Many will hear the Word of God, but only some will respond in a saving way.
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. And he was teaching them many things in 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 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.”
And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve 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? 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 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, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
I hesitate to say that this is the most famous of Jesus' parables. I think that distinction probably belongs to something like the parable of the prodigal son or perhaps the parable that Luke also records of the woman who finds the coin or the pearl of great price. These are different parables that even make it into common parlance, common usage. People, unbelievers on the street, know the parable of the good Samaritan, another parable that Luke alone records for us.
And so those are some of the more popular parables, but if you had to pick one parable, one parable that sums them all up, one parable that is, you could call it the parable of parables, it would be the parable that we have just read. ESV receives the heading, the parable of the sower, and that's true across Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All three of those gospels record this parable for us, the parable of the sower.
And some commentators actually like to refer to it not as the parable of the sower, but as the parable of the seed. Because as Jesus tells us, that seed is the Word of God that is going out. And Jesus is, again, preaching the Word of God.
He's announcing the kingdom and the gospel. Repent and believe. Still others call this the parable of the soils.
Because you notice that Jesus' focus is not so much on the sower, nor is it on the seed, but it is on these four different kinds of soil that Jesus wants to direct our attention and our focus. Now, that's not simply a parable about agriculture. We've just passed Easter, and so we're entering into another holy season in the calendar.
That is the season of planting. You go to Home Depot. That's real planting, not church planting.
I mean, real planting. You find people, they're not going to come to church on a Sunday, but they'll take their Sunday to make sure they get their plants and their mulch and their soil and all of it, and to provide for a garden in their lawn or wherever they're doing. Typically, in our neighborhood, you find they're ripping out their lawns and they're putting in rocks and trees and whatever else, and that's fine and okay if you do that.
But in any case, as we think about soils here, it's important to understand Jesus is not talking about how to plant a better garden. The soil is parabolic. That is, it is a picture for us.
This is a parable not about soil in and of itself. It is a parable actually about human hearts. The sower, Jesus doesn't actually identify him.
You could say he is the preacher. Ultimately, he is God himself. The seed is the word of God that is going forth, but the soil is you, your heart.
That's the parable that Jesus is telling here. This is a parable about human hearts. It's a story about human hearts.
Hearts that hear the word of God and reject it. Hearts that hear the word of God and eventually recant it. Hearts that hear the word of God and ultimately regret it, and then hearts who hear the word of God and respond to it, receive it, rest in it, rejoice in it to the end.
That's what this parable is about. You've heard this parable. A number of you, I know, have been in church for years and years and years.
You've probably heard five sermons on the parable of the sower, the seed, the soil, whatever you want to call it. I'm calling it the parable of the hearts because it's about your heart this morning. How are you going to hear this parable? Jesus is very interested in making sure that we understand that the primary command of this parable is for you to listen.
Listen, not just with your ear, but with your heart. Listen to what God is saying as he speaks. The parable is not about literal sowers, seeds, or soils; its about human hearts. Your heart, and how every hope in life and in death hangs on how you hear.
This is a parable about human hearts and how every hope in life and death hangs on how you hear. Many will hear the word of God, but only some will respond in a saving way.
And so this morning we have just two points for us this morning. The first point as we're looking at it is just to double-click on this story that Jesus tells, this story of four soils, which is simply a story about four different states of heart. Four different states of soul — four different kinds of people.
The first person that Jesus mentions here is one that he likens to ground. That is a path. “And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it... 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” (vv. 4, 15).
You might say this is a stubborn sort of soil. It's packed down. Now some of you like to hike, and you know we were coming out of the wet season, we just had rain yesterday, but as this gets into the dry season, and as you go for hikes out on the trails, you begin to find this phenomenon, what used to be a doughy sort of clay on the hiking trail, now becomes a hard, packed clay. Rock hard, actually.
It hurts to walk on it. Very hard path. That's the picture that Jesus is drawing out for us here. It's a picture of soil that is compacted, and hardened, and impenetrable in fact. He says, as the sower sows, he sows some seed, it falls along the path, and immediately the birds come out, and they gobble it up. They devour it.
He tells his disciples, the 12 and the rest who are around him as he's explaining this parable, these are the people, these are the hearts, these are the souls, who when the word is sown, when it is spoken, when it is given to them, they hear it, but Satan immediately snatches it away. He takes away the word that was sown in them.
It’s not hard to imagine here that Jesus has some of his recent controversies in mind. We don't know when exactly Jesus is telling this parable, but canonically (that is, in the way that Mark has arranged things by the Holy Spirit), we are just leaving chapters two and three, where Jesus has been continually meeting hostility from the Pharisees, hostility from the scribes, and hostility from his own family. They think he's a crazy man. The parable of the soils shows us just what Jesus has been dealing with in a parabolic form. And in fact all of these parables are going to be touching on this theme: Many will hear Jesus, but not all will hear Jesus. They hear Him, but with a hostile heart.
With that said, as Jesus describes for us this compacted soil, this path-like soil, it's important to understand for us it doesn't necessarily mean a soil that is openly and outright hostile. That’s not precisely what Jesus means here. His picture is actually much broader than that.
To be sure, there are the militant atheists. There are the serious anti-Christians. There are those who hear the gospel and have a visceral and visible hatred and disgust reaction to it. But there are also those who simply just let it bounce off their ears.
Rejection need not be hostile. This part of the parable shows us that a stubborn heart is not necessarily a militantly antagonistic heart — only a disinterested heart. The soil doesn’t take the seed and say, “Boo! I hate you!” It simply lets the seed bounce, and blow around, and then the birds come by and say, “Well, let me just take care of that for you.”
It’s a phenomenon that C.S. Lewis describes masterfully in his little novel, The Screwtape Letters. If you haven’t read it, you definitely should check it out. It’s a fictional collection of letters from a senior demon, Uncle Screwtape, who is writing to his inexperienced nephew, Wormwood, on how to draw a man (his “patient”) away from God and into Hell— a feat that Screwtape has succeeded in numerous times.
He describes one incident involving a thoughtful man. An intelligent and well-read man, whom Screwtape describes “a sound atheist.” For two decades, Screwtape has kept this man safely on the road to Hell. But then one day, in a museum, as the man was reading, he started thinking about spiritual matters. “Before I knew where I was,” writes Screwtape, “I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool.”
Screwtape knew better than to fight these new spiritual ideas head-on. Instead, he suggested it was about to grab a bite to eat. .
“[These ideas are] much too important to tackle at the end of a morning… Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind.”
By this point, the reader can almost hear Screwtape laughing as he boasts to Wormwood,
“Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn’t be true.”
And Screwtape adds, as a gleeful epilogue, “He is now safe in Our Father’s house.”
Now, that’s a work of fiction. But you’re really here. And we really just read Mark 4:1–20. And we really are talking about spiritual matters. And there really is a devil, and demonic forces, that are doing everything in their power to snatch away that Word once it’s sown. There are things that weigh on our minds — serious things, and silly things — and the Devil will use whatever he can to take us away from what God is saying.
“What am I having for lunch? I hope its…”
“I need to respond to that email. before tomorrow morning….”
“Am I free on the 29th? I’ll have to check the calendar and get back to…”
How many sermons in your life and in mine have gone into our heads, only to be quickly snatched away as we head into our cars? Or even during the sermon itself? Satan loves nothing more than to snatch God’s word right out of your ear, right off the compacted path of a disinterested heart.
But Jesus says there's another kind of soil: “Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil… 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” (vv. 5, 17). This soil is not one that immediately rejects the seed — instead, it recants at a later time.
Don’t miss the fact that Jesus says this is kind of heart hears the word and receives it “immediately with joy.” You can think of the mountaintop experience. Some of you have gone away on missions trips or perhaps to youth rallies, and you know that experience where there's an altar call and people come forward and they confess Christ and they're excited and they're on fire. And then you talk to them a few weeks later and they've just kind of left it all behind.
What happened? Jesus says they didn't have anywhere to go down so they only went up. All that spiritual experience was ephemeral. It was top soil stuff, but it didn't have roots digging deep down because there were rocks beneath. And when the sun rose—that same sun that is to give light and life to plants, the plants need sun to grow—and yet that same sun scorches these plants and they wither away.
What is that sun? Well, it’s simply what we just read last week and Peter, when he was telling us in 1 Peter 1: the refining fire of various trials. Peter said “There's tribulation coming. There's difficulty coming, and that is to purify your faith.” Peter said there what Jesus says here—except in this case, there’s nothing left after the fire burns. To borrow Peter’s metaphor, there was no gold to begin with — only dross. And so they whither away. They fall away. They apostatize.
If the first was a stubborn soil of a disinterested heart, this is the shallow soil of a despairing heart. “I will follow Jesus until it gets hard. I will listen to the word of God until my own experience outweighs what I'm seeing in the scriptures. I will listen to Jesus as long as he provides everything I need and want in this life. But as soon as the hard times come, I shake my fist at God and fall away.”
Is this a picture of those who have saving faith and then lose it in the face of trial? Is that what happened? Far from it. Scripture is very clear on this point. Again, Peter tells us that trials actually prove our faith. They test our faith. They refine our faith. Trials never eradicate true faith. They can't because true faith comes from the true spirit. Faith is a gift from God.
Trials never eradicate true faith—but they can certainly reveal faulty faith.
You know, it's amazing—I’m going to confess some of my own sinfulness here—but imagine I take my car in to be inspected because I think there might be a problem with it. The mechanic looks at it and finds thousands of dollars worth of damage that need to be repaired. Suddenly, I'm now mad at the mechanic. But why? He's simply revealing what was already there.
In the same way, when trials come, we get mad at God, but God is simply revealing what was already there to begin with. You thought you were riding high. You thought you had the mountaintop. You thought your faith was impregnable—but you were more shallow than you realized. The seed did not take as deep a root as you had thought.
Now I'm saying this conscious of the fact that all of us at different times—and many of you even in recent years—have very difficult faced trials. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound,” as fair Romeo once said. I'm not telling you that it's not hard to keep your faith when everything seems like it's falling apart around you. But understand it as the testing of your faith. The refining of your faith. Think of Joseph, Job, Jeremiah, Jesus himself — all of whom endured hardships beyond what we could even imagine. Yet they endured.
On the other hand, if suffering it causes you to reject the word of God, and to deny the love of God, and to doubt the very existence of God, you've only proved that your faith was just a shallow, rocky soil faith from a shallow, rocky soil heart.
Again, it’s easy to say from a position of relative ease. When the dark skies of hardship come, it becomes much harder to believe in the power, wisdom, trustworthiness, and love of God.
But it's true because Scripture says it. So believe it. Don't despair — don’t be like the soil that simply lets seed spring up, only to perish in the sun.
Jesus mentions a third kind of soil—a third type of heart, a person. Now, as a child reading this parable, I remember thinking, “Okay, Jesus is telling us a story of four different soils, two of which are bad, one of which is good, and one of which is like, eh, you know, you're barely making it.” At least this heart that does not outright recant—it simply regrets. The seed “fell among thorns,” Jesus says, “and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.”
Jesus says these are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things—Luke includes “pleasures of life”—choke the word and it proves unfruitful. So, not the most productive. But hey, at least it grew up!
Now, is little Ben's understanding of the parables accurate? Two bad soils, one good soil, one kind of okay soil?
No, actually, that's not what Jesus is saying here. There is only one good soil. The other three are utterly bankrupt, empty.
Yes, the seed did grow up in this third soil. It came to church. It received the word. It praised Jesus' name. Maybe served in different ministries for a time. But there were other things growing in this soil—thorns, thistles, and weeds—that ultimately choked the good grain so that it proved unfruitful. Unproductive. Useless.
The Bible is very clear on this. The ax is laid at the root of the tree, John the Baptist said.
Bare fruits lest ye be chopped down and cast into the fire. Or as James says in his letter, can a fruitless, unworking faith really be called faith at all? Absolutely not. Real faith works. But this soil is not a working soil. This soil is not a fruitful soil. Actually, it's what some have called a strangled soil.
A strangled heart. Not strangled by trials. Not strangled by disinterest. Strangled by the fact that there are other things in the world. Other cares and concerns. And Jesus says riches, good things. All good things. This heart does not despair in the face of persecution. It is simply divided. It wants two masters. It wants to serve the thorns and to serve the seed. But Jesus says you cannot have two masters.
You can't have two gods. There is only one God. To choose anything above God is simply and frankly idolatry.
That's really what this is about. Idolizing things, cares, concerns, riches. And again, it's so easy for this to seep into our own hearts. The distractions of the world. The things that look good. ”I want to follow Jesus, but I also want my family. I want to follow Jesus, but I also want career success. I want to follow Jesus, but I don't want to offend my friend.”
And so we're choked. And we're choked. And we're choked. And we prove unfruitful. Pleasure, Luke records, I said a moment ago. Seeking after pleasure. How many Christian faiths, so called, have been cast aside in simple, fleeting pleasure? That click on the computer screen. That conversation that leads to an illicit relationship. That theft when nobody was looking. That word said that felt so good. These thorns prove to choke us. Make us unfruitful. The thorns that grow up around us. That soil is no good, Jesus says. It's a heart that is not receptive to the word. It is strangled soil.
But then there's a fourth soil, Jesus says—A heart that responds. He calls it “good soil,” soil that “produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”
Jesus is not saying, “Look, some of you guys are going to be alright, some pretty good, and some awesome.” That's not really just the point he's making, because 30-fold is itself a crazy yield. That's insane. But Jesus says, “That's what's going to happen in this soil.”
The Word's going to be sown, a tiny little seed, and 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold, grace upon grace, measure upon measure, poured out, overflowing upon this soil. It's going to bear fruit, Jesus says. This is the heart that responds, the heart that receives Jesus' Word. The Word of the Kingdom. The secret of the Kingdom, he actually calls it. They bear much fruit, all because they heard a little seed.
Did you notice how many times Jesus actually says the word “hear” in this passage? Actually, the word in Greek, ακουω, occurs first in verse 3, when Jesus says, “Listen!” It's a command. Jesus says, “Hear this!” And then he uses the word again, and again in verse 9, twice, in verse 12, actually, he says it twice. Our translation only has it once, but instead of saying, “indeed hear,” he says, “hearing, they hear.”
That’s the rocky soil he’s talking about. They hear the Word, and receive it with joy, and then they perish and fall away in the trial. They hear the Word, those among the thorns, but then it's choked and it proves unfruitful. They hear the Word, the good soil, and they produce fruit.
What’s going on here? This is one of the paradoxes, or some have called it the puns at the center of this parable. Jesus is telling us that many will hear, but not all will hear.
“What? How can I hear, but not hear?”
When Jesus says in verse 3, “Listen!”, he's not just simply saying, “Now class, pay attention.” He's saying, there are those who hear and will not heed. There are those who hear and will not understand and obey. “Listen” is a command to receive and obey the message of the Gospel. Not to be stubborn, or shallow, or strangled, but soft.
Soft soil welcomes the Word, rejoices in the Word, not for a moment, but even through trial, even through sunlight and burning drought, it rejoices and grows and bears much fruit. This is a heart that responds because it is a devoted heart, a heart that is wholly given over to the Lord and to the Word of the Lord, fixed and fixated upon him. Luke says, they are those who hear the Word and hold it fast “in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience,” — or we just as equally say “through much suffering.”
It's the kind of soil the Bible talks about in Colossians chapter 1. As Paul there is rejoicing over the Colossians, he says,
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus…
It wasn't a rocky faith that sprung up for a moment overnight and then withered away. It wasn't a thorny faith that was choked by cares and concerns. It wasn't a hard-packed faith that heard and let it bounce away. “No,” Paul says, “We heard of your faith and your love. We saw the fruit.” As he says in v. 6, “you heard [the gospel] and understood the grace of God in truth… .”
"And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…”
“Bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” That’s what you find in a plot of good soil, in the heart of a person who has been transformed by the grace of God, trsuting in Christ for her salvation.
At this point we begin to ask, “Well, which am I?” One answer might be “Well, I’m here, pastor. I'm here at church, right? So clearly I'm the soil that hears and receives and bears 30 fold (or maybe we'll just say 15 fold, to be conservative).”
But that answer won’t cut it. Remember, Jesus has been speaking to a large crowd that is hanging on his every word. They're pressing in around him. It's not for nothing that he says at this very moment this parable. He knows, in this very crowd that is listening to him, some are hard-packed soil. Some are rocky soil. Some are thorn-choked soil.
Now, I don't believe that the odds here in this room are four to one that you're truly trusting in Christ. But that's the picture that Jesus gives to us here. There are going to be some among us, there are going to be some who hear the word of God—many, in fact—who hear the word and do not hear it. They don't heed it.
Again, how can this be? And why? Those are the questions the puzzled disciples ask Jesus. And they takes us out of the story of four soils and into the purpose of all parables, showing us why this particular parable has been rightly called “The Parable for All Parables.”
“And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables… And he said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?’” (vv. 10, 13).
In other words, Jesus says, “If you don't get this one, you're not going to get any of them.” Jesus says this because this parable that Jesus just told, the parable of the soils, says something about every parable that Jesus tells. Every parable in the whole Bible is connected back to this one parable about the soils, about the hearts. It’s that parable of parables, and the key to all parables, because it shows us that showing us isn’t enough to save us.
Parables show, but they don't necessarily save. The same parable may work in a person’s heart to bring forth faith, fruit, and fellowship with God, while in another person in may confuse and, ultimately, condemn. In this way, the parable of the hearts gets at the heart of all parables. Some will receive it, but others will regret, recant, or flat out reject it. And in doing so, they will bring condemnation down on their own head.
You see, God’s word has a double function, and parables show that inherently, by their very nature. To some, it actually enlightens and enlivens. It imparts saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.The Spirit works savingly through His word. But to others, it brings increasing condemnation, increasing hardness of heart, increasing rejection, and ultimately increasing wrath. In bold strokes and startling colors, this parable teaches us a principle of God’s word in general: Some get it and are saved; others miss it, and fall further into the darkness.
It is a strange thing, to think that the first function of a parable is actually to confuse. To confound. To obscure. To blind. “For those outside,” Jesus says, “everything is in parables, so that [quoting Isaiah 6] ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”
This is not just a strange saying; it’s a hard saying. This is one of those “Thomas Jefferson” verses, sections you almost want to cut out from the Bible.
“…lest they should turn and be forgiven.” Is this the same God, who says “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden”? I thought Jesus is calling to all people, repent and believe the gospel?
Indeed, He is. He's a sower sowing seed along even the hardened path. He's sowing seed on asphalt. He's sowing seed on concrete. And yet He knows they won't receive it. And so He tells them parables as a sign of judgment upon their already faithless hardened hearts.
And that's actually where we find it in Isaiah as well. When God says, “Isaiah, you've got a ministry before you,” Isaiah says, “I’m ready! What is it, Lord?” God says, “You're going to go to a people and tell them ‘You're not going to understand a thing I'm telling you.’”
Why? Because God is bringing judgment upon them. He's giving them over to their sin.
This is a phenomenon that the Spirit speaks about in Romans chapter one:
They are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
And so, God says, “I gave them up.”
It’s another “Lewis-ism,” I think, that says, ultimately, God's response to stubborn, shallow, strangles souls who say, “My will be done” is to say to them, “Indeed. Thy will be done.” They reject life, light, and love of their Creator — and so He gives them a reality without the life, light, and love of their Creator. They reject Him, and so He rejects them.
Again, the issue is ultimately one of idolatry. It's one of making good things into God things, of worshiping the created things instead of the creator. The horrific thing in this is that we become like what we serve, as God tells us in Psalm 115:
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.
That's why it shouldn't surprise us when we think we're speaking spiritual wisdom to people that they reject it or they just seem outright opposed to it. As God tells us in Proverbs 1:
Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice…
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
…I have called and you refused to listen,
have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you…
It's a scary thing when God laughs in the Bible. God’s laughter, I think, is almost always a sign of judgment. He goes on:
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the LORD,
would have none of my counsel
and despised all my reproof,
therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way…
Jesus says they've made their bed and now they will lie in it—eternally. Seeing, they will not see. Hearing, they will not hear. Indeed, they will have no forgiveness now.
But that’s not where Proverbs 1 ends. The last two lines come in verse 33: “but whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
The Hebrew word there for “listen” is שׁמע, the Hebrew equivalent of ακουω, and it can carry the same double meaning of not only hearing, but heading. “Whoever hears me and heeds me, obeys me, will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster.”
The problem in the parable is not with the seed but with the soil. Sometimes, we lose confidence in the plain preaching of the Gospel and the whole counsel of God’s word. We think we might do better with a different message, or perhaps a modified message. But friends, we don’t need a GMO Gospel, or some other seed substitute here. The problem is with human hearts, which are often stubborn, shallow, or otherwise strangled. Only in the soft soil — prepared by the grace of God — does the seed take root and produce a harvest.
In teaching us this, Jesus is showing us, through this parable, the total necessity of a new heart if we are to truly hear and respond to God's Word.
Kids, you can try this at home, a little experiment later this afternoon. Go up to a mound of soil and say to the soil, “Soil, be good!” and see what happens. “Be deep! Get rid of the weeds!” I wish I could do that with some of our gardening beds. I wish you would just get rid of your rocks, and the soil would do it.
But of course, that's not how soil becomes good. Soil needs to be amended. Good soil has something done to it to be good soil, whether naturally or (more likely in this cursed world) through the intentional work of a good gardener.
And that’s precisely what Jesus intends when He says in v. 11: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God… .” The good soil is not good simply because they happen to get it. It's not an accident. And certainly, it's not because the soil decided one day, “You know, I’m gonna receive this seed and bear fruit.” No, the gardener comes. And he amends it. He refines it. He puts manure in it. He puts good nitrates and other vitamins and things in that soil to make it good so that it bears good fruits.
“So, how do I know if I'm good soil?” That’s the questions we all should be asking ourselves at this point.
“Is your heart an open heart? Are you receptive to God’s truth? Do you allow it to settle down into your life and thinking so that it turns you from sin, directs your faith to Jesus, and produces the Holy Spirit’s fruit?”
Those aren’t my questions; those were the questions of James Montgomery Boice, late pastor at Tenth Presbyterian in Philadelphia. In his commentary on the parables of Jesus, Boice imagines someone answering his questions with a resounding “I’m afraid not….
I wish my heart was open, but I’m afraid it is hard, or shallow, or strangled by this world’s goods? What can I do?
Boice gives a deeply comforting, deeply pastoral answer:
“You can do nothing, any more than soil can change its nature. but although you can do nothing, there is one who can — the divine Gardener. He can break up the hard ground, uproot the rocks, and remove the thorns. That is your hope—not you, but the Gardener.”
That is your hope is not in you, but in the Gardener. And you need more than soil emendation. You need heart regeneration. You need the Holy Spirit to open your ears, to open my ears, to loosen my tongue, to open our hearts, to receive the word of God and bear fruit. That's a work of God, not of you. And it's the promise of God we find in Ezekiel 36
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
How many times have we missed a blessing from God because we were distracted with something so small? A little stone, a little thorn. And yet God is promising here, he's a good gardener. He will do this work. He will regenerate us. Indeed, that is what he does. The fact that we can even come by faith to God shows that we have been regenerated. We have been made new by the Holy Spirit.
(And if you don't believe me, you can grab one of the green notes. We don't have time today to go through all of these scripture passages. But if you get one of the green outlines, we have just a few scripture passages there. Just a few of the many in scripture that speak about this truth)
That it is God who does this work. He's a good gardener. That he brings forth fruit in your lives by his Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ who died for you. And when he was raised, was it an accident that Mary, weeping, weeping because her Lord had died, sees him, but doesn’t recognize him and says, “Oh, it’s just the gardener…”
The gardener. Yes, indeed, he is the Gardener. The Lord Jesus Christ. He died and is raised to renovate and regenerate and restore your soul, your heart, so that you would bear fruit to the glory of God 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold. Let's just say it, 300-fold. You have God working in you and through you for his glory and for your good. He's a good gardener.
Jesus doesn't give us in this parable “five quick steps to how to hear the word better.” I was tempted to make that the way this sermon ends, but then we'd be here for another hour, and so we're not doing that today. But just note this in Psalm 25, which is a precious prayer to the Lord:
Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.
So for people who wanna grow in grace, grow in godliness, grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, who died for us, who lives for us, who is coming again for us, we need to be praying this prayer. And we need to be acting on it. Going to him, listening to him, removing distraction. Remove the distractions, whatever those distractions may be, so you can fixate on him, on his word.
In your own quiet time, whatever that may be, when you're studying God's word, whether as a family or in private, set other distractions aside. Say, I'm not gonna deal with the agenda. I'm not gonna look at the calendar. I'm not going to read my email. I'm going to spend time with Jesus.
If we would have ears to hear, we should be ready to pray the prayer that the prophet Samuel prayed when he was a young boy. It was the priest Eli who taught him—one of the few good lessons that Eli ever taught:
“Speak, for your servant hears.”
Hearing is a spiritual gift, to hear the word of God and receive it with joy, not for a time, but for all time, to the very end of time.
Jesus gives us commands: “Listen!” and “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” But he also gives a promise in verse 11: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God.” It's been given to you, the secret, not a secret in the sense of it's a big mystery and you're not really sure whether it's true or not. It's a secret in the sense of something that was once hidden, but now is being revealed. Something that is put on full display. The kingdom of God: God's people in God's place, under God's protection, for God's glory. That's the secret that God is revealing to us.
And so he says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” knowing that he himself, with His Father and Spirit, will remove the rocks, root out the thorns, and take his heavenly rototiller to the hardened path. And one of the simple but powerful ways he does this is by just telling us, time and again, “Listen”
“Listen.”
“Listen to me. I died for you. I took your sins upon me. You have no guilt, no condemnation. You don't need to fear any of that stuff. Listen to me.”
Once, Jesus something like this to the church in Ephesus, a church that had made great traits, but had allowed the thorns to come around and choke their love. They were strangled soil, and Jesus told them very clearly to repent, lest they perish. But then he said “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear,” not to draw their attention to the command to repent, but to draw their hearts to the promise given to all who indeed repent and have faith in Christ:
“He who has an ear to hear, let him hear… to the one who overcomes, to the conqueror, to the one who has by God's grace, soil to receive and ears to hear. I will grant to him to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
Amen.
Psalm 51:10 | Create in me a clean heart, O God, & renew a right spirit within me.
Ezekiel 36:26 | And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
John 3:3, 5–6 | Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God... Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 | Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Ephesians 2:4–5 | But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.
Colossians 2:13 | And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.
Titus 3:5 | He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
James 1:18 | Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
1 Peter 1:3 | Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 John 5:1 | Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.
2. This effectual call is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it.
3. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.
4. Others, not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men, not professing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do profess. And, to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested.
