Let’s briefly picture the scene portrayed in the parable of the sower.
A farmer is going out to sow some seed in his field. He scatters the seed liberally by hand throwing it from side to side and it falls in different places. Some seed falls on the pathway that goes round or through the field. Here the soil is hard and compacted. Many feet and hooves have walked over it and the seed can’t penetrate the hard soil. The birds soon come and eat it up.
Some seed falls where there is only a thin layer of soil with rock underneath. The soil is warm and the seed sprouts quickly. However there’s insufficient depth for the seed to put out decent roots and insufficient soil to hold moisture, so the heat of the midday sun scorches the plants and they wither.
Some seed falls in the field where the ground has been cultivated but it falls amongst weeds and thorns. These compete for the moisture and sunlight and the resulting plants are stunted and fail to crop properly.
However some seed falls into good soil. Here there is sufficient space, depth and moisture for the plants to establish themselves and they bear much fruit.
Firstly who is the farmer or sower portrayed in the story, the one who scatters the seed?
Well the farmer can be seen as Jesus and the parable then relates to how the Jews of his day would receive his teaching.
However equally the farmer can be viewed as any christian who is prepared to tell others the good news about Jesus and his kingdom. It may be a preacher or teacher but equally it may be a lay person or even a child who shares their faith with a friend, neighbour or work colleague.
The important thing is that whoever it is, he or she sows seed.
How do we sow seed? Primarily with words but also by our actions and the lives we lead.
When we tell others about Jesus however inept we may feel or however basic our theological knowledge the
Holy Spirit can use our words to make an impression on someone.
Part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict people of their sin and to encourage them to believe in Jesus. As we speak out, the Holy Spirit takes our words and encourages our listeners to repent and believe.
Paul says in his letter to the Thessalonians ; “We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. “ So Paul proclaimed the gospel but it was the Holy Spirit who brought his words alive and impacted the hearts of those who received his message.”
So the farmer’s job in the parable is to sow the seed, but he can’t make the seed grow. Only God can do that.
Likewise we of ourselves can’t touch or change someone’s heart. Only God can do that. But we are asked to scatter seed, to be willing to speak honestly and openly about our faith in Jesus and to demonstrate his love with our actions.
Of course our actions and lives also speak to others and can reinforce or negate the words we speak about our faith. If people are drawn to something of Jesus they see in us, they are much more likely to listen to what we say about our faith.
Alternately they may disbelieve what we say because our lives don’t match the message we are proclaiming.
The main part of the parable of the sower deals with the reception the gospel will find when it is proclaimed and this will depend on the condition of people’s hearts.
Jesus identifies 4 heart conditions which hearers of the gospel are likely to exhibit.
The first condition is hard heartedness – the seed which falls on the path. The hard hearted person is like compacted soil – very tough to break through. Thus although he or she hears about Jesus the words make no impression. They are spiritually blind and don’t understand them and probably have no desire to understand them. A hard hearted person is likely to be proud and unable to see their need of Jesus.
In the gospel stories the Scribes and Pharisees were hard hearted. Although they heard Jesus words and saw the miracles he did they were unmoved.
Notice that this seed which falls on the path gets eaten by birds.
Jesus makes reference to birds a few times in the gospels and on occasion they symbolise the devil and his demonic host.
So Jesus explains in verse 19 that the birds symbolise the evil one who comes and snatches away what was sown in the hard hearted person’s heart. The devil is actively opposing the work of the sower. He doesn’t want to leave any seed on the path in case with rain the soil should soften and it might start to take root.
So there is a spiritual battle going on around the sower. The Holy Spirit will help us to convey our message but the devil will oppose our message.
This is perhaps something we lose sight of sometimes. The devil is anxious to ensure that people remain spiritually blind. The last thing he wants is for people to repent and believe in Jesus because he knows if they do this, his hold on their lives will be broken.
Paul tells us in Colossians that the person who receives and believes the gospel message is rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into Jesus’ kingdom. Satan’s hold on a person’s life is broken when they come to believe in Jesus, when the seed of God’s word takes root deeply in their lives.
The next heart condition identified by Jesus is shallow heartedness – the seed that falls on rocky places.
The shallow hearted person hears the word and receives it with joy but since he has no root he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes he quickly falls away.
The shallow hearted person apparently embraces Christianity, but when the going gets tough he or she quickly falls away. The trouble with the shallow hearted person is that their response to the gospel is superficial. It doesn’t involve genuine repentance and a change of heart, so the shallow hearted person is not truly converted. The roots of God’s word in them only penetrate the surface of their being.
God wants us to receive the message about his kingdom whole heartedly. The shallow hearted person receives the message half heartedly.
God is waiting for us to reach a point where we genuinely and truly want Him in our lives, where we are hungry for him, where we are prepared to put our old lives behind us and find a new life with him.
This is why the gospel frequently finds a more favourable response from people on the fringes of society, people in prison, people who have lost everything, people who feel worthless and people who are in despair.
Such people are often hungry for God and his word finds a ready home in their hearts.
And this is why Jesus mixed with those on the fringes of society. The religious leaders and the self righteous rejected him but prostitutes and sinners welcomed him.
The next heart condition Jesus identifies is the pre-occupied heart – the seed that falls among thorns. Jesus tells us the thorns are the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth which choke the seed so it becomes unfruitful.
This is quite an interesting condition as it is one that particularly affects Christians. The seed here has fallen on good soil but it is competing with other plants that steal its light, water and nutrients. There is perhaps the potential for this seed to become fruitful but for that to happen the thorns need to go.
Personally I think that having a pre-occupied heart is a problem for many Christians in the West. We can lead such busy lives that God gets smothered by our other concerns – work, family, hobbies, money worries etc.
These things eat into our time and God gets pushed to the edge of our lives. We find that we don’t have time to read our bibles regularly let alone have a quiet time. Church going sometimes gets put on the back burner as we seek to cram everything into our packed lives. We profess faith in Jesus but our lives really aren’t very fruitful. We find that God seems distant and church activities become just another thing to do.
For Christians the remedy for this type of pre-occupied heart is to acknowledge that we are getting our priorities wrong and to say sorry to God.
We will need to make a determined effort to uproot the weeds that we have allowed to grow in our lives and to put God back at the centre of our lives again. To choose to make time to read our bibles and to spend time talking to God in prayer. To choose to come to church and to become involved again. To choose to put God before other things which eat our time and even perhaps some family demands on our time.
Then once again we will start to become more fruitful.
Sometimes the weeds that choke us can be recurrent worries, for instance about money, about our families, our health or what the future holds. I know from personal experience that these can be very hard to cope with. We tend to become introverted and inward looking and even depressed.
The real problem here is a lack of trust in God. We need to recognise that worry and anxiety achieve little and to learn to trust God, to recognise that He is in control of our lives and that He is good and loving and kind.
We then need to learn to lay these concerns at his feet and trust Him to deal with them in his own time so that we can once again look outwards towards the needs of others.
Sometimes we may need God to speak directly into our lives to allay a specific fear or worry that could otherwise choke our fruitfulness.
Several years ago God reassured me about my health after I’d had a lump removed from under my arm. He spoke to me through Psalm 41 and told me that He would protect and preserve my life, that He would not abandon me to the power of my enemies, that He would help me when I was sick and restore me to health.
The last heart condition identified by Jesus is good heartedness. The person with a good heart hears the word and understands it and produces a crop yielding many times what was sown.
The person with a good heart studies God’s word and puts it into practice. The more they study and apply it the more it takes root in their lives and the more fruitful they become.
Several years ago when I was at St Phillips church in Tunbridge Wells I met a retired couple who visited our church as part of a Walk Kent mission. They came to our house group and shared something of their life with us. They’d both become Christians quite late in life but now they were retired they devoted their lives to God’s service.
Every morning they’d read 7 chapters of the bible aloud to each other, working their way through from Genesis to Revelation. This struck me as an awful lot but they’d done this for a few years now and as you can imagine they both knew their bibles exceedingly well.
After this they both go to separate rooms and pray, particularly asking God if there was anything He wanted them to do. Frequently they’d pray about church based events and things which were going on. If they felt there was anything specific they should go along to they’d write it down and then compare notes. If they were in agreement about anything they’d do it.
They said their retirement was the most exciting time of their lives. For instance they’d both felt God wanted them to go to America so they’d gone, trusting Him to provide the money which He did.
But the thing which really made an impression on me was their fruitfulness. They told us lots of stories where they had been in the right place at the right time and had helped numerous people to find a relationship with Jesus. They said it was as if God planned their lives each day. They did their best to be where God wanted them to be and God would provide the people to cross their path.
The soil of their relationship with God was deep and very fruitful.
So the question we need to ask ourselves is what sort of heart do we have, and where do we fit into this
picture of different soil conditions? Are we hard hearted or shallow hearted. Do we have pre-occupied hearts or good hearts, and how much fruit are we producing in our lives.
And what can we do to make our own hearts and the hearts of those we love a more fertile place for God’s word to take root and flourish in.
Well I think there are a couple of things we can do.
Initially untruth hardens people’s hearts. For instance if someone believes that God doesn’t exist, or that the bible is a fairy story they are likely to dismiss the gospel. Their heart will be hardened against it.
The antidote to untruth is the truth which we will find encapsulated within the pages of the bible.
Paul tells us that all scripture is God breathed. God has breathed life into scripture.
If you’re concerned that your heart may be hard, I’d suggest reading the gospels.
The other great antidote to a hard heart is prayer. Just as the constant drip of water can soften hard soil, so can sustained and regular prayer. We need to pray for our families and friends and neighbours that God will soften their hearts and open their eyes so that his word can take root in their lives.
And finally as Christians we need to guard our own hearts and make every effort to not allow weeds to grow because we can be sure if we do that our fruitfulness will suffer.
In the name of the living God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment