Matthew 13 the Parable of the Sower
This study focuses on the first ground that Jesus describes: the hard ground – the path.
OUT goes the seed – flung widely so that it lands on your heart. How does it get into your heart? It gets in through your ears and eyes. You both hear and see the word of Christ. You hear it from the Bible and you see it in the lives of some people. It lodges in your mind having entered through what you have heard spoken or read or seen in the lives of Christ’s followers. Your heart must decide what to do with it.
Did you know you had a heart? Not the pumping muscle that drives your blood around your body, but your inner self. Your heart means ‘who you really are’. Not the impression you put out for other people to believe, but your real character. Your heart is the centre of things. It is the inner you, where your appetites and wants, your emotions, your motivations and your will and decision-making comes from. You are not controlled by your brain as if the electrical impulses were determining what you want, what you believe, what you love or what you choose. You have a ‘self’ – an identity. You are a person not an animal. It is in your heart that see and know God – you need the eyes of your heart opened. It is in your heart that the Holy Spirit comes make you spiritually alive and join you to Jesus.
The seed is sown in your heart; that is, the message of Christ – the information about him and his call to you to repent and submit to God – that message reaches your mind through your ears and eyes, but your heart must decide what to do with it. The hard ground, the path, represents the person whose heart does nothing with the message. That person is impervious to the roots of Christ’s message. It goes something like this:
You hear the words and for a fleeting moment you vaguely work out that the speaker of the word or the person living out Christ’s message in front of you seems quite intense about it – but you do not reflect on the content of the message. Other things quickly distract you – a fly landing on someone’s head; a sudden recollection of the scene from a movie you watched last night; a plan for this afternoon; the sound of a car going past (was that a rotary engine?) … and in that moment the message of Christ is snatched away from you.
Who does the snatching? In Jesus’ parable it is birds that come and peck the seeds off the path, because the soil is so hard the seed cannot lodge itself into the particles of dirt. It sits there in broad daylight for a moment and the birds, who have been watching and following the farmer sow the seed, dart down, peck up the seed and swallow it down. GONE! When Jesus explained the parable to his disciples he revealed that something awful was happening. It was not just forgetfulness or distraction on the part of the hearer; the Evil One was at work. The Evil One is the Devil, Satan, the malignant fallen angel who has a flock of servant demons like vultures that hover and watch and prey upon decaying humanity. Satan sends out his evil flock to peck away at the hearts of people who might hear and receive the message of Christ. He works very hard to keep serious thoughts from penetrating people’s lives in case they wake up to their desperate situation, repent and lift up their eyes to Christ and call out for mercy and help.
Did you notice that this hard ground is described as a path? Alongside the fields where wheat was grown, there were paths which were just ordinary soil that had be trampled down by the constant activity of feet trudging along it. When the sower threw out the seed he was trying to get it well spread right up to the edge of the path so as to make the best possible use of his field. Some inevitably fell on the path.
The person who is like the path is hardened because he has allowed a constant traffic of ungodly ideas (that is ideas opposed to God’s good way) to walk up and down his life. He never filters out anything he might hear or watch or experience. If it’s fun or funny, he just lets it walk right in to his mind. If it’s what everyone else does, he will join in. If it feels good, he’ll do it.
And so his heart is like a busy city footpath, constantly being trampled with whatever is going. He never reflects on his life. He drowns out serious thoughts by always having a sound-track of music filling his mind. There is so much thoughtless action and noise traversing his life that he does not notice the light touch of the word of Christ being sprinkled on his life.
What should you do if you detect such deadness and hardness of heart in you? In keeping with the parable, the answer is straight-forward. Two things are needed:
1. You must stop being a path
2. Your hard ground must be broken up; loosened so it can receive the seed.
You must stop being a path. That means you need to turn off the noise. You need to put up some gates so that your mind and your desires are not constantly being occupied with the world’s distractions. You need to strain to hear the still, small voice of God, speaking to you in your own heart. You need to take the Bible and get alone and read it aloud to yourself. Read it aloud do that it you hear it in your ears as well as in your head. Plead with God to open your ears and loosen the soil in your hard heart so that you can take it in.
Your hard ground must be broken up. You must humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and ask him to plough up your hard heart to make is able to hear and receive and embrace the good news that Christ would be your Lord. Ploughed soil is unsettled soil – it has been turned over! The only hope for you is if your life becomes unsettled and loosened. Perhaps you have recently been unsettled by circumstances that have shaken you up. Do not resist this. Welcome God’s plough. Thank him for unsettling you from your dull and unresponsive attitude. Call on him in the day of your trouble to plant his word securely in your heart and water it so that it grows up into life and godliness that you may escape the corruption due to evil desires and share in the divine nature.
Hosea 10.12
Sow for yourselves righteousness;
reap steadfast love;
break up your fallow ground,
for it is the time to seek the Lord,
that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
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