, and puts out
large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its
shed. The Gospel of the Lord.
And good morning, happy Easter Tide.
In Easter Tide, we are going back to our series simply Jesus
walking through the gospel of Mark and looking at Jesus and
his Kingdom. Today's today we're covering
Mark 4, verses 21 through 25. If you'd like an exposition of
the parables in verses 26 through 32 that was covered in a
different message in 2024, you can look that up.
It's online and you can hear that.
Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you that you
continue to work, you continue to speak, and that even now as
we open up this this biography of your life, that it has
relevance for us today, that as your people, your spirit is
still working. We pray that your resurrection
power would allow us to understand and see what you want
us to see from this gospel as well as to live it together.
Thank you Lord that you will answer this prayer in Jesus
name, Amen. Mark 4, verses 21 through 25.
Nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything
secret except to come to light. The 198898 movie The Truman Show
is about a man named Truman played by Jim Carrey.
Now, on the surface, Truman had a very like, simple and great
life. He had a he had a good stable
job. He had a adoring wife.
He had a faithful and loyal best friend.
Everything worked well. Everybody was happy.
And he like was living and working in the same community
where he grew up. But beneath the surface, even in
Truman's own soul, something was a miss, something was a stir.
He had questions that no one would answer.
When he tried to move beyond the surface, people would blow him
off and redirect him back to, you know, all of the happy
things in his life. So he kept pushing, and he kept
thinking. And what, at some point, he
realized, like, no one's going to give me the truth, and so I
have to find it myself. And so he begins to act
disruptively. He begins to do erratic things
that don't go according to the script of what everyone's
expecting of him to do because he's trying to find out how are
they going to react? And what am I going to discover?
And he kept finding more and more bizarre things until he
realized that the whole thing was a lie.
That the entire world that he thought was real was actually
fake. That from the time of his birth,
his entire life with some moments was live streamed to the
world for someone else's profit. He was the star, but the world
was fake. His wife was an actor.
His best friend was an actor. All the neighbors were extras.
His job was a farce. His center of meaning wasn't
real, but that there was a real world and that if he was willing
to press hard enough, he could find the door to it.
And he could walk out of this world of lies into a world where
he was truly loved, truly called, truly known, truly seen,
not used for someone else's profit.
He walked into that world, but the first thing that he had to
realize is that this world that I'm living in is built on
concealed lies that everyone is agreeing to.
Now. Our world bears some
similarities with Truman's world.
Things aren't always as they appear.
People aren't always who they claim to be.
There are truths that are concealed.
There are falsehoods that are perpetuated.
And Jesus came right into the heart of this false world, not
to condemn it, but to redeem it. It's a world where we are truly
loved, truly called, where our life truly begins.
And it's here where our deepest questions are answered and our
deepest longings are met. That world is open to us.
That world of truth is open to us.
It's called the Kingdom of God, and it's breaking in right
inside the world that we live, not to condemn it, but to redeem
it. Now in our gospel text today,
Jesus is going to use two simple images from his culture. 1 is a
lamp which reveals his Kingdom, and another one is a measure
which reveals his people. Now these images pair together.
They are both about bringing secret things to light, what the
scriptures call in other places, the apocalypse, the revealing,
the unveiling. And Jesus is going to use these
images to reveal the Kingdom and reveal his sons and daughters.
And we're going to unpack these images as well as reflect on
ways that we can live this out together to become a people of
the truth who reveal the truth of Jesus.
So let's look first at the lamp, the lamp which reveals the
Kingdom of God in verses 21 through 23, verse 21.
And he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a
basket or under a bed and not a stand.
Now this is a rhetorical question and people listening
are, you know, expected to be like, no, of course not.
You would never do that with the lamp.
Lamps in Jesus day are not the stationary kind like that.
Just sit in one place all the time.
They were, they were portable. They were made out of a bowl,
you know, a medium sized bowl. And the bowl contained oil,
enough oil to like last several hours.
And in the midst of that oil was an oil drenched Wick.
And you would light the Wick and then you would carry the light
wherever it needed to go. In the ancient world, homes were
not large. Most people at night could sort
of exist before bedtime in one room.
You would bring the the bowl of light into the room and set it
on the lampstand and it would give light to everyone.
There would be light enough for cooking, There would be light
enough for reading or writing if you needed to do that, light
enough to work, light enough to clean.
If there were robbers that were trying to break in, it would
expose them to it. It looked, it exposed
everything. And so there's no point and
going through all of that trouble and lighting a lamp and
then putting it underneath the the bed or putting it underneath
a bushel or putting it underneath a basket.
Like the light is not meant to be subsumed by the darkness.
The light is meant to to transform the darkness and Jesus
is going to apply this to God's Kingdom in our world when he
continues in this way, verse 22, nothing is hidden except to be
made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.
Here's one of the reasons that I admire and follow Jesus and it
is because he is not afraid of the truth.
He loves to reveal the truth, and he's not doing it to be
mean. He's doing it to bring life.
He's ready to see it revealed, and as light of the world, he
does the revealing. God's Kingdom reveals other
competing kingdoms as well. He knows all the secrets of the
heart. He knows all of the things that
are brewing under the surface. He knows all of the lies that
are keeping people like in in place in unjust situations.
And he brings a light. You know, you read the gospels,
you see him doing this over and over again.
People hated it. But the turning over of the
temples being like this is not what the temple is for.
All these tables of merchandise. This is supposed to be a House
of prayer. Or when he revealed what was
going on in the hearts of the Pharisees who were judging him
and keeping people under their control.
He's like, you know, you're keeping people from the Kingdom
of God. You're standing in their way.
They did not like it when the rot of their heart was exposed,
even though it was good even for them to have it exposed.
So Jesus's light is going to reveal not only his Kingdom, but
all the competing ones that are going to keep us bound.
Now, there's one hidden expectation, for example, in
Jesus's day that he exposed, and it was this, if only we could
gain political victory, then we'd be truly free.
That was something that people believe.
They wouldn't necessarily have said that like as plainly or out
loud, but it was something that they believed and thought, you
know, Jesus's peers believed that if they could overthrow
their Roman occupiers, they would be free.
And we can understand why they thought that because they were
heavily taxed by Rome. They were occupied by Rome.
You know, imagine if, like, a foreign country sent a military
police force to police our streets.
We would not like that at all. We would want them out.
OK. And so that's how they thought
about Rome is like, this isn't where Rome's supposed to be.
This is our country, and they're taxing us, and our taxes are
going to pay for the swords of our occupiers.
Like that's not good. And so they thought, you know
what we need, we need a political Messiah who will take
care of this. The true king of the, you know,
the true son of David, the true king of Israel needs to
overthrow these guys yesterday. And so when Jesus feeds the 5000
and and they're like, what? He's our guy.
I mean, if he can do this, he
can certainly. So they tried to make him king
by force. That's what happens when the
light of Christ comes in like the the all of our desires come
to the surface. All the things that we thought
would save us come to the surface and we put them on
Jesus. We put them on our leaders.
We go save us. Now Jesus brings the lamp into
that darkness. He brings the lamp and he sets
it on the lampstand, and it brings light.
And the light is this. The Messiah came to deliver us
from our sin and from death and from the devil.
And he didn't come to give us victory over a particular person
or a particular political group. That's not why he came.
Now politics matters. Some of us are called to it, but
that's not where the Kingdom of God begins or ends.
Our deepest problems can't be solved by winning a temporary
political victory. And that's why Jesus brought the
light of the Kingdom in, and that's why he ascended to his
throne by descending to the cross, to show this is what the
true King came to do. And it was the biggest reveal in
all of human history. It was the greatest, brightest
lamp that humanity has ever seen, shining in the darkest
place. It was his cross.
It was his humility which was forgiving our pride.
It was his suffering which was healing our dying race.
It was his obedience exposing our mortal enemy and our mortal
enemy's rebellion. And this is the light.
This is the light that after his resurrection, Jesus, you know,
he didn't make himself mayor of Jerusalem.
He didn't make himself Roman Empire, Roman emperor.
He, what did he do? He he appeared to people who
were ready to be forgiven for all the ways that they had
brought darkness into the world. He encouraged them.
He breathed new life into them. He gave them authority over sin,
over death, and over the devil. And then he's like, hey, put the
lamp of his Kingdom into their hands and said, go forth into
all the world. And it's still true, friends,
that our biggest problems aren't solved by amassing more power
for ourselves that that lie, that if only we had more power,
we'd be truly saved. That keeps us in darkness.
Biggest victories for us are never political or military or
financial, whether on a small scale or a large scale.
The suffering servant is our king and our light, and he's the
king over all temporary kings, and he shines with humility, He
shines with love, and he so calls us to shine.
And his reign begins in the hearts and the common life of
his subjects. This past weekend I was reading
about the remarkable witness of the Church in Iran during the
chaos of Iran in the last few years.
I mean, it's there was a wave after wave of chaos.
It's the, it's they had an economic crisis and then they've
then they've had war and then I've had more bombings in war.
And So what do you do in war? It's like a big question.
And so many Christians have actually continued to meet in
homes, to worship, to love one another, and then to mobilize to
love their neighbors. Some, especially the leaders,
have been interrogated, abused, imprisoned.
And yet they have the light of the Kingdom in their hands and
they're carrying it everywhere they go, whether it's to prison
or to a war-torn apartment building next door.
Christianity Today reports a story of one recent convert in
Iran. He came to faith and then
expressed a desire to send his tithe to poor Christians and
other Iranian cities. And he asked his pastor, like,
what should I do with this tithe?
I want to give it to to those who are suffering and who don't
have much money. And so the pastor connected him
with a family, an impoverished family in another city who was
caring for a disabled grandfather.
And so we sent his tithe there. Now it just so happened that
another group of Christians had come to that same city to do
some ministry. And they, they actually ended up
in the apartment building of this, of this family with the
disabled grandfather. And they said, we got this money
from someone we didn't even know.
And we had we, we had no money left.
We didn't know where our money would come from.
We didn't know how we would make it and arrived just in time.
It's testimonies like that that are popping up all over the
country. And the church continues to
thrive and to grow. It was 500 people in 1979.
It's over 1,000,000 Christians in Iran today.
Why? It's because in the midst of all
this war and chaos and economic turmoil, it's the Christians who
have the peace and it's the Christians who have the light.
And in a country built on so much control, when you walk into
a Christian house gathering, you feel loved, not controlled.
And that is a huge witness. Now here's the lamp of Jesus
truth in his day and ours. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
I mean come on, it's still true. The light of Jesus Kingdom is
blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted and
blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Now that's the Kingdom that won't collapse.
All other kingdoms are built on lies, but the Kingdom of Jesus
is being built on truth, 1 Lantern at a time.
Now this is what I love about Jesus's parables.
They reveal reality and they reveal the unreality that that
binds us. So, OK, back to Chicago where
we're living our life. You know, we're living our call.
Have we have our eyes adjusted to the darkness?
Just think about that. What are the controlling lies
maybe that are comfortable for us that we've adjusted too much
to? Have we become a little too
comfortable with the world as it is?
You know, have we become too comfortable with with our Truman
Show reality? What ways and have the lies of
the culture convinced us and just lulled us to sleep?
You know, you think about like our headspace.
What what's what's going through our head?
What, what are we listening to? Does the Lantern of Jesus truth
have any prominence in how we think and how we live?
Jesus says in verse 23, if anyone has ears to hear, let him
hear, let her hear. And I just wonder if we can hear
the urgency in those words. It means essentially Jesus being
like, are you guys, are you listening?
Are you really listening to this parable?
And so we're supposed to listen and then prepare because the
world is not as it seems. And This is why, friends, we
don't just listen to the scriptures on Sundays.
We've got to be in the Word of God throughout our week, like
finding a time in the morning, finding a time in the evening
just to take in the words. And if we find something that
feels a little bit too glaring or a little bit too bright from
the scriptures, it's maybe because it's probably because
our eyes have adjusted to something else and we could use
some of that light. So Lord, let the word be a
Lantern to our feet and a light to our path, because if we're
going to shine a light in our city, guys, it's got got to be
formed within us first. And that's what the second image
is all about. It's not enough for the light to
be out there. It's got to get in here.
So let's look at the measure which is revealing the people of
God. If the lamp was revealing the
Kingdom of God, the measure reveals the people of God, verse
24. And Jesus said to them, pay
attention to what you hear. So again, it's it's listened
closely with the measure you use.
It will be measured to you and still more will be added to you.
Verse 25 for the one who has more will be given and from the
one who has not even what he has will be taken away.
Is Jesus a raging capitalist? You might be saying no.
Let's look at Yeah, I mean, that's the TLDR version anyway.
Verse 24 refers to a tool, a measure.
This is used in the marketplace to determine how much you owe
for the goods and services that you're buying.
And weights and measurements. Weights and measurements.
So before scales, this is like the ancient version of the
scale. You'd put your stuff in the
measure, you would put the weight on it like, OK, how much,
how many radishes are you buying?
OK, a pounds worth. OK, here, you know, that's how
much money you owe. So vendors provided their own
weights and measurements. So guess what happened?
OK, false weights and measurements got, you know what
I mean? You can kind of adjust it.
You can suit suit you now for a while you could get away with it
and people have paid a little extra for their radishes.
But after a while word gets around.
I'm like, I think the weights and measurements guy over at the
radishes department is, you know what I mean?
He's taking a little bit more from us.
And so there was a phrase that you know the faithful would use
around the time of Jesus that Jesus quotes.
He's going to re appropriate, but he's the measure you use
will be measured to you and he's going to apply this to the
Kingdom of God. He's going to apply it to our
lives, to our character, because eventually it catches up to us.
He's calling for us to be formed in the Kingdom of God on the
inside because eventually it will be revealed on the outside.
You know, I think sometimes we have this problem, which is that
we think other people can't see what we don't want them to see.
You know, it's like that kid that's like you put they put
their hands over their eyes and like you can't see me.
You know that like we think that because we can't see us, other
people can't see us. We're good at fooling ourselves
is actually it's a human condition problem.
We fool ourselves all the time, but it's much harder to fool
other people. And so we can get away with
something for a while, like hiding, hiding what we really
want and hiding what we really think and who we really are.
But eventually word gets out. People figure out what we're
about. You just can't hide from people.
We think people are dumb. They're not.
People aren't stupid. And the measure we use, it's
measured to us, right? You know this for other people.
I know this for other people. It's much harder to realize this
is true about myself. And sometimes we do this with,
we think we can fool God. We use religious things and
stuff and sure, you know what I mean?
I'm this, I'm that we play act. You know that we're really
listening that we're really Jesus's disciple.
Are we cheating God with false weights and measurements?
If so, we're only cheating ourselves and eventually it's
going to be revealed. That's what this parable is all
about. But the more we take in the
Kingdom of God with our whole heart, you know, with a humble
heart, with an open heart, the more of it guess what it's going
to, it's going to leak out. It's going to come out, it's
going to be multiplied. And then also God's work in us,
his grace, you know, Jesus says, and even more will be added.
This is like the, the good soil. Remember that.
It's like the good soil that produces 3060 a hundredfold.
This is what happens when we when we draw close to Jesus.
He's going to do things through us that we have no idea that we
couldn't have ever dreamed of, we couldn't have ever planned.
And especially when the people of God start doing this
together. God works through us as a
people. I mean, we're bearing fruit in
ways that we would never ever dream of, and probably won't
even be aware of fully until he brings his Kingdom in its
fullness. Still more will be added to you,
more will be given. Can you hear the grace in that?
It's going to get revealed. So let us, as Jesus says, pay
attention to what we hear. Let us pay attention to what we
hear. Pay attention to Jesus's words
and also you familiar with the phrase.
Pay attention to what you're paying attention to.
You ever paid attention to what you're paying attention to, what
you worry about, think about, dream about, hope for there's
this apocalypse that needs to come for our headspace.
There's this unveiling that needs to come with what's
circulating through our mind and heart.
Is it Jesus's thoughts, Jesus's values, or someone else's?
What messages are we internalizing as the most
important message of our lives? Because eventually that's going
to leak out. It's going to be revealed.
It's going to overflow. And how we, how we live and what
we say and whose Kingdom we really are Allegiant to.
And this is all about letting the Kingdom of Jesus be formed
in US off the spot, so that when we're put on the spot, the
Kingdom comes out. The Kingdom shines off the spot.
Moments are our leisure time, what we choose to schedule, whom
we choose to hang out with, passions that we give our energy
to, content we choose to engage on the spot.
Moments are whatever comes out, revealing who we've become along
the way, suffering, conflict, success, and also all those
unguarded moments where we kind of let our hair down and just
say what we're thinking. Those are the on the spot
moments. Like the Iranian church, the
early church was often put on the spot and they had been
formed in the Kingdom off the spot in such a way that people
got super curious about what they were all about.
Around 130 AD, 130 AD, you know, about a generation or two or
three after Jesus ascended to the Father, there was a, a man
named Diogentis, not a Christian.
And he was really curious about Christians.
So he asked his friends, his friend Matthitas, about the
strange group of people. Now Matthitas was, was a
Christian and he's like, what? What are Christians all about?
Who are they? And so Matthitas rose back to
his friend and said this quote. They love all men and are
persecuted by all. They are poor, yet make many
rich. They're dishonored, yet in their
very dishonor are glorified. They're reviled, but bless.
They're insulted and repay the insult with honor.
They do good, and yet are punished as evil doers.
When punished, they rejoice as if quickened to life.
Those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their
hatred. And I wonder, as we hear these
words, can we see the lamp shining brightly in the cruel
darkness of the Roman Empire, revealing the Kingdom of God and
all of its beauty and all it's unveiling?
Can we see the Lantern of love, of of gospel truth giving light
to everyone in the house? Just that open secret, The
Kingdom of God has come. You can leave the fake world of
Roman cruelty and enter the real world of the Kingdom of love,
which will no no end. There's Iran, There's the early
church, and then it's us. We have the light.
We have the light, friends. And now we have an opportunity
to set it on its stand right here in our city, in our own
lives, in our own community, in our own word, in our own deed,
to show Chicago what is actually, actually true, which
is that guess what? This idea that you can be your
own Lord, that's a lie. That really is a lie.
You will end up a slave if you try to be your own Lord.
There's only one true Lord that won't mistreat you, and his name
is Jesus Christ. That's the truth.
This idea that God hides from us, that he stands judgingly at
a distance, just judging, that is absolutely a lie.
But we have the light of the truth, which is that God is
Emmanuel, God with us, who is our friend and who loves us and
forgives us and is the most tender, patient person you've
ever met and who cares deeply about every single human life.
This idea that death has to be feared or like, boxed against or
somehow avoided and and shunted away into warehouses and pretend
like, let's pretend that we're not going to die.
That's a lie that keeps people enslaved.
But we have the light of the truth of the Kingdom of God,
which is that, yeah, death is our mortal enemy.
It's defeated. And that even though it's going
to take time for us to to like, learn this death, we don't have
to be afraid of it. You and I are all going to die.
And we don't have to be afraid of that moment.
We can actually see death as a threshold into life, into the
into the life of the Kingdom of God, which will know no end.
In fact, it even begins now. And I wonder if a curious
onlooker would be like, man, what are the people of Emmanuel
Angle can all about? Like, what makes them go?
You know, I hope and pray that it could be said this way.
You know what the people at Emmanuel Angle can?
They're not seduced by lies. They actually really love the
truth, even if it's uncomfortable.
They they don't actually live as if Chicago is the end all be
all. They love Chicago, there's no
doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt that they
love Chicago, but they don't worship it because they seem to
shine with the light from another world, but not with
pride, but with lots of humility and love and personal sacrifice.
I'm not sure I believe what they believe, but I sure wish I
could. I sure hope it's true.
Maybe someday I will, because when I see them love our city,
it really makes me long for a city I can't yet see.
I hope. I hope it could be said of us
that that was true. That's going to take some time
to get formed, won't it? It's going to take some Holy
Spirit. It's going to take some
repentance. Nothing is hidden except to be
made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.
So let the unveiling come, not to destroy, but to reveal, not
to condemn, but to redeem. Let that Kingdom be revealed in
us now, even now, for the life of the world, in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.