The Parable Of The Soils - [Matthew 13:1-23]

Heavenly Father, thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for today. Thank you for bringing us here. I just pray that you will humble us, help us to receive the teaching, help me to understand it in a way that you would want it to be.

Help me to explain it in a way that is clear and does justice to this parable. We add nothing to our salvation. We can do nothing apart from you, Lord. And I just pray that you bless our time together.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So, a little bit about what we're going to be doing today. We're going to be talking about the parable of the sower from Matthew 13, 1 to 23. And one of the first and most important things we need to learn about the kingdom of God is to find out how to get in.

If you're going to live the Christian life and devote your life to Christ, you should first be sure that you're a Christian. Many parables are devoted to this theme. Some refer to these types of parables as entrance parables.

Many parables also touch on the theme of living in God's kingdom and or entering God's kingdom. It is these entrance themes of faith, repentance, election, regeneration, and conversion that the parable of the sower deals with.

It's easy to skip over them, but they're there. A lot of them exist kind of on the fringe of this parable. So my plan today is to read the parable. We'll read Christ's explanation of it. Then my hope is that we can dissect and extract those fundamental truths that I just mentioned within by way of a quiz.

I'll have true and false, fill in the blank, multiple choice. There are some quizzes over there on the chair, and there are more copies up here if anyone needs any. Do you want to just pass those out?

Another reason I think this parable is important, I just want to say it doesn't really matter what I think. It does matter what Christ thinks. In Mark 4, verse 13, in Mark, when he tells about Christ speaking this parable, he emphasized the importance of this parable when he said, if you can't understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?

In Pastor John MacArthur's own exposition of this passage in Mark, he says, and I quote, in other words, if you don't get this one, you won't get the rest. If you get this parable, you'll get the rest.

MacArthur goes on to call this the great paradigmatic parable. It's the key that unlocks all of them. It's the master key, if you will. I'm just going to talk about numbers for a minute. For a little Bible trivia, does anyone know how many parables Jesus told in the Synoptic Gospels?

The answer is 39. The parable of the sower is unique in that it's one of the seven that appears in all three Synoptic Gospels. It's one of the select few. With those numbers in mind, seven of those 39 parables that Jesus speaks are contained in Matthew chapter 13 alone.

If I took seven locks, and each of those locks had a key, and I scattered them across the floor, and I challenged you to find out how long it took you to match each key to each lock, it might take you a few minutes to do it, but it might be a challenge.

And then before you started, I said, or here's the master key. It's maybe color-coded, it's larger, and it's clearly unique and different. So you can try to match the seven keys to the seven locks, or you can take the master key.

Only a fool would take the time to actually figure out which key of the seven matches up with each lock. Everyone would take the master key. So that's what this parable is. That's why it's important. It should be understood before you understand the others.

The subject of these parables contains lessons for kingdom living during what theologians call the interim period. So this is the period between Christ's first coming and Christ's second coming. It's the period that we live in now, so it's important to us.

Our responsibility from Matthew chapter 28, the Great Commission, is to preach the gospel and make disciples. So therefore, it's critical that we know what kind of responses we'll get. This parable of the sower sets expectations for us and for what to expect from our hearers.

With that said, we'll read the parable. Could I get three readers, please? So I'd like one person to read Matthew 13, 1 to 9, which is the parable itself. Mark will do that. Then if somebody else could do Matthew 13, 10 to 16.

Gary, thank you. And then lastly, Matthew 13, 17 to 23, where Jesus explains the meaning. Anyone else? Becky, thank you. Great, thank you. So we have these three sections here. There's the parable itself, the purpose of the parables beginning in verse 10, and then that last part where the parable of the sower is explained by Jesus.

With that said, why don't we begin the quiz? So with number one, a parable is a fictional story or illustration, often a narrative, that highlights a moral principle. Is that true or false? What do you guys think?

Yeah, so that's true. In the Bible, a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. The parable itself, which the word shows up in the Bible many times, it's a compound word made up of the prefix para, which means next to, alongside, or placing beside.

And then the verb ballo, in the Greek, which means to throw, to lay, or place. So the definition itself would be placing something alongside something else for the purpose of comparison. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it to take something unclear and then to make it clear in a brief fictional narrative.

That which was well known was laid alongside that which was not known or understood in order to explain it. So in the Bible, it's, I'll give you this spiritual truth, and then I'll lay alongside it a story that makes it more clear.

So it begins maybe as something foggy, and then it gets cleared up with the story itself. Parables can be effective because it makes an abstract truth more concrete, more interesting, and easier to remember.

It usually applies to simple things in life. So in this case, it's the agricultural story of sowing seed. All right, how about number two, true or false? There are parables in the Old and the New Testament.

Can anyone think of any common Old Testament parables that come to mind? Yes. Yeah, that's the most famous one I've written down. So when Nathan confronts David after Uriah is killed, he tells a parable.

And he says, there's a rich man and there's a poor man. The poor man has a lamb that he loves, and then the rich man has a traveler. And the rich man makes the poor man give him the lamb and give it up to the traveler.

And David says, that man should die. And then Nathan says, you are that man. So that's a parable. Another example I have is, and there's many, Ezekiel 17, 1 -10, the parable of the two eagles in a vine.

How about, move on to number three. In Matthew 13 -2, Jesus says, that day. What day was he referring to? What else happened on that day? This is just to kind of put it into context, the beginning of the parable.

This is, it's going to be from, it's from the previous chapter in Matthew 12, verses 46 -47. He's just referring to the day that Jesus' mother and brothers came looking for him. On that day he healed people of various diseases.

He explained the true character of the promised Messiah. And he healed and cleansed the blind demon. Just kind of on that note, the setting of the parable is, we're on the beach. It's the Sea of Galilee, the northern part.

And Christ is in a boat on the water. And when I was imagining this, I thought, it says that he sat down. And I just thought, you know, it's so windy on the beach. And it would be hard for him to sit down and have everyone hear him.

However, he had already proved his power over the natural in Matthew 8. And told the parable, and all the people crowded in on the beach. And that's what the setting was. In some of the readings I did on the sermon, they called it a floating pulpit.

The Sower, the Seed, and the Soils

Number four. Who are the characters in this story? What do you guys think? As you kind of go through these options, so obviously we have a sower. There's several answers that have that. Anybody think that C is correct?

So the answer to this one, I listed both C and D are correct. I was reading and studying a bunch of sermons that included John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul, Spurgeon, Steve Lawson. And there isn't really a dispute so much amongst how many soils there are.

But the critical learning point that I just want to make is, so like MacArthur, for example, he says there's six soils. So it's the sower, there's the seed, and then there's six soils. There's three bad and there's three good.

I kind of understood the parable for there to be a sower, a seed, and four soils. So there's three bad and there's one good. But the main thing to understand is that one good fertile soil has three different kinds, three different fruit-bearing amounts.

So you have the 100-fold, the 60-fold, and the 30-fold. So C and D are both correct. Just understand that ultimately that fourth fertile soil is divided into three. So I put the answer here as E, both C and D are correct.

Three soils with no fruit. Yes. Yep. That's a good point. Yep. I should have added that in there. Whoever made this test. I know. I also realize. It only just occurred to me as you were. Yeah. No, that's a good point.

Absolutely. I think there's a question towards the end where I listed the answer on the question too. But so good. Let's move on to number five. So in Matthew 13, verse three, Jesus says,. And he told them many things in parables, saying,.

A sower went out to sow. After hearing Christ's interpretation of the parable in verses 18 to 23, remove the noun, which is sower, and the verb, which is sow, can you fill in the blank with a comparative noun-verb combination that has the same meaning as a sower sowing?

So a blank went out to blank. What do you guys think? I came up with two decent answers. Yeah. Perfect. Anybody else? I had a preacher went out to preach. Same meaning. An evangelist went out to evangelize.

Yeah. Same meaning. All right. Let's move on to number seven. Okay. Sorry. Number six. True or false? There are four soils. Three are bad and one is good. Jesus is saying that about 25 or approximately one quarter of the earth's population will be saved or true believers.

Obviously true. Again, whoever made this test had some issues. So it's false. I have an obvious one. There's no real significance to those numbers. All right. Number seven. True or false? Jesus wrote in parables for the purpose of making things more clear for his listeners.

Okay. Good point. Good point. Anybody else? He said false. He said, just to paraphrase what you said, that he said in the explanation, I'm trying to hide it from some people and I'm trying to reveal it to other people.

Is that correct, John? Okay. Any other answers? Yes. So, yeah, I felt like you and Corey kind of said something similar. And again, just to paraphrase what they said, there's this concept that R .C. Sproul discusses a lot in regards to pretty much the answer to that question.

Is he trying to make it clear for his listeners? And the concept is that of to reveal and to conceal. So the purpose of parables is he's revealing it to those who have ears to hear. He is concealing it from those who do not have ears to hear.

So the first three bad soils. In doing that, it's an act of judgment and it's also an act of mercy, so they won't be further condemned. There's the passage that Christ mentions, Isaiah 6, 9 to 10. Can someone read 1 Peter 2, 7 to 8?

And then can someone else read 2 Corinthians 2, 15 to 16? Gary, you want to do the first one? 1 Peter 2, 7 to 8? And then can someone else do it? Corey? 2 Corinthians 2, 15 to 16. Are you in? Which one do you have?

Okay. So go ahead with that. And then, Corey, you can read 1 Peter 2, 7 to 8. So the hearers of the word who are the three soils that do not hear it, that Christ talks about, it has not been revealed to them as it was destined to be.

One more, if you don't mind. I'm just going to read Luke 24, 45. Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And then can someone read 1 Peter 1, 10 to 12? So the reason some people do not understand parables is that it has not been given to them to understand parables.

They're not able to do it. In quoting Isaiah, the intent behind the parables is that in seeing, they will not see, and in hearing, they will not understand. To those who have been given understanding, they will recognize everything that they have, including their understanding, in that it's by God's grace alone.

There are a couple of verses I had here where 2 Corinthians 4, 3 to 4, and Romans 8, 28 to 30. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. Let's go over to number eight.

What does the parable say about the sower? What do you guys think? So Corey said it doesn't say much at all. It just says that he went out to sow. Charlie? Yeah. So that's what I really loved learning about this parable, is that there are, on the surface, it's a parable and we have the explanation.

If you have ears to hear, you can kind of understand it. But it brings up, like I said, these fringe, indirect doctrines, perseverance of the saints, that it brings you to places, and you kind of go, I don't know if I want to go there right now.

Just as I was listening to many sermons on this, every single one, every pastor and teacher at some point, they would oftentimes get to that point, get to the part where it talks about fruit bearing, get to the part where it talks about Isaiah 6.

And just say, we're not going to go over this today because we don't have time for it right now. I mean, MacArthur said, I could probably preach on this parable for four months. When he did it in Mark, he did four weeks.

And two were just setting up for the actual parable itself. So in Matthew 36 -37, the parable of the weeds, I know it's a different parable. But he does say the sower is the son of man. So you can kind of think of Christ as the sower.

But anybody who throws the seed is a sower. So we're all sowers. This is every believer. This is us. This is you. We proclaim the gospel. Can someone read Romans 10, 13 -17? So faith comes by hearing.

It's not the sower is important and the sower needs to sow the seed. Even back in the day when I was reading about how farmers sowed, they would put a kind of like a sling over their shoulder and walk along their farm.

And they would broadcast. They would use the broadcast method of sowing seeds. So sowing the seed is important. It's not about the technique of the sower or it's not about the skill of the sower. It's not about how you spin the word.

The Seed as the Word of God and the Soil as the Heart

Okay, number nine, what does the seed represent? The seed represents the word, the gospel message of salvation. In Romans 1, 16 -17, it says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. So the seed is the written word. Jesus Christ is the living word, the logos, who gives it life, John 1.

Can I get someone to read 1 Thessalonians 2, 13? Thank you. And I'm just going to read 1 Corinthians 2, 1 -2. Number 10, what does the soil represent? So Becky said the heart. Anyone else thinks anything different in regards to the soil?

We have, like we said before, there's either four soils, three bad, one good, or you can think of it as six soils, three bad and three good. I'm just going to read a quote from MacArthur. He said, This parable is not primarily about the sower, Christ.

It's not a parable primarily about the seed, the word of God. This parable is all about the soils. The soils are hearts. He calls them heart soils on which the truth of the word, the seed, falls. This represents the four kinds of hearts that hear the gospel.

So it's important as believers, as evangelists, when we speak the gospel to others, to expect that there are going to be different kinds of responses, and this walks through the different kinds of responses that we can expect.

Do number 11, regarding the seed that fell beside the road, what are the attributes of this type of hearer? Yeah, absolutely. I'm not a farmer. I do have one of these broadcast spreaders, and so when I'm reading this, I always think, you know, you might aerate your lawn, and you poke these holes in your lawn to try to get the seed to fall down in it, and then these core aeration, these patches of soil, when it rains next, are supposed to fall back in, and that kind of acts like the plow, and you lose so much seed.

You just expect that you see birds coming and eating it up, and you just see the seed there for the entire year. I'm just going to read 2 Corinthians 4, 3 to 4. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.

In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. One other thing just about the soil that fell beside the road, a couple notes.

Satan uses fear of what other people might think about a person's becoming a Christian. Satan constantly used pride to blind people to their sinful condition in need of salvation. He makes them believe they are not really so bad, or that if they do need improvement, they can improve themselves.

He uses doubt, prejudice, stubbornness, procrastination, love of the world, love of sin, in every combination of these ploys. Yes, Pastor Steve. What are you talking about when you're telling an unbeliever that you got saved?

Yeah, I can't hang out with this guy anymore. Yeah, absolutely. There's not much joy. There's maybe some confusion on their part. Definitely a different response. Let's go over the next few kind of quickly.

You know what? I'm going to skip ahead for a sec here. Number 15. We might go back. Okay, number 15. A 30-fold crop yield is considered small. What was considered a good and acceptable crop yield back in ancient Palestine?

Any guesses? Yeah, that's exactly correct. So everything I read was 8 to 10. And kind of the application point of that is the fertile soil has these three responses, 160 and 30. And 30, sometimes you might seem like, oh, I'm not doing anything.

I'm at the bottom. But 30 would be considered what they called a bumper crop, which is an abundant harvest. A good harvest was considered 10. And so 30, you're talking about three times a good harvest.

So don't be discouraged. Absolutely. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Let's go back to... I'll go through these real quick. Okay. Seed that fell on the rocky soil, number 12. What are some attributes of this type of here?

Seed that fell on the rocky soil. What do you think? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There is a response. And this is talking about not that the seed fell on rock, but under, like in New England, there's just rocks everywhere under soil.

So I just think if I want to dig a hole, I'm really just finding a ton of rocks. And so it can't get enough root. So there is some soil, but it can't go down deep enough. It can't grow. So some traits of this type of rocky soil are shallow acceptance of the gospel, possibly due to a shallow, watered-down evangelism.

It's the kind that hides the cost, such as repentance, dying to self, and turning from the old life. Sometimes there's joy and enthusiasm. The soil of the heart is shallow and has no root, and the word can't penetrate past that rock.

Sometimes it brings religious experience, but not salvation. Why is it a bad idea to appeal to a person's emotions when we're giving a gospel presentation? Yep. Absolutely. It might create this over-theatrical, joyous, enthusiastic response that isn't actually real.

And then when you're not emotional anymore, you lose interest. But you can also manipulate a person's emotions. Some churches use altar calls, music to try and make you feel something. And sometimes those choices, the altar calls, the watered-down preaching, are almost recruitment tools for rocky type of churches.

So you just have to be aware of that. All right. Okay. Thirteen, regarding the seed that fell among the thorns, what are some attributes of this type of hearer? We have a couple of verses that I think will be helpful.

Could someone do 1 John 2, 15 -16? The seed that fell among the thorns, this person might love riches. His worldliness chokes the word. He has an unfruitful spiritual life. There's a question which we're going to have to skip because of the time, but it was 16, the rich young ruler.

I said true or false is the soil that fell beside the road. I don't actually know, but after reading that passage from Matthew 19, the answer to that was the seed that fell among the thorns. Can someone read Ephesians 2, 1 -10?

So believers bear fruit in abundance, some a hundredfold, some 60, and some 30. There are baptisms today. After a person gives their testimony, one of the pastors often asks that person a question. They'll say, have you added anything to your salvation?

And the correct biblical answer would be no. They didn't meet God halfway. God did everything. Christ's external visible kingdom was postponed, but the internal spiritual kingdom of his saints was established in their hearts.

And that's where the Lord reigns. And through their lives and testimony, he now expressed his will on earth. So our time is beginning to come to a close here. We're going to have to skip a few of these.

Why don't we move up to 19. 19, true or false, when Christ sat his disciples down in Matthew 13, 18 -23, and explained the parable, he was only speaking to those who have ears to hear. So, and the whole thing was, you know, Judas was in that rare position where he's now hearing the explanation just like an unbeliever could read this passage and hear the explanation now.

He just did not have ears to hear. So, you know, it begs the question, well, what kind of soil was he? And I'll just leave that answer for another day. Sure. I mean, sometimes I just think of those terms, an undercover Christian, a covert Christian, someone who's hiding, appears to be like one.

What does a Christian look like? No, thank you, Charlie. I'm just going to read this last question and I'm going to kind of, to use Jonathan's expression from last week, try to land the plane here because our time is coming to an end.

Number 21, I just want to bring that up. Prior to Saul's dramatic conversion in Acts 9, 1 -19, the disciples were aware of who Saul was. If you look at Acts 8 -3 and Chapter 9, verses 1 -2, he speaks of the way those who followed Christ and he persecuted them and he hated them.

Since they had already heard Jesus speak the parable of the sower, and again, this is just sort of a, I'm just throwing this out there, what kind of soil do you think the disciples thought Saul was at the time?

Would your answer change who you might preach the gospel to? Should you tell the gospel to those who hate you? When we think of Saul and how he got saved and the type of person that he was, it's very easy as a Christian today to only want to preach the gospel to people that are not going to hate us or might have a response that we're going to like.

Just for application, sometimes I think our children, maybe you have a child and they're 13 or they're 18 and they make a profession of faith, and I always think what Pastor Mike says, great, that's awesome, keep believing.

And you just never know, or you have a child that has no interest in the gospel at all, but we just need to continue to love them, live a life that exemplifies the gospel, and continue to preach the word.

So I'm just going to read my conclusion and then we'll finish up here. When I started reading about this parable, I had no intention to try to discuss an encouraging lesson. That wasn't my goal at all, but after going through it, I feel like this was encouraging to me.

So when the seed fails to grow, know that it's not the sower's fault and it's not the seed's fault. When the seed does grow, it is not to the sower's credit and is not to the seed's credit. The responsibility lies in the hearer, not the messenger or the message, not the church, not the preacher.

This is what the disciples needed to know and what we need to know today. There are people who will never believe no matter what we do. There are unreceptive hearts. Many of our so-called evangelistic failures past, present, and future are not failures at all, but are inevitable failures of unprepared hearts.

There are also those who will receive the word, irrespective of the skill of the sower. Just as we don't get blamed for those who don't receive the gospel, so we shouldn't get credit for those who do.

Our job is simple. It's Matthew 28. Go out and make disciples. Broadcast the seed. Plant the seed. God causes the growth. In 1 Corinthians 3, 6, and 7, it says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

The word of God is proclaimed and causes a division among those who hear. God's people receive the word and understand it and obediently fulfill it. Others fail to listen because of a hardened heart, a basic superficiality, or a vested interest in riches and possessions.

These people fail to bear fruit, and even what they have, spiritually speaking, will be taken away from them. So be encouraged, Christian. Be encouraged, pastors, because we are all sowers. There's one true seed.

There's no synthetic seed. So don't modify it, don't edit it out, and don't water it down or cut it with cheaper seed. This parable is all about the soils. Broadcast the seed. Preach the word of God. That's our job.

The faithful proclamation of the true gospel will never fail to bring forth fruit in those who have ears to hear. Thanks for being here today. I'm just going to pray. Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for just allowing me to walk through this.

Please humble us. Help us to understand what was taught here today. Lord, I pray that for all of us who have family members and loved ones and friends that are not believers, just please give us the ability to preach the word to them in a kind, loving way that does not water down the gospel, but just tells them the truth because we want them to know that.

We pray that everyone here has ears to hear. If not, I pray that you would save them to be one of your own. Thank you for your time. In Jesus' name, amen.