Parable of the Sower

Intro

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were sittin' on the porch one evening, and Boudreaux says, “Thibodeaux, I hear your boy Tee-Boy finally landed hisself a real job over at the bank downtown.”

Thibodeaux just shakes his head. “Yeah,” he says, “but it ain't gonna last.”

“Why you say that?”

“Cause two months ago he was sellin' boudin outta the back of his truck. Before that he was flippin' burgers at the Sonic. And before that, he done flunked outta LSU — twice. That boy changes his whole life every time the wind blows!”

Now, we laugh at that. But that boy is closer to describing you and me that we might like to admit. Because here’s the truth about being human. We are always standing in the middle of one chapter, convinced that it’s the whole book.

According to research, self made millionaires, most of them are first generation millionaires. IOW, the didn’t inherit it like our culture wants you to believe. They often started out in middle class or lower and worked and built to that point. But, what we don’t hear is that many who are millionaires today will not be millionaires 5 years from now. A job changes… the market changes… they make a decision - good or bad… and it reshuffles everything. So the millionaire club is far less permanent that we might think. An executive I knew at a large corporation responded when I commented on his name on the door… It’s put there with velcro. Thngs are always changing.

We are not talking about money tonight, so don’t worry. I just use this example to make the point. If something a countable as a bank account is that mobile, how much more is the human heart?

All of us move through seasons: seasons of doubt; distraction; distance from God; and season of real and visable fruit. Now here’s where we sometimes get into trouble. we take a snapshot of somebody in their hardest season… a season of addiction, or anger, or apathy… and we file them under that label permanently. We do that to other people, and if we are honest, we do it to ourselves too.

I want us to challenge that tendency as we read and study our passage this evening.

Matthew 13:1–9 NLT

1 Later that same day Jesus left the house and sat beside the lake. 2 A large crowd soon gathered around him, so he got into a boat. Then he sat there and taught as the people stood on the shore. 3 He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one: “Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! 9 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”

1. Jesus talked about four types of soil.

In this story Jesus describes a farmer scattering seed, and as it lands, it falls on four different kinds of gorund - and each one produces a different result.

Some seeds landed on the path

(Matthew 13:4 “As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them.” ) which was hard packed ground where nothing can get through. Shelby and her path. Jesus said this person hears the message of the kingdom but doesn’t understand it. Matthew 13:19 “ The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts.” The message never makes it past the surface.

Some seed falls on rocky places.

Matthew 13:5–6 “Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died.” This ground has a thin layer of soil over a shelf of stone. It springs up fast because there’s no depth to slow it down, but when the sun gets hot, there is no root system to draw moisture from and it withers. Jesus said this person who hears the word and receives it with genuine joy, but when difficulties hit them, they fall away.

Some seed falls among the thorns

Matthew 13:7 “ Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants.” The ground itself is fertile, but it’s already crowded with competition for the nutrients, moisture and sunlight. The seed grows, but it gets choked out. Jesus says this person hears the word, but the worries of life and the seduction of wealth choke it out, and it never produces anything. Matthew 13:22 “The seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth, so no fruit is produced.”

Some seed falls on good ground

Matthew 13:8 “Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” This soil has been clear and cultivated. The seed that lands on it produces a great crop: 30, 60 or 100 times more than what was planted. Jesus says that this person hears and really understands the word and produces a harvest. Matthew 13:23 “The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!””

So here’s the question.

How is your heart status in this season?

Four soils. Four responses. So let’s ask that question that Jesus wants us all to think about. Which soil describes your heart right now?

Are you the hard path? Resistant, maybe even outright rejecting what God wants to do in your life so you don’t even let it in.

Are you the rocky ground? You used to be all in, you used to have real joy in following Jesus, but somewhere along the way you got criticized for your faith, or life got hard and God went quiet, and now you're not following as closely as you once did?

Are you the thorny ground? You are not hostile to God, not even necessarily wounded by Him, just crowded? So full of deadlines and screens and obligations and legitimate emergencies that there's no time left for the things of God, and you can feel yourself going slowly numb to it?

Or, are you good soil? You understand what God is doing in your life, you keep pressing forward even when it costs you something, and you can see the fruit of it: deeper relationships, more peace at home, a sense of purpose, a life that's actually affecting the people around you? If that's you — keep going. Don't stop. That kind of life is exactly what's being promised here.

But if we are honest. The first three often describe us better than the fourth. If that’s you, here is some good news. It’s not permanent. Your situation can and will change. Today’s chapter is not the entire book.

Let me encourage you.

2. Never give up.

Don’t give up on yourself and don’t give up on the people you love who seem to be stuck right now.

If we're honest, most of us relate far more often to the distracted, worried, half-hearted soil than we do to the soil that produces 100 times what was planted. And when that’s us, we carry guilt and shame about it. We think that we just are good enough parents, Christians, workers… so we just don’t measure up so we think God must be disappointed in us.

When Jesus talks about soil producing thirty, sixty, or a hundred times what was planted, He is not ranking Christians against each other. That's a business mindset, not a kingdom mindset. There's no leaderboard in this parable, and no version of it where the hundredfold believer matters more to God than the thirtyfold believer.

Jesus is simply describing what happens

When the seed of the gospel takes root in soil that's ready to receive it: it grows. It multiplies. It transforms a life, and that transformed life affects everyone downstream of it.

Let me give you three examples from the Bible … three people whose soil changed when they encountered Jesus.

Paul was, by his own description, a man breathing out murderous threats against the church — present at the stoning of Stephen, hunting down Christians to have them imprisoned or worse. That was his chapter. Then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and God turned the church's chief persecutor into its greatest missionary and the author of roughly a third of the New Testament.

Photina— the name church tradition gives the woman Jesus met at the well in John 4 — had been married five times and was living with a man who wasn't her husband, drawing water alone at noon because she'd likely been shamed out of the crowd that gathered at the well in the cool of the morning. That was her chapter. Then she had one conversation with Jesus, and she ran straight back into the very town that had shamed her, saying, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” Many in that town believed because of her testimony.

And Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector — which meant he'd built his wealth by overcharging his own countrymen and skimming the difference for Rome and for himself. That was his chapter. Then Jesus invited Himself to dinner at Zacchaeus's house, and by the end of the meal, Zacchaeus was giving half his possessions to the poor and repaying everyone he'd cheated four times over.

Notice what all three of these people had in common before Jesus got hold of their story: they were a mess. Sinners. People whose lives had done real damage — to themselves and to others. And that's exactly the point. Sinners are the good soil. Damaged, distracted, ashamed, guilty people are the good soil. Your mess is not a disqualification. Your mess is the very soil the seed of the gospel is looking for.

I have good news for you this evening: you're a sinner too. And your life is precious to a Father who loves you unconditionally, who wants to heal what's broken in you, forgive what you've done, redeem what you regret, and write the next chapter of your story.

Romans 15:13 NLT

13 I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Don't give up. Let the seed take root. Let Jesus meet you in this chapter and lead you into the next one. What He did for Paul, for Photina, and for Zacchaeus, He can do for you. God does not change.

3. We all have two stories to tell.

Look at how the farmer in this parable sows his seed. He isn't careful with it. He isn't rationing it out only to the plots of ground that look most promising. He throws it everywhere — on the path, on the rocks, in the thorns, on the good soil — sowing generously, almost recklessly, without knowing in advance which ground will actually produce.

On one level, that farmer is God.

God is always sowing. He isn't afraid of rejection. He isn't running the odds before He reaches out to somebody. His love compels Him to scatter the seed on every kind of heart, because He knows that soil which looks hopeless today can be good soil tomorrow.

On another level, that farmer is us.

Because God is generous, we get to be generous. Because He isn't afraid of rejection, we don't have to be either. So how do we actually live this out? It's simpler than you'd think — we get to tell two stories.

The first story is the Gospel Story.

The first story is the gospel itself — who Jesus is and what He's done. You don't need a seminary degree to tell it. You just need to know it and be willing to say it out loud.

The second story is Your Story.

The second story is your own, and it breaks down into three simple parts:

What wasyour life was like before you met Christ,

How you came to faith,

What's been changing in you ever since.

You can tell that story over coffee, in the car, at a ballgame, standing in line at the grocery store. You don't need to dress it up or make it sound more dramatic than it was. What makes your story compelling isn't polish — it's honesty. Nobody can argue you out of your own story. They might argue with you about theology, but they can't take away what actually happened to you.

2 Corinthians 9:6 NLT

6 Remember this—a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop.

What would it look like for you this Fall to sow a little more generously — to tell one person the gospel story, or your own story, and trust God with what grows from it?

Conclusion

I want to close with a story that say it all.

In 1748, a twenty-two-year-old ship's captain named John Newton was caught in a violent storm in the North Atlantic. His ship was taking on water faster than the crew could pump it out, and by every reasonable measure, they should have gone down. Newton had spent years living about as far from God as a man could get. He'd been flogged and demoted in the Royal Navy for desertion. He'd made his living in the West African slave trade, transporting enslaved men, women, and children across the ocean in the hold of his ship. He mocked faith, and he mocked the men who had it. If you'd asked anyone who knew John Newton in 1747 what kind of soil his heart was, nobody would have said good soil. They'd have said hard path. Maybe rocky ground with nothing underneath it at all.

But that night, as the ship was breaking apart around him, Newton heard himself crying out to God for the first time in his life: “Lord, have mercy on us.” The ship survived. And something in John Newton survived that night too. It was the beginning of a slow, real conversion — not an instant one. He didn't leave the slave trade right away; that part of the story isn't clean, and I won't pretend it was. But the seed had been planted. And over time, that seed did exactly what Jesus said it would do. It grew. It took root. It changed him from the inside out.

Newton eventually left the sea, was ordained, and became a pastor in the Church of England — and became a fierce advocate for the abolition of the very slave trade he had once served. Years later, reflecting on his own life — the slave-ship captain turned preacher, the hard heart turned soft — he sat down and wrote a hymn about it. You most likely have heard it. Maybe you've sung it a hundred times: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

John Newton was the path. He was about as hard as it gets. And then, by the grace of God, he became good soil — soil that has now produced a harvest for over 250 years, sung in churches on every continent, at funerals and weddings and revivals, by people who have no idea they're singing the testimony of a former slave-ship captain who thought he was beyond hope.

That's the whole message this morning. Whatever chapter you're in — whatever kind of soil describes your heart right now — it is not the last chapter. God is not finished with the story. And He is not finished with you.

If you've been feeling like the hard path — you've heard the message a hundred times, but it's never really gotten past the surface — I want to invite you to come to the front as we sing here at the end of the service today.

If you've been feeling like the rocky ground — you once received Christ with real joy, but life, or criticism, or unanswered prayer has left you distant and maybe walking away — I want you to come forward tonight too.

If your life feels covered in thorns — so busy, so crowded with good things and hard things alike, that there's no room left for God to grow anything — I want you to come forward.

And if you're simply a sinner who's ready to let the seed of the gospel take root today, afresh — I want to invite you to come forward for prayer or pray right where you are and tell God you're ready to make room.

Then this week, consider telling somebody your story. Be generous, because God has been generous with you. Partner with Him in moving someone else from one chapter of their life into the next.

Altar time

“Lord, thank you that you came to bring the kingdom to earth. We love you because you meet us in one season of our life and lead us into the next. Renew in us a sense of hope and wonder today. And show us how to partner with you to bring your kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. Amen.”