Stony Ground 1 Series

The Parable of the Sower – 5

“Stony Ground 1”

Mark 4:16-17

“These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble.”

Last week we talked about the power of the seed once again. We must understand the dynamite power of the Word in order to fully grasp this Parable. Then Sunday night we talked about the wayside ground. The people who were hearing the Word had hearts that were hard, ears that were dull, and eyes that didn’t want to see.

When the Word comes and we choose not to accept it, we get no harvest and the enemy doesn’t have to do any work to get your harvest. He just simply walks away with it.

Wayside seed can also be seed that was spread, but no one was listening. No one made themselves available to hearing the Word, so it automatically becomes wayside. Therefore, that’s all Satan has to do is pick it up and walk away with it. If the Word is not received, accepted or acknowledged, the Word will not produce anything. In order for the Word to work in our lives, it must fall on good ground. But if we are not receiving anything, it falls by the wayside. This is how people can come to church for years and never see any change in their life or their circumstances. Although we love to blame Satan for all our problems, we see in the Parable of the Sower that if we don’t receive and implant the Word deeply into our spirits, we will be wayside ground that bears no fruit.

In this next type of ground, the Stony ground, we have just read that the people heard the word and received it with gladness. In other words, they heard the Word and then shouted, “THIS IS AWESOME!” These are the people who leave church and say, “Man that preaching was awesome! Did you hear that Word? That is awesome! God is going to heal my body! God is going to set me free from this addiction! God is going to work in my family! But if we keep reading in Mark 4:17, we find the fault:

Mark 4:17, “and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble.”

➢ The KJV says they are offended. The word stumble in the Greek is scandalizo and it means, “to trap you, to trip you up, to cause you to stumble or to entice you to sin.”

Satan wants you to be one of the offended so that he can cause you to backslide. People stumble, people get offended and backslide. I have seen it happen. It happened, not because of the offense, it happened because they became stony ground. What was the reason for the offense? “Because they had no root in themselves.”

➢ Turn over to Luke and look at his account. Luke 8:6, “Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture.”

It is important to note on this type of ground that the seed was planted.

Let’s say you are laying a new lawn. If you lay sod on the ground and water it only on the day you laid it, the sod will soon turn yellow, then brown. You could easily kick up the entire piece of sod because it would have no root system. If you watered it on a regular basis, however, the sod would begin to put down roots. Over time, and with regular watering, you could try to dig it up, but it would be rooted so there would be no way to kick it up.

Sin occurs in people’s lives because we fail to put down roots in the Word. We can get so busy working for God and working for the church that we miss this point. That busyness is not the same as planting and watering. No wonder Jesus said that if you don’t know this parable, you don’t know any of them.

So many Christians think, “I go to church; I give my time to the things of God. Why is this happening to me? Why am I not seeing any changes or getting any results?” They haven’t been doing any watering. They laid the sod, but then they walked away.

➢ Someone else can’t water the grass of your inner spirit; you have to water your own grass.

There are too many Christians with no root.

Jesus gives us two reasons why people are offended or stumble