The Sower & The Seed: Are you Listening?

Pastor Matt Moran

Mark 4:1-20

Transcript

The crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things
and parables. And in his teaching, he said to them, listen, behold, a sower went
out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came
and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much
soil. And immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the
sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other
seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded
no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and
increasing and yielding 30-fold and 60-fold and 100-fold. And he said, he who
has ears to hear, let him hear. And when he was alone, those around him with the
12 asked him about the parables. And he said to them, to you has been given the
secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables,
so that they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not
understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. And he said to them, do you
not understand his parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The
sower sows the word, and these are the ones along the path where the word is
sown, when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is
sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who, when
they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they had no root in
themselves, but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises
on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown
among thorns, but they are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world
and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and
choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good
soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, 30-fold and
60-fold and 100-fold. Thanks, Ed. Let's pray together. Lord God, we trust this
time to you. We ask for the illumination of your spirit. We ask that our hearts
would be like the good soil that we just read about. We ask that your word would
go forward in power and sink deep into us. In Jesus' name, amen. OK, at the
beginning of Mark's gospel, in chapter 1, Jesus begins his public ministry, and
Mark summarizes it like this. He says in chapter 1, 14, and 15, he says, Jesus
came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.
The kingdom of God is something that is already at hand and yet will not be
fully consummated until the day that Jesus returns. But when Jesus was saying
that the kingdom of God was at hand, he was saying that God is breaking into
human history in the person of Jesus, and his rule and his reign is being
established. Now in chapter 4 in Mark, we see this sequence of stories that
illustrate for us the dynamics of the kingdom of God. We're just looking at one
today, the parable of the sower and the seed. And we can picture the scene.
There's this great crowd that has gathered alongside the Sea of Galilee. And as
they stand by the water, Jesus is in a boat. We can picture his voice going
across the water. And from the boat, he teaches the crowd with parables. Jesus
was a very memorable teacher, and he's using illustrations, stories with a
purpose, to get his point across. Parables provide instruction for those who are
inside, who are within the community following Jesus, who are becoming part of
his kingdom, who are submitting to his rule and his reign. But the parables have
a dual function because they also provide judgment and warning to those who are
outside. So here on the shore, there's this very large, and we know from chapter
3, diverse crowd of both followers and opponents growing in size as Jesus's
miracles spread. And even as Jesus speaks, some people are coming to believe in
his message and follow him. Others are hardening their hearts and rejecting him.
Those dynamics of the kingdom of God are actually working themselves out in real
time as some are believing and some are becoming hardened as they listen along
the seashore. And Mark 4 gives us this sequence of stories. But first we hear
about the parable of the sower. This is what we're going to focus on. It's
really broken into two simple parts, the parable itself and then Jesus's
explanation. So the parable itself, Mark tells us in verse 1, again he began to
teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him so that he got
into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on
the land. He was teaching them many things in parables. And in his teaching he
said to them, listen. Behold, the sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some
seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on
rocky ground where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up since
it had no depth of soil. When the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no
root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and
choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and
produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold
and a hundredfold. And he said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. It's
probably a familiar parable to many of us. It's one of Jesus's best known
teachings. It's very memorable imagery. It's in three of the four gospels,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So first Jesus tells the story, verses 10 through 20,
he gives the explanation, telling his disciples the interpretation because they
did not initially understand. But before we even get into that, let's just make
sure we see the imperative, the command that's given in verse three, before the
story's even told. Do you see that in verse three? Listen. Before we even try to
interpret the parable and all the scenarios that are represented there, listen
and look at how the parable concludes in verse nine. He who has ears to hear,
let him hear. It's the very first question that when we as readers need to ask
ourselves, it's the first question that we need to ask ourselves and answer.
Because the seed in this story, as we'll see, is the word of God. Are we
listening to the word of God? Do we have ears to hear? That is the overriding
question going on in chapter four. So the sower goes out to sow the seed. And
one of the things that we notice is he is throwing seed all over the place. The
seed falls on hard ground that has not been prepared beforehand. If you enjoy
gardening or farming or cultivating things, this would seem bizarre. If you
fertilize your lawn, you know grass seed, like just a bag from Lowe's is kind of
expensive. If you don't rake up and dig up and prepare the soil at first, your
money, your efforts, are pretty much gonna be wasted. And of course this is
before any of that. This is before modern plowing techniques. They certainly did
not have tractors at this time. But neither did the Israelites have the
technology that we would think of for old fashioned plowing, like with a metal
plow behind an animal. They did not have those plows to break up the soil. The
plow was like a pointed stick. So the farmer would toss his seed first and then
drag that stick through later. Seems odd. If you have seed, why would you not be
more thoughtful about where it's going? Why is he throwing seed just all over
the place? The sower sows all over the place. He's almost like Johnny Appleseed
walking down the road with a bag of seed by his side, throwing seed generously,
letting it fall wherever it falls. There's some seed that falls on the path
along the wayside, the path that is just packed down by feet. There's some seed
that falls on rocky ground. There's some seed that falls on thorny ground. And
there is some seed that finds hospitable soil. Even there, there's three
different scenarios for fruitfulness. So there are people who are not even
interested in the word of God, and yet God sows there. The parable's hard to
understand, even for Jesus' followers, who at this point may still be a little
bit hard-hearted themselves. So Jesus interprets the parable for them in verses
10 through 20. Verse 10 says, when he was alone, those around him with the 12
asked him about the parables. And he said to them, to you has been given the
secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables,
so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not
understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. And he said to them, do you
not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? Sower
sows the word. And these are the ones along the path where the word is sown
when they hear. Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in
them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who, when they hear
the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves,
but endure for a while. Then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account
of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among
thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the
deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the
word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are
the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, 30 fold and 60 fold and
100 fold. So the disciples and those following Jesus, a larger group than the
12, ask about what he's been teaching. And in response, Jesus quotes from Isaiah
6. That passage is talking about the Israelites' hardheartedness to the word of
God. So again, the parables have this dual function. They are explaining how
God's kingdom works, but it's also a form of judgment on those who reject God's
word. And Jesus says to his followers, do you not understand the parables? How
then will you understand all the parables? Meaning there are harder things than
this coming. And he begins to walk them through the meaning of the story. The
sower clearly represents Jesus, but secondarily, it also represents anyone who
is preaching the word, whether it's in a setting like this or whether we're
talking about personal conversation. And the soil represents the various
conditions of the human heart. This is a parable where six different scenarios
are represented. And Jesus begins his parable by describing three types of soil,
three different responses to the human heart. Each soil is inhospitable, but for
different reasons. First we see the hard hearts. Verse 15, these are the ones
along the path where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes
and takes away the word that is sown in them. Every time the word of God is
sown, there are real intense spiritual battles going on. There's some seed that
falls on hard, packed down ground. It falls along the path. It finds no root
whatsoever. These are hard-hearted people. And when I say that, they do not
necessarily hate God in some active way, but they're too busy, too preoccupied
to think about what life is really all about. Two, they're indifferent to the
word of God, distracted, all set with their lives. If the thought about death or
the shortness of life or the coming judgment or the Bible came into their minds,
they would deflect it. They would probably look down at their phones. Many
people, perhaps the majority of people in our culture, live in that heightened
state of distraction. In his famous fictional book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S.
Lewis tells the story of someone he described as a sound atheist, this is 1940s,
but who accidentally, through his reading, began for just a moment to wonder
about faith in God. And in that book, the demon tempts him, not through what we
would call overt sin and not through intellectual arguments, but with the idea
of lunch and the newspaper and a bus ride. And those are the things that the man
sees as real life. Once a man gets distracted by real life, his mind moves on to
other topics and the seed is stolen from him. His heart is inhospitable soil to
the word of God. And we probably all know many people like this and think they
have absolutely no interest in spiritual things, how would I even talk to them?
How would I even begin a conversation? Here's the hopeful thing. God may take
the hard-hearted and the all set and the people who are not seeking him at all
and in his mercy, change their circumstances so that they have no choice but to
examine themselves. Mike and I spent time last month with a young pastor who's
starting his ministry in South Buffalo. He's in his early 30s, he has a family,
just finished his MDiv, which is like a 90 credit master's degree. We were in
the car together with him, I don't really know this guy, and asked him, how do
you come to faith in Jesus? And he said, I was incarcerated, I was in jail, I
was getting trouble in jail and someone came and gave me a Bible and God broke
through his hard-heartedness and his defiance and transformed this man's life.
God can break through even the hardest heart through the power of his word.
Jesus said, some seeds fall along the rocky ground, verses 16 through 17. And
these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the ones who when they hear the word,
immediately receive it with joy and they have no root in themselves but endure
for a while, then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word,
immediately they fall away. Some seeds fall on rocky ground, which means the
seed does not sink down very deep. It doesn't really penetrate the earth very
far, it stays shallow. Those are like the weeds or the dandelions that you see
in your driveway and your sidewalk in the springtime. They pop up quick but they
don't last long. In this area of the country, meaning the Middle East and
Israel, there would be a couple inches of soil but underneath that would be this
hard layer of limestone that's much more difficult to penetrate. If a seed
merely sank into those first couple inches without getting below the harder
surface, then it would immediately spring up. But after a while, under the heat
of the intense Middle Eastern sun, it would bake and wither away. And there are
those who hear God's word and they respond with joy and enthusiasm and tears and
emotion and maybe promises of change and resolutions. And for a few weeks or a
few months, you may see them every time the doors of the church are open. They
may have walked down the aisle for an altar call or signed a card or made some
type of decision, made a profession of faith. But there's no root. There's no
root. And unfortunately, that type of premature decision counting is absolutely
baked into American church culture. Many ministries depend on decisions and
other metrics just for their fundraising. Many churches self-promote themselves
as much larger and more fruitful than they really are. And I'm not trying to say
that an emotional response is bad. Emotion is good if you, when you follow
Jesus, emotion should be involved when you consider the miracle of his love and
that he has made you an object of his grace and you consider that he suffered on
the cross for your sins. But following Jesus involves also the will, the mind,
the heart. It involves a determined decision. It involves what Mark later on
calls denying yourself and taking up your cross to follow him. And Jesus says
right here, tribulation or persecution will come on account of the word. That's
part of the deal. You might recall in Luke's gospel in chapter nine, there's an
enthusiastic person who comes alongside Jesus and he says, I will follow you
wherever you go. And Jesus basically says to him, slow your roll. He said, foxes
have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
his head. He told him, think it through. Following Jesus isn't meant to be
comfortable. He knew that that initial enthusiasm was not enough. Some seeds
fall on rocky ground. And the illustration is meant to prompt some soul
searching. Has the seed found good ground in your heart? Are you willing and
prepared to suffer? Or do you think that you will one day be justified before
God because one day you signed a card or prayed a prayer? Some seeds fall on
hard soil. Some seeds fall on rocky ground. Some seeds fall on thorny ground,
verses 18 through 19. Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who
hear the word but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the
desires for other things enter in and choke the word and it proves unfruitful.
Some seeds fall among the thorns. In this case, the seed does begin to grow but
it grows alongside the cares and distractions of the world. When those two
things grow together simultaneously, as Jesus said, you cannot serve God and
money. The word gets choked out over time. It becomes unfruitful. The text says
it proves unfruitful. In other words, over time, we see that growth of the seed
get throttled. Or you could say the thorns win. And when I read that imagery of
the thorny ground and the cares of this world, I can see, this is most of the
people that I grew up with. It's many of the people that I went to Christian
college with, it's some of my oldest and closest friends. The cares of the world
are deceitful. They can fool us into thinking that the materialistic priorities
of this life, money, advancement, power, recognition, are what's truly worth
living for. And we like to think that those things actually can be our real
priorities but simultaneously, we can also cultivate faith in Christ. When those
things become our true God, our functional God, they will choke out the word of
God. We can't have both. It's a deception. The pastor, Kent Hughes, has an
illustration of a young man who went to his girlfriend and the young man said to
her, I love you with all of my heart. I don't have a yacht or a Rolls Royce like
Johnny Brown does but I love you with all my heart, let's get married. And the
girl said to him, I love you too. Tell me more about Johnny Brown. See, we can
have divided hearts like that girl. Some seeds fall on the wayside. Some seeds
fall on the rocky ground. Some seeds fall among thorns. And when the sower is
throwing his seed, seemingly haphazardly, we also know wherever the seed falls,
his word will accomplish exactly what the sower intends. Isaiah tells us this in
Isaiah 55, 10 and 11. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do
not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving
seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from
my mouth. It shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I
purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. When God sends rain
or snow, the water cycle never misfires. It nourishes the earth. And when God
sends out his word, he accomplishes exactly what he intends. The sower, and when
I say that I mean the capital S sower, is sovereign over all things. However
people may respond, his perfect plan is advancing. Look at verse 14 and what the
text describes as the sower's job. The sower sows the word. That's what Jesus
did. It's what we do, following in his footsteps. We love people, we speak as
clearly as possible, we try to meet people where they are at, and we do not need
to predetermine who will or will not be receptive. We sow the word. And finally,
Jesus says, there are those who do hear the word. They do not have hard hearts
or conflicted hearts. They're not in it for personal gain. Their hearts are good
soil, and the word sinks down. Verse 20, but those that were sown on the good
soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it, and bear fruit 30 fold, 60
fold, and 100 fold. These are the ones who listen, who have ears to hear, and
when the word finds hospitable soil, then a harvest comes. Now that harvest may
take time. In Luke's parallel account of the parable, Jesus explains the good
soil and he says, as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the
word, hold it fast with an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
However long it may take, however insignificant it might look in the moment,
there is a harvest. It's a harvest of good works, fruitfulness, life
transformation. This is the imagery Paul uses when he talks about the fruit of
the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things, there's no
law. It's a harvest of a transformed life. And in this scenario, the seed bears
radical fruit, 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold. Those numbers, they far exceed what
any Jewish farmer could expect. And here's the point, who knows? Who even knows
what God will do with you, and what fruitfulness may come from you if you truly
are yielded to Him, and truly listen to His word? That tiny, seemingly
insignificant seed has the power and potential to explode underground in your
hearts in ways that are beyond our comprehension. Today, we get amazed, some of
us understand this a little bit, most of us don't at all, but we get amazed, and
rightly so today, at the power of computers and microchips, and we think, how
can anything so tiny be so powerful? But think about this, if seeds, which have
been around since before recorded history, could somehow be understood by us as
modern technology, we would be, like, imagine if the concept wasn't familiar to
us, and you were told you could buy a seed, something like that big, on Amazon,
and put it in the dirt, and at the end of the summer, you'd have a huge flower,
you'd be like, that's insane. If you were told that you could put an acorn in
the ground, and leave it alone, and in 50 years have an oak tree, you'd be like,
what will they come up with next? Amen. The question for us is really simple,
it's just, is your heart good soil? Do you listen to the word of God? And you
could ask, what makes the soil good? Does it take a good person to be good soil?
Jesus said, no one comes to the Father, no one comes to me unless the Father who
sent me draws him, is what Jesus said. If the seed finds good ground in your
heart, it's not because you're a good person. It's the kindness and the grace of
God, it's the miracle of the Holy Spirit, who's drawn you and made you receptive
to the truth of the gospel. So we read the parable, and we just ask ourselves,
am I listening to the word of God? Is my heart and my mind good soil for his
word? And then we hear Jesus' words, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Let's pray. Father, I pray in humility that we would open ourselves afresh to
the truth of your word, that we would receive its life and its power, its
conviction and its comfort. I pray that each one of us would be hospitable, good
soil to your word. Lord, where we are hard-hearted, I pray that you'd be
merciful to us by your Holy Spirit and make us receptive. Keep us from the
thorns and the cares of this world. Keep us from early enthusiasm without
perseverance. But Lord, I pray that your word would find good ground in every
one of us that would grow up and bear fruit for your glory, in Jesus' name,
amen. Will you stand with me, and we'll respond to God's word in song. Amen.