In the time they had been with him, Jesus’ disciples had witnessed some extraordinary things. This man, Jesus, had brought a new kind of teaching, a teaching ‘with authority’ (1:27); he had cast out demons; he had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, a paralytic and many others who were sick. Mark records the reaction of the crowds:

This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:12)

But there was also a growing opposition. More and more, Jesus was coming into conflict with the teachers of the law, the Pharisees. This all came to a head in the latter part of chapter 3. The Pharisees came together to accuse Jesus of being in league with Satan. They were so persuasive that even Jesus’ own family were convinced that, at the least, Jesus must be out of his mind (3:21).

I can only imagine that this would have been troubling for Jesus’ disciples. The Pharisees were respected members of the community, who were charged with teaching God’s word. Can you imagine if all the doctors in the community came together to tell you that the medicine that had healed you was poison; or if the police told you that the man you were hanging out with was a charlatan and a fraud? You might be starting to get a picture of how conflicted the disciples would have been. On the one hand, Jesus had called them, was their teacher and friend; they knew that following him was the right thing to do. But wasn’t it the Pharisees’ job to know about religious things? They said that Jesus was not sent by God but by the devil. And if not even Jesus’ own family believed in him… ? If Jesus was really a messenger from God, a reliable teacher and prophet, then why was there such opposition?

It is in this context that Jesus teaches this parable of the sower. And it is for this reason that I believe Jesus intends for his disciples to identify Jesus (and ultimately themselves as well, as they follow in their master’s footsteps) as the sower in this parable. So this morning we will largely focus on the role of the sower under three headings: (1) the sower goes out to sow; (2) the sower sows generously, in spite of opposition; and (3) the sower sows expecting a great harvest.

The sower goes out to sow

The first point to be made about the work of the sower is found in v. 3.

A farmer went out to sow his seed. (Mark 4:3)

The NIV translators have chosen to use the word ‘farmer’ here, though this obscures the fact that the noun is closely related to the verb ‘to sow’.¹ For this reason, I prefer the ESV translation of this verse, which says, ‘A sower went out to sow.’ Though a farmer has many tasks – watering, harvesting, dealing with pests etc. – right now he is a sower. His job is to sow. That is his sole focus at this time. The time for harvesting will come later, but right now he must sow the seed for otherwise there will be no harvest.

This is consistent with Jesus’ own life and ministry. According to his own interpretation, the seed to be sown is ‘the word’ – the word of God. Wherever he went, he was always proclaiming the kingdom of God.

“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

He spoke with the authority of God, exercising command over sicknesses of body and spirit. He corrected the false teaching of God’s law, helping people to hear God’s word afresh. At the end of this chapter, Jesus will command the storm to still, and it will obey him.

But speaking God’s word was not Jesus’ responsibility alone. In chapter 6, Jesus will send the Twelve out to preach the word of God, to exercise authority over evil spirits and heal the sick. They will call people to repentance and will pronounce a curse on those who do not welcome them. Even now, Jesus is preparing them for that task, warning them that not everyone will respond to their message positively.

Friends, if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you are a sower of God’s word. You have your own field to sow: your family; your work; your soccer team; your friendships; your neighbours; your club; your mothers’ group; your political party. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you are called to be a sower who goes out to sow God’s word.

This is not limited to simple gospel presentations, though these will have their place. Perhaps your friend is having problems disciplining her children; or a colleague is dealing with conflict in the workplace. Maybe your neighbour has suffered great tragedy or your team-mate has broken up with his girlfriend. God’s wisdom has relevance to all of these circumstances, so why not sow it? And sow into the lives of those who are Christians as well, for we all need it.

Are you genuinely sowing God’s word into your life, and those around you? If not, ask God to show you by his Spirit how and where to begin today. For the sower must go out to sow if there is to be a harvest. It may seem obvious, but the role of a sower is to sow. If you are a disciple of Jesus, you are a sower and you too must sow God’s word.

The sower sows generously

As I read through Jesus’ parable, I am struck by how seemingly indiscriminate the sower is in where he sows his seed. Some falls on the path, some on rocky places, some on shallow soil. Surely the sower ought to know his field, and only sow in the places likely to yield a crop?

This is a farmer who is determined to sow right to the edges of his field. Every inch of fertile land must be planted, so that the maximum possible crop is achieved. He is not concerned about some seed being lost, because he has plenty of seed. If he doesn’t plant it, it will just sit in his barn and rot; it is only by planting the seed that he will see a harvest. So he sows generously, all over his land.

I hope that we have the same generosity in the way we sow the word of God. But I see two potential barriers.

Firstly, perhaps we do not have the ‘seed’ to sow. Where does that seed come from? It is the harvest of God’s word as sown and grown in our own lives. Perhaps you identify not so much with the sower as with the path. You feel like you’ve been walked all over for so long, there is not really room in you for God or his word. And so you will leave here this morning having rejected his command – perhaps not for the first time – to ‘listen’ (v. 3) and to ‘hear’ (v. 9). Or perhaps, like the rocky places, you hear God’s word and it excites you; the shallow but warm layer of soil on top of the rock allows for rapid growth. But there is still that rocky core, that part of your heart and mind where God and his word are not welcome – your pride, your relationships, your money, your sexuality, your identity. And when God’s word addresses those things your will choose them over him. Maybe you’re quite happy for God to do what he will with you, so long as it fits into your schedule, your ambitions, your desires, your plan. And so you find you have little or no grain, because all of your time and energy is being invested in secondary things.
If this sounds like you don’t despair, because there is hope… but it does not lie with you. Soil cannot change itself. Cry out to Jesus, asking him to deal with whatever prevents you from hearing and obeying God’s word. He can do it – just look at the Apostle Paul.

Ananias balked when he was called to go and sow the word of God into Paul’s life. He said,

“I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.” (Acts 9:13-14).

If ever there was soil that was rocky path, it was Paul! Yet the Lord responded with the astonishing claim that Paul was his ‘chosen instrument to carry [his] name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel’ (Acts 9:15)! And talk about about a harvest! For Paul became one of the greatest evangelists of all time, yielding a great crop of God’s word in his life and ministry.

Though the process is not always comfortable – imagine how soil feels being plowed! – if you ask him Jesus can and will make you into the kind of soil that produces a crop ‘thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times’ (v. 8) what was sown. Then, not only will you be able to enjoy your own fruitfulness, but you will have plenty of seed to sow into others around you as well.

The second barrier to sowing generously is when we try to economise on our sowing. We measure out God’s word based on who we think will respond positively and who will not. But that’s not our job. Unlike an actual farmer, our supply of seed is unlimited. Our job is to sow, and to sow generously, all the way to the edges of the field assigned to us. God by his Holy Spirit will determine the response, yielding a crop oftentimes in surprising places – such as the Apostle Paul!

So the sower sows generously, even knowing that some of the seed will be lost (such as that on the path) or will bear meagre fruit at best (such as that on the shallow, rocky soil or the seed amongst the thorns).

Are you sowing God’s word generously? Or are you hampered by your lack of seed or your attempts to economise? Ask the Lord to grant you the seed to sow and the generosity to sow it. For the sower must sow generously if the harvest is to be plentiful.

Excursus: Why different kinds of soils?

But does this really tell us why there is such opposition to Jesus’ work and words? After all, God is sovereign over all the earth; why doesn’t he make all of the soil fertile? This is an important question, and not really answered in the parable itself. Instead, Jesus addresses this concern in the preface to his explanation:
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” (Mark 4:10–12)

This is a troubling explanation, because it seems to suggest Jesus uses parables as an instrument for preventing understanding. In other words, he speaks in parables to ensure that some do not understand his message, and so do not repent and seek forgiveness. Can this be right?

To understand, we must consider the original context for the words that Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6. There, Isaiah has a vision of the Lord God seated on his throne. Confronted with absolute holiness, he becomes painfully aware of both his own sins and those of his nation (Isa. 6:5). God graciously deals with Isaiah’s sinfulness (Isa. 6:6-7), but that still leaves a sinful nation to deal with, and Isaiah is to be instrumental in accomplishing God’s purpose in this regard, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).

We don’t know what Isaiah expected, but surely it was not what follows:

He said, “Go and tell this people: “‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:9–10)

Isaiah, by his prophetic ministry, was to bring about a hardness of heart in the people of Judah. Can you imagine having this message preached at your commissioning? ‘Go, and preach the word; your preaching will make them hard-hearted, deaf and blind, so that they will neither repent nor be saved.’ That is a hard calling in anyone’s book.

Why such a harsh message? The first five chapters of Isaiah leading up to this passage detail the repeated failings of God’s people. Though they have every reason to love and trust God, they have rebelled, turned their backs on him and forgotten him.² Their worship of God has descended into meaningless ritual³ instead of the justice and righteousness that God requires.⁴ They ought to be the unique people of God, a light to the world showing how God ought to be worshiped;⁵ but instead they are no different from the nations around them.⁶ God, through Isaiah (and many other prophets) has called them to repentance but they have refused. And so, he enters into judgment.

Part of this judgment is that Judah shall become deaf and blind to God’s word. But why does God preclude the possibility of repentance? Why must Isaiah,

Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. (Isaiah 6:10)

Doesn’t God want them to repent?

I don’t claim to have a comprehensive answer to this question. But I do think we glimpse his purpose when we remember that the judgments pronounced by Isaiah (and other prophets) culminate in the exile. And the exile was the ultimate demonstration that ‘the system’ was not working – nor would it ever. Let me explain.

A little over six years ago, Katrie and I were eagerly anticipating the arrival of our first child. We wanted a natural delivery, because we had been taught that anything else was second best. Except there was a problem: the baby had not turned around, and was in a breech position. Apparently this complicates natural birth, so we were strongly advised to consider delivery by Caesarean section. Our obstetrician explained that it was OK to wait for a time and see if the baby turned, but only for a time. And so we waited the full time allotted, before reluctantly proceeding with the Caesarean. We were glad we did! Because as the doctor delivered Aedan to us, he showed us that the umbilical cord had become wrapped around his neck – three and a half times! Our plan was never going to work. And, though it might have seemed unfair for the obstetrician to impose a time limit, in the providence of God that was exactly what needed to happen.

I believe God was doing something similar with Judah. The covenants under which Judah lived – the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant – had enabled a long cycle of disobedience, judgment, repentance and disobedience again. Those covenants by themselves were not sufficient to accomplish God’s purposes because they didn’t address his people’s sinfulness. That plan was never going to work, and Judah needed to see it. A new people was required, descended not from sinful Abraham but from the sinless son of God. A new law was required, written not on tablets of stone but on the hearts of men and women.⁷ A new king was required, one not only after God’s own heart⁸ but the very expression of his heart.⁹ The Lord hardened Judah’s heart in order to accomplish his greater purpose and make way for what Jeremiah would call a ‘new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah’ (Jer. 31:31).

And that purpose is also evident in Mark’s gospel. For the growing opposition to Jesus would culminate, not in another exile, but in the crucifixion of the Son of God. The new covenant was proclaimed in the blood of Jesus, poured out for us;¹⁰ but that would not have happened if not for the hardness of heart precipitated by Jesus’ teaching. As Jesus taught that he had authority to forgive sins, some rejoiced but others found it intolerable blasphemy.¹¹ As he healed, particularly on the Sabbath, the crowds saw God’s power at work but the Pharisees saw a threat to their authority and plotted to kill him.¹² So even though he knew that sowing the word of God would produce hardness of heart in some, he also knew that even that hardness of heart would ultimately serve God’s purpose and plan.

We, too, must sow the word of God in spite of opposition. It is a hard thing to know that speaking God’s word may be the cause of hardening and judgment in our family, our friends, our colleagues. Yet it may also be the means by which God brings them to repentance and faith, and it is that hope that helps us to go out and sow day after day. Which brings us to our final point.

The sower sows in hope of a great harvest

After receiving his commission, Isaiah is understandably distressed:

Then I said, “For how long, O Lord?” (Isaiah 6:11)

We can imagine Isaiah’s thinking: ‘Maybe it is just temporary. One year? Five years? Twenty? How long before you redeem your people, O Lord? How long before you allow them to repent and be healed? How long must I proclaim this curse upon my nation?’

The Lord’s answer is not encouraging:

And he answered: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.” (Isaiah 6:11–13)

The judgment of God on Judah was to be thorough. Even if ninety percent of the land were wiped out, that is still not enough! But, as so often when God pronounces judgment, there is also hope. For even though Israel is like a tree that has been cut down, yet there will still be a ‘holy seed’ that will be a ‘stump’ that contains the possibility of regrowth. The desolation and destruction will not be complete.

In Jesus’ parable, however, there is even more cause to be hopeful; he speaks of a crop thirty, sixty and even a hundred times what was sown. While Jesus’ ministry parallels Isaiah’s in many ways, in this he is quite different. Isaiah saw only the possibility of regrowth long after the judgment he proclaimed; Jesus saw a great harvest that would grow from his preaching of God’s word. The exile had done its job of preparing the soil, and now it was ready for planting.

We ought to have the same expectation as we sow the word of God into the lives of those around us – and indeed in our own life! Jesus says elsewhere,

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. (Luke 10:2)

It is not the harvest that is in doubt; it is the workers! So in the very next verse he appoints seventy-two of his disciples and says, ‘Go!’ (Luke 10:3). Though the image has changed from sowing to harvesting, the need for workers is constant.

The disciples were doubting Jesus and his ministry because of the opposition that it aroused. They had their eyes on the seed that was lost, but failed to appreciate the tremendous harvest that was in front of them. Friends, let’s not make the same mistake. Don’t doubt because of opposition, but believe in the great harvest… and sow!

Endnotes

1. ἐξῆλθεν ὁ σπείρων σπεῖραι. cf. the more general γεωργός in Matt. 21:33 || Luke 20:9.
2. Isa. 1:2-4.
3. Isa. 1:11-15.
4. Isa. 1:16-17.
5. Isa. 2:3-6.
6. Isa. 2:6-8.
7. Jer. 31:33.
8. 1 Sam. 13:14.
9. John 1:1-18.
10. Luke 22:20.
11. Mark 2:6.
12. Mark 3:6.