As Jesus is the cornerstone upon which the Church is built, so are his teachings the unifying cornerstone of Christian doctrine.

Is Teaching a Waste

Bible teachers may wonder if they have cast pearls before swine. It's frustrating when people stubbornly believe falsehoods and will not listen to reason, or will even accuse us of being false teachers if we do not agree with wacky interpretations of Scripture. So why do we bother? In Mark 4, we find the parable of the sower. There too, the seed of the kingdom is scattered in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. Why would anyone deliberately scatter seed on useless ground? Doesn't it seem like a waste? We need to understand ancient agriculture to understand the parable. Seed was sown in hope, because ground quality was not always obvious until after sowing. Anciently, plowing came after sowing. The focus of the parable is also not on wasted effort, but on the ground that did produce fruit. So, teach in hope that fruit will be produced: thirty-, sixty- and a hundred-fold.

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