Isaiah 55:10-13/2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9/St Luke 8:4-15
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Sometimes this parable is mistakenly called the Parable of the Soils. Calling it this, instead of the Parable of the Sower, takes the emphasis off of the Sower - who is clearly Christ - and puts it on you. I’ve heard it broken and butchered and then preached as if the first three types of soil - the path, the rocky, the thorny - are all those people out there. But you, you’re the good soil because you’re here, in the Church, week in and week out, listening and doing.
One pastor I heard even went through the whole litany, describing how those people out there are the three bad soils, they care only about money and stuff. Then arriving at the fourth soil finished by saying, “I don’t need to talk to you about the fourth soil, the good soil, because, well, you’re all here. Amen.”
Outrageous! Don’t misunderstand me. You are the soils. Or, rather, as Jesus says, your heart is. But its not that you are one over the others. You are all four, most, if not all of the time. Consider it:
The parable gives us a realistic insight into the farming practices in the stony soil of the Galilean hill country. At the same time, the parable is about you. Or, more importantly, its about Christ, who is the Seed of the Word, and what happens to Him, His Word, and you, when He sows among you.
Some see falls along the path, a winding path for donkeys that make their way down to the water. Since the path cuts right through the field, where there is no fence or ditch, its not wonder that a portion of the seed falls on the bare stones, where it is immediately tramples upon and plucked up by birds.
This often happens to God’s Word. It ends up on the bare stones of a heart where anything is allowed in and all the world’s impressions and experiences, philosophies and ideas parade through endlessly. These donkeys trample all over the seed that is sown and the devil’s birds pluck it away before it has a chance to grow. The prophet Ezekiel likened the human heart to stone (Ezek 11:19; 36:26), impenetrable to the Word of God that He graciously desires to sow and plant and grow there. You may recognize this in yourself, in your own heart, when you treat the Word of the Lord as mere information, something to be stored in the head and quickly spouted out, but never takes root in the heart.
Some falls on stony ground. That would be the limestone under every field in the Palestinian mountains. In many places the limestone is exposed at the surface. The topsoil is thin around the edges of the field. In spring, the stones warm up and the fields are like a hotbed. The grain begins to grow there first. It looks promising, but when summer come, the sol is too hot and everything dries up.
Jesus says, The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. Consider your own life. Your prayers. When you are confronted with the scorning trials of despair and misbelief, to whom do you turn? When you are burned with bad news over the health of a loved one? When you are hurt by a friend? In whom or in what do you fear, love, and trust most? I tell you, that is your god.
Some seed falls among the thorns. Thistles and thorns are the scrounge of Palestinian farmers. They can grow as tall as men, growing together into an impassible snare of thorny brush. They get harder and sharper as they dry up. No one dares to try to harvest such a field. It will remain that way until it’s burned. Jesus uses the picture of choking thorns to describe our hectic pace, the thousands of things we have to do. The obligations and ambitions that haunt your daily lives. Leisure and social activities that fill your nights. Together all of this begins to choke out the fruit of the Holy Spirit that had begun to grow within you.
Finally, there is the good and fertile ground where the seed is planted, takes root, grows and bears fruit. This is what ideally happens with the Word of God in your heart and life. But for all “his scattered plenteousness, one-fourth waves ripe on hill and flat” (LSB 586:5). Which means that three-quarters failed to grow and mature and produce a harvest. What abject failure! We may be tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with those people? Why didn’t they believe?”
Beware, following that foot-trail can lead us down the wrong path where we end up thinking there must be something in us that prepared us to be good soil and receive the Seed of the Word. There is not. None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless (Rm 3:10-12). It is as you heard last Sunday: It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, that this faith is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God (Eph 2:18).
So if God does it; and its not about the soils, it must be about the seed, we wonder. There must be some reason the Word takes root in some and not others. Maybe God planned it that way? To save some and condemn others? Again, this line of thinking can be disastrous. And our Lutheran Confessions respond to this error with beautiful insight. They say,
Many hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing, fall away. The reason is not that God was unwilling to grant grace for perseverance to those in whom He “began a good work,” for that is contrary to St Paul. The reason is that they willfully turn away again from the holy commandment, grieve and embitter the Holy Spirit, involve themselves again in the world’s filth, and redecorate their hearts as home for the devil. For them their last situation is worse than the first. (FC SD XI 42
In other words, Jesus’ words, He who has ears to hear, let him hear is a warning, an exhortation. Why any at all are saved is solely by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone as revealed in Scripture alone.
The Word is sufficient and efficacious. It does what it says. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
So it is with the Word which is God and the Word which was with God; the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. He, that is, Jesus Christ, the Word, went forth from the mouth of His Father. He shall not return to Him empty, but shall accomplish His purpose: to reconcile the world to the Father by His own death and resurrection.
Consider this, Christ Jesus is the paradigm for the Good Soil. He is the Second Adam, taken not from the dirt, but from the soil of Mary’s womb. He is God, who alone is good, thus He takes this soil, this humanity from His Virgin Mother, and makes it good by uniting it to His divinity. And then He is tested and tried, harassed by the devil who attempts to dissuade Him from the Cross. But as the Good Soil He remains steadfast and endures. He lives according to the Word and will of His Father. And as the thorns are pushed down upon His head and He is scorched by the wrath of the Father and your condemnation under the Law, He falls into the earth and dies.
For He is not only the Good Soil, He is also the Seed of the Word, who falls into the death and dies. And in dying, He bears much fruit; of which He is Himself the First Fruits, with you, His bounteous harvest of a hundred fold! Did you catch that in the parable? Three quarters failed to thrive. Yet the one-fourth that did, produced a full harvest! “Ah what of that, Lord, what of that!” The Word does what it says. It takes the rocky, thorny, hardened soil of your heart and makes it good by implanting His Word within you by the preaching and proclamation of the forgiveness of all your sins.
It takes ears to hear, for the ear is the pathway to the heart where the Seed of the Word is planted and takes root, growing and blossoming, producing fruit according to His Word and will. This is the mystery of the Kingdom of God which has been given to you, as Jesus says. Elsewhere St Paul says, The glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Which means that those who bear fruit to maturity do so because Christ is in them and they are in Him. And those who hold fast to the Word with perseverance do so because He faithfully holds them in His hand through His Spirit in the life and ministry of the harvest field of His Church, through the preached Word and Sacraments, which keeps them steadfast in the true faith, until life everlasting.
It is not that life keeps coming up roses for the Christian; the catechumen, that is, the hearer of the Word. For where this Word is preached and heard, taken from ears to heart, heart to lips, lips to life, achieving God’s sending purpose, there the thorns still creep in, seeking to choke out faith. There Satan keeps swooping down, attempting to snatch away the Word of the Lord that is preached and catechized into your ears and hearts. The scorching heat beats down on you each and every day. But know this dear Christians, it is not you that is being attacked, but Christ who is in you by faith. And because Christ the Word suffers, so do you, His dear Christian, suffer. Is this not of a type of which St Paul boasted in today’s Epistle? In his weakness? Did not Jesus say of Him, I will show him how much He must suffer for My Name (Ac 9:16)?
It is no different for you, beloved. Why? Because Christ has ordained it as such. This is the limit of the mystery of election that is revealed to us in God’s Word. It is simple yet utterly profound: A sower went out to sow his seed. And He sends out others who continue to do so. Earnestly, steadfastly, without counting the cost or consideration, trusting the Lord of the harvest that He will watch and tend His planted Word. Abide in this teaching and cling to it. For it is a very useful, saving, and consoling teaching. His grace, given by and through His Word, is sufficient for you. His power is made perfect in weakness.
Even now He leads you out in joy and forth in peace, as Isaiah says. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Indeed even now He leads you in joy up His Table where He bestows upon you His peace, by way of the fruits of the Word made flesh, His Body and Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. He implants these in you. Guarantees of a bountiful harvest in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Sometimes this parable is mistakenly called the Parable of the Soils. Calling it this, instead of the Parable of the Sower, takes the emphasis off of the Sower - who is clearly Christ - and puts it on you. I’ve heard it broken and butchered and then preached as if the first three types of soil - the path, the rocky, the thorny - are all those people out there. But you, you’re the good soil because you’re here, in the Church, week in and week out, listening and doing.
One pastor I heard even went through the whole litany, describing how those people out there are the three bad soils, they care only about money and stuff. Then arriving at the fourth soil finished by saying, “I don’t need to talk to you about the fourth soil, the good soil, because, well, you’re all here. Amen.”
Outrageous! Don’t misunderstand me. You are the soils. Or, rather, as Jesus says, your heart is. But its not that you are one over the others. You are all four, most, if not all of the time. Consider it:
The parable gives us a realistic insight into the farming practices in the stony soil of the Galilean hill country. At the same time, the parable is about you. Or, more importantly, its about Christ, who is the Seed of the Word, and what happens to Him, His Word, and you, when He sows among you.
Some see falls along the path, a winding path for donkeys that make their way down to the water. Since the path cuts right through the field, where there is no fence or ditch, its not wonder that a portion of the seed falls on the bare stones, where it is immediately tramples upon and plucked up by birds.
This often happens to God’s Word. It ends up on the bare stones of a heart where anything is allowed in and all the world’s impressions and experiences, philosophies and ideas parade through endlessly. These donkeys trample all over the seed that is sown and the devil’s birds pluck it away before it has a chance to grow. The prophet Ezekiel likened the human heart to stone (Ezek 11:19; 36:26), impenetrable to the Word of God that He graciously desires to sow and plant and grow there. You may recognize this in yourself, in your own heart, when you treat the Word of the Lord as mere information, something to be stored in the head and quickly spouted out, but never takes root in the heart.
Some falls on stony ground. That would be the limestone under every field in the Palestinian mountains. In many places the limestone is exposed at the surface. The topsoil is thin around the edges of the field. In spring, the stones warm up and the fields are like a hotbed. The grain begins to grow there first. It looks promising, but when summer come, the sol is too hot and everything dries up.
Jesus says, The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. Consider your own life. Your prayers. When you are confronted with the scorning trials of despair and misbelief, to whom do you turn? When you are burned with bad news over the health of a loved one? When you are hurt by a friend? In whom or in what do you fear, love, and trust most? I tell you, that is your god.
Some seed falls among the thorns. Thistles and thorns are the scrounge of Palestinian farmers. They can grow as tall as men, growing together into an impassible snare of thorny brush. They get harder and sharper as they dry up. No one dares to try to harvest such a field. It will remain that way until it’s burned. Jesus uses the picture of choking thorns to describe our hectic pace, the thousands of things we have to do. The obligations and ambitions that haunt your daily lives. Leisure and social activities that fill your nights. Together all of this begins to choke out the fruit of the Holy Spirit that had begun to grow within you.
Finally, there is the good and fertile ground where the seed is planted, takes root, grows and bears fruit. This is what ideally happens with the Word of God in your heart and life. But for all “his scattered plenteousness, one-fourth waves ripe on hill and flat” (LSB 586:5). Which means that three-quarters failed to grow and mature and produce a harvest. What abject failure! We may be tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with those people? Why didn’t they believe?”
Beware, following that foot-trail can lead us down the wrong path where we end up thinking there must be something in us that prepared us to be good soil and receive the Seed of the Word. There is not. None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless (Rm 3:10-12). It is as you heard last Sunday: It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, that this faith is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God (Eph 2:18).
So if God does it; and its not about the soils, it must be about the seed, we wonder. There must be some reason the Word takes root in some and not others. Maybe God planned it that way? To save some and condemn others? Again, this line of thinking can be disastrous. And our Lutheran Confessions respond to this error with beautiful insight. They say,
Many hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing, fall away. The reason is not that God was unwilling to grant grace for perseverance to those in whom He “began a good work,” for that is contrary to St Paul. The reason is that they willfully turn away again from the holy commandment, grieve and embitter the Holy Spirit, involve themselves again in the world’s filth, and redecorate their hearts as home for the devil. For them their last situation is worse than the first. (FC SD XI 42
In other words, Jesus’ words, He who has ears to hear, let him hear is a warning, an exhortation. Why any at all are saved is solely by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone as revealed in Scripture alone.
The Word is sufficient and efficacious. It does what it says. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
So it is with the Word which is God and the Word which was with God; the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. He, that is, Jesus Christ, the Word, went forth from the mouth of His Father. He shall not return to Him empty, but shall accomplish His purpose: to reconcile the world to the Father by His own death and resurrection.
Consider this, Christ Jesus is the paradigm for the Good Soil. He is the Second Adam, taken not from the dirt, but from the soil of Mary’s womb. He is God, who alone is good, thus He takes this soil, this humanity from His Virgin Mother, and makes it good by uniting it to His divinity. And then He is tested and tried, harassed by the devil who attempts to dissuade Him from the Cross. But as the Good Soil He remains steadfast and endures. He lives according to the Word and will of His Father. And as the thorns are pushed down upon His head and He is scorched by the wrath of the Father and your condemnation under the Law, He falls into the earth and dies.
For He is not only the Good Soil, He is also the Seed of the Word, who falls into the death and dies. And in dying, He bears much fruit; of which He is Himself the First Fruits, with you, His bounteous harvest of a hundred fold! Did you catch that in the parable? Three quarters failed to thrive. Yet the one-fourth that did, produced a full harvest! “Ah what of that, Lord, what of that!” The Word does what it says. It takes the rocky, thorny, hardened soil of your heart and makes it good by implanting His Word within you by the preaching and proclamation of the forgiveness of all your sins.
It takes ears to hear, for the ear is the pathway to the heart where the Seed of the Word is planted and takes root, growing and blossoming, producing fruit according to His Word and will. This is the mystery of the Kingdom of God which has been given to you, as Jesus says. Elsewhere St Paul says, The glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Which means that those who bear fruit to maturity do so because Christ is in them and they are in Him. And those who hold fast to the Word with perseverance do so because He faithfully holds them in His hand through His Spirit in the life and ministry of the harvest field of His Church, through the preached Word and Sacraments, which keeps them steadfast in the true faith, until life everlasting.
It is not that life keeps coming up roses for the Christian; the catechumen, that is, the hearer of the Word. For where this Word is preached and heard, taken from ears to heart, heart to lips, lips to life, achieving God’s sending purpose, there the thorns still creep in, seeking to choke out faith. There Satan keeps swooping down, attempting to snatch away the Word of the Lord that is preached and catechized into your ears and hearts. The scorching heat beats down on you each and every day. But know this dear Christians, it is not you that is being attacked, but Christ who is in you by faith. And because Christ the Word suffers, so do you, His dear Christian, suffer. Is this not of a type of which St Paul boasted in today’s Epistle? In his weakness? Did not Jesus say of Him, I will show him how much He must suffer for My Name (Ac 9:16)?
It is no different for you, beloved. Why? Because Christ has ordained it as such. This is the limit of the mystery of election that is revealed to us in God’s Word. It is simple yet utterly profound: A sower went out to sow his seed. And He sends out others who continue to do so. Earnestly, steadfastly, without counting the cost or consideration, trusting the Lord of the harvest that He will watch and tend His planted Word. Abide in this teaching and cling to it. For it is a very useful, saving, and consoling teaching. His grace, given by and through His Word, is sufficient for you. His power is made perfect in weakness.
Even now He leads you out in joy and forth in peace, as Isaiah says. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. Indeed even now He leads you in joy up His Table where He bestows upon you His peace, by way of the fruits of the Word made flesh, His Body and Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. He implants these in you. Guarantees of a bountiful harvest in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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