Mark 4:11

Jesus said, “You mob follow me, so God wants you to know what my stories are all about, so I will tell you what they mean. Those stories are about how God gets people into his family. But other people don’t follow me, so they only get the picture stories. I will not tell them what they mean.

Plain English Version

In The King James Version

And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

In Context

10Some time later, Jesus came away from that big mob of people. Then just his 12 special workers and a few other people sat around him. They said to him, “You tell us picture stories, but we can’t understand them. What are your stories all about?”

12You know, God got one of his men to write these words, and they are in God’s book. He wrote, ‘People will look with their eyes at what I do, but they will not try to understand what it means. They will hear my words with their ears, but they will not try to understand them properly. If they do understand me properly, then they will turn around and come back to God, and then God will not blame them for the bad things they did. But they don’t want to know about that.’ And those things are happening now.”

Read all of Mark 4

Cross References

1 Corinthians 5:12You see, I can’t be the judge of people that are not Christians. God will judge those people, and he will punish those people that do bad things. But if a Christian in your church group does bad things, you have to work out how to punish them. You have to do what God says in his book, “Get rid of bad people from your group.”

Ephesians 1:9God planned it all a long time ago, and nobody knew about it. But now he let us know about it. He told us that he is using Jesus to do the things he planned, things that make him happy.

Colossians 4:5And you too, whenever you are with people that don’t believe in Jesus, if you can tell them about him, you have to do it. Be sensible in how you live with those people.

Matthew Henry on Mark 4:2-21

The Parable of the Sower. 1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. 2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, 3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: 4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. 5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had… Read the whole commentary →

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