We will start with the sower, a vivid picture to the people of those days. A sower would go forth to sow seed to plant his crop. He carried a bag over his shoulder which held the seed for planting. As he traversed his land, he took seed from the bag and scatter it over the land as he walked.

The sower pictures the Lord Jesus and his ministry. Like a sower, Jesus traveled throughout Samaria, Judah, and Galilee. As he traveled through these nations, he scattered seed. He fulfills the picture of the sower.

Like Jesus, the master sower, Christ-followers scatter seed as well. We emulate him, and we scatter the seed as well as he did.

Next we come to the seed. Jesus called it the Word of God, the message of the Kingdom. In Mark 1.15, we read that the Lord Jesus went out and preached the gospel of the kingdom. He said, “Repent and believe for the kingdom is come.”

As the Lord Jesus scattered the seed, he proclaimed the message of the kingdom of God, the gospel, the good news. He declared himself as God the Father’s provision for sinners like

you and me. He proclaimed himself as God’s Son, whom the Father had sent to become the Savior of sinners. “Whoever believes in me,” he said, “shall never die, but shall inherit eternal life.”

Now we come to the soils. First, we encounter the one by the wayside. In that day, many paths meandered through the crops, and people and beasts used them to travel from location to location. The ground became very hard. Because they interspersed between the various crops, the sower would scatter some of the seed on the hardened pathways. The hardness of the soil prevented the seed from penetrating it. In fact, the birds of the air came and fed off of those seeds that fell on the wayside. The seed never had a chance to penetrate down into the soil.

The Lord Jesus used picture to identify those who have hardened hearts. The Word of God does not penetrate them nor sink into their minds, hearts, souls or spirits. In fact, the devil comes quickly and grabs away the seed of the Word of God before it even has a chance to take root.

The pathway identifies for us those people who reject the Word of God. They have hardened hearts just like the hardened soil. The devil comes and takes away the seed of the Word of God so they cannot believe.

The stony places picture the second soil, a common condition in Israel. I remember many years ago my wife’s uncle took a trip to the holy land. When he

came back, he had coined a new phrase: “Rocks, rocks, rocks, everywhere you look, rocks. Stones all over the place. That is all you see is stones, stones, stones, rocks, rocks, rocks.”

He aptly described it. This picture describes the soils where the scattered seed would hit a very thin layer of soil where stones lay underneath it. It would enable the top part of a plant to grow. But as it tried to grow a root base, it encountered the rocks and died. It wouldn’t grow because it had no root to obtain nutrients and moisture necessary for growth.

The Lord Jesus used this illustration to identify people just like that. They have hearts like the stony places. God's word comes to them and takes a little root. Initially, they accept the word of God with great joy. However, when the bright sun of trial and difficulty comes, it scorches the plant and kills it.

Jesus described another type of soil, the thorny places. Thorns grew in strange

places in Israel. Sometimes big clumps of thorns scattered throughout the plot of good soil that the sower wanted to sow. On other occasions plots of thorns would grow in the corners of fields, making it difficult to clear out all the thorns.

As the sower sowed his seed, some of it fell among the thorns. As the thorns grew, they choked out any seed that had any beginnings of life and would even prevent seed from reaching the soil. The thorns would choke it out.

The Lord Jesus used this soil example to identify for us those people who have thorns in their lives. The thorns represented the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, and covetousness, the lust of things. These temptations draw us in, promising much but causing such great harm. These thorns of life choke out the Word of God and prevent it from taking root and becoming fruitful in our lives.

Last, Jesus explained the good soil. When the sower scattered the seed into the good soil, it grew up, matured, and brought forth fruit, abundant fruit. Some of the seeds brought forth 30 fold, some 60 fold, some 100 fold, a fruitful crop from the good soil.