Faith allows us into the Kingdom where the King can reveal to us what naturally we cannot accept or understand
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The parable is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke and there are four types of soils described. All of them give us glimpses of how it relates to the heart.
The Lord came to the world offering a Kingdom, talking, teaching about it, calling people to acknowledge Him as King.
The people of Israel, descendants of Abraham were to be the channel through whom the world would be blessed, through whom the Kingdom would come, by whose King it would be ruled. But they refused the King and His Kingdom. So in chapter 13, the Kingdom is postponed to a future when the people of Israel will accept the King acknowledging His Kingdom and receiving it in its fullness. The time between the rejection and the return is the time the Lord calls "the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven" (13:11). Peter also refers to it (1 Peter 1:10-12). So the period between the rejection of Christ and His return to set up His Kingdom is described through the parables in Matthew 13. We are still in that period of time.
The parable of the Sower represents the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world. The context of Jesus' time was agricultural in that part of the world. Everybody understood about sowing seeds. There were four responses to the preaching of the Gospel.
1. 13:3-23 The seed that fell along the path. People initially rejected it. In Israel at that time there were no division of fields, no stone walls or hedges. There were paths across the land for people to walk through and for farmers to use. The soil in these narrow waysides would be hard packed, uncultivated, never loosened. Through continual use and the dryness of the climate it would be compacted as hard as pavement. What the birds didn't eat was trampled by men.
2. Stony soil (13:5). The soil in Israel has running through it strains of limestone rockbed. In many areas this rockbed rises up close to the surface, so right beneath the soil is this hard rockbed. As the seed falls and begins to germinate the roots hit the rockbed having nowhere to go. The moisture and sun generate life upwards, springing up probably higher that the other grain in other seed bed which is going both ways. It flourishes immediately, but when the sun comes out, it dies because its roots aren't strong enough to maintain moisture or to find it. The plants die in the heat of summer.
3. Seed falling among thorns, choking the plants (13:7). Weeds are in the soil. This soil looks good. It's deep, rich, turned over, tilled, cultivated, clean and ready, the seed falling down into that area begins to germinate. But the weeds choke the good seed out.
Weeds are natural to the soil, belonging to it. Because of Adam we are born in sin. The sowing of the grain is a foreign element just like the sowing of what is pleasing to God is foreign to our human nature. It has to be carefully cultivated. The weeds in their natural soil just totally dominate and strangle and choke, growing faster, sending leaves and shade, starving the plants of sun or moisture. There's not enough room for everything to share the nutrients of that soil. So the good seed dies.
4. Good soil (13:8). Producing a crop a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Unlike the pathway it is soft. It's deep unlike the weed infested soil. The seed has room to burst into life bringing forth a tremendous harvest. The average harvest would be 7.5 fold. A good crop would be tenfold. So we are talking about a tremendous crop.
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He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
Only the ones who believe in the King, the redeemed who are in the Kingdom, can hear, see and understand. Faith allows us into the Kingdom where the King can reveal to us what naturally we cannot accept or understand. The amazing thing is that no matter what type of soil our heart is, God can change it.
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:26
This process of regeneration of our heart involves Father, Son, Holy Spirit and us.
The Father: John 6:44. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day."
The Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:26, 34. "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
We, ourselves. Hosea 10:12. Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unploughed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.
Author: Betty Plumb
May God bless and enrich your life
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