Well do please keep your Bibles in hand and turn in them with me this time to the New Testament scriptures and to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 13. You can find that on page 818 if you’re using one of our church Bibles.
Beginning next week, God willing, we’ll be turning our attention to the message of 2 Peter which will take us through the summer. So do please pray for me as I prepare those messages. But for this morning, we conclude our series of sermons considering the teaching of our Lord in the famous parable of the sower. You’ll find that parable itself in Matthew 13:1-8, actually 1-9, and then Jesus’ own inspired exposition of the parable beginning in the eighteenth verse of the same chapter.
And so far you will remember we have looked at the seed sown on the path. It’s a picture of a hard heart; a heart that makes no response at all to the seed of the Word of God that it hears. Then we looked at the seed sown on the rocky ground where the topsoil is shallow and the seed can put down no roots. It’s a tragic picture of a superficial heart. A heart that makes only a shallow response to the Word of the Gospel. So it springs up quickly, it promises much, but it just doesn’t last. It does not endure. Then last time we looked at the seed sown among thorns where Jesus shows what happens in a crowded heart; a heart in which the message of the Gospel is crowded out by many competitors. The seed sprouts and grows, we learn, but because of the competing demands of sin and worldliness that have been allowed to blossom unchecked in the heart like perennial weeds, the life of the seed has been choked and it bears no fruit. It looks healthy, from a distance, but there is no harvest. And as we said last time, the harvest is what matters. Real Christians, in whose hearts the seed of the Word of God has done its true work, always, always bear fruit. So the seed on the path is a hard heart, the seed on the rocky ground a superficial heart, the seed among thorns is a crowded heart, and now finally our focus for this morning is on the seed sown in good soil. It’s a picture of a receptive heart. A receptive heart. A heart that hears the Word and believes it and bears abundant fruit to the glory and praise of God.
The first three soil types offer a sobering picture of the various ways that the fallen human heart can reject the Gospel, toy with the Gospel for a time and abandon the Gospel to the great grief of those who pastor them as well as to their own everlasting loss. So the teaching so far has been important, but it’s been weighty and solemn, unsettling even. But now at last, having warned us and challenged us thoroughly, in this final image of the parable, the Lord Jesus offers us some wonderful comfort and encouragement principally along two lines. There is, first of all, a word of encouragement for sowers of the Word. A word of encouragement for sowers of the Word. Whether we are preachers or Sunday school teachers, or small group leaders or moms and dads teaching our children, or sisters and brothers witnessing to our siblings, or colleagues and friends bearing testimony in the workplace or in the neighborhood, whoever we are, when we open our mouths to speak a word for the Lord Jesus Christ and sow the seed of the Good News, this part of Jesus’ parable has a word of comfort and reassurance for us. There is encouragement for sowers. Then secondly, there’s also a word of encouragement for hearers of the Word. Encouragement for hearers. As we hear, Jesus wants to assure and instruct us in the certainty, character, and path to fruitfulness in His service. And since every Christian ought, in some sense at least, to be both a sower of the Word and a hearer of the Word, these two emphases in this part of the parable should be instructive for us all. Encouragement for sowers and encouragement for hearers.
Before we unpack some of that, however, as always, let’s pause once again and pray and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read the parable together. Let us pray.
O God, the field of our hearts, of our lives, is now open before You for the sowing of the seed of Your Word. By Your Spirit, press the seed down into fertile soil, we pray, in every heart here, that we may all bear much fruit to Your glory. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Matthew 13 at the first verse. This is the Word of God:
“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.’”
Then verse 18:
“Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Well as I cruise into middle age, I find it to be a disconcerting, increasingly frustrating experience, to be more and more left behind and bewildered, frankly, by technology. I never used to be this way, you understand. I used to be more like my teenagers who seem to know intuitively how to do stuff with technological thing-a-me-bobs and online-doohickies! Listen, my dad used to have me program his VCR! Okay! You remember VCRs? Children, VCRs are devices created in days of yore to record television programs that they could be watched later. Back then, I was tech-savvy. My dad got me programming his VCR. Now I’ve become my dad – clicking away, red-faced and angry, fruitlessly pounding on the same button trying to make the stupid interwebs work the way it always has every other time I’ve used it. I just don’t understand. It always worked before. So far as I can tell, I’ve done nothing differently; it’s just not working, stupid internet!
Matthew 13 is a parable designed to help the disciples understand why, when they are doing the same thing each time, sharing the same message in each town, the Gospel message doesn’t seem to work the same way. It worked wonderfully in this village, but when they arrived in that town, they were asked to leave. This person heard the message of the Lord Jesus and left everything to follow Him. But that person heard the very same message and denounced Him as a dangerous fraud. The Gospel worked before just fine. Why doesn’t it work now, Jesus? That’s the question. Is it just a case of user error, as in the case of middle aged preachers trying to work technology? It’s just user error?
Well clearly not, since Jesus Himself is the greatest preacher who ever lived and He Himself also had the same mixed results as people listened to His preaching. No, the explanation the parable of the sower has been teaching us lies in the different condition of the human heart; the different responses of the human heart as it hears the Word, as the seed of the Word is sown within us. And as we’ve seen, the three of the four possible ways that human hearts can respond to the Word are negative. Doubtless all of this would have resonated deeply with the disciples own experience of ministry. They’d seen plenty of hard hearts, after all, that rejected the message outright – the seed sown on the path. There’d been more than a few who had responded with great enthusiasm at first, but when the cost of discipleship became clear to them, they soon fell away – the seed sown on rocky ground. There have even been some who liked Jesus and all that He had to say, well enough, but they never could quite shake the lure, the draw of worldliness, and so it wasn’t long before the disciples initial hopes for a good harvest in this person’s life were dashed completely – the seed sown among thorns. All of this the disciples had learned by painful, personal experience.
And we can see them, can’t we, in our minds – nodding along with Jesus at each point in the parable. “Yes, that’s true, Jesus. We’ve seen exactly that response in our own ministries as we’ve gone out preaching the Gospel.” But I wonder if they wouldn’t also have admitted perhaps, when they were alone without Jesus present, that so far at least the parable hasn’t really helped them very much. To be sure, it’s explained why some people have reacted the way that they have to the same Gospel Word, but as a pep talk for struggling evangelists who need to keep at the task of Gospel preaching, I doubt that the parable up until this point is what any of them were hoping to hear. Until verse 23, that is. Because verse 23, at last, offers a word of encouragement for sowers of the Word. Encouragement to sowers of the Word.
A Word of Encouragement for Sowers of the Word
Look at verse 23 once again with me. “As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” Yes, many will reject the Word, to be sure, or fail to endure in their profession of faith in Christ. And yes, there is no way to tell when you are sowing the seed what type of soil the Gospel Word is being sown into. We can’t identify who the good soil hearers are before we sow the seed. We don’t know who the elect people of God are or where they are to be found scattered in the world, not until, that is, the seed actually bears the fruit in their lives that alone makes their election plain. And so our task is to sow the seed everywhere to everyone indiscriminately without any guarantee or in any particular case that we will have the results for which we long. And yet, against all these uncertainties – the uncertainties with which any faithful witness for Christ must struggle – the promise of verse 23 offers sufficient encouragement to sustain us and make us bold to press on.
Do you see the promise in verse 23? Look at it with me. What’s the promise? Isn’t it simply that in some cases the seed of the Word of the Gospel will bear fruit in God’s time? Isn’t that the promise right there in verse 23? It really will bear fruit in God’s time? Notice the word, “indeed.” Do you see that word? “Indeed.” “He indeed bears fruit.” It’s the only time, actually in the whole of Matthew’s gospel, this little Greek word is used. It’s designed to underscore certainty. You could translate it, “of course,” or even, “for sure.” “For sure he bears fruit.” In some cases, the seed of the Word will bear fruit. Have you perhaps come to doubt that the Word will work? Have you become discouraged as you’ve born witness for Christ and sought to serve Him, wondering if you’re getting anywhere with people? Keep sowing the seed, verse 23 is saying. For sure, it will be fruit, in God’s time and in God’s way.
And also notice when it does bear fruit the fruit is always an abundance. The fruit is always an abundance. Do you see that in the text? Even the least fruitful seed, the thirtyfold harvest, yields much more grain than the farmer sowed. Even though there are three other types of soil that fail to bear any fruit of any kind, the soil that does bear fruit makes it all worth it. That’s the big point. Think about a mom. A mom forgets all the agonies of childbirth in a moment after she holds her newborn child. It’s not long before the couple is planning number two, maybe even number three. The stress and the pain of delivery – very real – they can’t compare with the joy and the love of having that child in your life.
And anyone who has led someone else to Christ feels something like that – a thrill not dissimilar to that. All the tears and the prayers, all the hours of conversation and argument, all the seed that has been sown, all the times that you shared the Gospel and got nowhere, all of it is instantly eclipsed by the joy of the harvest when it comes. The harvest makes all the labor of sowing the seed worth it. Why should you keep on sowing with your unbelieving spouse, your unbelieving children, that colleague, that neighbor, or that friend that you’ve known and worked with and prayed for and witnessed to for years? You should keep sowing the seed because even the least harvest makes it all worth it. It makes it all worth it.
Of course sometimes we don’t get to see the harvest, do we? Some of us will only ever sow the seed rather than reap the harvest. Someone else will reap the harvest. That’s the nature of the kingdom of God, isn’t it? That was the experience of the apostle Paul in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 3:6. “I planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth.” At Corinth, Paul wasn’t the one to cultivate the crop. He wasn’t the one to reap the harvest. He was the one who sowed the seed. And sometimes that’s the way the Lord would have it with us too. Maybe you’re a sower rather than a reaper.
I came across this story again recently of the Canadian medical missionary, Dr. William Leslie. Do you know this story? It’s a remarkably encouraging story for sowers of the seed. In 1912, he went with the Gospel to live amongst tribal people; they were called the Yansi tribe, in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He worked among them for many years, laboriously traversing the thick jungle visiting their villages, educating their children, teaching the people the Word of God. In his seventeenth year in the Congo, Dr. Leslie had a falling out with some of the tribal leaders and they told him they didn’t want to ever see him back there again. As you might expect, he returned home to Canada profoundly discouraged. He’d been sowing seed for seventeen years, sowing the seed, and so far as he knew there had been no fruit. None.
In 2010, a small team of missionaries flying with Missionary Aviation Fellowship reached Vanga where Dr. Leslie once had his missionary station. There, they crossed the Kwilu River and hiked a further ten miles into the forest to reach the first of the Yansi villages. They knew nothing about Dr. Leslie’s now forgotten work but the missionaries, nevertheless, expected that the Yansi might have had some vague awareness of the name of Jesus because they’d had limited contact but real contact with the outside world to some extent. But they did not expect them to have any real understanding of His person or His message. The missionaries were, however, completely unprepared for what they found when they arrived. Listen to their report in their own words. “When we got there, we found a network of reproducing churches throughout the jungle. Each village had its own gospel choir, though they wouldn’t call it that. They wrote their own songs and would have sing-offs from village to village.” In each of the eight Yansi villages that they visited, across about a 34 mile area of jungle, they found a Gospel church. In one village they found what they described as “a 1,000 seater stone cathedral” that had become so crowded during the 1980s with people walking from miles around to attend worship there that a church planting movement had begun in all the surrounding villages.
Seventeen years of fruitless sowing of the seed, never seeing a harvest. He died, actually, never knowing that the seed he had scattered in the Congolese jungle had produced anything because we don’t always know. But remember that the power, the life, is in the seed and not in the sower. And though the hoped for harvest might not come in our time and in our way, the Word will nevertheless bear fruit as God intends. So remember Galatians 6:9, you who sow the seed. Galatians 6:9 – “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Keep sowing the seed. Who knows, but God, what abundant harvest your labors might yet produce, though you may never see it. Keep sowing the seed. So there’s a word of encouragement for sowers.
A Word of Encouragement for Hearers of the Word
Then secondly, there’s a word of encouragement for hearers of the Word as well here. Look again at verse 23. “As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” Let me highlight three things – each of them have some subheadings; that’s a preacher trick, so we’ll just call them three things! It’s more than three, I’m afraid, but it gives you some sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel if you think there’s only three! Three things.
Number one, Jesus here is teaching us positively what He taught us negatively when He talked about the seed that fell on thorny ground. The failure of the seed on thorny ground had nothing to do with the size and apparent maturity of the plant that had grown up. None of that mattered to the farmer. The one thing that was important to the farmer is the harvest, and the thorny ground hearer had none. On the other hand, the one thing, the one thing that distinguishes the good soil hearer from all the others in this parable is the presence of good fruit. What’s the message? Faithful disciples of Jesus, in whom the Word of God is doing its work, are known by their fruit. By their Christ-likeness. By godliness ripening in their lives. That is the soul distinguishing evidence that the seed has been sown in good soil – that you bear good fruit. Are you bearing good fruit? Is there a harvest in your life? Will Jesus find a harvest when He comes to judge the living and the dead? It’s an urgent question we need to be asking our own hearts.
Secondly, Jesus is teaching us here that not everyone will bear fruit to the same degree or at the same rate. Some produce “a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty,” He says. Now that means at least two things. First it means we must aim, each of us, to be as fruitful in our Master’s service as we can be. We should want to yield a hundredfold and not just thirty. So strive, will you, to pull up the weeds of sin in your heart. Dig up the rocks so the Word can sink deep roots down into your heart. Never let the Word of God sit unused and fruitless on the surface of your life. Press it home. Take action in response to it. Passive hearers are never fruitful hearers. We need to engage with the Word. All disciples bear fruit, but not all bear the same fruit in the same degree, so aim to bear as much fruit as you can.
Secondly it also means we ought not to confuse little fruit with no fruit at all. We ought not to confuse little fruit with no fruit at all. That’s a very common mistake in the Christian life. We see a one hundredfold believer and her many spiritual graces. We see her always abounding in the work of the Lord. We see her prayer life, her quiet service, her humility, her love for the lost, her delight in the Word of God, and then we look at our own hearts! And here and there, perhaps, we see a few meager heads of grain ripening in the field of our lives and it’s easy to wonder at that point, isn’t it, whether we are converted at all. Or, even worse, sometimes we find ourselves judging others by the brightest examples of Christian fruitfulness around us.
These actually are also two issues faced by Paul at Corinth. Although he uses a different metaphor to tackle the problem, he talks about the body and its members. In 1 Corinthians 12, one part of the body, he says, should not look at another more prominent, apparently more useful part of the body and say, “Because I am a foot and not a hand, I don’t belong in the body. Because I’m not as useful as he is or she is, maybe I’m not really a Christian at all. Because I’m not as fruitful in Jesus’ categories, maybe I’m not really converted.” That’s a mistake. Don’t rule yourself out of the kingdom altogether because in your own estimation you don’t measure up to the attainments of some brother or sister in Christ around you.
But then neither, Paul says, should one prominent and useful part of the body decide that since there are other parts of the body that are apparently less useful, he has no need of them at all. Don’t rule other people out of the kingdom because you don’t judge them as fruitful as you are. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’” as Paul puts it. No, the most mature in the kingdom, the most fruitful in Christ’s service, cannot do without the new believer or the heart that only bears a thirtyfold harvest. In the Lord’s field, the mark of authentic discipleship, the evidence of spiritual reality, of the Word doing its true and proper work in our hearts, is not how much fruit we bear in comparison to others but whether we bear fruit at all. Are you bearing fruit? It’s an urgent question.
And then finally, if fruitfulness in response to the Word is so very important, we need to ask, “How can we, how can I be sure that I am in fact bearing fruit as the Word is sown into my heart?” How do you bear fruit? And at this point, I want to direct your attention to Luke’s version of the parable because he adds and amplifies to Matthew’s description of the good soil hearer in some important ways. Listen to Luke 8:15. Luke 8:15, “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.” How has the fruit come to be produced in their lives? They hear the Word, they hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and they bear fruit with patience.
So number one, you’ve got to hear the Word. That may seem obvious, but I think it needs to be emphasized. You will never bear fruit if you neglect the preaching of the Word. You must hear the Word. It’s the way that God has appointed to produce a harvest in your life. So, to put it bluntly, get to church! Sit under the Word. If I may say so, watching online or at home is good if you cannot get here in person, but there is no substitute for being physically present in the company of the people of God under the ministry of the Word of God. No substitute. We must hear the Word.
Number two, Luke says a fruitful hearer of the Word “holds it fast in an honest and good heart.” The seed sown in this heart isn’t like the seed on the path, you know, that never sinks in and is soon snatched away by the evil one. He grasps ahold of the Word as the only instrument of life and vitality. He’s not playing with the Gospel. He’s not toying with Jesus in response to the Word. His response to the Word is honest and good, Jesus says. It’s the real thing.
Imagine you are sailing out one day in the ocean and the boat you are in begins to sink. You’re miles from land; it’s not long before you find yourself treading water alone in the sea. You are in big trouble. Soon you start to tire. Your strength begins to fail, and just then some driftwood floats past, maybe the wreckage from your vessel; just large enough for you to haul yourself out of the water, keep you afloat. Wouldn’t you cling to that driftwood with every fiber of your being because your life depended on it? Wouldn’t you? Everything depends on holding it fast. That’s the picture. This is your life raft. This is your only hope. The Word of life! Hold it fast with tenacity. Don’t ever let it go! Get a tenacious grip on Jesus Christ as He comes to you in His Word.
Number three, Luke says this heart bears fruit “with patience.” With patience. Patience is key if you want a harvest. You can’t force a harvest, do you see. It takes time to mature. Matthew Henry says we need both “bearing patience and waiting patience.” I think that’s great. Bearing patience to bear up under trials and tribulations. And waiting patience because it takes time for the fruit to ripen, slowly, slowly over the years. This is a heart, in other words, that responds to the Word of God in a steady, persevering way. Does that describe you? Steady perseverance. It endures and it presses on. It’s not looking for quick fixes, easy answers, instant solutions. This is a person who knows that the fruit of discipleship takes a whole life to ripen. And so we need patience. The heavenly Farmer is cultivating His crop in your life, but remember, it will take the whole of your life to ripen. And so we need to be patient.
There is an encouragement here for sowers of the Word. I hope you can see it. Keep sowing the seed, will you, because in God’s time and in God’s way there will be a harvest if we do not give up. And there is an encouragement for hearers of the Word. What kind of hearer of the Word are you? Has the seed been sown in good soil? Will there be a harvest, however large or small, of Christ-likeness in your life? It begins today in repentance and trusting yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ and every day thereafter clinging tenaciously to the life raft of the Gospel. That’s how you will produce a harvest. May God make His Word mighty and fruitful in each of us for His glory.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we praise You that Your Word brings life and bears fruit. May it give life and bear much fruit in our hearts also. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.