God's Word, The Good Seed

God’s Word, the Good Seed

Mark 4:1-20

Good morning.

How many of you have a garden? Those of you, who garden, know weeds grow faster and stronger than seeds you may plant.

Some farmers say it takes 60 pounds of wheat seed to sow an acre of wheat; but, there’s 3,000 pounds of weed seed in an acre, already there because weed seeds are native to the soil.

An article about wheat seed I read, said, “There is a big difference between seed lots in the number of seeds per pound.

This range can be as many as 10,000 to as much as 20,000 seeds per pound.”

So, it becomes quickly apparent that each lot planted at 60 pounds per acre would give vastly different plant populations.”

Think about this theory when it comes to people hearing the Word of God; there is a big difference how God’s Word is received by different people as well.

Please open your Bibles to Mark 4 as we return to that study

Before our Christmas mini-series, while in the Gospel of Mark, we studied the sermon on Jesus’ Master Passion.

A large crowd had come to Jesus and His own family thought He was crazy; so, they went to forcibly take Jesus under their control and haul Him back home!

Jesus taught about a divided house and the unpardonable sin.

We ended saying the abundant life in Christ, is a life lived passionately serving and worshipping Him.

Today, Jesus is going to teach a parable about different hearts receiving the same message; but, responding in different ways.

I. The Parable of the Sower.

Read Mark 4:1-9

Here, the crowd was so large; Jesus got into a boat and used it as sort of a stage or platform to speak from.

It would be much easier for Jesus to back up several feet from the shore to be able to see over and address the entire crowd and for Jesus’ voice to carry enough for the crowds to hear Him.

Sound systems did not exist then; but, in ancient times, leaders spoke to large armies indifferent places like coliseums.

If there was a hill behind the crowd, Jesus’ voice would have carried even better for the crowds to hear Him.

Jesus is God in the flesh and has special abilities; so, He could have spoken louder or caused the crowd to hear Him as well.

(Notice) Jesus taught them many things using parables, which can be described as earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.

Word pictures are very powerful tools within teaching; they cause people to relate to the subject that is being communicated.

Here, Jesus tells a Parable about planting seeds and yielding an increase.

In this parable, we see a farmer sowing seed, as well as four different kinds of soil; and the farmer liberally throws out the seed in a random pattern.

Sometimes back then, the ground was prepared by plowing; but in other cases, seed would be sown without ground preparation.

This story resonated with the people there that day because many of them had to have gardens in order to have produce.

In this parable we notice the seed was good in each instance; but we also learn there are four different types of soil.

1. The wayside was a traveled road or a walking path.

Lettuce, chard and certain beans grow in clay soil; but the wayside described here was packed down soil and very hard; so, the Seeds could not grow.

The birds came and snatched up all of the seed because the ground was so hard, the seeds were never covered with dirt.

2. Stony places had very shallow soil on top of a rocky underlayment.

There are some shallow-rooted plants, such as grasses and ground covers, and some weeds.

On this kind of ground the seed springs up quickly because of warm soil; but do not take root, because of the rocks.

3. Among thorns describes good soil which has a bramble bush, brier, or a thorny plant.

Many weeds or thorn bushes grow alongside the grain.

4. Good ground describes fertile soil free from any weeds growing in it. A fruitful crop grows in the good ground.

What farmer or Sower in the world would not want to plant on the Good Soil, because of the yield the seed would produce?

The parable is about God's kingdom and the Sower is Jesus; He sows "the word of God". For farmers, planting seeds contains the promise of a future blessing, cultivating the future crop.

Seed will produce, if the soil is good. Notice, Jesus doesn’t give more value to the larger crop; He lumps together the 30/60/100.

When we look at the body of Christ, we see people who have come to saving faith come from all kinds of different backgrounds, personalities, talents, intellectual capacity, etc.