The Parable of the Sower and the Seed

The Grades on the Wall

Before we get into the parable, I want to tell you a short story. Many, many moons ago, I took a degree in business administration at the University College of the Fraser Valley. That name gives you a hint as to when that was, because it’s not called that anymore. Most of my classes were small and engaging, small class sizes, but there were two classes that weren’t. One of them was Microeconomics 101, and it was in the theater. They packed like 150 people into that theater, and the professor would run balon at the front about supply and demand curves, and it was amazing. At the end of the class there was a multiple choice test. And then after the test, after the whole semester, they posted all the grades on the wall. You got 150 grades, all labeled by student number. So you found your student number and looked down. I found my grade and thought, okay, I did all right. And then I just kept scanning out of curiosity. Went down, down, down, down. And I found somebody who got 6% on the test. It kind of blew my mind, because I thought if you just put in “C” for everything, you’d probably get at least 40%, maybe even pass. So I thought, how do you even get 6%?

As Alf said, we’re talking about the Parable of the Sower, and school is an amazing analogy for that. In the context of that class, everybody got the same seed. All 150 people in that class got the same seed. The difference was in the soil that received that seed.

During my time in school there, I applied myself and I yielded a harvest. I can’t tell you the individual seeds that were sown back then, but I can still point to the fact that today I look at the world through a business and marketing lens. That’s the harvest I got out of that time. But there were other students who would just cram the night before, just enough to get the information in for the test, and then, poof, it was gone after that, because it didn’t really sink in. That’s like the rocky ground. And then there were some who were just focused on partying and other distractions, and again didn’t really yield a harvest from that. And then some, I would suggest the 6%, they were like the path. It just hardened. I remember thinking at the time, I bet their parents paid for them to be here and they don’t want to be here, and they’re using this to send a message. There’s just this closed heart that no matter what, I’m going to just… right?

Reading the Parable

So let’s read the parable. It’s in Mark 4, verses 3 through 9.

“Consider this. A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some fell along the beaten path, and soon the birds came and ate it. Some fell onto gravel with no topsoil and quickly sprouted, since the soil had no depth. But when the days grew hot, the sprouts were scorched and withered because they had insufficient roots. Some fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. But some fell into good, rich soil that kept producing a good harvest. Some yielded 30, some 60, and some a hundredfold. If you understand this, then you need to respond.”

Now I find it really interesting that Jesus said at the end, “if you understand this, then you need to respond.” This tells me your soil condition is not locked. Jesus never looked at the crowd and said, “Oh, Jimmy, I see that you have a very hard, stony heart. Sucks to be you. Better luck next time.” That’s not what he’s saying here. He’s saying, if you recognize yourself in this, you need to respond. There’s a path to becoming good soil.

What Is the Seed?

So let’s zoom out. What is the seed? Mark 4:13, Jesus gives us the answer. He says, “The sower sows the word.” And he’s talking about the word of God. But not just the Bible. In Deuteronomy 8:3 it says that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. “Proceeds” is present tense. God has never stopped speaking. He has spoken, he is speaking, and he will continue to speak for eternity. He upholds all things by the power of his word. So this is far more than just the Bible, although that of course is included: creative ideas, business ideas, inventions, relationship ideas, whatever the case may be. God is always sowing seed on all people. You don’t have to be one of his children. You don’t have to be a Christian for him to sow seed in your life. And you don’t have to recognize that it’s the voice of God for that seed to bear fruit in your life either. He sows on all. It says he sends rain on the just and the unjust. He’s the farmer of the whole earth.

Have you ever had a really, really good idea? Anybody? I know I’ve had really good ideas. I remember what that feels like. But I can’t really tell you what I’ve done with most of them. You would think that if you had a really good idea, it would be a great thing just on the strength of the idea. But that’s not true. It’s actually about the soil that idea lands in.

Here’s an interesting thing. A farmer will not hold a field responsible for seed that was sown in another field. God is not going to hold me responsible for a seed that he sowed into Alf’s life, and vice versa, because we’re different fields. That wouldn’t make sense. Likewise, a farmer never asks a field, “Are you in my farm or out of my farm?” That doesn’t make any sense. Why would a farmer do that? This parable is not about figuring out whether or not you’re in or out of the kingdom. It’s about maturity. It’s about fruit. It’s about harvest. What happens when God sows in your life? Instead, a farmer would go to the field and say, “Hey, how much are you producing? I’m very curious.” If you’ve ever talked to a farmer, you know they’re all about pH levels and bushels, harvest. They’re very interested in how much that field can produce.

Here’s the harder part. You might be tempted to look at all these soil types and be like, “Well, which one am I?” And that’s the trap, because the reality is we can have all of those soil types in our heart. Have you ever seen God do something amazing in your life, and then that same afternoon you blow up at your kids, or you lose it in some other area, or you just hit a wall, and you’re like, how can this be? How can I have amazing fruit in one area and just be hitting a wall in another area in the same afternoon? You would think that if God’s word was at work in your heart, it would just be equally doing everything. It’s not the case, because we have different soil types in our heart. Things like finances, your relationship with your spouse or your kids or your boss or friends, your health, all these different things, they’re all different domains in our heart, and they can all have different soil types.

Jesus Explains the Parable

So let’s read Jesus’s explanation of the parable. “If you don’t understand this parable, how will you understand any parable?” He’s saying this is the key to unlocking all of them. Let me explain.

“The farmer sows the message of the kingdom. What falls on the beaten path represents those who hear the message, but immediately Satan appears and snatches it from their hearts. What is sown on gravel represents those who hear the message and receive it joyfully, but because their hearts fail to sink a deep root, they don’t endure for long. When trouble or persecution comes on account of the message, they immediately wilt and fall away. What is sown among thorns represents those who hear the message, but they allow the cares of this life and the seduction of wealth and the desire for other things to crowd out and choke the message so that it produces nothing. But what is sown on good soil represents those who open their hearts to receive the message, and their lives bear good fruit. Some yield a harvest of 30, 60, and even 100-fold.”

So Jesus is inviting us to examine our own hearts. What are the soil types in our own hearts? We can identify good soil by looking for areas in our life where the word of God comes, and I’m not even just talking about Christian-related stuff, but whenever things come and they yield fruit without striving, without working hard for it. Good soil, you’ve never seen good soil trying to squeeze out a better plant. It doesn’t work. Good soil just produces a plant. It’s at rest. So in areas of your life that produce fruit and you’re at rest, that’s an indicator of good soil.

Rocky ground: sometimes we get ideas and we’re like, “oh, yeah,” we get really fired up about them, we make a little bit of progress, and then they start to fizzle. The next day you’re like, “yeah, that’s a good idea, I should get back to that,” and then maybe the next week it’s just as if it never happened. This really fast little blip, that’s rocky ground.

Thorny ground is where you’re making real progress, but then the thorns come up. I’ve got a field with blackberries, and I tell you, those things take over. The thorns come up, they start taking the sunlight, the roots go and start stealing the nutrients, and pretty soon that real growth that was started is just totally taken away by the thorns. The cares of this world, Jesus lists them. How many distractions do we have in our lives? Many, many.

And then sometimes we have that path, the hardened ground. Maybe it’s an area where we’re really numb, or we’re hard, or we’ve been wounded, or trauma, whatever the case may be. Maybe we just can’t find a way to forgive a person. There’s this area that it’s like, God, all that’s fine, but over here, we’re kind of holding it. Not this part. That’s hardened ground. That’s the path.

Hardened Ground Isn’t Final

Now here’s what’s interesting: Jesus says when the seed is sown on the path, then the birds come and take it away. Isn’t it interesting that the farmer sows seed on the path? Does that make sense? God is still sowing seed on the hardened parts of our lives. But because we’ve got things going on, like unforgiveness or whatever the case may be, that provides a landing pad for the birds of the air. He calls it out, Satan comes and snatches that away, and it’s as if that seed never landed, because we’re closed off. It’s our own choice.

Hardened ground, though, is not a life sentence. In between the parable and Jesus explaining it, there’s this little bit where he’s quoting Isaiah 6. He said to the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should turn and their sins be forgiven them.”

Now it sounds at first glance like Jesus doesn’t want people to get the point, but that’s contrary to the entire purpose of why he came to the earth. So what’s really going on? If we look in Isaiah 6, we find out that the people of Israel had made continuous choices to harden their hearts. Through continuous disobedience, they had chosen the quality of their own soil. They had hardened their hearts toward God, and so now God’s saying, you know what, you’re going to hear, but you’re not going to… right.

That was the state of Israel at the time of Jesus. But even within that, you still get people like Simeon and Anna, who, when Jesus was carried in the door literally as an infant, immediately said, “that baby is my Messiah.” How tender does your heart need to be to recognize Jesus as an infant? They are examples of good soil, so that even when the overall environment was hard, clearly there is a way to become good soil in the midst of that.

How do we soften our hearts? Well, you ask. In Matthew 15 we get the story of the Canaanite woman and her daughter, who is severely demon-possessed. She goes to Jesus and says, “Oh Lord, son of David,” using all the titles, and she’s met with silence, nothing. Then she keeps going, and Jesus replies, “I was only sent to Israel. What are you doing here?” That’s hard. What does she do? She gets a little bit more desperate, loses the titles: “Lord, help me.” Then he says, “It’s not good to throw the children’s food to the little dogs.” She could have taken this as an insult. She could have taken it in bitterness or rejection. But instead she agreed with Jesus: “Yes, but even the little dogs get to eat the crumbs.” She just humbled herself further. She agreed with Jesus, she didn’t argue, and she humbled herself further and further. You know what the end result was? Jesus said, “This is great faith.” It sounded like he was ignoring her, but in reality that produced humility in her, and he turned around and said, “This is great faith.”

And then we’ve got the man who came to Jesus and said, “Lord, help my unbelief.” Sometimes we just have to ask. We have to humble ourselves before God. He responds to humility.

A Vision Born at Mara

I’ve gone through a bit of a hard-ground season myself. For a long time, many years, I’ve been dissatisfied with my work, with my business, and where things were at. I felt like it was hard, unproductive ground. I felt like I was doing what God wanted me to be doing and not getting anywhere. A few years ago I heard a sermon about the importance of needing a vision, and I was really convicted that I had no vision whatsoever. I was kind of dead to the whole thing and apathetic about it. I called out to God, “God, I need a vision for my work, for what you’ve called me to do.” I was hoping I’d have a dream, or someone would give me a prophetic word, and nothing. The months went on, and God brought me in touch with a guy named Ed Rush, who began to teach me about asking God to reveal the lies I was believing in my own heart.

This started quite a journey for me, where God revealed lies in all these different heart domains we talked about: finances, work, relationships, health, all the stuff. And I was surprised how many lies I was believing, even though I was living a Christian life and all the rest of it. In the context of our parable, lies are like boulders in your field. If you’ve got a rock there, it’s a problem. You can’t dig through it, you’ve got to remove it, or if you’ve got machinery it might create a big furrow and go off in a weird direction. You do not want rocks in a productive field. It messes things up. Lies that we’re believing in our hearts are like boulders, and they make the ground around them unproductive. So God began showing me how to replace those lies with his truth.

About a year after I had asked for that vision, I found myself again up against the wall, just discouraged, no place to go. So I went away for a couple days on my own to seek God, and he brought me to a place named Mara near Sicamous. As I was there, he showed me that the Israelites had gone to a place named Mara, and they found bitter water and complained against God, and Moses threw a stick in the water, a type of the cross. My host there, her name was Chantelle, which means “to sing,” and she said, for whatever reason, “the water is sweet here.” God began to speak to me at that time. He said, “You know what, the water is sweet. You are in my favor. I’ve been looking at all my circumstances and basically adding those up, and it equals not-in-favor, because nothing’s happening.” He’s like, “No, no, no, you’ve got the wrong equation. You are in my favor. You need to look at it from the other perspective.” I love all the testimonies we had this morning about believing the word of God. He’s like, “You just need to believe me. Don’t believe your circumstances.” He began bringing me from believing lies, then we replaced the lies with truth, and then he began to bring me into declaring the truth and starting to live from the truth. That’s a very different step again.

About a year ago I was having lunch with a couple friends, and God gave me an idea for an app, and I recognized it at the time, the way it came, I’m like, that idea was from God. I tried to do something with it at the time, and it kind of fizzled, because I didn’t have the skills and things weren’t right. But it set me off on a path of trying to understand and learn how to write software using AI. About a year later, just a few months ago, a few conversations came together, and all of a sudden that little seed that had been dead in the ground popped above ground. All of a sudden I had a vision for how my work could impact people, a kingdom vision, and it started growing. I saw this little shoot above ground and thought, wow, this is amazing. But if God had set that seed in my life a few years earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything with it. The soil quality wasn’t there. Back then I was spending time believing God, you pray about stuff, and then you go about your life, and basically the whole rest of your day is a form of argument against what God has said. You might not be arguing to his face, but you walk over here and you’re just doing daily life naturally.

Gideon and Elijah: The Quality of Our Yes

So we get to the last line in Jesus’s parable, and at this point he’s dealt with all the bad soil. Now he says, “But the good soil, some yielded a harvest of 30, some 60, and some 100-fold.” That’s really interesting, right? Why would there be a difference in harvest? It’s good soil. I would suggest to you that it’s all about the quality of our yes. Quality of yes is not the same as works. You can’t work your way, as I said, good soil cannot work its way to become better soil. It’s about the quality of your receiving, of your surrender, of your humility.

We’ve got some foundational truths. Jesus died for our sins. We’ve been made sons and daughters of God. We’ve been raised up and seated with him in heavenly places, read Ephesians, as Alf continuously encourages us. We have been given every spiritual blessing. The Bible talks about these things in the past tense, they are accomplished. But many of us are living as though they are yet to come. We’re trying to live toward those things, trying to work our way toward those things, when Jesus is saying, this is done, you need to live from those things. Big difference, and it changes the type of our harvest.

So I want to look at a few examples of people from the Old Testament who I think are examples of the 30 and the 60. Gideon: when we first come across Gideon, the nation of Israel is really beaten down by the Midianites. The angel of the Lord comes to Gideon, and Gideon’s first response is, “Oh, God shows up. If you’re God, why haven’t you delivered us already?” A bit odd, right? I’m paraphrasing. He argues immediately from his circumstances. He’s like, if you’re so great, why haven’t you delivered us already? Then the angel of the Lord says, “Gideon, mighty man of valor,” beginning to speak a new identity over Gideon. But Gideon argues from his own believed identity: “Who, me? I’m the smallest, I’m the least, I’m the weakest.” He again argues out of his perceived identity. Then, as this exchange wraps up, he says, “Are you really the angel of the Lord? Can you give me a sign?” And the angel of the Lord lights some food on fire, and Gideon’s like, “oh snap, that actually is the angel of the Lord.” And yet even then he still goes and there’s the two fleeces. Five times Gideon argues out of his circumstance or out of his identity against God. And yet five times, five is the number of grace, God graciously answers him and meets him where he’s at. He doesn’t condemn him. He says, “You know what, Gideon, I’ll meet you here. If you still doubt, head down to the camp, you’re going to hear a dream, and it’s going to give you the confidence.” And so he does, and of course there’s a mighty victory, and the nation of Israel is set free from the Midianites.

But the story doesn’t end there. Out of the spoils of war, Gideon actually makes an ephod, and it begins to lead Israel astray, away from God. Then they say, “Hey Gideon, we’d like to make you king,” and again Gideon has an identity crisis and says no. But he turns around and names his firstborn son Abimelech, which means “my father is king.” That’s kind of odd. Fast forward, Abimelech kills all his brothers and sisters. If we zoom all the way out, we see the story starts with Israel serving Baal. Gideon comes along, sets the people free, and then Gideon’s gone, and all the people are back in Baal worship again. So yes, there was a harvest, there was a victory, but it was limited, because Gideon didn’t fully receive the identity God was trying to instill in him, and he certainly wasn’t able to transfer that to the next generation.

And then we have Elijah, one of these big heroes. Elijah is kind of a type of the New Testament believer walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. He had signs and wonders and miracles, he called down fire from heaven. Literally the whole nation was like, he is the guy. But just after this mountaintop experience where he called down fire, Jezebel says, “I got your number, I’m going to kill you.” And for whatever reason, the switch flips, and he flees into the wilderness. He spends 40 days, and again God meets him in grace, sends an angel to care for him and give him food. At the end of 40 days, God catches up with him and says, “Hey Elijah, what’s going on?” And we get to find out what Elijah’s been thinking about for 40 days. His answer to God is, “I’ve been very zealous for the Lord Most High, but I alone am left of all his prophets, and they want to kill me too.” This is what he’s been thinking about for 40 days. When I hear that, I hear the words of someone who feels abandoned. He’s like, look at me, look what I did for you, God, and where are you? So God doesn’t answer him. Instead, he retrains him how to hear his voice, and sends the wind and the fire and the still small voice. After that experience, God asks again, “Elijah, what’s happening?” And Elijah answers the same thing: “I alone am left, I’ve been very zealous for God, but I alone am left, and they want to kill me.” God answers him and says, “You know what, there’s actually 7,000 that I’ve kept over here.” Here’s the thing: you can have a mountaintop experience with God, you can be in his presence directly, you can hear his voice, operate in signs and wonders and miracles and prophecy and every kind of thing, and if those things do not change your identity statement, it’s going to limit your fruit. Because that was the last we really heard of Elijah. After that he had to go anoint his successor, and that was the last miracle he did, because his identity statement never changed.

Abraham and Mary: The Hundredfold

So what about the hundredfold? Abraham: God comes to Abraham as an old man and says, “I want to make you the father of many nations.” Now Abraham could have argued from all kinds of stuff, “have you seen me, I’m an old man, have you seen my wife, she’s an old lady, this doesn’t work anymore.” He didn’t do that. The angel said, “Can you count the stars? Can you count the sand on the seashore?” These are ridiculous numbers, right? It’s not like, “can you count those sheep over there.” This was an utter impossibility. “That’s what I’m going to make your descendants like.” What did Abraham say? “I believe you.” How crazy is that? Romans 4 says Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, his simple belief. He didn’t do anything. And when that word came into Abraham’s life, it took a long time for that fruit, that seed, to bear a harvest, even a tiny little shoot above ground. He had to wait many years before he saw Isaac, the son of the promise, and he never saw, you know, a large family, let alone the stars, the billions, trillions, we can’t count that either. But here’s the thing: we don’t have to see the harvest. We are not the farmers in our own life. God is the farmer, we’re the soil. Our responsibility is to be good soil, and his responsibility is to look after the harvest. We just have to be good soil.

Mary, another example. Again the angel of the Lord comes and says, “Hey Mary,” she’s a virgin, “you’re going to have a child, it’s going to be the Son of God.” She’s like, “How can this be?” But she wasn’t saying it like an accusation, she was legitimately like, I don’t get it, how can this be. But we see her heart in the final words she said: “Let it be to me according to your word.” That’s her heart. She’s like, “Yes, Lord, I agree, I believe you.” Look at the harvest that came from Mary’s yes, from the quality of her yes, where she did not argue, she said, “I believe.” Look at the harvest. Jesus came into the earth, and we literally don’t know what the earth would have been like if Jesus hadn’t come, because he changed everything.

A hundredfold harvest doesn’t require easier circumstances. It just requires a better yes. When I was looking at that wall of grades, Microeconomics 101, there was nothing anybody could do to change the quality of their soil at that point. It was already done, it was tested, it was locked in. That’s not what this parable is about. Jesus is saying, if you understand this, you need to respond. He’s saying if you understand this, there is a path to becoming better soil. Gideon, Elijah, Abraham, Mary, they’re not different people, they’re like different domains in our heart. And maybe there’s other areas as well, maybe there’s some thorns in there, distractions, some things we need to deal with, lies, boulders, unforgiveness, and then sometimes maybe there are those arguments, arguing out of circumstances, arguing out of poor identity. And then maybe there’s some areas in our lives where there’s good fruit as well, where there’s a yes. Here’s the thing: God is the farmer, he works the soil, it’s on us to believe. Ephesians 2 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” This is the playing-field leveler. We’ve all been given the same capacity to believe. Yes, we all have different skills and abilities and circumstances and all the rest, but God’s not looking at that. He’s like, “I just want your yes.”

Closing Prayer and Response

So if I could invite the prayer team to come up. If there’s anything God’s been laying on your heart as we go through, maybe it’s some thorns, or lies, or whatever it is, unforgiveness, maybe it’s the arguments from circumstance or from identity, whatever it is, I invite you to come up and pray with these people. They’d love to agree with you in faith, because it’s not on us to fix our field. We partner with him, we partner with the Father.

So let’s pray. Father, thank you that you are good, that your word is good. Thank you that you sow your word into each of our lives. Lord, we just lay down all of our arguments from circumstance, from identity, from whatever it is that sticks itself up as an argument against what you have said over our lives. Lord, we just lay those things down and repent of them in Jesus’s name, and we ask that you turn our hearts into good soil, that we would yield a hundredfold harvest, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Do you want to come up? I think one question that stuck out to me while John was talking is, do we know the condition of our soil? If you struggle with, “I really don’t know, out of those four things, what is the condition of my soil,” these lovely people will help you discern that with the Lord. So come on up, and then we’ll pray for lunch.