It all Depends on the Soil
You’d have to say that Jesus’ ministry was a success wouldn’t you? Here in Matthew 13 we see a scene reminiscent of a Taylor Swift appearance. There are so many people flocking to hear him that he has to get the disciples to bring a boat for him to get into before he gets pushed into the water. People are flocking to hear him, willing to endure hunger and thirst because they’re hungry for God’s word - here is the evangelist’s dream. What more could you ask for?
And yet as Jesus proceeds to teach them, there’s a sadness in the story he tells - reinforced by his brief commentary on the purpose of parables in vs 10-12. What on the surface might appear to be a charming story of rural life has a barb to it. It contains a warning to us, the hearers, to be careful about how we listen to God’s word and how we persevere in following that word so it bears much fruit in our lives.
The sadness in the story is that it points out how often, and how easily, the divine seed of God’s word is destroyed.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus would be sad when he sees the fate of the word of God. Here he is preaching and teaching to these eager listeners, yet he knows that after he’s finished and moved on to another town, they’ll all go back to their homes and families and few of them will take his words and apply them to their lives. Not many of them will see, the way the disciples did, that Jesus has the words of eternal life.
And what makes it evenMatt 13:1-13 sadder is that Jesus has come to bring salvation to his own people yet in the end the majority of his people would reject him.
And we find as he tells them this story that even the disciples don’t understand. They come up to him when he’s alone and ask him to explain these parables he’s been telling. You’ll find his answer in vs18-23.
What does he say? He gives this enigmatic answer. “To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to those on the outside everything is said in parables.” Now you may have thought that parables were told to help people understand. That they were simple everyday examples that teach the deeper truths that Jesus wanted people to learn: earthly stories with a heavenly meaning; a bit like Aesop’s Fables. follow them and you’ll be a better person. But here Jesus says ‘no’, it doesn’t work like that. Those on the outside are ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. The parables by themselves won’t lead to salvation. If they had then everyone who heard them would have changed their lives forever.
But no, parables are simply an invitation to faith; an invitation to seek further; to understand the meaning behind them; to ask, so understanding and faith would be given; to seek so they might find; to knock so the door would be opened to them. That’s why at this stage even the disciples don’t understand, because they’re still at the stage of seeking out the truth. But they are seeking it out and it will come as they spend more time with Jesus.
The Parable of the Sower
But then Jesus turns to their understanding of this particular parable, because it actually touches on the reason behind the answer he’s just given them. He says if you don’t understand this parable how will you understand any of them? Why is that? What is there about this parable that sets it apart from the rest? It isn’t that it’s particularly easy to understand. No, I think it’s because to understand the parables you first have to be good soil. That is, you have to understand the need to listen carefully, to take in let what you hear take root in your life and then persevere in living it out.
I quite like gardening. Well, actually I don’t like the hard work side of gardening but I do like seeing things grow, being able to pick the fruit and vegetables that we’ve grown. But my problem is that where we live we have that typical inner north soil that’s mainly Merri Creek clay, perfect for making cricket pitches out of but not much use in a garden. Fortunately the previous owners of our house dug out a lot of that clay and replaced it with river loam but it stills need to have compost and fertiliser added to it to get things to grow because what matters in a garden is the quality of the soil the plants are planted in.
That, Jesus explains, is what this parable is all about. When God’s word is preached, what matters isn’t just the quality of the word, but the soil onto which it falls.
Four types of Soil
So let’s think about the different types of soil that Jesus describes.
A Path
First there’s the path. He’s saying some people are like the path where some of the seed falls. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.
Now paths aren’t bad things. It’s quite a good thing to have a path to follow when you’re walking through the bush or through wet grass. On our last holiday we saw lots of paths that I call democracy paths: where people have literally voted with their feet and created a more convenient path across a patch of grass. Paths have an important function: for people to walk on. They’re a means to get from one place to another.
The trouble is, some people are like that. They hold key positions. They’re influential. It’s important that you know them if you’re to get through to someone else. But sometimes those people can end up with hearts like a path. They’re so used to being used that their hearts are beaten down, even asphalted over. Sure, they play their part in human life. They hold important positions. They’re there when you need someone to network with, someone with influence. No-one can blame them for being influential, just as no-one can blame a path for being hard, for not being a field. But what’s an advantage in one area can be a disadvantage in another. The fact is that a seed can’t take root on a well-beaten path. A person who is only a path through which the daily traffic passes, or a busy street where people go rushing by, hour by hour, where there’s never a moment of rest, will hardly provide the soil in which the word of God can grow.
How many people do you know who find their life is so busy they don’t have a moment to think? I think of parents of who seem to be constantly driving their children to one activity or another so they have no time to spare. For some this includes not having time to put aside each Sunday morning or evening to meet with God’s people, to be still and listen to God speak to them.
There’s a great danger for us in our busy lives to think that because we’re busy we’re doing something that matters. Or to think that the things we have to do right now are the most important. But someone once said traffic, and hustle and bustle, aren’t fruit. They’re just lost motion. Sometimes we need to stop and pay attention to what God might be saying to us.
Shallow Soil
But this isn’t the only thing that might happen when the word is preached. Sometimes when a person hears the word of God it touches something inside them and they get excited. He says they receive it with joy. But the trouble is there’s no depth there. What’s been touched has perhaps been an emotional trigger, the warmth of welcome they received when they first joined a church; or that desire for the spiritual that exists in all of us. But it goes no further. As soon as they begin to live the Christian life they find that the emotional high or the spiritual feelings aren’t enough. They fade away. Life’s too hard. Jesus points out elsewhere that conversion involves dying to self; it involves being at odds with the world; it involves a sword that comes between those who respond and those who don’t. And so when troubles come, these people find they can’t cope. They don’t want trouble, they want excitement and joy. They can’t get past their personal needs. They don’t seek after God, they seek after their favourite preacher or their favourite song leader or organist, or their favourite sacred site, whether it be some building, some cathedral, or church, or some beautiful part of nature. But in the end they discover that these things can’t sustain them through the hard times and they shrivel up and drop away.
Thorny Ground
Then, he says, there are those in whom the seed is truly sown, but it falls among thorns. That is, the seed of the word grows, but other seeds are allowed to grow along with it that choke out the growth of the plant. So what are these other seeds, these thorns and thistles? Jesus describes them as “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things.” That is, they’re all things that we hang on to that take the place of dependence and faith in God. The worries of this life are ordinary things like health and children and husbands and wives and mothers and fathers, brother and sisters. Things that all of us worry about to one degree or another. But sometimes we become so worried about them that we forget that God is in control of the world. We fail to trust him to look after us and our loved ones. Maybe we get so worried that we even forget to pray about it! We expend all sorts of effort trying to solve our problems and never even think of taking them to God, or of sharing them with our Christian brothers and sisters. Secondly there’s the deceitfulness of wealth. Again, those who are wealthy, or trying to become wealthy can so easily be led astray, to trust their wealth to give them security, when in fact the only real security they can have comes from God. God is the only one who can make you secure. None of us knows whether we’ll even be here tomorrow. So as useful as wealth may be in this world its promise of security is an illusion. It’s a mist that passes as the sun rises in the sky. Thirdly the desires for other things. What could be more appropriate to our day, when the desire for more and more and more worldly goods is provoked in us daily through the TV, radio, newspapers, social media, movies, in our letter boxes and our supermarkets. It’s very hard to resist the subtle and not so subtle temptations to want more and more; to be dissatisfied with our lot. Yet Paul tells us that “godliness with contentment is great gain.” So the warning to us is to be careful that our eyes and minds aren’t diverted by the temptation to want those things, those experiences, those pleasures that are being offered to us, more than we want to serve God.
Fertile Soil
By contrast there are some who hear the word, accept it and produce a healthy crop. These are the people who take in what they hear and hang on to it, feed off it. It’s almost as if this group is the negative image of the other three. These are those whose life has time for meditation on God’s word; these are those who take seriously God’s promises; who count on God’s word in their lives; who trust Jesus to break the chains that tie them to their present circumstances. These are those who resist the devil and all his works; who are aware of the temptations, subtle and otherwise, of the world they live in; who are content with what God gives them. These are those who seek to use the gifts they have to further God’s purposes not just their own and who, when the chips are down, persevere; who keep trusting even when trouble and persecution are their lot.
And those who persevere, who receive and build on God’s word in their lives, he says, bear fruit out of all proportion to what they receive, 30, 60 even 100 fold.
Before we finish I just wanted to bring out two thoughts about what we read in this passage. The first is to think about how Jesus preached the gospel. Last week Steve mentioned those people who stand on street corners calling people to repent and he commented that perhaps that’s not the way to go about evangelism these days. Look at what Jesus does. He doesn’t confront people with a message of God’s coming judgement and the fact that he’s the only way they can be saved. (Apart from the Pharisees who needed to be shaken up a bit). No, he tells them stories with a twist, a sting in the tale, that cause them to stop and think; that encourage them to seek clarification. He gives them space to discover the truth if only they’ll listen further. It seems to me that this is probably the only way people today will come to know the truth about Jesus: if we can help them to discover it for themselves by using stories and good questions that might get them thinking.
Secondly, notice the lack of control that the farmer has over what is sown. We can’t control either the gospel or its effects. There’s an unpredictability in the response to the gospel that’s out of our control. As much as we’re responsible to think through how our words might be seasoned with salt, there are other forces at work that may be more determinative of the result than all our skill and effort. We play a part but it’s only a part. To play that part is to risk oneself every time, with the possibility of frustration and failure or fulfilment and success. Yet, the gospel is God’s word. And God tells us in the words of Isaiah 55: “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11so 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 succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
So when the gospel is preached it will find fertile soil where it’ll bear fruit - 30, 60 even a hundred times what was sown.
