The Four Soils

Mark 4:1–20 ESV

1 Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. 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. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” 9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” 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.”

This is parable is diagnostic. What does that mean? Well, a diagnosis is what you get from your doctor. You may go there experiencing some pain and on the basis of your symptomns your doctor will make a diagnosis, that is, they will tell you the root cause of your symptoms and then prescribe the proper treatment.

The parable Jesus teaches here makes a diagnosis too. Something like this might be being asked concerning Jesus and His ministry; ‘If this Jesus really is the promised Messiah, if He really is preaching the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom, then why doesn’t everyone believe in Him?’ Why do some reject Him? Why are others just simply ambivalent? Jesus makes a diagnosis of this quandry here.

This is a question which is relevant to us today in the 21st century, it’s a question that we need to have an answer for. If this Gospel really is good news, if it is actually the power of God unto salvation, then why is it that so many ultimately reject it?

It’s a question we are brought face to face with when we are actually doing the work of evangelism; telling others about Jesus. Why do so many seem uninterested?

Some in the Church have sought to make their own diagnosis of this problem.

Some have thought that maybe the problem is with the sower. She’s not eloquent enough, she’s not got the intellectual depth to handle the objections people have, that’s why people don’t receive what she’s preaching. Or, he’s not relevant enough, He doesn’t look the part. If only he could get himself some up to date gear and start using the local vernacular people would believe the message he’s preaching!

Others have diagnosed that the problem is with the seed; that the problem is with the message being preached. Saying; people don’t want to hear about sin, judgement and hell. They don’t want to be told to repent, and telling them that there’s only one way to God is surely a bit narrow minded for these times isn’t it? Come on, let’s bring the message up to date, skim off all the negativity and broaden it. Let’s just preach love and inclusion, that’s what will win people over.

But Jesus never said that the problem lay with the sower or with the seed, He said the problem was with the soil or in other words, the problem was in the heart. We don’t change the word of God to appease ungodly men, and we don’t dress sheep up as goats to win converts, we acknowledge that the change has to come within the hearts of those we are preaching to.

In the original Greek text Jesus begins and ends His teaching from verses 3 to 9 with the same verb Ακουειν meaning to hear or to listen, beginning with the imperative form of that verb which is like a command; listen! or harken! He uses the same verb a further four times from verses 14-20.

If you want to be a disciple of Christ first you must be somone who knows how to listen to Him.

I must understand that if I want to bear much fruit unto God in my life then it begins first with my passive obedience in hearing His word. A good disciple is a good receiver before they are a good doer.

Today I want for you to consider these things as I preach:

How well do I listen to Christ’s words? Which soil best describes my heart?

Note the condition of each soil and think of it in terms of evangelism, have you come across individuals like this? How should this teaching impact your evangelism? How should it impact our thinking about discipleship? Does it inform our understanding of who is truly saved and who maybe isn’t?

The 4 Soils

So let’s take a closer look at these four soils:

The Wayside

There is such a hardness, such a resistance in this individual that when they hear the gospel presented it literally bounces right off them. And before they have any chance to chew it over Satan comes and takes it away, out of sight and out of mind.

This person is the natural man described by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians; dead in trespasses and sins, walking in futility of mind with their understanding darkened. They don’t even give Christ a second thought, He and His gospel are irrelvant, childish and nonsensical. No amount of evidence will persuade them.

Christopher Hitchens, the late British journalist and Atheist even admitted in debate that even if He were confronted with incontrovertible evidence for the existence of the Christian God he still wouldn’t become a Christian.

These individuals may believe they are rejecting the gospel because of their higher learning, their sophistication. But Jesus tells us the real reason for their unbelief; they have a heart of stone.

2. Rocky Ground

To be clear, Jesus isn’t talking about decent soil with some rocks in but rather a very thin layer of soil which is covering a bed of rock.

When the rocky hearted man hears the gospel Jesus says they actually receive it, and not only that but they receive it with joy! There is an overt emotional response to the gospel. Though the joy is real and perhaps even a very powerful emotion in the moment it ultimately proves to be superficial and short lived.

I’ve known so many like this. In my younger years I remember one of my best friends coming with me to meeting and hearing an evangelist preach. We both responded to the message, my friend was deeply impacted and was very emotional. Few a few months they would come along to church with me but eventually they stopped coming and went back to their old life and it was as if that encounter had never happened at all.

I’ve learned over the years not to use emotional responses as a metric for someones spiritual maturity or strength of conviction. However it has become part of the cultural makeup of Charismatic Christianity to play to the emotions. When the preacher starts a gospel appeal up pops the worship team to pluck away wistfully. The lights, the environment is often finely tuned to speak to the emotions of the congregants. This is dangerous especially in evangelism. When we make an attempt to play to people’s emotions then we cannot be suprised when people run to the altar not driven by any spiritual conviction but purely by their emotions. This is a recipe for making false converts.

These types of people are quick to believe, maybe even too quick. They don’t appraise what they are hearing, they don’t feel the weight of it, they just say yes. They spring up quickly Jesus says. They’re the first forward for the pastors altar call, they say all the right things, before you know it they’ve signed up for every class and every serving team, they seem to be racing ahead but then suddenly they disappear. You try contacting them, you try engaging them and invite them back to church but it’s no use, they’ve moved on.

What happened? Trouble came. A little bit of affliction, an illness, financial trouble, doubts, maybe even a hint of persecution. But all it took was a little gust of trouble and over they went. Why? Because there was no root in them. What you saw in all of their enthusiasm and excitement, that was it. There was no root, no hidden life, no secret prayer, no study of scripture, no discipline to sustain them in the trial.

They just weren’t expecting to have to suffer as a Christian. They were happy to be a Christian when it felt good and helped them feel more positive about life. They were happy to be a Christian if it meant perpetual health, happiness, financial prosperity and the like. But that isn’t what Christianity offers, that’s what the cults offer. So when trials come the way of the stony hearted man, he’s out, he’s gone, his faith withers and dies. Sadly it was superfical, it never took root.

All this goes to show that praying a prayer, or making a simple confession of faith ‘I am a Christian’, or even seemingly ‘having an encounter’ doesn’t necessarily make someone a Christian.

No one was ever justified by a profession of faith - R.C. Sproul

Yes, we are saved by faith alone, but true faith never comes alone. it is always acompanied by works; a prayer life, a growing love of God’s word.

3. Amoung Thorns

This is someone who has heard the word and received it. They have on some level accepted the gospel, perhaps on an intellectual level; it makes sense to them, they understand it and accept it as one might accept that 2 + 2 = 4. God’s word begins to take root in them but then other worldly concerns begin to choke out their new life as a Christian and eventually make it unfruitful.

This individual may be someone who has had a high exposure to church, maybe they even regularly attend. It’s something they do because it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps they know a fair bit about the Bible, maybe even more than your average church goer.

But at some stage in their development other voices in their world get louder and get more and more of their attention; their career, their family, their dreams and ambitions. These things begin to take precedence over their Christian life, they can’t really make it to church now, because life has gotten so busy. Eventually they lose interest altogether and abandon their walk with Christ. Even at this point this individual might still think they are a Christian, but theres no fruit in their life to prove it. Just as Jesus inspected the fig tree on the road from Bethany and found it fruitless, so will it be when He inspects their life.

Take care and be guarded that we don’t love the good things in life too much, so that they end up taking the place of Christ as Lord over our time and energies.

I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies (wife and children). I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can be properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyment, and all as dead to me, and myself as dead to them. - John Bunyan

4. The Good Soil

Those who’s hearts are like good soil for the word of God don’t just bear some fruit, they bear a miraculous amount of fruit, well beyond their natural capability.

Remember, that you aren’t always aware of what fruit you’re producing. Only the harvester of that fruit truly knows! Many of us can become discouraged and wonder whether we’re very fruitful at all. But this scripture is a promise to every Christian that their fruitfulness will massively exceed expectations.

In 1854 a Sunday School teacher in Detroit got talking to a 17 year old boy who was working in a shoe shop. In the end the Sunday school teacher led the young man to Christ in the basement of the shoe shop. That young man’s name was Dwight L Moody, or more famously known now as the evangelist DL Moody. A man named J. Wilbur Chapman was converted at a D.L. Moody Meeting, Billy Sunday was converted at a Chapman meeting, Mordecai Ham was converted at a Billy Sunday meeting and a young man named Billy Graham came to Christ under the preaching of Mordecai Ham. And Billy Graham went on to reach millions of souls for Jesus. I wonder if that Sunday School teacher had any idea of the fruit that would come through His sharing the gospel with that young man that day?

You will never know the full impact of your life here this side of eternity, but rest assured God will be reaping a bumper harvest from you!

The sower sows the same seed indescriminately over all the surfaces. He doesn’t just spread seed on the good soil but spreads it everywhere, even knowingly sowing it in places where it doesn’t seem to have a good chance of growing.

So what differentiates those who receive His seed and bear fruit and those who do not? The condition of their heart.

But lest we start thinking boastfully that it is we who have so cultivated the environment of our hearts to the requisite standard to make God’s word efficacious we must take note of Jesus’s words in verse 11.

Mark 4:11 ESV

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,

and also in the parrallel passages in Luke and Matthew

Luke 8:9-10 “9 And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, 10 he said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’”

Matt 13:11 “11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

The ability ‘to know’ about the Kingdom of heaven is something that is given to us. We don’t possess the ability naturally ‘to know’ the Spiritual truths of the word of God, that ability must be given to us by God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV

14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

John 6:65 ESV

65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

1 Corinthians 4:7 ESV

7 For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So, even that work of turning our hearts from rocky, thorny places into fertile soil is something we must look to God to do for us. If you know this afternoon that there is rocky ground in your heart, that there is no real root to your faith call out to God today and ask Him to till the soil of your heart and pull out the rocks. As He does that you will find you have a deeper, stronger, more resilient faith. Ready to stand up against the storms that will inevitably come your way.

Are there thorn bushes in your life? Cares of the world that choke out all the time you have so that you never have time to spend in prayer or hearing his word? Call on Him today to come and begin to weed your heart. Are there things you need to lay down before Him like Bunyan did while in prison?

Perhaps up until today you’ve never really given the gospel a second thought. You thought of Jesus as irrelevant to you, a symbol of a bygone age and nothing more. But now you sense a stirring within. There is a strange curiousity that you never felt before. Who is Jesus, and what is He all about? His message to you today is the same as it was here in Capernaum 2000 years ago; repent, turn from your old ways, from your sin, from your selfishness and believe. Believe in what? Believe in Him. Believe on Him with everything in you, with all that you are. Knowing that without Him your situation in hopeless. Without Him you stand condemned before a thrice Holy God, the ruler and judge of the cosmos. But this Holy, awesome God, is a Father to all those who are in Jesus Christ. All who believe in Christ need no longer fear condemnation, why? Because Christ has taken their condemnation with Him to the Cross. Not only do you not receive what you deserved, but you receive that which you didn’t deserve, the perfect righteousness of Christ, reckoned to you. May God grant you repentance today. May He give you a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. Amen.