The Soil Of The Heart Series

The Soil of the Heart

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

To hear and truly understand the words of our Creator is no simple task. This is the One who knit us together in our mother’s womb. Who recorded every moment of our lives before one of them came to be. Who holds together the seen and unseen, past, present, and future. How could finite, self-absorbed minds ever grasp the wonders of creation, the unseen battles of the spiritual realm, and the eternity God has set within our hearts? And so Jesus chose to speak in stories—parables—so that ordinary people could glimpse eternal truth.

Imagine standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The morning sun glistens on the water, a cool breeze drifts in, and the crowd is buzzing with anticipation. People have left their homes, their nets, and their fields to hear this teacher everyone is talking about. The crowd grows so large that Jesus steps into a boat, pushes off a little from the shore, and the water becomes His pulpit.

He begins—not with a lecture, not with lofty theological terms—but with a story. A story so simple that every man, woman, and child nods their heads in recognition.

“A farmer went out to sow his seed…”

In that moment, they could see it. They had all watched farmers plowing their rocky, sunbaked fields with oxen, cutting shallow furrows into stubborn soil. They had all seen the sower reach into his bag and scatter seed with a wide sweep of his arm, praying something would grow. Some seed fell on the hardened path, and before it could even take root, the birds swooped down and devoured it. Some fell on rocky soil. It sprang up quickly. But just as quickly, the sun withered it—because it had no root. Some fell among thorn bushes, and though it started to grow, the weeds choked the life right out of it. But some—some seed—fell on good, rich soil. And to everyone’s amazement, it produced a harvest: thirty, sixty, a hundred times what was sown!

When He finished, Jesus simply said, “Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

You can picture the farmers in the crowd nodding in agreement. They knew the struggle, the sweat, and the disappointment of planting in difficult soil. They lived the curse spoken to Adam: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground.” But Jesus wasn’t just talking about farming. He was inviting them to lift their eyes from survival in the dust of this world to something eternal. Because the Sower in this story is the Son of Man. The seed is the Word of God. And the soil… the soil is the human heart. And here’s the heart of the story: The harvest never depended on the Sower. It never depended on the seed. Christ and His Gospel never change. The difference is the soil. So the question is not just for them on that shoreline two thousand years ago. The question is for us, right here, right now—what kind of soil is in your heart today?

The Hard Soil – A Closed Heart

And so Jesus begins His explanation with the first soil: the hard path — trampled underfoot, impenetrable, and quickly snatched away by the birds. This is the picture of a closed heart: a heart where the message of salvation cannot sink in or take root. And it reminds us that in evangelism we will meet some who hear the Gospel but will never respond in faith. Creation itself proclaims God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:28). And yet, many refuse to retain the knowledge of God. They suppress the truth written into their very souls. They ignore the eternity God has placed in their hearts. To them, the cross is nothing but foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). Worse still, it is offensive, because the light of the Gospel exposes their sin and their love for darkness (John 3:19).

The sovereignty of God. His holiness. His wisdom. Even His love—offend the natural heart, because it insists on wandering its own path and chasing its own pleasures. And even those who appear religious, like the Pharisees, prove that head knowledge without heart transformation is worthless, for their rituals were empty and their motives enslaved to the praise of men. Yet we do not lose hope. Since our Father is patient, “not willing that any should perish,” we bear witness even to hardened hearts. We do so wisely—not as those casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6)—but with the confidence that the blood of the Lamb is powerful enough to save anyone who will believe.

But before we think only of others, we must be honest with ourselves—the hard soil is not just “out there”; it can also be found in here, within our own hearts. There are places where we resist the Gospel, where God’s Word cannot take root because the ground has been trampled down and grown hard. And what makes a path hard? It is walked on, over and over again. In the same way, repeated sins, unchecked attitudes, and worldly habits can pack down our hearts until the truth of God cannot penetrate. It is one thing to agree in principle that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). But it is quite another to invite the Potter to put His hands on us, to soften and reshape our attitudes and behaviors so that they align with His righteousness rather than our own pleasures.