So as you approach chapter 13, the die is cast.  Israel has rejected the King.  Israel, therefore, has rejected the kingdom because you cannot separate the kingdom from the King.  For centuries they had awaited the Messiah.  For centuries they had awaited the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth.  They had awaited the times of refreshing, the restoration, the granting back of the glory and the blessing that was man’s before the fall.  And when it was offered to them, they refused it and they lost it in that generation.  And so as you come to chapter 13, you can see the shadow of the cross looming in the background.  Already in chapter 12 verse 14, they had sought to destroy Him.  They had reached the point of wanting only to kill Him.  They have rejected the King.  They have rejected His kingdom.  If Jesus came to offer the kingdom, if Jesus came to bring His kingdom to earth, to reign and to rule and to establish that which was promised, and they refused Him and refused His kingdom, what then happened to the kingdom?  What happens now?  And that is exactly the question answered by chapter 13.  It tells us what is going to happen. 

Because, you see, the kingdom cannot come…listen carefully to this…until the nation of Israel receives the King.  And so, at this point, the kingdom had to be postponed in terms of its full fulfillment.  And I know that sounds redundant but it’s still a good phrase as I hope you’ll understand before we’re through.  Because they rejected the King, the kingdom in its full fulfillment had to be postponed.  And it had to be postponed to a future time.  What time?  The second coming of Christ. 

You see, that’s why Christ is coming a second time, to bring the kingdom that was refused the first time.  He came and His message was this, “Repent for the kingdom is at hand.”  And the message of John the Baptist, His forerunner, was the same.  “Repent for the kingdom is at hand.”  And the message of the apostles, chapter 10, verse 7, was the same.  The kingdom of God.  They were preaching the kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom.  And the people said no to the King and no to the kingdom and the kingdom therefore was postponed.

You say, “Well, why didn’t God just eliminate it altogether?”  Because God made a promise to Israel and God keeps His promises.  God is a God of His Word.  And if God just set the kingdom aside and said, “Forget it, I gave you one shot at it,” and dropped it,

then his prophecies would not come to pass and His Word would be violated.  And so, it is postponed until they believe.  And the day will come when they do, you know. 

For example, Zechariah says, “The day is coming when they will look on Him whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as an only Son, and at that moment a fountain of salvation will be opened up to the line of Israel and the nation will all be regenerated.”  They will be redeemed.  There’s coming a day when they look on the one they’ve pierced and they will have a fountain of cleansing opened to them.  They will be redeemed. 

So, all Israel will be saved, Paul says.  We know that’s to come and we believe it to come in the time known as the great tribulation.  At that time, also, it says in Revelation 7, “There will be so many Gentiles saved they will be unable to be counted.  And innumerable hosts from every people, tongue, tribe and nation across the globe.”  So, you have the nation of Israel redeemed. 

You have worldwide Gentile salvation and when the kingdom of God comes into the hearts of men, internally, then it will realize its full fulfillment, externally, as Christ reigns on the earth for a thousand years in the millennium, spoken of in Revelation 20.  And so, when we talk about the full fulfillment of the kingdom, we mean that kingdom which comes to pass on the earth both internally, that is in the hearts of believing people, and externally, as Christ rules and reigns as King on the earth.

Now, there were some.  There was a remnant who received the King internally.  And there are today those who receive the King internally.  But someday there will be a massive response, and when the kingdom comes internally at the level that it does in the tribulation time, then it will come externally in the wonderful millennial reign of Christ on the earth for a thousand years. 

But what happens in the middle?  What happens between now and then?  This is the period that some theologians have called “The Parenthesis.”  Some have called it “The Interim.”  Some have called it the “Interregnum.”  But it is a period that is not seen in the Old Testament.  And so, Jesus calls it the mystery.  That is that which was hidden from time past. 

They didn’t see this period of time.  That’s why you have to have chapter 13 because they had no teaching on what it would be like.  And so, in chapter 13, you have a series of eight parables from verse 1 on to verse 52, and in those parables…listen now…Jesus describes the interim period.  He describes that parenthesis in which we live.  We’re in that period. 

We need to understand chapter 13 because it’s talking about our time, our period.  What it will be like when the King has been rejected and the kingdom postponed until He comes again to set up His kingdom.  What’s it going to be like?  This describes…believe me; it describes Christianity in 1982 to the very tee.  It’s amazing.  Our Lord said it would be this way, and each of the parables discovers another facet of this period and you’ll see how they perfectly parallel our time. 

Jesus, at this point, is in heaven.  Now, that is not to say that He’s not present in our midst, obviously the Bible says it.  But in terms of where He identifies Himself biblically, in terms of that glorified body, He dwells with the Father at the right hand interceding for us in heaven.  And He is awaiting the time to return to earth.

Now, as we look at Matthew 13, 1 want to give you, this morning, just a general overview and a sense of what’s going on in the mind of our Lord as He teaches here.  Three points that I want you to note”.’ the plan, the purpose and the promise.  And I think these three will help us to get a grasp of this great chapter. 

Now, what is a parable?  Parabolē.  It really means para, meaning alongside.  It means to lay something alongside something else, so to place something along side something else so that a comparison can be made.  That’s basically what it came to mean.  A comparison or an illustration. 

We may not understand the concept of spreading the gospel, but we do understand it when we see a man throwing seed in a field. 

Now, the first parable occurs from verse 5, 4 or 5, right on through verse 23.  And it is a parable about a sower and a seed.  He went into the fields and he sowed the seed.  Now this is depicting the preaching of the gospel throughout the world.  Some people will initially reject it, stony ground.  Some people will initially receive it, but the thorns or

the sun will cause them to fall away.  Some people will initially receive it and ultimately bring forth fruit. 

Now, go back to the thought of parables in verse 3.  So, the Lord teaches all of this in parables.  Now listen very carefully.  Admittedly, while parables explain things and parables help us understand things, and parables make things clear…listen…when they are explained to us.  An unexplained parable is nothing but an impossible riddle.  An unexplained parable is an impossible riddle unable to be understood.  And that is why He had to explain everything, even to His own disciples. 

In Mark 4:10, indicating the same occasion, “When He was alone, they that were about Him with the twelve, asked of Him the parable.  And He said to them, ‘Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto those that are outside, all these things are done in parables.’ ”  He said, “It’s only for you.”  Jesus only explained the parables to the twelve and those who believed, not to the rest.  All they got was unexplained parables.  And those are nothing but riddles, unable to be understood.

Now, that takes us to verse 10 and the purpose for His plan.  “And the disciples came, and said unto him, ‘Why speakest thou unto them in parables?’ ”  Why do You just give them these parables without explanation?  Why do You do that?  “He answered and said unto them, ‘Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.’ ”  Now that tells us about the purpose of parables.  They are to reveal and they are to what?  Conceal.  To some they make truth clear; to others they make it even more unclear.

Now, Jesus says it’s for you to know the mysteries.  Now when He said that word, no doubt their cultural identification helped them to understand it better than we do.  When we think of the word mystery, we think of Agatha Christi, or somebody.  We think of some kind of whodunit?  But that is not the way they did.  In the Greek culture, in the Hellenistic world of that era, mysteries were sacred secrets known only to upper-level religionists.  They were truths only for the initiated. 

Now, we have a parallel to that with the secret societies of today like the Masons and others who have these secret truths that nobody knows except the people who get to

certain levels to know them.  That’s really a heritage borne out of Gnosticism, from the word gnosis, to know.  We are the ones who are in the know; we know the secrets.  And the mystery religions of…of Greece which were borne out of Babylon, were religions in which there were these secrets that you attained as you moved up the ladder of that religion. 

For example, one of the most famous mysteries was the mystery of Isis and Osiris.  Osiris was a wise and good king.  Seth his wicked brother hated him, and with 72 conspirators persuaded him to come to a banquet.  And when he came to the banquet, he put him in a coffin and threw him in the Nile River.  But he was found by his wife and brought home. 

And while he was at home…gets complicated…Seth came again and cut his body into fourteen pieces and shipped them to fourteen locations, throughout all Egypt, figuring that would be the end of Osiris.  However, Osiris pulled himself together.  Actually, his wife went everywhere and collected the pieces.  And he rose from the dead and became forever after the immortal king of the living and the dead.

Now the initiated people were told what that story meant.  Every one of those little things had a…a little secret.  It talked about goodness being attacked by evil.  The sorrowing search of love, the triumphal discovery that love finds its object, raising to life, death conquered, reborn for eternity. 

And the ultimate secret was that if you as a worshipper would say to Osiris, “I am thou and thou art I,” you would then be placed in union with Osiris and live forever.  That was the ultimate secret.  Now, without an explanation, you could only do your best to make sense out of that whole thing.  But they had it down to a gnat’s eyebrow.

Jesus says, “I’m going to show you mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, the secrets never revealed to anybody.  But they’re given to you to know.  But not to them because they don’t accept the King.”  And so, the Lord then unfolds and hides at the same time.  Look at verse 12, “For whosoever hath, – ” and here’s the principle that He uses – “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance.” 

Oh, what a great statement that is.  You know what He’s saying there?  Whoever has…whoever has what?  Well, whoever has in the sense of having received from God that which comes to those who believe.  Whoever is regenerate, whoever is part of the kingdom, whoever has received the King and believes in the King and, therefore, identifies with the King. 

Whoever has accepted God’s truth will get more of God’s truth.  That is ascent, that is enlightenment, that is illumination, as the one who has gets more and more and more.  Do you remember the parables of our Lord where you find the fai…the unfaithful servant.  And invariably the Lord will say, “Take what he has and give it to those who already have more?”  And what he has he loses? 

To the one who accepts the simplicity of the King and His kingdom, God will begin to reveal an ascending revelation of truth.  That’s what He says.  To those who live up to the light of Christ, He will give more light and more light and more light.  But then, look at the rest of the verse.  “But whosoever hath not – ” that is whoever is not regenerate, whoever does not accept the King and His kingdom, whoever does not believe God – “from him shall be taken even what he has.”

What does that mean?  Well, there may have been a little bit of light dawning as he was being led to that point.  Certainly that was true of Israel.  The King had come, He had taught, He had preached, He had done miracle after miracle after miracle.  They had some understanding of who He was, some understanding of what He could do, some glimpses and foretastes of the kingdom.  They had seen the signs of the Spirit of God.  They had seen wonders.  They had some of that, but when they said no to the King, even what they had they lost.  None of it made any more sense and they began to descent into more profound and deeper darkness all the time.

I think we see that today.  Nobody in our society, no group of people in our society are as lost in terms of disorientation from their religion as Jewish people.  They had the covenances, the promises, the…the gifts of God, the fathers, the adoptions, all of that stuff in Romans 9.  Paul said, “You had everything.”  And as soon as they rejected the King and the light went out, they began to lose the meaning of everything they had. 

And I say now, that no one is as lost as they are because the religion they ascribe to makes no sense even to them.  They can’t put it together.  Therefore Judaism has moved from orthodoxy to what is called Conservative Judaism, to reformed Judaism where they don’t even believe the Bible is the Word of God.  It’s just been a descent into darkness, deeper and deeper and deeper darkness.

You see, if you live up to that light which Christ gives, then more light comes.  If you refuse that light, then deeper darkness ensues.  And the parables of the servants and the talents reiterate this again and again.  Take away what he has and give it to one who has rightly responded to Me.  And so, He says even what they have they will lose. 

All men, then…now listen carefully…all men then are in progress, up or down.  That’s a fearful thing.  No man stays static.  The longer you know Jesus Christ, the more faithful He is to reveal His truth.  The longer you refuse Jesus Christ, the deeper the pit of darkness becomes.

Verse 13, Jesus says, “Therefore I speak to them in parables.”  I speak to them in parables because this is an act of judgment.  “They seeing see not; hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”  Because they will not hear with understanding, they will not see, I will now speak to them so they cannot see. 

You see?  See what happens is that willful rejection becomes judicial rejection.  Man says no, so God says no as well.  God confirms men in their own stubbornness; God binds them by their own chain.  And for them the parables become interesting stories and they really don’t know what the point is.  Just riddles.

And then marvelous statement in verses 14 and 15.  “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah,” right on schedule.  This was no surprise that they rejected the King.  No surprise.  They fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 6, verses 9 and 10, which saith, “By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive, for this people’s heart has become fat, gross, their ears are dull of hearing, their eyes they’ve closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, should understand with their heart and should be converted and I should heal them.”

You know when Isaiah wrote that?  Isaiah wrote that at a time of profound judgment on Israel.  He had just pronounced a series of curses on them.  He cursed them for all of their drunkenness, debauchery, their immorality, He cursed them for their bribery, He cursed them for their oppression of the poor.  He cursed them for their hypocritical religion.  And then, of course, at the height of all of that cursings, the King Uzziah died, and the country plunged into the darkest days in a long time. 

They were on the edge of imminent conquering, and the Babylonian captivity came as that judgment.  And Isaiah says to them, “Now God’s going to judge you; you wouldn’t hear and you wouldn’t see and now you can’t hear and you can’t see.  You wouldn’t be converted and you wouldn’t be healed, and now you can’t be healed or converted.” 

And it wasn’t long after that, Jeremiah echoed the message of Isaiah, and the great hordes came and swept away the people into Babylonian captivity.  That was the first fulfillment of Isaiah’s words.  And Jesus says, “Here’s the second.”  So parables…listen carefully…are a judgment on unbelief.  The fact that the natural man understandeth not the things of God is not only a statement about his ignorance.  It is a statement about God’s judgment on that individual. 

And the fact that we who love Jesus Christ understand the Bible is not a statement about our intellect; it is a statement about God’s gracious illumination of our hearts and minds.  This is judgment.  Look at it this way.  When Jesus first came, His words were very clear.  He said He was the King.  He proved He was the King.  He preached the Kingdom message.  He said, “Here’s how it is in My kingdom.”  He said, “Repent, the kingdom is at hand.”  He gave them all they needed to know about the kingdom.  They didn’t hear.  They refused Him. 

So, when they wouldn’t listen to the clear words that He spoke.  And you remember back in Matthew 5 to 7, He would say, “The kingdom of heaven is like – ” and then He would use that analogy, salt or light or birds or lilies of the field and He would always explain its meaning?  Therefore He said, “Seek ye first the kingdom and all these things will be added.  It was always very clear what He meant.  And then when they hardened their hearts and blasphemed Him and said He was from Satan, then He talked to them in riddles that He did not explain.

And you want to see what the third step was?  Look at the fourteenth chapter of I Corinthians, the fourteenth chapter of I Corinthians in verse 21.  “ ‘In the law it is written – ’ he says, quoting out of Isaiah 28; and here’s another word of judgment pronounced by Isaiah on Israel – ‘with men of other tongues – ’ or languages – ‘and other lips will I speak to this people, and yet for all that will they not hear Me,’ says the Lord.  ‘Wherefore languages, or tongues, are for a sign not to them that believe but to them that believe not.’ ”

Now Listen, people always ask me What are tongues for?  It says right there, they are a sign.  For whom?  Not for those who believe, but for those who believe not.  Where was tongues primarily used?  On the day of Pentecost in the face of the Israelites.  Why?  Listen clearly.  They wouldn’t listen when He spoke to them clearly in their own language, so He judged them by speaking in riddles.  They wouldn’t listen and seek the truth then, so thirdly, He spoke to them in a language they didn’t even know.  You see the progression of judgment?  Tongues are a sign of judgment upon Israel.  God is now talking so you can’t even understand the language.

Now, go back to Matthew 13 with that in mind.  So that He says the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled.  So the plan was to speak in parables.  And the purpose of the parables was to reveal and to conceal.  Now, we’ve seen the conceal, let’s look at the reveal in verse 16.  “But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.”  Isn’t that great?  I mean, that’s the other side.  We understand the parables.  You say, “How so?”  Because Jesus explained them.  And we have the New Testament text and also because the Spirit of God is our teacher.  That’s the illumination.

Mark 4:34 of this same incident says, “He expounded all things to them.”  And over in verse 52…do you see it there of Matthew 13…51 rather.  “Jesus said to them, ‘Have you understood all these things?’ ”  And they said unto Him what?  “Yes, Lord.”  They weren’t smarter; they just possessed the illuminating presence of Jesus Christ. 

This was part of His ministry.  At the end of Luke’s gospel, in verse 45, after the road to Emmaus, it says, “Then opened He their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.”  And you want to know something?  Listen to me.  Even though you’re

regenerate, you would still not understand the Scripture were it not for the illuminating work of the Spirit of God. 

That is His marvelous illuminating work.  And that is why the Psalmist, in Psalm 119:18, cries out, “Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of Thy law.”  That’s…that’s the heart of Isaiah, in 64:1, when he says, “0 God, rend the heavens and come down.”  “I’ve got to have an explanation,” is what he’s saying.  But verse 17 says, “I say unto you, many prophets and righteous men desire to see those things which ye see, have seen them not, and to hear the things you hear, and have heard them not.” 

Isaiah said, “Rend the heavens and come down.”  And he wasn’t alive when the heavens were rent, and He did come down.  “They were not perfected – ” Hebrews 11 says – “without us.”  Peter says, “They were looking into their own prophecies and searching what person and what time these things would come to pass.”  They didn’t get to see what we see.  They didn’t see what the disciples saw in the heavens being rent and God coming down in human flesh to reveal His truth. 

Oh, how wonderful it is that we now have the resident Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.  That one of whom it says in I Corinthians that He searches the deep things of God and reveals them to us.  And we only know them because of the Spirit revealing them to us.  Even for the saved there has to be divine illumination.  That doesn’t mean we don’t have to study.  We have to study to keep from being ashamed.  There’s the discipline of study, and in the process the illumination of the Spirit of God.

So parables conceal as an act of judgment against Israel.  At the same time they reveal because Jesus gave the parables and gave you explanation.  Today we have the Word.  You say, “Jesus isn’t here to explain.”  No, but He said, “When I go away I’ll send another explainer, the Holy Spirit.  And He’ll lead you into all truth.” 

Do you realize what a privilege we have?  Do you realize that we not only have this book, but we have its author living in us to explain it to us?  To interpret it to us?  To apply it to us?  How they of old hungered for that.  And so, the plan and so the purpose.  One other thought came to my mind.  That is the promise, the promise.  As a person who tries to think logically and as I try to anticipate the question, the inevitable

question…and it came from several sources…is “Well, if the King offered the kingdom and they rejected it, did this foul up the plan? 

Is God up in heaven making alterations?  Is He adjusting, saying, ‘I sent the King.  If they accept the King they get the kingdom.  If they don’t accept the King they don’t get the kingdom.  So I’ve got to have plan A and plan B?’ ”  Does this alter what’s going on?  The fact that He had to judge these people for their unbelief, and the kingdom had to be postponed and the mystery age had to be dropped in, was that sort of an additional thing tacked on when things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to?

Let’s look at the promise in verse 35.  Verse 34 says, “He spoke only in parables – ” and verse 35 says – “In order that, for the purpose that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying, ‘I will open My mouth in parables, I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.’ ”  Marvelous.  You know who said that?  Asaph.  Asaph was a prophet and a seer, and that is what he said in Psalm 78 verse 2.  That’s a Psalm by Asaph.

And Asaph predicted that the Messiah would have to speak in parables, that He would have to speak in parables as an act of judgment.  And that to His own people He would reveal a secret kept from the foundation of the world.  Listen.  God didn’t adjust.  Before the foundation of the world He knew they would reject and He knew He’d have to put that secret mystery period in there.  What does that say?  That says everything’s on schedule.  God is not making alterations as He goes.  He’s sovereign.  Everything is on schedule.

Well, I hope that wets your appetite a little bit for the message of Matthew 13.  That’s just the beginning.  Now listen carefully to what I’m going to say.  There are some great profound lessons that we’ve seen just this morning.  Let me sum up the key ones.  First, truth is only available to people who believe and are taught by God. 

The other side of that is this second truth.  Rejection of Jesus Christ means the decreasing darkness of unbelief.  You don’t stay in the same spot.  It gets deeper and deeper and deeper.  And the third point that I want you to see is that God’s plan is on

schedule.  It’s big enough to encompass the unbelief of Israel and the mystery of this age.  Let’s bow in prayer.

While you’re meditating for a moment before I lead you in prayer, if you’re looking into your own heart and you know you don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ, you have not received Him as Lord and Savior, you’re not staying in the same spot.  You’re slowly inexorably moving into deeper darkness and the inevitability of the judgment of God. 

But it need not be so, for God calls you to Christ even this hour while you can still hear, and promises that if you receive the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, there shall be an ever increasing light, an ever increasing illumination of spiritual truth until, finally, someday you shall know as you are known in the eternal presence of the living Lord. 

You can make the commitment to Jesus Christ right where you are this morning.  Some of us Christians have in our hands this incredible gift and dwelling within our souls the teacher, and give little opportunity to either to work in us.  May we be faithful to refresh that commitment to the Word and the Spirit through the Word.  Do Your work, Lord, in the hearts of all who are here. 

Thank You for letting us be alive now when we have the book and the Spirit.  Thank You for even letting the unbelievers here be alive now, when they can hear from the Book and they can witness the power of the Spirit as He transforms lives and moves through His church, convicts.  We pray that no one will go from this place who has not embraced Jesus Christ or has not refreshed a vow to commitment to Him.  We pray in His name.  Amen.

Let’s join together in looking at the Word of God, Matthew chapter 13.  Part of our worship is to focus on the truth that God has granted to us.  We might better be able to worship Him by better understanding His Word and His will.  In looking at Matthew 13, we begin, today, an in-depth look at the parables of this marvelous chapter.  Now I confess to you that I’ve waited a long time to dig into these parables because of their tremendous importance to us in this age. 

As we’ve learned in the last couple of weeks together, the parables of Matthew 13 are given by our Lord to describe the character of the kingdom between His rejection and

His return. And they describe the church age, as we know it, this period of time that is called the mystery form of the kingdom.  Christ is still the King; His kingdom is here.  It’s the part of the kingdom, however, that was not seen in the Old Testament.  The King was rejected.  He will return to establish His prophesied kingdom.  But, in the meantime, there is this mystery form, unseen in the past, that we know as the age of the church.

And we asked the question in the last couple of weeks; what will this period be like?  How will it be?  Will the gospel be preached?  Will it be heard?  Will it be believed?  What will happen to the kingdom in this period?”  And our Lord gives the answer to His disciples in a series of seven parables.  They are given in this chapter and wonderfully explained to us, the very time in which we live.

Now, this morning, we want to look at the first parable.  It begins in verse 3.  “And He spoke many things unto them in parables, saying, ‘Behold, a sower went forth to sow.’ ”  Now as we pointed out to you, the Lord knows how to take the natural world and wield it as a weapon of great precision in instructing regarding spiritual truth. 

He takes something they could understand, lays it alongside something they did not understand and the one explains the other.  And that is what a parable is.  It is a comparison.  Each of these stories is filled with profound spiritual truth.  And I have found that the longer you look at them and the longer you study them, the more rich and full they become.

This week, as I studied this parable over and over again, I suppose I spent 15 hours or more on this one parable, just looking at it and digging into it.  It became more and more rich, and more and more rich, until I had to restrain myself from developing a series out of this one parable. 

The amazing thing is that with all of the richness, with all of the wide range of ramifications of what is said by our Lord, it is amazing how each parable is so simply told.  How the Lord has that supernatural capability of filing down all unnecessary words to get at the very bare minimum of terms, and yet express incredible profundity.

Now, the statement at the beginning there in verse 3, “Behold, a sower went forth to sow,” opens up our understanding of this particular parable.  Jesus is on familiar

territory as He speaks in this regard, because there was much agricultural life in that part of the world.  Everybody understood the sowing of seed; everybody understood what was involved in that.  It may have been that as Jesus was off the shore of the lake of Galilee, in a boat, seated there, teaching the multitude gathered on the shore, that they could have looked off in the distance and seen this very thing taking place.

They could have been watching a man going up and down the furrow sowing seed.  They would drape over the shoulder a bag, and the bag would be full of seed and it would have an opening.  And as the furrows had been prepared, the man would reach in and take out the seed and with his hand he would broadcast it.  That was the original meaning of that English word, to “broadcast.” 

He would scatter the seed in to the furrow, and he would do it with ordered steps in a straight line, and when he reached the end of the line, he would turn to start the other way, never miss a step, and continue throwing the seed.  And that was how the field was sown, by throwing the seed, the broadcasting method.  As he throws that seed, Jesus indicates there are four kinds of soil on which that seed will fall.  Let’s look at them. 

First is what He calls the wayside soil, in verse 4.  “And when he sowed, some of the seeds fell by the wayside and the fowls came and devoured them.”  Now, in Palestine which was just literally crisscrossed with fields, the fields were usually long, narrow strips and men could’ cultivate those fields.  The strips were separated from other strips and other fields by paths, the paths being about three feet or so wide, narrow paths. 

Those were used by the farmer to get in between the fields to get to whatever field he wanted to reach.  They were also used by the travelers who were going from one part of the country to another.  We find even in Matthew chapter 12, that the Lord Jesus Christ and His disciples were walking through the fields of grain.  And no doubt they were walking on those little paths that were for that purpose.  There were no fences around the fields, there were no walls surrounding the fields, just these little narrow paths for travelers and for the farmer to get around in his area.

And no doubt this is what the Lord has in mind when He talks about the wayside.  The dirt would then be packed down, beaten hard, uncultivated, never turned over, never loosened.  And by all of the continual pounding and pounding, and because of the dryness of that part of the world it would be compacted to the point where it was like a road.  It was as hard as pavement. 

And when the farmer came along and threw the seed and it went beyond the furrow and landed on that hard surface, it could not penetrate the ground.  And it would lie there on the top and birds would hover, no doubt, until the farmer turned his back.  And as he started down the next furrow, they would land on the hard surface and they would eat the seed.  And what they did not eat, Luke says, was trampled by the feet of men who were passing through the fields.  That’s the wayside.  The birds and the men removing the seed which cannot penetrate the soil.

Then you come to the stony soil in verse 5, “Some – ” and this would be very true because of the method of sowing the seed would scatter and fall in different places and this one would fall on stony places, or rocky places – “where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth.  And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.”  Luke adds, “They had no moisture.”  There was no root to capture the moisture.

Now what is this?  Well, it’s not talking about soil with rocks in it because any farmer who cultivated a field would make sure all the rocks were out.  But basically, Israel, in terms of its land, has running through it strains of limestone rock bed.  And in very many places this rock bed surges up to become close to the soil so that maybe inches beneath the soil there would be solid rock bed limestone.  And when cultivating the field you might not see that or you might be unable in the cultivating process to break up that rock bed. 

And so right beneath the soil is this hard rock bed and as the seed falls in and begins to germinate and tries to shoot its roots down, they hit the rock bed.  They have nowhere to go.  All of the moisture and the sun that’s there generates life upward so they spring up, probably higher than the other grain and the other seed which is going both ways and using its energy to go both ways.  This flourishes immediately, but when the sun

comes out, it dies because its roots are not strong enough to maintain moisture or to find moisture, and the rock bed hinders them and it dies in the heat of the summer.

Now verse 7 introduces us to the thorny, or better, weedy soil.  Weeds are in this soil.  “Some fell among thorns – ” or weeds – “and the thorns – ” or weeds – “sprang up and choked them.”  Now, this soil looks good.  It’s deep, it’s rich, it’s turned over, it’s tilled, it’s cultivated.  It looks clean and it looks ready, and the seed falls down into that area and it begins to germinate.  But also there are fibrous roots of weeds and they tend to choke that life out. 

You see, weeds are natural to that soil; they belong in that soil.  They fit in that soil.  They’re at home in that soil.  The sowing of the grain is a foreign element into that soil.  It’s not natural; it has to be carefully cultivated.  And the weeds in their natural soil just totally dominate and strangle and choke and grow up fast and send out their leafs and shade so that there cannot be the sun or the moisture.  There’s not enough room for everyone to share the nutrients of that soil.  And so, the good seed dies,

Finally, in verse 8, is the good soil.  “Other seed fell into good ground and brought forth fruit.  Some in hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.”  Now, here is deep, soft, clean soil.  It’s soft, unlike the hard wayside.  It’s deep, unlike the stony limestone ground.  And it’s clean, unlike the weed-infested soil.  And there the seed bursts into life and it brings forth a tremendous harvest, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold.  And by the way, the average would be 7.5 fold we’re told.  A good crop would be tenfold.  So, we’re talking about a tremendous flourishing crop.

Now, the parable then is very simple.  A man goes out and throws seed.  The seed falls into four kinds of places.  It falls on a hard path where it will never germinate.  It’s either picked up by birds or trampled under the feet of those who walk on the path.  Some seed falls into rocky soil, germinates for a little while because the sun and the water are there to start with.  It responds by growth but its growth is all upward and there’s no root and when the sun scorches and burns that plant up there and it finds no resource underneath, it dies. 

And then there is that seed that falls on the weedy ground that is strangled out and choked out by that which already lives there and is natural to that place.  And then there is that which falls into the good, clean, deep, rich soft soil and it grows and produces a tremendous harvest.

Now, verse 9 simply says, “Who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  What does that mean?  If you can understand this, then understand it.  If you can get the message, then get the message because there’s an important message.  You say, “Well, who is this who can hear?”  Well, that’s why He has verses 10 to 17 there which we went into last time.  Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.  Whoever can understand this, understand this. 

And we learned last time that the only people who can understand it are the people who believe in the King, right, are the people who are redeemed, who are in the kingdom.  Because of you’re in the kingdom, the King promises to explain to you the meaning of this.  You see, the benefit of being a Christian is not that you get some instant academic knowledge; you get some instant wisdom so you understand everything on your own.  No.  The fact that you become a Christian doesn’t mean you understand on your own any better.  It does mean, however, that God promises to teach you the meaning of His Word.

And so, now He says, “If you can understand, then understand.”  And the question would immediately arise, “Well, who I can understand?”  And first of all, He says, “Well, it’s for sure one thing.  The people with the hard hearts and the deaf ears can’t understand.”  And so He quotes Isaiah there and He says down in verse 15, “The people’s heart is gross, their ears are dull, their eyes they have closed,” and so forth.  It isn’t going to be the people that reject Me.  It isn’t going to be the people that don’t accept Me. 

Who’s it going to be?  Verse 16, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see and your ears, for they hear.”  Who can hear?  You can hear, and only you can hear.  This is then given to conceal from those who don’t believe and revealed to those who do because the Lord’s going to teach.  In Mark 4, the disciples came to Jesus and they said, “Tell us the meaning of the parable.  And when He had them apart from the multitude, He told them

the meaning of the parable.”  But only them who know the King have the promise that He’ll be their teacher.

He begins then, in verse 18, to explain the meaning of the parable.  “Hear therefore,” He says.  So, verse 9 says, “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”  Who is that?  Verse 16, “Blessed are your ears, for they hear.”  Therefore, verse 18 says, “Listen to what I’m saying.”  You are able, so take advantage of that.  “Listen to what I say,” and I think He’s talking about get the spiritual message, get the deeper connotation.  Here comes the interpretation.

Let’s look at verse 18, and let’s go right into the interpretation.  “Hear therefore the parable of the sower.”  Now, we have to ask ourselves a question at this point because it’s obvious.  Who is the sower?  Who is the sower?  Well, it seems rather obvious that the sower is the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is confirmed later on in the chapter as the Lord is seen in another parable doing the same thing.  Verse 37 says, “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man.”  The Lord is the original sower.  He is the one who first puts the seed in the soil.

And you say, “What is the seed?”  Well, it says in verse 19, “When anyone hears the Word of the kingdom.”  The seed is the Word.  The seed is the Word of the kingdom.  It is God’s revelation. Luke 8:11, a parallel passage giving the same parable, says, “The seed is the Word of God.”  The message about the King and His kingdom, it is the gospel.  And the first sower of the gospel was the Lord Himself. 

But may I add this?  Anybody who sows what Jesus first sowed is a sower.  If you repeat the message of Jesus Christ, you become a sower.  If I repeat the message of Jesus Christ, I become a sower.  In Mark 4:14, it says, “And the sower sowed the Word.”  So, anybody who sows the Word becomes a sower.  Jesus was the first sower, and we who follow by giving His message are also the sowers.

William Arnot said, “As every leaf of the forest and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam off again, and so spread the light around; in like manner, everyone, old or young, who receives Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name.”  So, we are all the sowers

who love Christ, who received His message, who pass it on.  The seed, then, is the Word of God.  We are sowing, then, the gospel, the message of the kingdom.

And may I hasten to make a point here.  You know, seed, just in its natural sense, seed cannot be created.  If we ever lost the seeds, if we lost seed, we could never cause things to grow.  We are dependent on what grows and produces more seed because the origination came from God.  God originally created seed and seed reproduces itself.  If we ever lost seed, we’d never be able to reproduce it.  We can’t create it.  And the same is true in the seed of the Word of God. 

God does not call on us to create our own message.  God says, “Take that which has already been sown and sow it again.”  We are not to produce a new supply of information.  We are to build upon the revelation of the Word of God and we are utterly dependent, then, upon divine revelation as much as we are dependent on God creating the seed in the first place which reproduces itself and brings to us the fruit that we eat even today.  So, the seed is the Word.  The seed is the Word.

And may I just add as a footnote, that the Word encompasses the written word but inside of it is the living word.  It’s as if the Bible is the husk and the living Christ is the seed within the husk.  So, initially, it’s Christ sowing the Word of God containing the seed, which is Himself.  He is both sower and seed.  We are the sowers who sow the seed.  The husk is the Word of God and in it contains the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, the parable, then, is about this.  It is about preaching the gospel.  That’s what it’s about.  It’s about preaching the Word about the King and His kingdom, telling men that Jesus is the King, He’s come to bring a kingdom; telling men what the King is like and telling men how to get in His kingdom; telling men what His kingdom is like and what it will promise to do in life and death and eternity.  It’s all about the good news of the King and His kingdom, to be in the King, to be in the kingdom, both one and the same.  So, we’re talking about preaching.

Now we come to the soils.  And here is the main import of the parable.  It is how men will respond to the gospel.  When it’s preached, how will they respond?  Now, let’s talk about the soils for a minute.  We’ve seen there are four kinds of soils.  Let me say this

and I want you to understand it.  All the soils are basically the same.  Dirt is dirt is dirt, whether it’s hard dirt, soft dirt, dirt with rock under it, or dirt with weeds in it, dirt is dirt is dirt.  It’s all talking about the same part of the world. 

The issue is not specifically the soil; the issue is what has influenced the soil, the condition that it is in.  It is to say, then, that all men could receive the seed, right?  All soil could receive the seed if it was broken up, if it was cleaned of weeds.  The issue, then, is this.  Here comes the key to the parable.  The result of hearing the gospel in the life of an individual depends upon the condition of that person’s heart.  Did you get that?  That’s what Jesus is teaching.  The result of the preaching of the gospel will depend on the condition of the heart of the hearer. 

Now we know the soil refers to the heart because it tells us that in verse 19.  “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and understands it not, then comes the wicked one and catches away that which was sown in his – ” what? – “heart.”  Heart is the same as soil.  You see, the issue is the condition of the heart.  That determines the reception of the gospel.  And Jesus is saying to these disciples who at this point are saying, “Lord, what’s going to happen?  You’ve been blasphemed.  You’ve been rejected.  The kingdom cannot come.  All is lost.  What is going to happen now?”

He says, “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, you’re going to go out just like I did and you’re going to sow.  And you’re going to sow the seed, which is the Word of God, and you’re going to preach the same message about the same King and the same kingdom.”  “But, Lord, what is going to happen?”  “Oh, lots of things are going to happen.  But it’s going to depend on the condition of the heart of the hearer.” 

And I think the basic point of the parable…and get this…is to encourage the apostles, that there will be wayside soil; you’ve got to know that or you could really get disillusioned.  And there will be stony ground soil and there will be weedy ground soil but there will also be good ground soil that will bring forth thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.  It’s an encouraging parable.  It is a parable to help them to approach the ministry with excitement, anticipation that God is going to produce results.

Now, the mark of salvation in the soils is fruit.  And only one out of four demonstrates it.  And that’s a very important point.  Salvation is noted by fruit.  Not by foliage, by fruit.  And if you don’t understand that, you get confused in the parable.  So, we’re going to meet four kinds of hearers, four kinds of responders to the gospel.  And they are characteristic of our day.  So these are the things that we’re going to be able to really identify with.

Number one, we call this one the unresponsive hearer, the wayside hearer, verse 19.  “Anyone hears the word of the kingdom, understands it not, then comes the wicked one and catches away that which was sown in his heart.  This is he who receives seed by the wayside.”  Seed fell on the hard surface, couldn’t penetrate the hard surface.  The birds hovered around, waited till the man’s back was turned, came down and hit the surface and ate the seed.  And the rest, says Luke, was trampled under feet. 

Now, what is this?  This is the man who is hard-hearted, very simple.  This is the man the Old Testament would call stiff-necked.  This is the man who is irresponsive, unresponsive, inattentive, unconcerned, indifferent, negligent, doesn’t want anything to do with it, just hits him and bounces off.  And Satan is seen as the birds, the wicked one who comes and snatches away, so that even as the Lord said earlier in the chapter, “That which he has is lost, because he doesn’t respond to it.”  Self-destroying neglect.

In other words, there’s a condition of the human heart that has been so pounded and pounded and pounded with the crisscrossing of the mixed multitudes of sins that traverse the life, that there’s just no sensitivity at all.  This is the heart that knows no repentance, knows no sorrow for sin, knows no guilt, knows no concern over things that really matter; just allows itself to be trampled and trampled and trampled with the mixed multitude, the feet pounding away that mark the sins of life day after day after day after day.  Never broken up, never softened by conviction, hard-hearted, callous, indifferent. 

I believe this could be best seen in the fool of Proverbs.  The fool who hates knowledge, the fool who hates instruction.  The fool who despises wisdom.  The fool who is stiff-necked.  The fool who is hard hearted.  The fool who says in his heart there is no God.  This is the fool who will not hear, whose mind is shut, who does not want to be bothered at all; who says, “Let us alone.”  

And we’ve all met him, haven’t we?  I mean, you’ve thrown your seed and it just bounces, nothing, no penetration.  And it doesn’t stay there very long but Satan comes in and he takes it away, he cleans it off.  You say, “Well, what is this?”  Well, this is the same as II Corinthians 4:4, where it says of Satan who is the god of this age, “That he’s blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them.” 

In other words, when someone does not respond to the gospel initially, when they’re hardhearted and stiff necked, Satan just snatches it away.  He just blinds them to its true value.  How does he do that?  Well, there are a lot of ways.  One way he does that is send false teachers along to say all of that stuff was lies.  Don’t believe that stuff.  Another way he snatches the seed is by the fear of man.  People don’t respond to it because they’re afraid they might lose their reputation or they might be kicked out of their little group or somebody might think they’re a religious fanatic. 

Sometimes Satan uses pride.  People are just know-it-alls.  They just don’t want to admit that they need some help, that they need some information, that there’s some things they don’t know.  Sometimes Satan snatches it away through doubt.  Sometimes he snatches it away through prejudice, sometimes through stubbornness.  Sometimes through the love of sin the person doesn’t want to give up.  Sometimes through procrastination.  But one way or another or a combination of ways, when it hits that hard stuff, Satan snatches it away and the person so easily forgets that it ever came. 

There are many people like that.  And I guess you ought to examine your heart at this point.  Are you that dry, hard, road on the edge of the field?  You may be on the fringes of religion and activity but sins have just pounded and pounded and pounded down the dirt of your heart until it is utterly unproductive and unresponsive to God.  There are people like that.  And some of them hang on the edges, very close, and very shut to the truth.  And so, we expect that.  We expect that when we preach the gospel.  Jesus said, “Expect it.”

There’s a second kind, and that’s the rocky ground hearer, verse 20.  “He that receive the seed in stony places, rocky places, the same is he that hears the word and immediately with joy receives it.”  Now, I like this one.  This is the person who hears the

Word and immediately with joy receives it.  And the indication is that there’s not a lot of thought involved.  It’s just sort of a quick response, a wow, you know.  It’s sort of emotional, sort of euphoria, sort of instant excitement without counting the cost, without understanding the real significance. 

There’s a warm affection, there’s a good feeling and there’s a lot of joy and the thing shoots up.  And all of the energy is going up and it’s all external and it’s all on the outside 'cause there’s nothing underneath.  Because that rock bed of resistance is still there to true repentance, to true brokenness, to true contrition.  There’s just a soft surface, that’s all.  And there are people like that.  They don’t really ever deal with the real issues.  They just sort of jump on the Jesus Bandwagon.  It looks so good. 

You know, and we look at them and we see that deal shoot up and it may even shoot higher and faster than the rest of the people who are really going to bear fruit because everything is going up.  And those are the ones we say, “Ah, that’s real.  Boy, that is real, look at the joy.  Oh, tears and joy, and that’s got to be real.  Have you ever had that?  And three months later, gone.  They’re gone.  And all that was there, it was all the euphoria. 

Maybe they wanted to belong or maybe…maybe they wanted to marry you and, all of a sudden, you said I’m a Christian and they said, “Okay.”  And they got all joyful and turned…didn’t turn out the way it looked.  Or, maybe the person’s coming out of a deep problem and they reach for Christianity.  And there’s sort of an instant feeling, “I’ve got it now, God’s on my side.”  Or, maybe some inadequate evangelism, and there’s so much of this, you know, going on, who just talk about a happy-go-lucky Jesus kind of relationship. 

And they jump on the bandwagon and now there’s a happiness and a joy that comes because they belong, they found acceptance, you’ve been kind to them.  They have a sort of a sense that everything’s okay and it’s all really wonderful, but they’ve never really plowed the soil underneath.  They’re like the guy who built the house on the what?  On the sand.  They built the house all right, I mean, it’s up there.  The religious structure is there, nothing holding it up.  Superficial joy.

Now, if you look at the field at first, you don’t really notice these people except that they stick out because they’re taller than everybody else.  You say, “Boy, got to be real.  Look at that, isn’t that exciting?  And you come back a little later whet the summer hits, and the moisture is very limited, and the sun is very hot and you see them dead.  And it says in verse 21, “He has no root in himself, so he endures for a while.”  Never been redeemed; he’s just sort of accepting the seed, but it’s never been really genuine. 

Endures for a little while, and what finally does it?  Tribulation and persecution, thlipsis.  Pressure and suffering arise because of the Word, because you belong to Christ, because of living the Word of God, because of being identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, all of a sudden some pressure comes.  There’s maybe a pressure to really begin to live the Christian life.  There’s maybe a pressure that comes. 

People around you saying, “I want you to get into a Bible study, I want to meet with you to have prayer.  I want to disciple you.”  And, all of a sudden, you begin to feel the pressure coming.  And then there’s persecution.  You’re a Christian and now people start to say things about you.  They start to knock you.  They start to criticize you.  Well, this kind of person won’t survive that because there’s no root there, there’s no depth. 

This is…this will blow them right out, and they’ll give evidence of the non-reality of the initial response.  Now this is so insightful, isn’t it?  It’s so helpful because it tells us to expect this kind of thing.  We know…I know that when I pray with someone to receive Jesus Christ, they can be this kind of person.  And when you see a very immediate, very instantaneous and a sort of a euphoric response, there’s something in you that says this might be rocky soil.  Where’s the depth and the brokenness and the counting of the costs?

William Arnot said in 1896 when he commented on this, “If the law of God is never rent the stony heart, and made it contrite, that is bruised it small, you may by receiving the gospel on some temporary superficial softness of nature obtain your religion more easily and quickly than others who have been more deeply exercised, but you may not retain it.  He that endureth to the end shall be saved, he that fails in the middle, shall not,” end quote.

And so we expect that.  Tribulation, pressure, suffering for the sake of Christ.  “All that live godly in this present age – ” 2 Timothy 3:12 says – “shall suffer persecution.”  So when the persecution comes and the pressure comes, they’re gone.  We’ve had them here.  I’ve baptized them.  I’ve even prayed with some of them.  I’ve even spent hours discipling some of them.  And I can’t tell till the pressure comes, till the persecution comes.

And then it says at the end of verse 21, “They are offended.”  They are scandalized.  It means, basically, the word for baiting a trap.  They’re trapped, they’re caught, offended.  So watch for the conversion that’s all smiles and cheers and lacks the beatitude attitude.  Watch for that superficial kind of thing that happens so often today in the superficial presentations of the gospel that very often occur through television and other means.

Now, just as a footnote here, trouble and persecution, then, become very important to the…to the kingdom of God, because trouble and persecution will do two things.  One, trouble and persecution will kill the false believers.  And secondly, they’ll strengthen the true believers, right? First Peter 5:10 says, “After you have suffered, the Lord will make you perfect.”  So, we should really desire this because trouble and persecution kill off the false and strengthen the true, very important element.

If your confession of Christ, however you define it…if your confession of Christ…I’m talking about you personally…does not come from a deep inner conviction of your sin, does not come from a deep sense of lostness, does not include a tremendous desire for the Lord to cleanse and purify and lead you; if your confession of Christ does not involve a great hunger for self-denial and self-sacrifice and a willingness to suffer for His sake, then you have no root and it’s only a matter of time. 

And something will come along and you’ll burn up and die, because you’re not willing, as Jesus said, to take up the cross and follow Him.  And if you’re not, you’re not worthy to be His what?  His disciple.  Only God can break up that stony heart.  And if you’ve got that kind of heart, you need to pray and ask the Lord to do for you what He promised to do for Israel in Ezekiel 36:26 when He said, “I’ll take away your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh.”

Third here is in verse 22, “He that received the seed among the weeds – ” or the thorns – “is he that hears the Word.”  You notice they all hear the Word, and the Word again indicating that that’s what the seed is.  “And the care of this age – ” Worldliness, folks – “and the deceitfulness of riches – ” which is the heart and soul of worldliness.  Living for the mundane, living for the things of this world, the cares of this age.  Your career, your house, your car, your job, your wardrobe, your prestige, your looks. 

And riches deceive, they are liars.  They pierce many, many hearts.  Read 1 Timothy 6.  They are deceitful, and the love of them the root of all evil.  And so, He says there are…there are these who hear, but they never clean out the soil.  The world is still there.  And money is still there.  And that’s exactly why Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and money.  You either hate the one and love the other –“ or despise the one and cling to the other. 

That’s why John said, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is – ” what? – “not in him.”  You can’t be that double-minded man.  The soil that is going to produce the fruit must be cleansed of that stuff.  And that is why I’m so convinced in my heart that true salvation only occurs where there is true repentance...where there’s a willingness to deal with sin in the life and that is a marvelous and gracious work of God.

You know, the U.S. Agricultural Department has come up with a kind of an interesting new system when they’re trying to help farmers with their planting and stuff.  They have developed a six percent ethyl alcohol solution.  And when they go to a field that’s going to be planted, they’ll cover that field with this six percent ethyl alcohol solution and it…it causes weeds to grow.  I mean, weeds just love it. 

They just come up like mad.  And that’s the whole point.  And they get all the weeds up and then once the weeds are all up and full grown, they can deal with them mechanically.  And what they found is that instead of a seasonal dealing with the weeds, it’s a long-term extending beyond five years before they have a problem from the new ones that blow in.

And I think there’s an interesting parallel in that sense, that as you as an individual come to the Lord Jesus Christ, there must be a willingness to deal with all the stuff, to

get it up and get it out.  And I think that’s part of what true conversion is all about.  And I know there are people who say, “Well, you don’t have to do anything to be saved.  Just believe and that’s it.  But I think that sounds too much like rocky soil, and it sounds too much like thorny soil, or weedy soil.

Now the soil is good.  It’s just impure.  Somebody trying to hold on to everything at the same time wants the Word of God and wants everything else.  But, you see everything else…and here’s the key point I made a few minutes ago, everything else is indigenous to that earth.  Weeds flourish, that’s their natural home.  When you introduce the seed that is a foreign element, and it has to be cared for and nurtured and cultivated.  It can’t survive.  The ground’s only got so much to give.  There’s only so much nourishment there. 

And if it’s trying to support all of the weeds, it isn’t going to survive in trying to…it isn’t going to be able to cause the seed to survive, an important thought.  Nothing wrong with this sower, by the way.  Nothing wrong with the seed.  Nothing wrong with the soil either.  It’s just the condition that it was in.  People don’t get saved when their hearts are still occupied with the things of the world.  They’ll choke it out.  They’ll choke it out.

Now, all of these parables so far, leave us with a negative feeling, that there are going to be people that just totally resist, and boy, we’ve all known that.  There are going to be people who spring up real fast.  And then there going to be people who try to waltz along with the whole thing hand in hand.  We’ve seen these, too, haven’t we?  Have you ever wondered about people?  You say, “Well, you know, come to church but never seem to get committed?  Right?  Always seem to be preoccupied with the world’s thing; money, career, fame, fortune; always wanting to fulfill the lust of the flesh. 

This is a person who always says they’re a Christian but…but can’t be faithful in a marriage, that doesn’t care or seem to care about a pure life.  Or the person who just lives their whole life for…for personal gain, personal prestige, personal money, enterprises, and this is the goal of life.  It may be that this person is just weedy soil.  And yes, there’s a germinating of the seed and it looks so good, but eventually it just gets choked out and they just sort of fade away. 

We’ve all seen people like that.  There are some like that sitting right in this room right now, some of you.  You never really plowed out the garbage, you never got rid of the world and the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches, and the seed is choked.  So, the Lord says you’re going to have to expect that.  This is so profound, people, I can’t tell you.  When Jesus said this, this is all prophetic, and this is exactly what we see in the church today.  This is what we see in the kingdom. 

And we all scratch our head and we say, “You know, maybe they lost their salvation.” But Jesus is saying here they never had it, isn’t He?  That’s the whole point.  And what’s the mark of salvation in this parable?  What is it?  Fruit.  Fruit; and that’s always the way it is.  In John 15, if you don’t bear fruit, He cuts you off and burns you.  That’s hell for people who are fruitless.  Because not being on the vine, that’s not salvation.  That’s attachment to Jesus.  It’s the fruit bearing that marks the salvation.  In other words, a true believer manifests fruit.  And that takes us to the last soil.

Verse 23, “He that receives seed in the good ground is he that hears the Word, understands it – ” Mark says, “Accepts it.”  Luke says, “Holds on to it.” – “and bears fruit and it brings forth a hundred and sixty and thirtyfold.”  Now that’s very productive soil.  Three thousand percent, six thousand percent, ten thousand percent product.  Now would you notice something here?  This is dirt like the rest of the dirt but it was good because of its preparation.  No weeds, no rocks, no hard surface. 

And this is, I think, the climax of the whole parable.  This is where the Lord is trying us.  It’s like there is good soil out there.  There really is.  Now isn’t that a wonderful promise?  I mean, we’ve all run into the hard stuff, haven’t we?  And you go away and you’re discouraged.  And then you’ve all run into the stuff that springs up real fast, and you’re so excited and then when it sort of falls away and dies, you say, “Aww,” And it’s very discouraging.  And we’ve all come across those people and we’ve invested but they’re double-minded and they never let the world go.  And finally they fade away and we get discouraged and we wonder if it’s worth it.  But then comes this last one and the Lord says, “The good soil’s out there.”  It’s out there.  You be faithful.

Beloved, the ultimate mark of salvation is fruit bearing, fruitfulness.  What is fruit?  What is this?  It’s product, it’s evidence of the divine life.  If you want it simply, Paul put it this

way, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.”  In other words, you look at a life; you see gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, love, joy and peace.  And do you see it on a long-term, protracted, continuous basis because the fruit is a continual thing?  That’s attitude fruit.

And then it tells us in Paul’s writing to the Colossians and the Thessalonians and Philippians, that there was to be the fruit of righteous behavior, so that fruit is a right kind of attitude and fruit is a right kind of deed.  Paul tells us in Romans that fruit is winning People to Jesus Christ.  He said, “I want to come and have some fruit among you, as I’ve had in other places.”  Fruit is God at work, manifesting in the attitude, manifesting in the action.  Fruit is God producing spiritual reality in our life. 

You show me somebody who has no manifestation of those attributes, somebody who has no manifestation of righteous deeds as God counts righteousness and I’ll show you somebody, no matter what they may look like on the surface, who’s going to die out.  Fruit is the issue.  Even in the 1st Psalm it says that the true person, the true believer is like a tree planted by the rivers of waters who bringeth forth – ” what? – “fruit in a season.  Fruit is always the mark of true faith. 

In John 15, the true branches brought forth fruit.  In Ephesians 2:10, Paul says, “You are created unto good works, and God ordained that you walk in them.”  It isn’t that you’re never going to do something wrong.  It’s really this, that one who is truly good ground has as a consuming desire to be productive, to let God produce through his life.  And even when there’s failure, there’s great brokenness over the failure because the desire is to see God at work.

Now, notice another thought as well, too.  It says that there will be some who bring a hundredfold, some sixty and some thirty.  Not everybody is equally productive.  God uses people in different ways.  And there are some Christians who never really fully get their act together, and they go through life being a thirty-folder, when they could be a sixty or a hundred.  And there is…when we say that Christians will always be fruitful, we’re not saying that all Christians will always be as fruitful as they ought to be or could be.  Because when we do become disobedient, then we restrict that. 

But may I hasten to add, all Christians at this point in the parable start and thirtyfold and thirtyfold is three times what was even normal.  So that a true believer isn’t somebody you’ve got to scrounge around looking behind the leaves to try to find a piece of fruit hanging somewhere.  A true believer is one whose fruit is multiplied and manifest.  And it only goes from a tremendous and obvious fruit to one that is just inconceivable in terms of fruit.  That’s the plan.  True believers produce fruit.

Now what is the Lord saying in the parable?  Listen very carefully, as we draw the lessons from it.  He’s saying this.  “Go and preach, and realize it as you preach, you’re going to get resistance.  And you’re going to get short-termed converts, and you’re going to get double-minded people who can’t let go of the system.  But you’re also going to get the real ones.  And keep this in mind; you’re going to have an enemy all the way along.  And the enemy is defined for us very clearly.  First in verse 19, “The wicked one,” ho ponēros, Satan, the devil.  He’s going to do everything he can to stop it.

Secondly, the flesh, verse 21.  People get under tribulation and persecution and they can’t take the grief.  They want to be comfortable.  They want to be fat and sassy and without complications in their lives.  They’re not willing to pay the price, make the sacrifice.  The flesh is an enemy.  And, finally, in verse 22, the care of this age and the deceitfulness of riches speaks of the world.  And there you have the three constant enemies of the gospel: the world, the flesh and the devil.  And they’ll be at it in the process of sowing to try to stop you.

Now, there are several lessons in conclusion.  One is this.  Self-examination.  What kind of soil are you?  That’s the prior lesson here.  What kind of soil are you?  Where do you fit?  God help you to be the good ground.  And if you’re that hard stuff that the birds just take the seed off, you better ask God to plow your heart. 

And if you’re that rocky soil underneath a soft superficial exterior, you better ask God to do the plowing deeper.  And if you’re that weedy soil, you better ask the Lord to clean you so you can receive with purity the gospel.  The first lesson in the parable is to look at your own life to see what kind of ground you are. 

Here’s the second lesson, and I love this.  The second lesson is this.  The issue in the parable is not the talent of the sower.  Did you get that?  It is not the talent of the sower.  You take a little kid, barefoot, five years old, wants to go out and sow a field with his daddy.  His father knows how to do it beautifully. 

Boy, he throws that seed just mechan…and the little kid’s going along throwing seed all over the place.  And you know something?  It may not be as much seed hit the good soil when the little guy throws it as when his dad does.  But when the seed hits the good soil, it doesn’t matter who threw it, right?  It’s going to grow.  It does not depend on the talent of the sower.  And that’s so important to know.

Some people say, “We’ll I’d like to preach the gospel.  I’d like to witness for the Lord, but I…I’m not very talented.  That isn’t the issue.  You got the seed, the Word of God.  Throw it.  The issue is the condition of the soil, not the talent of the sower.  I…I…I’m always amazed to hear people say, “Oh, you know, if we could ever get so and so saved, oh how many they could win to the Lord.”  No, no, no, no.  Or, “If so and so ever got turned on, wow could they be a great soul winner.”  No, no, no, no.  No, it is not the talent of the sower; it’s the nature of the soil. 

But let me tell you something, folks.  The more you throw the better the opportunity you’re going to hit some good soil.  I mean, some people are letting out a seed or two every year, and it is really tough.  You just keep slinging it and you’ll be amazed how much good soil is lying around, no matter how incapable you may be as a sower. 

And then, remember this.  That sometimes the Lord plows up the stuff that doesn’t receive the seed the first time, so don’t give up.  In fact, you know, they had a way of sowing sometimes in Palestine that was quite interesting.  They would throw the seed first, and then plow it under afterwards.  Sometimes you’ve just thrown the seed; you throw it there and before the birds can hit it, comes the Holy Spirit with the plow, plows it under. 

So, be faithful.  Hard soil, shallow soil, weedy soil, may not always stay that way.  By God’s grace He may do some tilling in that soil.  So keep throwing the seed in that same field over and over, over and over, over and over and see if the Lord won’t break up the

soil.  Well, the lessons are very clear.  Check your own life and make sure you’re following the Lord Jesus sowing the seed.

Father, we thank You again this morning that we can look into Your Word.  Help us, first of all, to come to the point of self-examination, honesty in our own hearts to see what kind of soil we really are.  We know that all men are able to receive, but the conditions aren’t right.  Father, if there are some with us this morning who are hard-hearted, stiff-necked, break up that, plow that under.  Some, who are shallow, reach deep into their lives and get to those places, those hard places, those resistant places and break them up. 

And for those whose lives are filled with the roots and the fibers of weeds, who are still filled with the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches, the system of the world, the sins of life, the things that they want from their own desires, clean them out, Lord.  There might be true repentance and then faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. 

And Lord, for those of us who love You, give us those places where we find the good soil, to help us to know it isn’t the talent of the sower, it’s the condition of the soil and the power of the seed.  Help us to be throwing out the seed that it might bring forth some hundred, some sixty, some thirtyfold.  In Christ’s name, amen.