They call this the parable of the sower, but it isn’t really
about the sower. It isn’t even about the
seed that he sows. It’s about the kinds
of soil that the seed is sown upon; or, as Jesus explains, it’s actually about
the people who hear about God and the 4 basic ways that they might respond to God’s
Word when they hear it.
The parable is one of the better-known parables, and Jesus
even gives us the explanation of the parable, telling us what everything means. But He also leaves a lot of questions
unanswered, questions that nobody is asking.
Maybe Jesus didn’t answer the questions, because every society in every
generation has to answer those questions in their own way. But if we are serious about reaching the
world for Christ, and particularly our neighbors and the country we live in,
then we need to answer these questions.
But first we should look at the parable itself.
The parable is found 3 times in the Bible, in the books of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These are
called the synoptic gospels, because they all present the life and teaching of
Jesus in a similar fashion. But they
each have a different emphasis and their own unique perspectives. So, while much of the gospels cover the same
stories, they are not redundant but complement each other. And when included in each gospel, they
present a more fully formed and well-rounded picture of Jesus and His teaching.
I find it
interesting, for example, that when the parable mentions the work of the devil
in keeping people from responding positively toward God, each gospel refers to
him by a different term. In Matthew’s Gospel,
he refers to the devil as “the evil one.” Mark calls him Satan, which means
‘adversary, and Luke uses the word devil.
The Greek word there is dia/boloj, diabolos, from which we get the word
‘diabolical. The basic meaning of the word is
‘slanderer.’ Slander is “the utterance
of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another’s
reputation.” I
don’t think we should consider the slander here to what the devil says about the
person necessarily, but what he says about the Word or message.
So Matthew emphasized the devil’s nature, Mark his work,
and Luke his methods.
But let’s look at the parable itself. We’ll use Matthew’s account as a base line:
Matthew 13:1–23
(NASB95) 1 That day Jesus
went out of the house and was sitting by the sea. 2 And large crowds
gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was
standing on the beach. 3 And He spoke many things to them in
parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow; 4 and as he
sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them
up. 5 “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. 6
“But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root,
they withered away. 7 “Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns
came up and choked them out. 8 “And others fell on the good soil and
yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. 9
“He who has ears, let him hear.” . . . 18
“Hear then the parable of the sower. 19 “When anyone hears the word
of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and
snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was
sown beside the road. 20 “The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky
places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with
joy; 21 yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only
temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately
he falls away. 22 “And the one on whom seed was sown among the
thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the
deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 23
“And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears
the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a
hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”
But then Jesus
explains what this all means:
In the first case,
the seed fell along the road. This is
where people walk, so the ground is firm, and the seed is unable to go below
the surface. It can’t take root, and it
is soon eaten by the birds.
Matthew notes that
these people don’t understand the Word. Luke
adds that the seed was trampled on by those on the road. The Word is sown on people’s hearts, but the
ground is hard and it doesn’t really penetrate.
The devil then comes and takes it away.
It’s gone, leaving no permanent impact.
Mark says that this happens immediately.
People hear the Word of God. and it’s like you’re speaking a foreign
language. Jesus says that this is the
work of the devil.
Jesus didn’t merely
say that some people won’t accept the message, but that there are spiritual
forces that immediately are at work and who remove the Word so that it has no
effect on their lives.
The ground is firm,
so the seed can’t penetrate, and the devil comes and takes away the Word. He takes away the Word, but that doesn’t
explain why the ground was hard and impenetrable in the first place.
The second group of
people actually accept the Word. These
are those where the Word is sown on rocky soil.
The three accounts
all note that this person receives the Word with joy, Matthew and Mark add that
this response is immediate. But the Word
has no root in this person. They believe
for a time (Luke), but then they stop.
Matthew and Mark say the person was offended, or stumbled, or got
angry. Luke says they fell away.
The reasons for this
short-lived spiritual life are tribulation (lit. pressure) and persecution
(lit. being pursued). Luke calls it ‘a
time of trial (or, test, temptation).
In the third case,
the seed is sown on thorny soil. The Word
is choked out. In Matthew and Mark, it’s
cares (anxiety) of the age and the deceitfulness of wealth. Mark adds the desires for the rest of the
things. Luke describes it as worries,
riches, and pleasures of life.
The last group
receives the Word and bears fruit.
Matthew adds that they understand the Word. Remember he was the only one who noted that
in the first group, the people didn’t understand the Word before the devil was
able to snatch it away. Matthew and Mark
describe this fruit bearing as 30, 60, hundred-fold. Luke just notes that they hold fast to the
Word and bear fruit with endurance, or perseverance.
The question needs
to be asked why the people responded the way that they did. Why are some people like well-worn paths
where the ground is hard and impenetrable to the seed of the Word of God? Why are some people’s lives full of rocks,
and what are these rocks? Why are some
people’s lives full of thorns and thistles, and what does that represent? And why are other people’s lives like
well-watered, fertile, broken-up soil where seed can easily take root and grow?
I believe that human
beings are basically the same across all cultures and across all generations,
yet a complete answer will be unique to every culture and generation. A culture establishes a basic norm for
thinking, a common worldview that underlies all the discussions and decisions that
people make.
And what makes a
culture?
We can offer a list
of things from family to music to media, but there is one creator of culture
that has become so dominant today that any attempts to try to counteract it might
well be met with the full force of the law.
Most influences of culture have been voluntary and unorganized. Nobody said you had to listen to the Beatles
or Bob Dylan, but they are nothing compared to the real shaper of culture in
our time.
And that is
government.
There are three
strains of thinking today that dominate in our culture that are not only
encouraged by government, they are driven by it and compel your compliance.
These strains of
thinking I would call secularism, entitle-ism, and hedonism.
Secularism is
the thinking that religion can and should be separated from public life. A religion purports to describe reality, what
is true and false, what is right and wrong, and how life is to be lived. Secularism declares that religion is
personal, like your taste in music or food, and that society must be run, or
governed, by a system devoid of anything that has anything to do with God, or
religion.
After a few
generations of this kind of thinking, now when God is introduced into public
discourse, you might as well be talking about aliens from outer space, because
not only is it considered unknowable (unprovable), it is irrelevant. It has no bearing on real life. Everything is and can be explained without
it, and everything that is said about it is just your opinion.
If our society is
and was meant to be secular, as we are often told, then religion is not only
unnecessary to life but unrelated, unconnected, and finally inappropriate.
In our society,
secularism has risen through a complete misunderstanding, intentional and
unintentional, of our First Amendment.
You can’t understand the First Amendment if you don’t know the early
history of our country. If you don’t
know what practices were considered consistent with the First Amendment back
then. you are not going to be able to understand what our Founders meant by it.
The First Amendment
cannot guarantee free exercise of religion unless religion and its values are
consistent with the highest values of our country. If we were meant to be a secular nation, then
secular values would be higher than religious ones, and freedom of religion
could not be promised.
For example, prayer
and Bible use were a part of public education from the time of the Pilgrims in
the early 1600s and continued continuously until 1962, almost 350 years after
the first public schools were formed in our land. And now they are found to be
unconstitutional??????
The First Congress
had Bibles printed to be used in the public schools, and the First Congress
declared a national Day of Prayer as one of its first acts. The Ten Commandments were prominently
displayed in schools, courts, government buildings, and on government property
for most of our nation’s history, but only in the last few decades has this
practice been found unconstitutional.
Some may say that
the culture changed the laws, but these were court decisions made by a majority
of nine people who were not elected to represent us and who we are essentially
powerless to resist or remove from office.
And what a court changes today becomes the new normal tomorrow.
Four years ago,
almost nobody openly endorsed gay marriage.
President Obama came out in support of it, and within a year or two, the
Supreme Court made it the law of the land.
That didn’t change too many people’s minds, but children from the
earliest ages in public schools today will be taught that homosexuality is
normal, healthy, and just as good as heterosexuality.
And the Church will
be seen as bigots, haters, and stuck in the ancient past of superstition, the
flat earth, and the myth of Adam and Eve.
But back to the
parable.
Secularism produces
a people steeped in naturalism. There is
no God behind the curtain that governs in our lives. We have a government instead to protect us. And things happen because, well, they just
happen. Any talk of a God or religion is
just superstition, or a carryover from an unenlightened, primitive past. We know better now.
People with a
secular worldview see no need for God or even a reason for God. We’re born, we live, and we die. There’s nothing more to see here. When you talk to people about God, it is as
if you were trying to sell them insurance coverage for an outer space invasion. They are like a well-worn path where the
ground is hard, and seed is not able to penetrate it.
The second strain
of thought promoted by government is entitle-ism, or entitlement. We may laugh when schools have multiple
valedictorians, and when every athlete gets a participation trophy, but they
are not kidding.
If God has no place
in our public life, then neither does the Ten Commandments. The Commandments didn’t
address school grades or sports directly, but it does teach responsibility for
one’s actions and accountability. So when religion teaches that people are
responsible for their actions, this means then that some people make good
choices while other people make bad choices.
So to set religion
aside, we must also set aside any idea of judgment or accountability. Those are inherently religious ideas, and we
can’t promote religion.
Secularism then had to
develop its own moral code, and we call it political correctness, which
basically teaches tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity, which includes
multiculturalism, the equality of all cultures and societies. To say that one culture or society is better
than another assumes some outside point of reference, a higher authority, and
then we are back to God.
Since religion involves
accountability and standards of behavior, all this must be rejected as
well. So the worst offense now is to
offend somebody, as it would show one’s attempt to assert some form of moral
superiority over someone else.
Discrimination would be another form of this, and one must aim for the
most diverse outcomes in order to prove that it has not taken place.
In a politically correct
society, there should be no winners, because that would mean that somebody
lost. We are all winners. We are all equal. Believing that people are equal in
this current sense means that any differences in people’s status must be the fault of the society
and not the individual. So society is
divided into oppressors and the oppressed, and society must focus on elevating
the oppressed peoples, who just happen to be everyone of color or female in
gender.
There is no One who
judges people. And there is no One up in
the sky who takes care of people. That
function is now that of the government.
So where the first Bill of Rights listed some of the things that people
could do without government interference, rights now become things that people
are entitled to by the government. Or,
in other words, things that people are to be given at the expense of other
people.
Back to the
parable.
The second kind of
soil describes people who believe in this God talk for a while. After all, God has a wonderful plan for your
life. But these people are easily
offended. The Christian life is hard, if
you are really serious about it.
But a secular life
is meant to be a smooth safe life. The
government is responsible to see that everything is taken care of including
your emotional and mental wellbeing.
People are to be protected from inconvenience and intolerance, and
certainly they have the right not to be offended.
Christians are the
last people in a secular society to be defended from abuse, and people today
have a right not to be hurt. Unless, of
course, you are a Christian, because then you actually deserve it. It’s your religion that teaches intolerance
and judgment.
The parable talks
about tribulation and persecution that causes these people to be offended. The basic ideas of these two words are
pressure and pursuit. Tribulations can
be any kinds of pressure, and persecution can apply to any kinds of challenge
to your faith by a disagreeing society.
So we have a
society that is emotionally pampered, sensitive to any criticism, and unwilling
to challenge the accepted thinking of the age.
These traits don’t contribute to longevity in a person’s new Christian
walk. So people who are like rocky soil expect things to go easier than they
usually are, and they are not ones to stick things out when things get rough.
The third strain
of thinking I called hedonism.
Essentially hedonism is the thinking that life is meant to be enjoyed. What feels good and tastes good are pleasures
that should not be denied. How can
something that brings pleasure be wrong or be restricted in ways that seem
arbitrary at best?
The moral code of
secularism doesn’t address moral issues beyond those basic principles of
tolerance, etc.; and since all cultures are equal and God and religion are just
relics of an unenlightened past, we as a society will not and cannot judge you
on your lifestyle. We have no grounds to
reject it or question it.
But take it a step
further. This is a view of life that
puts all value on what can be seen, felt, experienced with the senses. There is nothing more beyond this. Life is to be lived in the here and now,
because there is nothing else.
Luke summarized the
thorny ground as cares, wealth, and pleasures of life. The same people that will pursue pleasure,
or comfort and security, as their priority are the same people prone to cares
and the pursuit of wealth. The same God
who is not there to judge them is also not there to be trusted to take care of
them.
This third type of
person is entirely engaged in a life that finds its highest meaning and value
in the things of this life. That chokes
the word, because the things they can feel and see are more real to them than
things they cannot see or directly feel.
All three of these
soils, these kinds of people, these ways of viewing life are promoted, even
codified, by a secular government. They
are part of our public educational system from the earliest ages, and
government is seeking to get your kids at an even earlier age through pre-K
education and child care.
Almost all new laws
and court decisions are based on these kinds of thinking, and the government
will encourage and force these ways of life through the courts and law
enforcement.
Think of government
as a huge dump truck that covers the land of our country with rocks that make
any growth of life from the Word of God more difficult than it need be.
Christians today
often talk about persecution and how it is good for the Church. It wakes believers up, and the Church gets
serious and starts growing. They look at
China, but they don’t look at the Middle East.
The Church is growing rapidly in China under persecution., but the
Church is being pushed to extinction in the Middle East through
persecution.
The Church is
growing in China in spite of persecution and not because of it. Chinese Christians believe in miracles and
see them regularly in their evangelistic efforts, and Christians here
don’t. But that’s another article.
The fact is that we
had a Christian country for hundreds of years before and after we officially
became a nation. But gradually government,
through our courts and our laws, slowly changed the rules by which our nation
ran, and every generation started out with a new normal, a new baseline on who
we are and were as a nation.
A lot of Christians
don’t value or even accept the idea today of a Christian nation, because they
see that as only the outward trappings of religion but not the true commitment
of born again individuals.
But they forget the
parable.
Those outward
trappings, like prayer and Bible in school, public manger scenes, the Ten
Commandments posted prominently, even just being able to say Merry Christmas,
all work to normalize the idea that there is a God to whom we are accountable,
that God is real, and that Christianity and the Bible are true.
Christians pray for
and give to help small tribes in remote jungles, but they live in a nation of
over 300 million people who are becoming increasingly impervious to the gospel,
because they live in a country that marginalizes it, and Christians think it is
wrong to challenge that.
Christians keep
thinking they are living in Bible days when they had kings and rulers and
Caesars. We have representatives. If we think they aren’t doing a good job of
promoting and protecting our values, then we have the right and responsibility
to remove and replace them. And we may
have to be the ones taking their jobs, because we can’t wait for someone else
to come along to do this better job.
But we need to see
that winning the world is not just presenting the gospel one on one to
individuals.
The entire political and
cultural system affects how the people will respond to it. We may talk about the power of the Holy
Spirit as making that irrelevant, but don’t forget, it was Jesus who told us this
parable. It was Jesus who told us about
these different kinds of people, and we won’t be successful in our attempts to
reach the people of our country if we don’t know and understand the dynamics
affecting how they think.
Challenging this
whole concept of a secular society may sound like we are trusting in politics
to save us when we are praying for a revival, but challenging a society at its
very root might be the very way necessary to start this revival.
