In our last couple of times together we have studied Mark’s recollection of Jesus’ parables. Starting with the parable of the sower and its explanation and then moving into shorter parables that use the same ideas of nature to reveal the Kingdom of God and the divine identity of Jesus. One of the main points we considered last time was that Jesus was not simply a preacher searching through nature to find illustrations of the points He was trying to teach but instead He was the Creator of all things that actually formed nature to reveal Himself and His grace. Everything God formed was done in such a way that it pointed back to Him, to His love, to His mercy, to His faithfulness, to His holiness and to His grace that saves. Seeds and soil don’t happen to resemble the word of God being planted in men’s hearts, they were created to reveal God’s plan for His word and our hearts. The reality that a grain of seed has to fall to the ground and die to produce fruit is not a coincidence that also illustrates what Jesus did for us it was created by Jesus to point toward the work that He would do. The parables are not illustrations from nature; they are actually revelations of God’s hand in nature. The parables are theological statements far more than they are clever illustrations.