Welcome to a year in the Bible with Daily Grace.

My name is Kristen and my name is Katie.

And we want to spend a few minutes a day with you walking through the New Testament, one chapter at a time.

This year we will fix our gaze upon Christ so that we may know him, not only with our minds, but with our hearts.

Together we will learn that who Jesus is changes everything.

Hello, hello, this is Katie, and we are back.

Study the Gospel of Mark.

Today, we are diving in to Mark 4.

So far in Mark, we've seen quite the range of responses to Jesus.

The crowds love him. The Pharisees hate him, and his family

thinks he is out of his mind. Isn't it interesting how different people can have such drastically

different reactions to Jesus? And that brings us to parables, which makes up most of Mark for.

Parables were often used by Jesus in his teaching,

and they are meant to make the hearer think and to provoke a response from them. Parables contain a main point, but are presented in a way in which that main point is obvious to some, but is hidden to others.

In the first parable, a man scattered seeds

which land on four different types of ground. Some seeds fell along a path, but were quickly

swallowed up by birds. Some seeds fell on rocky ground and spring up quickly, but then withered

in the dry sun. Others fell on thorns, so even though they

started to grow, the thorns choked the plants out. And then there were seeds that grow along

the good soil and produced a crop. Explaining this to his disciples, Jesus says that these these seeds which were snatched up by the words

those are the hearers of the message that he is preaching but satan immediately snatches out the word

from them it has no effect on them some are like rocky places who receive jesus's message with joy

...