We have seen that in Mark the Lord Jesus gathered the soil and put it into His pocket in order to sow Himself into it. But according to the cases recorded in the Gospel of Mark, this soil was in a pitiful condition. How could the Lord use soil that is sick, contaminated, and corrupt? Some may think that He should cast such useless soil away. But the Lord cannot cast away those who were chosen by God and predestinated before the foundation of the world. In a very real sense, the Lord Jesus did not have a choice. The disciples had been marked out, predestinated. How could He reject them? The Father had chosen them before the foundation of the world, and the Lord had come to do the will of God the Father. Therefore, He could not cast aside the disciples, even though as soil they were in such a pitiful condition. What, then, could the Lord do about the soil? As the Gospel of Mark indicates, it was necessary for Him to heal this soil and turn it into good soil.
We have seen that, according to the Gospel of Mark, the soil was in a pitiful condition. How could it be healed? The proper way to heal the soil is for it to pass through a process of death and resurrection. In principle, this is the way healing takes place in our physical bodies. We thank the Lord that in His creation of man’s body He ordained such a principle. Otherwise, once a person became ill, he would not be able to recover. However, in our bodies there is the principle of death and resurrection, the principle of the dying out of what is old and the rising up of something new. Diseases are healed in man’s body through this basic life principle in which old things die out and new things are produced.
If we understand this principle, we shall see how the Lord Jesus heals the soil into which He sows Himself as the seed of the kingdom. The human soil that had been chosen by God became contaminated and useless. But because God the Father had chosen this soil, the Lord Jesus could not cast it away. This soil had even been predestinated, marked out, by the Father. The Lord must have some way to heal this soil.
As we have seen, to follow the Lord Jesus is to be put in His “pocket.” But how does the Lord heal the soil that is in His pocket? He heals the soil by bringing it to the cross and causing it to die out and then bringing it into resurrection. In the Lord’s death we died out; that is, in His death we were made dead. Then in His resurrection we were resurrected. Therefore, we died in the Lord’s death and rose in His resurrection. In this way the soil is healed.
In chapter one of Mark, the Lord Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and they began to follow Him. Actually, they followed the Lord blindly, not knowing where they were going or what they were doing. The fact that Peter made many blunders indicates that he did not know what was happening. The Lord Jesus, however, knew what He intended to do with the disciples.
After gathering the disciples as the soil, the Lord presented Himself to them as a pattern. For more than three years, Peter and the other disciples observed what the Lord said and did. Eventually, the Lord Jesus brought the disciples, and all those chosen by God, to the cross. After He brought them through death and resurrection, they were healed. This is the reason we say that in Christ’s death and resurrection His followers, as the soil chosen by God, were healed. All the healings in the Gospel of Mark are signs pointing to this real healing, the healing that takes place through Christ’s death and resurrection.
When we come to chapter one of Acts, we see that Peter, Andrew, John, and James, with the remainder of the one hundred twenty, were no longer sick. They were no longer sick with a fever, contaminated, paralyzed, withered, blind, deaf, or dumb. They all had been healed through the Lord’s death and resurrection.
In the foregoing message and in this message we have covered four matters: the background of the Lord’s ministry, the Lord as the Sower sowing Himself as the seed, the disciples as the soil chosen by God, and the healing of the soil. As a result of being healed through Christ’s death and resurrection, the chosen people of God were recovered and became good soil. They became the “good earth” spoken of in Mark 4:8 and 20.