The Scandal of Indiscriminate Sowing
Introduction: The Kingdom's Seed Policy
We live in an age that worships efficiency. We want targeted results, guaranteed returns, and data-driven strategies for everything from marketing to ministry. The modern church growth expert wants to do a demographic analysis of the soil before he commits to planting anything. He wants to know the pH balance, the income levels, and the felt needs of the community. We want to manage risk and maximize our return on investment. We want a tidy, predictable, and manageable process.
And into this sterile, corporate mindset, Jesus walks out to the beach, gets into a boat, and tells a story that is an affront to all our careful planning. The Parable of the Sower is not a gentle story for flannel graphs. It is a declaration of the Kingdom's economic policy, and it is a scandal. It is a story about a Sower who appears, from our perspective, to be reckless, wasteful, and inefficient. He throws precious seed on ground that is obviously, patently unproductive. He casts it on the hardened path, the rocky ground, and the weed-infested patch with the same motion as He casts it on the good soil.
This parable is a foundational statement about how God's Kingdom advances in the world. It is not about our cleverness, our strategies, or our ability to find the "right" kind of people. It is about the inherent, explosive power of the seed, which is the Word of God, and the sovereign, profligate generosity of the Sower. This is not a business plan; it is a battle plan. It reveals that God's method for taking over the world is to overwhelm it with His Word, trusting in its power to produce a harvest so supernatural that all the apparent waste is revealed as glorious wisdom.
The Text
On that day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea. And large crowds gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was standing on the beach. And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. And others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and were yielding a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
(Matthew 13:1-9 LSB)
The Setting and the Method (vv. 1-3a)
First, consider the scene.
"On that day Jesus went out of the house and was sitting by the sea. And large crowds gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was standing on the beach." (Matthew 13:1-2)
Jesus goes "out of the house." In the previous chapter, He had a sharp confrontation with the Pharisees, the established religious leadership of the house of Israel. Now He leaves that house and goes to the sea, which in Scripture is often a symbol of the Gentile nations, of chaos and the unformed masses. He gets into a boat, a platform that separates Him slightly, giving Him a pulpit and a position of authority, and addresses the great multitude on the shore. This is a picture of the gospel going forth from Israel to the nations.
His method is to speak in parables. We have a sentimental notion that Jesus used parables to make things simple for the simple-minded. The Bible says the exact opposite. Jesus Himself says He speaks in parables so that "seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear, nor understand" (Matt. 13:13). Parables are not illustrations for the lazy-minded; they are spiritual riddles for the hungry. They are a dividing instrument. To the heart that is genuinely seeking, a parable is a window. But to the proud and cynical heart, it is a wall. It forces a decision. You either lean in and say, "Lord, explain this to me," or you shrug your shoulders and walk away, confirmed in your stupor.
The Indiscriminate Sower and the Three Failed Soils (vv. 3b-7)
The parable itself begins with a sower who simply goes out and sows.
"Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up." (Matthew 13:3b-4 LSB)
The sower is Christ, and by extension, His church. The seed is the Word of the Kingdom. The action is primary: he sowed. He broadcasts the seed everywhere. The first soil is the road, the path. This is ground that has been trampled and compacted by constant foot traffic. It is hard, impenetrable. The Word of God lands on this kind of heart, and it just sits on the surface. There is no reception at all. This is the calloused heart, the cynical mind that has heard it all before. And because the seed cannot penetrate, it is exposed, and the birds, whom Jesus later identifies as the evil one, come and snatch it away. Before the message can even be considered, it is gone. This is the person who hears a sermon and is thinking about lunch before the benediction is over.
"And others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up... But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away." (Matthew 13:5-6 LSB)
The second soil is rocky ground. This is not soil with rocks in it; it is a thin layer of soil over a bedrock shelf. It gets hot fast, so the seed germinates immediately. It springs up with great enthusiasm, and it looks like the most promising plant in the field. But there is no depth. There is no root. This is the religion of pure emotion, of the conference high, of the sinner's prayer without repentance. It is a faith based on feeling, not on fact. And when the sun comes up, when tribulation or persecution arises because of the Word, it is scorched. When following Jesus requires actual sacrifice, when it costs something, when intellectual challenges arise, this faith withers and dies because it was never rooted in the deep, nourishing soil of sound doctrine.
"And others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out." (Matthew 13:7 LSB)
The third soil is thorny. This ground is fertile. The seed gets in, it takes root, and it begins to grow. The problem is not the soil itself, but what is already growing in it. The thorns, which Jesus identifies as the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, are competing for the same nutrients, the same water, the same sunlight. This is the divided heart. This is the man who wants Jesus plus the world. He wants the Kingdom of God, but he also wants the approval of his peers, financial security at all costs, and a life of comfortable ease. The Word is not rejected, but it is slowly and surely strangled. The thorns of anxiety, avarice, and ambition grow faster and stronger, and the plant of faith becomes unfruitful. This is perhaps the greatest danger for Christians in the comfortable and distracted West.
The Good Soil and the Glorious Harvest (vv. 8-9)
After all this apparent failure, we finally come to the point of the story.
"And others fell on the good soil and were yielding a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear." (Matthew 13:8-9 LSB)
Some of the seed, in the course of this reckless sowing, lands on good soil. This is the heart that hears the word and understands it, a heart prepared by the grace of God. And what is the result? A harvest. Not just a little bit of fruit, but a supernatural, explosive, compounding harvest. A hundredfold return is an agricultural miracle. This is the whole point. The sower is not a fool. His method is vindicated by the results. The harvest from the good soil is so overwhelmingly abundant that it more than compensates for all the seed "wasted" on the other three soils.
This is a promise about the certain and triumphant advance of the gospel. The Kingdom of God is not a fragile enterprise that we must carefully manage. It is an invasion of power. While many will reject the Word, those who receive it will produce a harvest that will ultimately fill the earth. This is the engine of postmillennial optimism. The sower knows what he is doing. He knows that the power is in the seed, and that the harvest is assured.
Jesus concludes with a sharp command: "He who has ears, let him hear." This is not an invitation to listen to a sweet story. It is a demand for self-examination. It forces the question upon every person in the crowd, and upon us. You have heard the Word. What kind of soil are you? This is not a passive question of diagnosis, but a command to respond. Hearing, in the biblical sense, means to hear and to obey.
Conclusion: The Plowing of Grace
So, what is the application for us? It is easy to hear this parable and fall into a kind of fatalism, thinking, "Well, I guess I'm just thorny ground. Nothing to be done." But that is to miss the point entirely. Soils can be worked. A farmer does not just sow; he also plows. Paths can be broken up. Rocks can be cleared. Thorns can be uprooted and burned.
The gospel itself is the great plow of God. The law of God comes and breaks up the hard-packed soil of our self-righteousness. The doctrines of grace come and clear away the rocks of our shallow sentimentalism. The call to repentance and faith is a call to take a hoe to the thorns of worldliness in our hearts and ruthlessly cut them down.
We are responsible for how we hear. We are commanded to cultivate the soil of our own hearts. We do this by steeping ourselves in the Word, by prayer, by fellowship with the saints, by partaking of the Lord's Supper, and by actively mortifying our sins. We are to be good soil.
And as sowers, which all of us are called to be, our task is clear. We are not called to be soil inspectors. We are called to be sowers. We are to be as profligate with the seed of the gospel as our Master was. We are to cast it everywhere, on our hard-hearted neighbors, our shallow friends, our worldly relatives, and on the good soil of our children's hearts. We are to sow it without discrimination and without fear, because we know that the power is in the seed, not the soil, and that our God has guaranteed a glorious, world-conquering harvest.