Context No. 2471 of 4322 · Matthew

Matthew 13:1-9: in context

1On that day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the seaside. 2Great multitudes gathered to him, so that he entered into a boat and sat; and all the multitude stood on the beach. 3He spoke to them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, a farmer went out to sow. 4As he sowed, some seeds fell by the roadside, and the birds came and devoured them. 5Others fell on rocky ground, where they didn’t have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth. 6When the sun had risen, they were scorched. Because they had no root, they withered away. 7Others fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked them. 8Others fell on good soil and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty. 9He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Jesus sits in a boat off the shore and tells the crowd a parable everyone farming that hillside would recognize. A sower scatters seed, and it falls on four kinds of ground: the hard path, where birds snatch it; rocky ground, where it springs up fast and withers for lack of root; among thorns, which choke it; and good soil, where it yields thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. He who has ears, let him hear.

The seed is the same in every case. What differs is the soil. That is the searching part, because the parable is not mainly about other people's hearts but a mirror for my own. Am I the trodden path, too hard for the word to sink in? The shallow rock, all quick enthusiasm and no root, wilting the moment faith costs something? The thorny ground, where worries and wealth crowd the word out? Or soil that actually receives and holds and bears fruit? The same word meets every heart; the harvest depends on the ground it falls into.

What kind of soil is my heart right now, and what would it take to become ground that actually receives the word and bears fruit?

Sources

Matthew 13:8: Others fell on good soil and yielded fruit: some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty.
Matthew 13:9: He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Matthew 13:5: Others fell on rocky ground, where they didn't have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of earth.