Spiritual Farming

Mark 4:3-9 (William Barclay)

"Listen! Look! The sower went out to sow. As he was sowing, some seed fell along the roadside; and the birds came and devoured it. Some fell upon rocky ground where it did not have much earth; and it sprang up immediately, because it had no depth of earth, but, when the sun rose, it was scorched, and it was withered away, because it had no root. Some fell among thorns; and the thorns crowded in on it until they choked the life out of it, and it did not yield any fruit. And some fen on good ground; and, as it grew up and grew greater, it yielded fruit and bore as much as thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold." And he said, "Who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Mark 4:13-20 (William Barclay)

"Don't you understand this parable?" he said to them. "How then will you understand all the parables? What the sower is sowing is the word.

• Multiple times throughout the parables of Jesus, the Word of God is represented as a Seed. Seed is powerful and mysterious.

• Even today with all of the scientific advances of our day we do not know all of the mechanics of exactly why seeds do what they do. They are tiny packets of information. Tiny factories that when given the right conditions germinate and sprout and grow into plants and eventually bear fruit. They tend to need soil and moisture and nutrients and sunlight. We know how to make them work, but why they work remains a mystery.

• The Word of God is like a Seed. It contains information, promises, and instruction that given the right conditions eventually lead to a fruitful life.

• In Israel at the time of Jesus planting seeds was done in a few ways. One way was to broadcast the seed. The sower would walk along and cast seed from his hand generously. He sprinkled seeds everywhere.

• This is one of the ways that God plants the Seed of His Word in the world. God is not stingy. He lavishes His Word everywhere. His Word comes to humanity in so many ways. He continually speaks through the wonder and goodness of creation. He speaks through the awe-inspiring natural disasters. He speaks in the conscience of humanity. He speaks through the written Word and the work of His Spirit in our lives. He speaks through the songs we hear and music. He speaks through the preaching and teaching of the written word. He speaks through prayer and life events. He speaks through history.

• “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (C. S. Lewis)

• One of the Names of God is the Word. He is constantly speaking, generously sowing the Seed of the Word everywhere and upon everyone!

• He is the sower.

The kind of people represented by the case in which the seed fell by the side of the road, are those in whose case the word is sown, and whenever they hear it, immediately Satan comes, and snatches away the word that was sown into them.

• “There was the hard ground at the side of the road. The seed might fall on this kind of ground in two ways. The fields in Palestine were in the form of long, narrow strips; these strips were divided by little grass paths, which were rights of way; the result was that they became beaten as hard as stone by the feet of those who used them. As the sower scattered his seed some might well fall there; and there it had not a chance to grow.” (William Barclay)

• “But there was another way of sowing. Sometimes a sack of seed was put on the back of a donkey; a hole was cut in the corner of the sack; and then the beast was led up and down as the seed flowed out. Inevitably as the donkey was brought along the road to the field some of the seed fell on the road; and just as inevitably the birds swooped on it and gobbled it up.” (William Barclay)

• There are places in some of our lives that have been trampled upon so often that we become hardened.

• For some of us, we have been hurt so many times in the same way that it is like a trampled path. God’s Word from whatever source can fall on those areas of our heart with no effect.

• Unforgiveness is a tool of the adversary that keeps us from receiving God's Word. Unforgiveness makes us hard. Hurt makes us hard. The intention of the person who original hurt us doe not even have to be evil. Some of the things that hurt us are because of our perceptions, others are because of the immaturity or ill-intent of those that hurt us. It can get really complicated when we are hurt, and our hearts get those well-worn paths of offence. The devil knows that and so he will keep you hard so that as soon as the Word comes to your life he can swoop down and steal it before it can even begin to germinate. He does not want you to be fruitful.