The Scripture is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways.
- It cuts the reader. It cuts the listener. It cuts the preacher
- It cuts the preacher as well as the congregant.
- It cuts the avid student and the casual listener.
- It cuts the maturing saint and the beginning disciple.
Jesus loved to teach His two-edge messages in parables. One parable that appears in three of the four gospels is the Parable of the Sower. Today, I had the opportunity to reexamine this very familiar parable. Two things to remember, when Jesus or any other rabbi of the first century used a parable, they were entering a long established tradition of teaching through story-telling. The structure was known. Within a few words, one to seconds, a first century crowd recognized the form an knew that they were being invited into a story that had a point. A point. Not four. One.
Every parable of Jesus has one point that He is driving toward. And Jesus’ audience knew that they were being invited into thinking hard about what Jesus was saying so that they could understand what Jesus wanted them to understand. At the end of the parable (vs. 4-8a), Luke tells us that Jesus cried out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (vs 8b).
As you read the broader context, it is clear that Jesus is very concerned about how people hear the word of God. It seems to have been His primary concern for his audience. The parable of the sower and the soils is concerned with how people hear the word of God.
The parable is NOT about evaluating or judging other people’s lives. It is a diagnostic tool for anyone of us to evaluate the state of our own soul, the state of our own heart. Jesus sows the seed of His word in the world and He is looking for what every sower is looking for when they put there seed in the soil. He is looking for fruit. He looking for a seed that gets received with joy, in a good and steadfast heart that yields fruit (vs. 15).
