Mark 4:1-20

I do not have a green thumb; not even close. The closest I’ve come or ever even wanted to come to having a garden was growing some cooking herbs out behind my house. Cooking herbs are basically weeds. You don’t have to water them. They grow just about anywhere. I managed to mess up even that.

But this year, Brother Harold decided that my kids needed a vegetable garden. Diane Roberts was a co-conspirator, so Audrey, Molly, and Noah have become little tomato, cucumber, and pepper farmers, and they are doing TOO well at it. I’ve never seen so many little tomatoes or weird-looking little cucumbers.

We have this one tomato plant that seems like it’s given us a million little tomatoes. Just about every day, Audrey goes back there and fills up several bags of these little things. It’s insane. They aren’t regular tomatoes. They are these yellow and brown tomatoes called heirloom tomatoes. We’ve got tons of them.

But here is the thing: That tomato plant started as a tiny little seed, almost so small you cannot even see it. And here is the second thing: That tomato plant isn’t just producing a bunch of tomatoes. It’s producing a bunch of tiny little seeds—hundreds of them—that could each produce its own tomato plant, which could in turn produce hundreds more tomatoes or tiny little seeds. Under ideal conditions, little yellow tomatoes would take over the world. This is what keeps me up at night.

Seeds are amazing and powerful things, but seeds have to be planted in a good place. We put those plants in Miracle Grow, in raised buckets so the animals couldn’t get to them, with air holes, and next to the chain link fence so they could be supported as they grow.

If we took those seeds and put then on the sidewalk or the kitchen counter, nothing would happen. If we took those seeds and put them on the snowy ground in Antarctica, nothing would happen. If we took those seeds and cast them into the Atlantic Ocean, nothing would happen.

In Mark 4:1-20, Jesus gives the first of many parables. This one is usually called “The Parable of the Seeds,” but it should be called “The Parable of the Soils,” because the seed doesn’t change in this story; just the soil changes.

The word “parable” means “to cast alongside.” Parables were put alongside teaching to help us to understand it. A parable is a kind of metaphor. It’s a story or word picture that helps us understand a heavenly truth.

But parables can also hide the truth at the same time. If you don’t have the keys—if you don’t understand what each thing stands for—then a parable is just going to leave you scratching your head.

So parables allowed Jesus to teach one group—the group that wanted to hear and understand—while simultaneously confusing another—the group that just wanted to catch Jesus in His words.

Let’s go ahead and read Mark 4:1-20 this morning.

”1 And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. 2 And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, 3 Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: 4 And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. 5 And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: 6 But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. 8 And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. 9 And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. 11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all [these] things are done in parables: 12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and [their] sins should be forgiven them. 13 And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables? 14 The sower soweth the word. 15 And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts. 16 And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; 17 And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended. 18 And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, 19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. 20 And these are they which are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive [it], and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.”

Have you ever sat on a beach and listened to someone teaching from a boat? I haven’t, but that is what Jesus had to do here. He’s got a huge crowd listening to Him, and He uses a boat as a pulpit and the beach as an auditorium.

Jesus probably looked around at this huge crowd and knew what we can’t know. He knew their hearts.

• He could look at that guy over there and think, “That guy is really getting it. He really wants to follow me. He’s going to be a great Christian someday.”
• And He could look at that person and think, “She is just here for the excitement. As soon as the excitement goes away, she’ll forget this even happened.”
• Jesus might look at the guy in the way back and think, “He doesn’t even want to be here. His wife made him come.”

So that is what Jesus’ parable was about. It was about the types of people who receive Christ’s teaching.

Really, it was about how to be a fruitful and productive Christian. The word of God is powerful. The word of God is like a little seed that, if it’s allowed to grow and do its thing, can really, really make a huge difference in the world:

• The word of God can produce eternal salvation. I Peter 1:23 says, ”Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”
• The word of God can break up our hard hearts. Jeremiah 23:29 says, ”Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”
• The word of God can build you up and give you an inheritance. Acts 20:23 says, ”And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”
• The word of God can cause you to be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, whose leave also shall not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper” as Psalm 1 says.

(I could literally spend the next twenty minutes doing this.)

• The word of God guides us and keeps us out of trouble: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalm 119:105)
• The word of God feeds us: ”man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3)
• The word of God delights us: ”More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” (Psalm 119:10)
• The word of God keeps us from sin: ”Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” (Psalm 119:11)
• The word of God enables us for ministry and makes us complete Christians: ”That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:17)

So the word of God is powerful. The word of God is amazing, but for the word of God—this amazing seed—to be fruitful, it has to be planted in the right kind of heart—the right kind of soil.

We live in Central Illinois. Our entire communities are built around good dirt. That’s our main asset around here. We don’t have the ocean; we don’t have mountains; we don’t have a lot of forests; we don’t have a lot of trees. What we have is lots and lots and lots of good dirt. We have land with some of the best soil in the world.

I’ve dug fence posts for a job in New Hampshire, which is called the Granite State. That nickname wasn’t randomly generated. You can’t dig but a few inches in New Hampshire before you hit lots and lots of rock.

I’ve worked out in the fields in East Tennessee, and down there, they have this thick, hard red-orange clay they have to fight with.

But here in Illinois we have some of the best dirt in the world. That’s why driving down the interstate feels like driving through one neverending corn and soy farm.

Soil is important, and having the right kind of heart is important if you want to receive God’s word and be a fruitful Christian.

So Jesus gives us this parable about three kinds of hearts—three kinds of soils that don’t receive the word and become fruitful. As we look at these this morning, ask yourself if you have one of these kinds of hearts.

The first bad soil is

1. The Wayside.

This is the hard heart.

In Jesus’ day, the farms weren’t perfectly square acres like we have now. They were twisty serpentine patches, and around these little farm patches would be paths where farmers would walk and where oxen and horses would trod.

The word “wayside” here is just road. In fact, this same word is translated as “highway” several times in the New Testament.

What were roads before we had concrete and blacktop? They were just paths that had been walked on over and over and over again until they were rock hard and nothing grew there.

So the wayside represents a hard heart.

You throw a seed on the road, and it’s just going to sit there. It’s never going into the road. It’s just going to sit on the hard surface of the road until some bird sees it and snatches it up.

Jesus was saying that some people’s hearts are so hard that when they hear the word, it has no chance. It never penetrates. Satan just comes and snatches it away.

Maybe they say, “That’s ridiculous. I know science. This is 2018. Enough with this Bible nonsense.”

Maybe they are just so busy that the word never has a chance to penetrate. They just don’t have the time to stop and think. They don’t have the mental bandwidth.

Maybe something happened to them in the past and they are bitter about it and mad at God.

But they are hard-hearted, so the word has little chance. It just bounces off like a bb shot at an elephant side, because they have put up a shell.

So that’s the first type: The wayside, the hard-hearted person. The second kind of bad soil Jesus described is…

2. The Stony Ground

This is the shallow heart.

In Palestine, this stony ground would be soil that looks normal on the top, but just a few inches below the surface, there is a large piece of limestone, like a shelf, so there is no room for roots to take hold and grow.

Jesus said:

”And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.”

A shallow heart doesn’t reject the word. A shallow heart enthusiastically receives the word. I mean, they seem like they are on fire. They seem like they are just going like gangbusters. They are riding high.

But then something happens, and they are gone. You don’t see them anymore. Pretty soon, you are talking after church and saying, “Hey, whatever happened to so-and-so? They seemed like they were doing so good.”

They get saved, and it’s exciting. They go to the revival service, and it’s exciting. They are just doing so well, but then the excitement wears off. You get back to the boring. The special speaker goes out of town, and you have to listen to me week in and week out. And poof! They disappear.

I can think of some people like that here. I mean it’s exciting for a couple weeks but then they are harder to find than common sense in Washington D.C..

Spurgeon said it this way:

Then there are many more, whose religion must be sustained by enthusiastic surroundings. They seem to have been baptized in boiling water; and unless the temperature around them is kept up to that point, they wither away… the religion that is born of mere excitement will die when the excitement is over.”

Growth isn’t always exciting. In fact, most growth is boring. Most growth is day by day. A whole lot of growth is below the surface. A whole lot of growth is just a little bit at a time, so little you can’t even see it.

We don’t look at our kids every day and think “wow, they are growing” but every time we see grandma, which may only be once every six months, it’s obvious to her.

Jesus said this about the stony ground:

”And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.”

So they grow quickly, but the minute it gets hard, they are gone. The minute it gets unpopular, they are gone. When people start making fun of them, poof! They are gone.

Because they are shallow ground. It never takes root. It’s all surface. It’s all emotion.

So you have the wayside, you have the stony ground, and then you have the third kind of bad soil…

3. The Thorny Ground

Verse seven says:

”And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit.”

If the wayside is the hard heart, and the stony ground is the shallow heart, then this represents the crowded heart.

Jesus described the crowded heart people this way:

”And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”

When I was a kid, there was one chore I hated more than any other chore. I hated weeding the garden. I would do ANYTHING before I had to weed the garden. It always seemed to be my job, too.

No. Seriously. I’m having PTSD right now remembering this little patch of garden we had next to the road, and my parents would make me scoot along the road with a screwdriver and dig out these weeds that would grow there.

When I imagine the gulags in Siberia, I imagine a bunch of people being forced to pull weeds. I hate that job.

Apparently, there were some lazy Jews who hated weeding the fields, too, because some of them would just burn off their thorns and weeds, or cut off their thorns and weeds so the field looked good to go. But of course, the roots were still down there, so the plants would grow, but the weeds would grow, too. And they would have to compete for sunshine and for water, and the weeds would inevitably win.

This last kind of bad soil is probably the most common. Every Sunday I look around and I think, “What’s going to win today: The word of God, or the mortgage payment? The word or the vacation plans? The word or the promotion you are working on?”

Maybe you respond to the invitation, and you determine you are going to start reading your Bible faithfully again and coming to church faithfully again. Immediately after that, some little crisis happens, and it’s out the window. You don’t mean to do it, but life just takes over.

You can’t be a fruitful Christian if everything else is crowding your life.

So three types of bad soil: The wayside—the hard heart; the stony ground—the shallow heart; the thorny ground—the crowded heart.

What do we do with this passage? How do we apply it to our life?

Here is my challenge to you this morning. Don’t look at this deterministically. I don’t think Jesus’ intention here was for us to say, “Oh well, I have a crowded heart. Oh well, I have a stony heart. Oh well, I have a hard heart. I guess I’ll never be a fruitful Christian. What’s the point?”

I don’t think that is the way we should look at it at all.

Here is the thing: Hard soil can be plowed up. It can be broken up. You can take a tamping rod to it; you can take a cultivator to it. You can make it good soil.

For some of you hard-hearted people out there, God might have to bring some real hardship in your life to stir you up so you can receive the word. Maybe you ought to do some cultivating.

Shallow soil can be made deeper. You can always add topsoil, or you can dig down and break the rocks below. If you have a shallow Christianity this morning, why don’t you determine to dig deep? Become a regular. Embrace the slow deep growth you need to be a fruitful Christian.

Thorny and weedy soil can be weeded. You can guard your heart and your life so that you aren’t living for riches and the cares of this world. You can push those things aside and determine that God’s word will be the priority.

Weeding isn’t fun. I hate weeding, but it isn’t hard. It can be done. We can pull out the weeds of the cares of this world from our hearts so the Word of God can do its work in us.

There is nothing wrong with the seed. God’s word is unbelievably powerful and unbelievably fruitful. How’s the soil?