The Parable of the Sower

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered round him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 'Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.'

Then Jesus said, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.' (Mark 4:1–9)

The Parable of the Sower is one of the better known parables of our Lord and provides us with valuable insights into the kingdom of God.

Mark begins his account by telling us that such a large crowd had gathered round Jesus that he got into a boat and pushed out into the lake to address them. He also tells us that he sat down to teach. Standing in the boat would have made him more visible, but it was customary for rabbis and teachers of the law to sit down while teaching.

The fact that Jesus did sit down to teach would have galled any Pharisees who were present. Here was someone they had not accepted—who had not studied with them or been through their ecclesiastical system—teaching in Israel. And to make matters worse, large crowds were flocking to hear him.

Why Jesus spoke in parables

Before we look at the Parable of the Sower in detail, let's look at what Jesus said about parables in general.

When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, "they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!" ' (Mark 4:10–12)

Some people think that Jesus spoke in parables, using illustrations from everyday life, so that the people he was speaking to could understand what he was saying. However, quite the opposite was true. According to his own words, Jesus spoke in parables so that the people would not understand what he was saying.

God only reveals spiritual truth to those he has chosen so they can believe and be saved (2 Thessalonians 2:13). Others hear the truth but are not able to understand it because it is spiritually discerned i.e. understood by revelation of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Speaking to his disciples Jesus said: 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you.' Because we (the disciples of Jesus) have the Spirit of God dwelling in our hearts, we can understand spiritual truth.

The seed is the Word

Then Jesus said to them, 'Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word.' (Mark 4:13–14)

Jesus said that the seed the farmer sows is the Word of God. Traditionally we've expected people to come to church to hear the gospel, but how many people attend church nowadays? It is right and proper that the gospel is preached in our churches, but we shouldn't wait for people to come to church to hear the Word.

At the beginning of the parable Jesus said: 'Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed (Mark 4:3).' The church needs to go out, like the farmer, and sow God's Word into people's hearts. The whole world is our field!

Paul prayed that Philemon would be active in sharing his faith (Philemon :6) and, in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, the king told his servants to go out to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone they could find (Matthew 22:8–9).

Scattering the seed

'As he was scattering the seed…' (Mark 4:4)

In this age of high technology a farmer uses a precision drill to place seed in the ground at precise distances apart, but in Jesus' day broadcasting the seed was the only method available. It may have been wasteful with respect to the amount of seed that was used, but it holds spiritual significance for us.

To sow his seed in Jesus' day, a farmer would fix his eyes on a point at the other side of the field and walk steadily towards it, rhythmically taking handfuls of grain from the pouch at his side and scattering them in a sweeping action to the left and to the right. He wasn't watching where the seed fell, but was making sure he kept a straight line across the field. Consequently the seed came to rest in various places.

The Christian's task is to sow the seed of the Word of God into people's hearts. We won't know what kind of soil we are sowing it into but, as we have the opportunity, we must scatter the seed wherever we can. And the seed that we sow doesn't have to be the gospel. All of God's truth is living and active (Hebrews 4:12): God can use any part of it to bring people to himself.

Jesus taught that, as far as the kingdom of God is concerned, mankind can be divided into four categories.

1. The seed along the path

'Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.' (Mark 4:15)

Matthew's Gospel gives us more information.

'When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.' (Matthew 13:19)

Those along the path are those who hear the Word of God but cannot understand it, so Satan comes and takes the Word away from them. As we've already seen, only those whom God has chosen can understand spiritual truth. These are people who have not been chosen by God to be saved and so cannot understand the Word. They are never born again.

2. The seed on rocky places

'Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.' (Mark 4:16–17)

Some Christians believe that those who are like seed sown on rocky places are not true believers and make only an outward confession of faith. I cannot accept that for three reasons.

Unlike the previous category, Jesus didn't say that these people don't understand the Word. They do understand it and receive it. That is only possible with the help of the Holy Spirit.
They receive it with joy. Joy is a scriptural sign that someone has come to believe in Jesus (Acts 16:34).
In Luke's Gospel Jesus said: 'They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away (Luke 8:13).'

Jesus knows whether a person has believed in him or not. Such people are true believers but they don't develop a root system. Consequently, when persecution comes, they quickly fall away.

Rooted in him

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6–7)

Paul urges all who have received Jesus Christ to root themselves in him so they can build themselves up in him and become strong in the faith.

A plant's root system serves three functions: it anchors the plant to the ground and enables it to absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil. This parable is concerned only with the moisture aspect.

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus said that when the plants came up they withered because they had no moisture (Luke 8:6). They had no moisture, because they had no roots to absorb the moisture.

Water supplies the moisture a plant needs and water, in the Bible, is used to symbolize the Holy Spirit (John 7:38–39). Water symbolizes the Spirit because the Spirit is as essential for spiritual life as water is for physical llfe.

These people don't put their roots down into God to draw on the life-giving moisture of his Spirit, so when the heat comes (the time of testing), they shrivel up and die.

Jeremiah spoke about such people:

This is what the Lord says:

'Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives.' (Jeremiah 17:5–6)

Christians who trust in man for their strength, rather than in God, fall into three categories.

Those who rely on their own strength.
These are Christians who trust in their own strengths, abilities and skills. They don't need God to help them in life, other than to be their Saviour. This is allied to pride. It's humbling to say: 'Lord, I can't do this by myself. Please help me Lord, I need your help.' These people rely on their own strength, rather than on God's strength.
Those who rely on the strength of others.
These are Christians who love the fellowship of believers (which is not wrong), but their lives become unbalanced. Their time is taken up with meetings and doing things, so much so that their quiet time with the Lord is nothing more than a few brief moments snatched during the day (if they have the time).

They don't spend time reading their Bibles, or in prayer. If they have a problem, others pray for them. I know it's scriptural to pray for each other, but the Word says: 'Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray (James 5:13).'

God wants us to present our requests to him ourselves and to see him answer our prayers so that our faith in him will grow. These people never learn to rely on God directly, they only rely on other Christians and so, in the time of testing, they fall away.
Those who relied on the Lord, but do so no longer.
These are Christians who trusted in God but, as the years go by, they start to put their trust in other things. King Asa, in the Old Testament, is a good example of this (2 Chronicles 14:1–15; 16:1–10).

Jeremiah 17:5 says: 'Cursed is the one who trusts in man… and whose heart turns away from the Lord.' We can only turn away from the Lord if we once trusted in him. God sent a prophet to Asa to ask him why, having once relied on the Lord, he was now looking to man for his strength. Asa was so angry with the prophet that he put him in prison. (Sometimes we don't like to be confronted with the truth.)

Contrast those people with Jeremiah's next words:

'But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.' (Jeremiah 17:7–8)

This is the Christian who has taken time to develop an intimate relationship with God himself. He reads his Word and spends time at his feet (Luke 10:38–42), listening to his voice. His confidence is in the Lord and not in those around him.

He has put his roots down deep into God and draws constantly on the life-giving power of his Spirit. He trusts in the Lord, and continues to trust in him. Consequently, no matter what comes against him—troubles, trials, persecutions or testings—he will stand, because God will make him stand. He can go through drought and heat without effect, because his strength is in the Lord and not in man. The Word says he'll be blessed in what he does and he'll never fail to bear fruit.

It doesn't matter how well we begin our walk with the Lord, it's how we finish that matters (Hebrews 3:14). Asa began by trusting in the Lord and was blessed by God because of that but, when he turned to man for his strength, the Lord said: 'You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war' i.e. trouble will be your lot (2 Chronicles 16:9b).

3. The seed among thorns

'Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.' (Mark 4:18–19)

To my mind, this is the saddest of the categories Jesus spoke about. If the people in the previous category are true believers, then these also are true believers. These are people who hear the Word of God, are born again and begin to grow, but they allow the things of the world to come in and stop their growth so that they do not produce fruit. All backsliders come under this category.

Luke's Gospel says:

'The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.' (Luke 8:14)

I believe this is the single greatest danger facing Christians in the western world today. It is not persecution that is threatening to turn us from God, but love for the world and the desire for its riches and pleasures.

Paul wrote that Demas, because he loved this world had deserted him and had gone to Thessalonica (2 Timothy 4:10), and that others, eager for money, had wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs (1 Timothy 6:10). Do we believe that we are more pure than our first-century brethren and that such actions are beyond us?

Surely never before in the history of mankind has such a huge range of pleasures been available to so many people, together with the financial means to indulge in them. We are truly living in a pleasure-loving and a pleasure-seeking world.

There is so much around us to excite our senses and entice us away from our devotion to God. What would you rather do: watch your favourite television programme, or pray? The Lord may not mind if you did watch the programme, but if he wanted you to pray at that time, would you find it difficult?

Pleasure (if it doesn't involve sin) is not wrong and can be beneficial as long as we keep it in proper perspective in our lives, but if it occupies the No.1 slot in our hearts we are guilty of idolatry. Idolatry is not just creating an idol and bowing down to it, idolatry is allowing anything in the world to become more important to us than God.

The first commandment God gave to Israel was that they should have no other gods before him (Exodus 20:3). The Hebrew word translated 'before' in that verse means 'in front of'. Not only did God say they should have no other gods, he spoke about the position those gods should not occupy.

God doesn't want anything in our lives to be more important to us than himself. God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5), he doesn't want to compete with anyone or anything for our affections. He commands that we love him more than anything that is in the world (Mark 12:28–30; 1 John 2:15).

Paul wrote to Timothy:

The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. (1 Timothy 5:5–6)

Christians who live for pleasure have no future in God. He also wrote:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…. Have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3:1–5)

Who can deny we're now living in the 'terrible times' Paul wrote about? We're definitely in the last days. One of the signs of those times is that people will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Christians are told to have nothing to do with such godless behaviour.

4. The seed on good soil

'Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.' (Mark 4:20)

When a farmer sows his seed, he does so with one aim in mind, and that is to reap a harvest. He won't see the seed that fell along the path: it didn't germinate and has long since disappeared. It will sadden him to see the dried, withered plants on the rocky soil, and the short, stunted plants that were choked by thorns, but his delight will be in the mature plants that have yielded a crop—for that is why he sowed his seed. The same is true with God.

Even though man sows the seed on God's behalf, God is the farmer in this parable as much as he's the gardener in our Lord's teaching on the Vine and the Branches. In both God is looking for a crop.

That they deal with the same subject can be seen from the wording used. The Greek word karpos translated 'crop' in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:8; Mark 4:8; Luke 8:8), is used seven times in the teaching on the Vine and the Branches, where it's translated as 'fruit' (John 15:2,4,5,8,16). It is also found in Galatians 5:22 where it describes the karpos (fruit, or crop) of the Spirit.

The message to Christians is clear: God expects to reap a harvest from the spiritual seed he sows in our lives, and that harvest is the fruit of his Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That 'fruit' or 'crop' takes time to grow and is produced as a Christian matures. It comes as we allow the Word of God and the Spirit of God to change us.

Modern plant hybridization ensures that every ear of corn yields almost an identical amount of grain, but that was not so in Jesus' day. In our Lord's day, yields varied greatly from plant to plant. And so it is with us. We won't all yield the same amount of fruit for God, but we can all produce a crop if we persevere (Luke 8:15).

Unfruitful

But what about those who do not produce a crop for God? As we've seen, they come under three categories.

The seed that fell along the path
These are people who don't understand the Word, so they never believe and are never saved.
The seed that fell on rocky places
These people believe for a while but when trouble or persecution comes they fall away (Luke 8:13; Mark 4:17). That means that they believe and are saved, but turn away from the faith when things get difficult. Will such people inherit eternal life?

Jesus, speaking about persecution, said: 'At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other… but he who stands firm to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:9–13).' That implies that those who do not stand firm to the end will not be saved.

He said that many will hate and betray each other. The apostle John wrote that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and that no murderer has eternal life in him (1 John 3:15).

Jesus described such people as plants that become scorched and withered by the sun (Mark 4:6). We've all seen plants like that. Is there any life in them? There was life there at one time, but it's gone.
The seed that fell among thorns
These people believe and begin to grow, but their worldliness stops their spiritual growth and they do not mature (Luke 8:14). More importantly, they do not bear fruit (Mark 4:18–19). Will such people be saved?

In his discourse on the Vine and the Branches Jesus said that he is the vine, we are the branches, and his Father is the gardener (John 15:5a,1). He said that his Father will cut off every branch in him that does not bear fruit (John 15:2). That means that every believer who fails to produce the fruit of the Spirit will eventually be cut off from Christ. Fruit-bearing is essential for salvation.

Predestination and free will

Jesus said that the secret of the kingdom of God has been given to us (Mark 4:11). The Parable of the Sower is a parable that explains the workings of God's kingdom. Jesus was telling us how things are in the kingdom and how things will be.

But does that mean that every individual on earth is predestined to be in one of the four categories Jesus spoke about and there's nothing they can do about it? The answer is no. Predestination (having our destiny planned in advance by God) is true only with respect to the first category (the seed on the path)—whether a person has been chosen by God to be saved, or not.

Which of the other categories we find ourselves in depends on the decisions we make as Christians i.e. the exercise of our free will. God has not predestined any of his children, whom he loves (1 Thessalonians 1:4–5), to abandon their faith or to be lovers of pleasure: those are decisions we make ourselves.

If we are born again, God has chosen us to be part of his family. We must then trust in God, rely on God and obey God. 1 Peter 1:1–2 tells us that we've been chosen by God to obey his Son, Jesus Christ, and to be sprinkled by his blood. Do you obey Jesus? God wants you to.

Fear of man could tempt a Christian to renounce his faith when persecuted. What did Jesus say about that? He said that we shouldn't fear those who can kill the body, but can do no more, we should only fear God (Luke 12:4–5).

But who can do that in their own strength? Jesus said that it's those who have no root (who are not relying on his Spirit) who will fall away when they're persecuted. Is it God's will they fall away? No, not at all! God wants all he has chosen to root themselves in him and to be empowered by his Spirit. However, man has free will in this matter; it's up to us whether we do that or not.

The same is true for those who are choked by thorns. There are some things that God does for us and some things that God wants us to do. Colossians 3:5 tells us to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry (the worship of oneself). That's not something that's done for us when we're saved, it's something that we have to do. If we don't do it, then we won't inherit the kingdom of God (Ephesians 5:3–7).

But who can put their earthly nature to death in their own strength? No one can. It's only when we ask God for help that we can do that. Paul cried out: 'Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24–25)!

It's up to us to remove the thorns from our lives that choke our spiritual growth. God is ready to help us in that task, but it's our responsibility.

Make your calling and election sure

Salvation comes from the Lord (Jonah 2:9), but we are told to make our calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10–11). The Greek word translated 'sure' in that verse means 'firm, sure, or certain'. Does that mean our salvation is not certain? Our salvation is certain from God's side; we have to make it certain from our side. The preceding verses of that passage tells us how to do that (2 Peter 1:5–8).

We are also told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). The Greek word translated 'work out' in that verse means to accomplish something, or to bring something about. Having been chosen by God, we are told to bring about (cause to happen) the salvation he is giving us.

God has provided us with everything we need to be saved (2 Peter 1:3–4), and his desire is that we are saved. If any Christian fails to reach heaven the fault will be their own and not God's.

Michael Graham
June 2006
Revised June 2010

home | next | guide