Pas­tor Julien Cyrus

“Lis­ten! A farmer went out to sow: And as he sowed, some seed fell by the way­side, and the birds came and de­voured it” (Mark 4:3-4).

This agri­cul­tur­al-based para­ble of the Sow­er in Mark, Chap­ter 4 is the first of Je­sus’ para­bles for which he gives his dis­ci­ples a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion while clar­i­fy­ing each as­pect of the les­son.

Here, Je­sus speaks about a farmer who sows seed in four dif­fer­ent soil types. He iden­ti­fies the seed as be­ing the word of God and the soil types as be­ing the heart con­di­tions of those who re­ceive it. Of these, the way­side, the rocky soil, and the thorns are un­pro­duc­tive. On­ly one – the good soil – is pro­duc­tive.

The “way­side” rep­re­sents the heart that hears the word but does not un­der­stand it. Be­cause it is not read­i­ly re­ceived and act­ed up­on, the un­at­tend­ed mes­sage is im­me­di­ate­ly seized up­on by Sa­tan.

The “rocky soil” speaks about the heart that hears and joy­ful­ly re­ceives the word of God. How­ev­er, it is not pre­pared for the long-term im­pli­ca­tions of sus­tain­ing this new de­vel­op­ment. When chal­lenges and per­se­cu­tion arise from be­liev­ing the word, it is sum­mar­i­ly abort­ed.

The “thorny soil” is a heart that is dis­tract­ed by the cares and plea­sures of this life. The dri­ve for what is re­ferred to as suc­cess, and the in­sa­tiable de­sire for world­ly achieve­ments choke the word, and though it shows po­ten­tial and thrives for a while, it even­tu­al­ly be­comes un­fruit­ful.

This is not ref­er­enc­ing a hard-heart­ed un­be­liev­er or a sur­face-lev­el per­son. The soil is fer­tile and deep enough, but there are com­pet­ing in­ter­ests present that, un­less re­moved, be­come stronger, grow faster, and choke the word. In the field, thorns ex­pand ag­gres­sive­ly, and even­tu­al­ly de­ny oth­er plants ac­cess to sun­light, wa­ter, and soil nu­tri­ents.

Je­sus is say­ing in Matthew 6:24 that we must pre­vent this sce­nario from hap­pen­ing by de­cid­ing to in­ten­tion­al­ly al­low his word to pros­per in our hearts: “No one can serve two mas­ters: for you will hate one and love the oth­er; you will be de­vot­ed to one and de­spise the oth­er. You can­not serve God and mam­mon”.

The “good soil” is a heart that makes time to hear, un­der­stand, and im­ple­ment God’s word dai­ly. This is the on­ly type of pro­duc­tive soil among the four, and yields 30, 60, or even 100-fold.

Je­re­mi­ah pas­sion­ate­ly af­firms, “When I dis­cov­ered your words, I de­voured them. They are my joy and my heart’s de­light: for I am called by your name, O Lord God of hosts.” (Je­re­mi­ah 15:16)

To be­come the “good soil”, we de­light our­selves in God’s word and med­i­tate on it day and night. The out­come of this fo­cused ap­proach is amaz­ing: “He is like a tree plant­ed by streams of wa­ter, that brings forth its fruit in its sea­son; whose leaf al­so shall not with­er; and what­so­ev­er he does shall pros­per” (Psalm 1:3).

In­deed, the heart of the mat­ter is the mat­ter of the heart. “For where your trea­sure is, there will your heart be al­so” (Matthew 6:21).