Jesus told the famous “Parable of the Sower” (Mark 4:1–20). He used the familiar imagery of a farmer scattering seed to illustrate the proclamation of the gospel. The sower throws seed. Some land on the path. Some land on rocky ground. Some land among thorns. Some land on good soil. Four types of soil—and only one produces fruit.
Jesus explains the parable. The seed is the Word of God. The sower is the one spreading the Word. The soil is the human heart. There are hardened hearts and shallow hearts, crowded hearts and fruitful hearts.
It’s a parable, not an allegory. An allegory is more complex; a parable conveys a focused meaning. So it’s dangerous to try to pull out more than Jesus intended. What do we see here?
Numerically, three out of four soils fail. More hearts will not benefit from the Word than will.
There is no attempt to modify the seed distribution. We shouldn’t be “evaluating soil” before sowing the Word. We don’t really know the condition of any given heart.
One interesting thing to note is that good soil always produces. The yield varies, but it never fails. Or, to put it another way, you can tell how good the soil is by the fruit it bears.
After Jesus told the parable, His disciples took Him aside to ask what it meant. His answer is surprising: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11–12). Jesus is echoing Isaiah’s language of judicial hardening—the sobering reality that persistent resistance to God results in obscured understanding. It is apparently His expectation that not all will be saved.
A simple parable from the mouth of our Lord, yet full of profound and challenging truth.
One of my morning short podcasts talked about this parable. Something I've thought about this parable is also that the ground doesn't get to decide for itself whether it is good soil or not. The One who tills the soil determines what is good and bad soil by the preparation of the soil.
ReplyDeleteAlso as you mention here, according to Jesus there are those who are denied the ability to believe. Jesus spoke in parables specifically to not be fully understood without explanation. Those in the non-Calvinist camps have a problem with this. But I say, "Take it up with Jesus, not me or Calvin." Nonbelievers often state that Jesus never directly claimed to be God. I think the reason for that is patently clear, it would have led to the Jews trying to execute Him more fervently and frequently that He would not have been able to travel and teach as He did.