The Lord Jesus often taught the people as they followed Him in the streets or in country places or by the sea. One day He sat in a boat near the shore of the Sea of Galilee, while the people stood or sat on the shore, and He told them a parable about a special kind of seed. It was a most important lesson, and He wanted them all to listen carefully. He said, “Hearken; behold, there went out a sower to sow.”
Then Jesus told them of four kinds of ground on which that seed fell:
1. Some fell by the wayside, where the ground was so hard that the seeds could not take root, and birds carried them away.
2. Some fell on stony ground, where the seeds got no deep roots, and the young plants withered away.
3. Some fell among thorns, where the strong weeds crowded out the tender plants.
4. Some fell on good ground; there the seeds got good roots; plants sprang up and grew and produced grain, some thirty, some sixty, some one hundred times as much as the seed sown.
The Meaning of the Seed
You see the seed was all the same and all good; the difference was in the ground where it fell. Jesus explained the parable, and we learn that He was the “Sower,” and He would use only good “seed.” But it was a very special kind; it was not grain, but the words of God. The “ground” where the seeds fell was not earth, but the hearts of the people who heard Him speak.
As you know, in every good seed there is a life germ which takes root in the soil and sends up shoots, which bear the same kind of seed. So when Jesus called God’s words “seed,” He meant those words have life and will take “root” in the hearts of those who receive them.
The Lord is still sowing the precious “seed” in the hearts of boys, girls, men and women, whenever they hear His words read or spoken. Let us think of some of those words as “seed” and of our hearts as the “ground.”
Important Words
Here are words which we all know:
If, when you hear these words, you feel no need of that great Saviour and are careless of why He came to earth, your heart is like the wayside ground, and God’s wonderful “seed” cannot take “root.”
It is only when we feel we need the Saviour and believe God’s words about His Son that our hearts can be like good ground, and the precious “seed” takes “root.” Then there will be “fruit,” or blessing, for us and for others, and God will give more of His good “seed.”
Further Meditation
1. Consider these additional scriptures that mention God’s Word:
2. What does the Bible use plowing as a figure of?
3. For more help on the parable of the sower, you might read Notes on the Parables of Matthew 13 by W. Kelly (only 32 pages).