A sower went out to sow...

The Parable of the Sower is a parable of Jesus recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (in Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15). Over the years, every clergyman will preach and every lay person will hear a number of sermons on this parable.

Most of the time these sermons will focus on the most obvious aspect, namely, the varying responses to the gospel that are made by those who hear it. They may provide examples of the sort of people and their response to the Gospel that the various "soil" are said to represent in the parable. They usually conclude with solemn admonitions to take the parable to heart and, in particular, to take pains to be sure that you were not one of those hearers symbolized by the first three soils. I have certainly preached this aspect many times.

But clearly, the primary point in such sermons is that Christ is sowing the gospel and the time for the harvest is coming, and that it will be a great harvest. All of this is of course true as far as it goes. People do, in fact, respond differently to the Gospel and in just the ways described in this parable.

But, taking the four soils¹ seriously, doesn't yet answer the question that the disciples' asked: what does the parable mean? It may be that it shows us different responses to the Gospel when it is preached or explained and that it shows us the difference between an almost disciple and a true disciple of Jesus. But is that its main point of the parable? Is that the central message Jesus is trying to impart? Luke gives us a strong clue in verses 9-10, which divide Christ's telling of the parable itself from His interpretation of it. 'And his disciples asked " What might this parable be?" And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand."

Our Lord's remark about the secret of the kingdom, lying between the parable itself and its interpretation is so often overlooked. Christ says The Kingdom of God is a secret, a mystery. It is not understood by many people, even by people who hear about it and see it with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears.

Take yourself back to the day when Jesus first taught this parable sitting in that boat just off the shore. The kingdom of God had come. He said that at the outset of his ministry. In his life and ministry the rule and reign of God manifest in the flesh – the long awaited Messiah – had made His appearance in the world. But from that point onward nothing happened as people expected it to happen. Christ wasn't revealed immediately as a king, he didn't gather an army, he didn't march on Jerusalem and crush Israel's enemies.

What is more, if the coming of the kingdom of God is good news, as every Jew certainly expected it to be – grand news, surpassingly wonderful news – then why was it not eagerly embraced by everyone? Why did the Jewish religious leadership – the scribes and Pharisees, not welcome Jesus gladly and fall at his feet? Why was there so much unbelief and opposition – even in the face of miracles?

Some obviously remained unimpressed. Some even felt that Jesus was so far from being the messianic king, that he was demonic. When the Messiah arrived all Israel was to rejoice and welcome him; but that didn't happen. Many, to be sure, marveled at the authority of his teaching and even wept with joy over his miracles of healing, but even they still wondered what in the world was going on. Look at the doubt of Mary and Martha, look at the disciples.

Christ as the incarnate Word was not obvious even up to the moment of the resurrection. It wasn't obvious to these people that this man from Nazareth was no one less than God the Son come now in human nature. If Jesus was the Messiah, if he was the long-awaited king, why did people respond to him en masse – Jewish people, who supposedly were all eagerly awaiting the arrival of this king – why did they respond so differently?

When the parable was first taught by Jesus, this mystery seems to have been the central point of the parable. Both Luke and Mark, in his account, make this clear by placing in the middle of his presentation of this parable and its interpretation the Lord's remark about the secret of the kingdom of God and how it has been revealed or given to some and not to others.

The nature of the kingdom as revealed in Christ is so unexpected, so different, so opposed to human reason that it takes divine revelation for people to be able to grasp it. The coming of the kingdom of God turned out to be nothing like people expected. And, as the months and years of the Lord's ministry passed, this continued to be the case. Certainly very few were expecting that when the Son of God came into the world, it would be as a carpenter's son from Nazareth or that the Messianic king would be rejected by his own people and executed on a Roman cross.

The parable confused the disciples for the very same reason that the reality it was describing confused them. It described a situation utterly unlike what they were expecting. And for the other hearers, no doubt it was even more so. The message that Jesus preached about the kingdom of God, the gospel, the good news turned out to be a message that some found uncomfortable or threatening or offensive and, for that reason, opposed it while others simply failed to see the point at all. Even those who accepted it, the Lord's true disciples, would have to be re-educated root and branch, their expectations constantly readjusted, and their understanding of God and of the faith rebuilt from the ground up. And in this very little has changed from those days.

What is the problem with trying to communicate the Christian gospel today? We are, after all, promising people eternal life in a world of joy. I saw a church ad once that said "Free coffee and everlasting life – what more can you ask for in a church?"

What is not to like?

In America today, in the movie and television industry, the music business, in any aspect of pop culture, you make ridiculous amounts of money, or in politics, rise to the heights of political power just by telling people what they want to hear.

Christians do not have that luxury. We Christians are proclaiming God's Word, His truth. It is a wonderful, joyful, yet also serious message, but also far more wonderful, beguiling, fulfilling and we are offering it for free. But, of course, many people don't like it. Others remain wholly indifferent, uninterested. The Devil either picks up the seed before it ever takes root, or people seem to embrace the message only to abandon it shortly thereafter. Others seem to embrace the message, they say they do, but subsequently they live utterly unimpressive lives, indistinguishable from those who reject the message. It's sad, for instance, that the divorce rate is higher among so-called Bible Church Christians than the population at large.

Who would have thought this would be the result of God the Son coming into the world as a man and offering forgiveness of sins and eternal life to mankind. Some say 'ho hum;" others say, "No way!" Others say, "Okay," but then do absolutely nothing with the message. They are obviously much more interested in other things. Only some who hear really believe and really follow the Lord.

This is a mystery and it is only because you and I are so used to it, so jaded by it, that we are not always scratching our heads and wondering how God could come into this world and appear at a glance to make so little difference; how God could come among men and most men not even notice that he was standing right in front of them; how God himself, the creator of heaven and earth, the redeemer, could come into the world and men hate him and put him to death. Nobody thought this is what would happen!

Nobody thought that the kingdom of God when it came into the world would go the way of the seed and not the way of a mighty host. They were expecting a sudden, glorious catastrophe and instead they got a farmer going out to sow his seed. And the mysterious, the secret nature of the kingdom of God is no less obvious today. The sort of responses made to it by men and women, such as Jesus described in his parable, are made still today.

How can that be? How can a man who saw the Christ then forget what he saw? My goodness, Judas heard all of Jesus' sermons, he saw his miracles and then sold Him out for thirty pieces of silver. And how could theologians who were actually watching Jesus drive out demons and heal the sick nevertheless declare that he was an agent of Satan himself? No one would have expected such responses at the time. When the king came, all Israel was to rally to his righteous cause. Or so they thought. But the kingdom did not come that way. It came the way of a seed that was sown in all manner of different soils with all manner of different results, many of them profoundly disappointing, but some, only some, bearing fruit.

And even among his true followers there is a result that is surprisingly far from uniform. Some bear a thirty fold crop, some sixty, and some a hundred. What is more, the measure of the harvest is not known, of course, until the reaping is done. Some Christians are powerful recommendations of the gospel. Others much less so., not very good recommendations for faith in Jesus Christ. Have we not all been amazed more than a few times in our lives that the church of the Lord Jesus is not better, more faithful, more attractive than it is?

And some leaders, clergy and laity disappoint us. Yet many ordinary Christian folk who have been unspectacularly faithful begin to look better and better when all is said and done. In truth, it is impossible to tell how much fruit has been borne until the harvest on That Day. Why in the world is the kingdom of God like this?

There certainly isn't going to be any of this secret or mystery when Jesus comes again! All will be plain for everyone to see. He will come with his mighty host; he will conquer all his and our enemies and lay them in the dust before his feet. He will vindicate his people and take them with him into the life to come. No one will need an interpreter to figure out what is happening then!

That is precisely what everyone thought would be the case when the Messiah first arrived. And it was their confusion on this point that made the parable hidden to most of Jesus' hearers. They were utterly unprepared for this part of the kingdom's history, for the Messiah's hidden-ness, his suffering, his death and for the long stretch of the years during which the gospel would make its slow progress through the world like a farmer sowing his seed and producing such uneven results. Even after the Lord's resurrection from the dead, strange as it must have seemed to them at the time, even after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the gospel went the way of the seed.

Many more did not believe than believed. So commonplace was the defection of some who once received the word with joy that several books of the New Testament were written to address this problem and encourage the church in the face of it. So virulent was the opposition to the message of Christ and his kingdom that many of the disciples who first heard Jesus teach the parable of the sower lost their lives in the work of sowing that seed. Who would have thought that such would be the result of the Son of God appearing in the world?

Throughout the Gospel we encounter the difficulty people had accepting Jesus as the Messiah and his coming as the coming of the kingdom of God precisely because he did not fulfill their expectations. His coming was not the immediate triumph for the righteous – or those whom they thought righteous – and the immediate catastrophe for the wicked that they expected it to be.

And still today the gospel suffers primarily from its failure to meet the false expectations of the people who hear it. Why don't people believe this wonderful message? For precisely the same reasons they did not believe it when Jesus preached it himself and authenticated it with his miracles. He didn't meet their expectations. They wanted a king who would lead them in triumph over their enemies, not a king who would die for their sins. They wanted prosperity; he offered them forgiveness of sins.

This is the secret, the mystery that we have been taught, that we have been given to understand. The kingdom of God, the gospel, salvation itself goes the way of the seed. It disappoints us in the case of many people. It is ignored or overlooked, it is mocked and ridiculed and spoken against. It is embraced by large numbers who embrace it only superficially. This was and has always been the fate of the Gospel in this world.

But it is also heard and accepted by many and in them it bears a wonderful harvest. Think of the good the Church has done in Christ's name these 2000+ years – and with only some who have believed. At the end of time, think of the harvest it that it will yield. How important it is for us to know this so that we will not be discouraged or dismayed by what appears to be the gospel's failure in many places and at many times. How important that we should understand that this is as it must be: the various soils, the various results, and, nevertheless, the great harvest in so many lives.

It is easy not to believe the gospel and easy not to believe in Jesus Christ. Vast multitudes do not believe. They are offended by its requirement that they acknowledge their guilt before God and that they forsake their self-sufficiency. They are unwilling to surrender the lordship of their lives to Christ Jesus. Their hearts are unfit to receive the gospel because they remain too proud. They comfort themselves with the fact that there are vast multitudes of others who do not believe either. What is more, they don't see the fruit of the gospel. They aren't that impressed with Christians, or with what Christians have done for the world in Christ's Name and by His grace. They don't think we prove that the gospel is true. Despite all the hospitals, orphanages, homeless shelters, schools, universities, and countless other social ministries, despite the international funds to feed the poor in the Name of Jesus, secularists argue, the state is much more competent and efficient and all without any moral scruples. Yet it is a fact that Christians individually give four times as much to charity as non-Christians, and obvious refutation of the notion that man can have a moral foundation without God. They are too blind to see, or even to know they are blind.

But denying the obvious is proof of nothing except that God has not yet revealed to them the secret of the kingdom of God. Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear. Until Christ reveals Himself to a person, His kingdom remains a mystery to them. But for us, all is precisely unfolding as our savior said it would and the seed is scattered until the harvest comes.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. By all means test yourself by the parable. Put yourself to the test of the four soils. But understand that ultimately this is a parable about God's grace and sovereignty, and not about us.

There is thus great encouragement in this parable. We face the same temptations, the same worries, the same fears, the same opposition, the same discouragements, the same questions as believers have always had. We face the same obstacles within and without that have withered and destroyed the commitment of those who for a time we took to be Christians. But the truth is that we are not responsible for the harvest, we are responsible only for scattering the seed. We do so by Word and sacrament and by good works done in the name of Christ so that all men might have the opportunity to see, hear, and believe.

The rest is up to God. The seed springing forth to bear fruit from the good soil is an example of mystery of election. Our task is to labor on! The harvest is the task of God. Do not become weary in well-doing, for at the proper time the Lord will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

A sower went out to sow...

¹Four soil types:

• Wayside hearers (represented by seed sown at the wayside) are completely unresponsive. They are those from whom the evil one (Satan or one of his agents) completely remove all spiritual impressions. (Matt 13:19)
• The seed on the rocky ledge describes the case of the shallow, emotional hearer whose initial enthusiasm is completely withered by a trying experience or persecution. (Matt 13:20-21)
• The seed sprouting among the thorns depicts the preoccupied hearer whose heart is already full of care and worldly interests that prevent the maturation of spiritual values. (Matt 13:22)
• Only those represented by seed sown on good ground understand the word and bear fruit. (Matt 13:23)

The soil conditions are described in commentaries as "conditions of the heart". The explanation of how the hearts arrived at these conditions is outside the scope of the parable. (The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, C.F. Pfeiffer & E.F. Harrison)