The Parable of the Soils

This morning we are going to be diving into the Parable of the soils. Most of you will probably know this as the parable of the sower, but the emphasis today is not on the one who sows, but on the persons hearing the word of God. Just like last week, I am going to read all of verses 10-20 in chapter 4, but we will be focusing on verses 14-20 in the sermon.

Mark 4:10–20 ESV

10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 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, 12 so that “ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ” 13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 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. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 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. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 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. 20 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.”

Good soil. If you want to plant seeds and expect something to grow from it, you need good soil. Just as some of you here have experienced, I worked many years in an industry that relied on production. I know many of you have worked for mobile home companies, tire manufacturers, and probably most of you at some point have worked in the spinning mills at some point. You know what it is like to work in production. There is an expectation that is put on every single employee. Each place may be unique in some aspects, but for us at the trailer mill, we had a certain goal of production each day and we could not leave until we met it. In my first year there, the entire plant struggled greatly. There was a large influx of new employees and it takes it a while for things to start to run smoothly.

For the first year or so, I would go into work at 7 am and would not get home till after 6 pm. We were struggling. Many of the people that I worked with struggled with it. The fact that we were working 10, 11, and 12 hours days sometimes took a toll on people. It took a toll on them at work and their motivation was very low, but it took a toll on everyone personally too. So greatly that we were having people quit almost on a daily basis because of the toll it was taking on their home life.

You might be thinking, “what does this have to do with seeds and soil and the gospel”. Our soil at work was not good soil. And because of that, we were not able to produce what we needed to produce. The job was all about production but the soil did not cultivate that production that we needed. You could take this analogy and plug it into many other things. Sports, church, relationship, marriages. All of these things need good soil to be able to produce.

Going back to the parable that Jesus is telling here. In probably every sermon that you have heard on this verse, we focus on the soils. But we should also focus on the goal of sowing seeds. And it is very easy to get caught up in the conditions and not focus on the harvest. We need to know the goal of sowing seeds. It is just like if I were to buy a field and I would want to open an apple orchard. To grow apples, I would need to plant seeds for the trees to sprout and the trees to grow and the trees to bear fruit. That is why we sow seeds. We sow seeds so that people can bear fruit.

Main Idea - Without Good Soil, Fruit Cannot be Produced.

As we go through this, we need to be self reflecting. This is a passage that should cause us to examine our own lives to see which soil we are. So I want to prime that pump as we begin to dive into God’s word. I want to ask you a question and as we go through God’s word, keep going back to that questions.

Does God’s word produce fruit in your life?

Let us begin in God’s word. Today, we will have 4 points that support the main idea (Without Good soil, fruit cannot be produced). Before we get into each soil. I want us to remind ourselves of verse 14.

Mark 4:14 ESV

14 The sower sows the word.

Remember that if you are a believer, you are a sower. A sower must be committed to planting the seeds. What are the seeds? The seeds are God’s word. At the very least, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is the gospel of Jesus Christ?

(Gospel presentation)

Keep in mind what the gospel is and that we are the sowers of the word of God as we look at each type of soil.

Those with Hard Hearts Don’t Bear Fruit

Mark 4:15 ESV

15 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.

Let’s go back to the parable itself and read what Jesus says about the seed getting sown.

Mark 4:4 “4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.”

If you have ever planted any seed, you know that it is useless if the seed gets eaten up by birds. Today, we plant a little differently. We now take the seeds, place them in the ground, and cover the seed. This would prevent the seed from being eaten up by birds. But in the culture that Jesus was speaking to, a common way that they planted seeds was by scattering. They would be able to spread seed at a faster rate. But, as this parable shows, the seed does not always take.

This is what we would classify as hard hearted. They are not affected one bit by God’s word. No emotion whatsoever. They can come to church, hear the preaching of God’s word, hear the singing of beautiful hymns, even witness people declaring their faith through baptism and hearing testimonies of people being brought from death to life, and still sit there unaffected.

Exalting Jesus in Mark The Soil of Some Hearts Is Hard (Mark 4:14–15; cf. 4:4)

They suffer from what might be called “gospel deafness.” Like skeptics, they dismiss the Word without giving it careful consideration. For whatever reason they are hardened to the gospel. The book closes when the service ends, and so do their ears and hearts.

It is like trying to plant grass seed on asphalt. There is nothing there for it to take root to. Seed does not take on hard ground.

Let’s be real. There are people that sit in churches every single week that are like this. Maybe it is kids that are being brought to church by parents or spouses that come because they feel obligated to be there. They hear the songs, they hear the word, they see the word, and nothing happens in them. It is like me watching a Hallmark movie, nothing happens in my heart.

It isn’t the fault of the sower, it isn’t the fault of the seed. The problem is that Satan has such a hold on the heart of the person receiving the seed that it cannot take root. And we all know people like this. The pastor of Hickory Grove in Charlotte gives us great advice on what to do when we know people like this. 1) Pray for softening. 2) Prepare to share.

Just because the ground is hard when we sow seeds does not mean that we need to give up. If you have been in church for any amount of time, you can probably think of someone who has had such a hard heart towards the gospel and their heart eventually softened towards it and they repented and believed. Our goal is sowing seeds is to see fruit grow. We must be ready to continue to sow seeds on hard hearts. Pray for God to soften the soil for the seed to take root and people to be brought from death to life and see fruit be produced.

Those with Shallow Hearts Don’t Bear Fruit

Mark 4:16–17 ESV

16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 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.

Let’s look at it’s counterpart in the parable now.

Mark 4:5–6 ESV

5 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. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.

The seed is sown and it has just enough soil that the seed is able to sprout. In my little experience in gardening, this would happen and I would get excited. A few years ago, I planted some tomato plants. I had them in trays and it didn’t take very long that they started to sprout up. After a little bit, I transferred them into the ground. But one of the problems is that after I tilled up the ground, I left the big rocks in there. And I don’t know if you know this, but plants don’t grow in rocks. So it didn’t take long for them to die.

What Jesus is telling them here is that rocky soil may give us some hope of fruit bearing, but it proves to be unfruitful. We see this way too often in churches and I will be bold and say that we celebrate this way too often in churches. You and I should be extremely burdened by each of these but this one should be a little extra because this one has a great impact on the membership of the local church. We all know these people. These are the ones who hear the gospel and we see this immediate change in them. Their life seems different, sometimes it is a dramatic change. But it is often because they do not understand the cost of following Jesus.

It says in verse 17 that they have no root but endure for a while. This is that initial fire that they have for the faith. They maybe change some of their lifestyle even. Maybe they were alcoholics, drug addicts, or maybe they had a filthy mouth. And you begin to talk to them and these things seems to be gone. But then, maybe a couple of week or maybe a couple of months or maybe even a couple of years later, something happens to them. Maybe it is a tragedy or some event that challenges their faith. Maybe it is the people that they hang around or the career path that they have taken. Whatever it is, some kind of persecution comes at them and, just as Jesus says, they immediately fall away.

This is one of the reasons that churches have bloated rolls. A couple hundred years ago, there would be more people attending churches than members on the roll. They took professions of faith so serious and held people accountable. And they also understood healthy church discipline. They would discipline members who fell into sin and fell away from their walk with Jesus. They took a profession of faith as something serious that ultimately affected the entire church. I am not afraid to tell you that our church membership roll is very bloated. We have close to 130 people who are considered members of our church. Now, I do take into account that we have people who do not have the ability to come on a regular basis anymore due to health situations. And we also have some who have recently decided to look for a new church home and have yet to move their membership. But they are actively looking. So these are not the people that I am talking about.

I can remember over the last couple of years of trying to learn the people of the church. And I would go to people who had been active for 30 or 40 years. I would ask about people on our membership list. And many times the answer was “well they came for a couple of weeks, got baptized, joined the church, and we never saw them again”. This is heart breaking. Because there are people out there who are members of churches who have this sense of security, and because of their walking away from the faith and from following Jesus, the church should not affirm this. There is no root. That is what Jesus says.

John talks about this in 1 John 2:19 “19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” We cannot continue to call people who have walked about from the church, not just our church but the church, and have walked away from the faith our brothers and sisters in Christ. Because they were never of us.

I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago and they were telling me about a family member they had that one day made a profession of faith. And this person was one of those people that you might call “wayward”. But this person had a turn around in their life. And it lasted a few weeks and they were right back to their old ways. He told me that you could look on this persons face and could tell something was different but then they went right back to the old life. He asked me if I thought they were saved.

This is something that is very tough to wrestle with. This individual personified what is happening in verse 16-17 here. He received the word with joy. He had a turn around in his life. But then tribulation and persecution on account of the word came and he fell away. Why? Because there was no root. See, we often see this happen and we try to call it salvation but it is nothing more than emotionalism. We want to call it salvation but with salvation will come perseverance but in the life of someone who falls away, there is none.

This does not mean that someone cannot stumble sometimes. We aren’t talking about that. What we are talking about is people who have made professions of faith that seem legitimate and then suddenly they are abandoning all that has to do with Christ and the bride of Christ. They do not endure. They do not persevere. And ultimately, they do not bear fruit.

Those with Worldly Hearts Don’t Bear Fruit

Mark 4:18–19 ESV

18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 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.

Thorns. No one who has a garden likes thorns. Let’s see what Jesus says in the original parable.

Mark 4:7 ESV

7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.

The thorns grew up and choked it and because of that, it didn’t grow anything. Jesus equates this as someone who hears the word and the things of the world get in the way and no fruit can grow. It is the outside influences that stop the fruit from being produced. Let’s spend a minute talking about the things that Jesus says stop the word from growing.

Cares of the world - This could be a lot of things. And I do not believe that I could come up with an exhaustive list. Maybe it is something like sports, hobbies, exercising, social media. Or, this is a good time to talk about this, but we are in an election year. Maybe it is something like our concern for the election.

Deceitfulness of riches - Keeping up with the Jones’s, 401K, nice house, nice car, or just your job in general. These things can often get in the way of the word taking hold of someone. Especially when the gospel is preached as there is a price to pay to serve Jesus. These things often grow into idols in someones life.

desires for other things - This could be anything.

These things keep the word from taking root in the life of someone. People care too much about the temporary to see the importance of the eternal. Jesus solidifies this when a man wishing to follow him approaches him in Luke 9. The man said that he was willing to leave it all behind but after a warning from Jesus, we see that the things of this world are of greater importance to him than following Jesus.

Luke 9:57–62 ESV

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This man heard the word from Jesus. He recognized that Jesus was someone worth following. But there were other things that got in the way of this. We all know people like this. Maybe they seem interested in Jesus. Maybe they really like going to church and hearing the word being preached. Maybe they even recognize their need for a savior. But just like this man, it is very short lived.

John 8:31 ESV

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,

You want to know who are truly followers of Jesus. It is those who abide in his word. Abiding is not a singular event. It is a lifestyle. Fruit cannot grow without us abiding in the word of God. We cannot be distracted by the things of this world that really and truly are false idols. We must have a singular focus of being fruit bearers of God. And that brings us to the last point in this passage.

Only Those with Good Soil Bear Fruit

I want to first go back to the parable. Look with me at verse 8 of chapter 4.

Mark 4:8 ESV

8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

Good soil. To produce a crop, it isn’t all about the seed, it isn’t all about the sunlight, it isn’t all about the environment. All of these things are factors. But the key to it is good soil. Without good soil, the seed will never take root. Without good soil, water will stagnate on the ground and drown the seed. Without good soil, the seed will sit up on the ground and be subject to the sunlight and the birds. But, if the soil is good, then you are primed for a harvest. What makes the soil of the heart good for the word of God to grow.

Mark 4:20 ESV

20 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.”

Jesus tells us that 3 things happen here with the word being planted in someone. They hear the word. They accept the word. And they bear fruit.

All the other people have heard the word. So what is the difference. Mark 4:9 “9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”” And remember in the verses prior to this passage about understanding. Mark 4:12 “12 so that “ ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’ ”” You can hear the word of God all day long but if you do not understand, then it is falling onto everything but good soil.

Each of these people had heard the gospel. Only one received it. This is the one who bears fruit. This fruit is multiplied in the life of the one who accepts it. Thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.

Conclusion

I don’t do this every week. But would you close your eyes and bow your head for a moment. I want you to spend some time in reflection.

Does God’s word produce fruit in your life? This depends on what type of soil that you have. I believe that I am speaking to people with each kind of soil here today. I have sown the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have heard that God created everything perfect. But because of the sin of Adam, sin crept into our world. This sin has separated us from God. We need a way back. That way back is found in Jesus’s perfect life, death on the cross, and resurrection from the grave.

You have heard the word. Will you accept it? You may ask yourself, “how do I accept it?” You accept it through what the bible calls repentance and belief.

To repent means to turn. Your life has not been focused on Jesus. So you turn to him. Why? Because you believe (repent and believe), you believe that Jesus died so that you can have new life in him. This is how you accept it.

Does this mean that you can say that you do this and you can turn around, walk out of these doors and go right back to your old life. If you do that, then the word has fallen onto rocky ground and you will not endure. But the great news about it, that is what the church is here for. We are here for those who give their lives to Jesus and need to grow in their pursuit in holiness and godliness.

If you have, for the first time, legitimately accepted the word of God and have repented and believe in Jesus, would you raise your hand so that I can pray for you and reach out to you this week?

Prayer

Brothers and sisters in Christ. We are saved by grace through faith. If you are here today and are saved, you have experienced this amazing grace. You were a wretch and are now walking. You were blind but now you see. Let us sing about this amazing grace.