Sermon: Sunday, 27th July, 2025
Speaker: Alistair Donald
Scripture: Mark 4:1-20
And so we come to one of the best-known parables that Jesus told – usually called the Parable of the Sower, although maybe the Parable of the Seed and the Soils would be a better guide to its meaning – we’ll come back to that later. The fact it’s one of the best-known parables means we may think, ‘Oh I know that already.’ We must guard against being complacent!
Parables; simple stories from everyday farming and fishing life in rural Galilee that have a neat way of making us think. What do they make us think about? Mainly they make us think, in language that everyone can understand – whatever education they may or may not have had, whatever age we happen to be – about what the ‘Kingdom of God’ actually means; how we can be sure we are indeed citizens of that Kingdom; and how we can truly have the close relationship with the living God that he wants for us all.
Sometimes Jesus’ parables make us downright uncomfortable. Usually, they make us take a good, hard look at ourselves. So these parables work as a kind of spiritual searchlight so that we have no hiding place from God’s gaze on our souls. Any shadows we might wish to lurk in are blown away by that searchlight. We see ourselves very much in a new light. We see our total dependence on God, and our need for him, in a new way.
Now, every word in the Bible is there for a reason, and you’ll note that the first word in Mark chapter 4 is the word ‘again’; ‘Again Jesus began to preach by the lake (Sea of Galilee).’ (Mark 4:1) Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had called the tax collector Levi (Matthew) to follow him, and a crowd gathered. This time the crowd was so large that Jesus got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore. How come so many people gathering? Because crowds attract a crowd but also there were great expectations because; ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’ (Mark 1:15)
This is the first of the parables of Jesus recorded in Mark’s Gospel. Maybe that’s why we get some clues later in the passage as to its meaning. In the later parables we’re just left to work it out for ourselves! So we read that Jesus taught them many things by parables. But after he had told the story of the seed and the soils, his disciples came up to him when he was alone, and asked him about the parables, why he spoke in that form. And the reply that Jesus gives is very interesting. He says this: ‘The secret of the Kingdom has been given to you (his disciples).’ (Mark 4:11a)
A ‘secret’ – there’s that expectation of a king with a crown in the here and now, with a visible kingdom in the here and now. Jesus has been sharing with his disciples the ‘secret’ that he’s not that kind of king, and his kingdom is not that kind of kingdom. As Jesus later explains, ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ (Luke 17:21) Only faith could recognise the Son of God in the lowly figure of Jesus of Nazareth. The secret of the Kingdom of God is the secret of the person of Jesus.
So the secret of the Kingdom is given to his disciples. But then there’s this: ‘But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables.’ (Mark 4:11b) For the reason for this, Jesus quotes a verse from Isaiah so that; ‘…they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ (Isaiah 6:9) Now this is surely quite a difficult verse! It sounds like Jesus doesn’t want people to be forgiven! Can that in fact be right? But really, it’s because Jesus has been facing the same problem that Isaiah faced hundreds of years earlier: Many people just don’t want to know because their hearts are hardened.
Jesus describes why this is. ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.’ (Mark 4:9) Indeed, he said on other occasions. It’s the same point Isaiah made about being ‘ever hearing but never understanding’. After all, don’t we sometimes say: ‘It goes in one ear and out the other’? Especially when asking kids to do something they don’t want to do! That’s what we need to guard against when we’re listening to God’s word. It’s very easy for the message just to drift over us when our hearts are hardened.
So the parables work as a king of sieve. In the same way, the parables work to separate out people who really want to be in the Kingdom of God from those who’re just kind of hanging around listening, who harden their hearts against ‘getting’ what Jesus is on about. And that’s exactly the same point that we see when we look at the first type of soil that the seed fell on, in the story Jesus told.
The farmer sows the word. Who’s the farmer? In the first instance, it’s Jesus himself speaking to the crowds. But by extension, the farmer is also any faithful preacher of the Bible today. The farmer spreads the seed in an apparently wasteful manner. Only some of the seed falls on good soil and produces a crop. The same seed gets sown, the same message gets preached but the outcome is not the same in each case.
Think of the original hearers of Jesus as he was preaching from that boat. They all heard the same story. Some people may have said: ‘Well I was quite disappointed really. I went along to see if this was the Messiah who would give us back our independence. But it was just some guy telling some stories.’ Others may have said: ‘I was there beside the lake. And the story this guy Jesus told really hit home. I could see that what he said made every difference in the world, about me, about God. About how I need to turn my life around.’ Same message heard – very different outcomes.
The first fellow thought that Jesus was there to fulfil his expectations. The second one saw that his expectations were all wrong, and that the story searched him to the core of his being. Jesus didn’t come to fulfil all our expectations, or to be a kind of genie to sort out all our problems. But when we do open our lives to him and bow down before him, we find that he turns everything upside down: what we thought was most important becomes not important at all, and what we thought wasn’t worth bothering with becomes the most important thing of all.
So, mixed responses to the message of Jesus even back then and it’s the same today. What, then, is your response going to be? What’s my response to be? Let’s have a closer look at the story Jesus told to find out. The farmer sowed the seed and, as he was scattering the seed, it fell on four different types of soil:
Along the path…
Verse 3 and verse 14: The farmer sows the word and some people are like the seed sown along the path (by the wayside) where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. So these folks hear the word alright but it doesn’t penetrate at all. The evil one might right now be whispering a little voice in your ear: ‘Well, I enjoy the company at church, the people here seem really nice. But I don’t think all this stuff really applies to me. It’s quite interesting, but I don’t really need to accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord. I quite like to hear the stories in the preaching, but the application makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I’m okay as I am. I believe in God and I try my best.’ The seed that falls on the path and the birds came and ate it up before it could take root.
Rocky places…
Verses 5-6 and verse 16: Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. Well, this sounds more promising! But hang on, since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. This is someone who responds to the Gospel very positively, and very promptly: ‘Yes, I’m in!’ It might have started at big church rally with warm music. There’s a call to go to the front, and down you go. That’s it! Count me in as a Christian!’ But then it doesn’t really work out. It’s flash-in-the-pan faith, flaring up brightly, then fading to nothing. It’s like someone who sees an exercise bike advertised. Great, I’ll have one of those. Their enthusiasm lasts a whole week, or maybe 2 – then it just lies there.
Why does faith sometimes fade in this same way? Jesus tells us: ‘When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.’  : (Mark 4:17) Owning up to being a Christian among friends or family or at work just comes at too great a price. They begin to freeze you out, they maybe even begin to give you a hard time. And that’s just too big a price to pay. And so you begin to hold back from going to church. Maybe even a spouse will say: ‘That’s enough of this Jesus stuff: you’re going to have to choose: it’s Jesus or me!’ And you make your choice.
Among thorns…
Verse 7 and verses 28-29: Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. And this is surely the most subtle response of all.
It all starts so well. A life is turned round by the Gospel. Someone finds a new family in the church family. The Bible teaching is lapped up – can’t get enough! Fruitful service is given to the local church. But then something changes, very gradually at first, almost imperceptibly. You think, ‘Well, you don’t absolutely have to go to church every Sunday, do you? Aren’t we saved by our faith in Jesus? So then the odd Sunday is missed, and before you know it, it’s a few more. Next there’s a loss of appetite for the Bible. It becomes a closed book to you. Literally.
What’s gone wrong? Jesus puts his finger right on the problem, (or problems): ‘The worries of this life; the deceitfulness of wealth; and the desires for other things…’ (Mark 4:17b) These come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. The worries of this life; life certainly has its worries. I don’t suppose any of us here today are immune from worries – financial worries, worries about the family, worries about health. But rather than worries being an excuse to drive us away from Jesus, worries should cause us to cling more closely to him!
As Jesus said in Sermon on the Mount: ‘Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. So do not worry about these things. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things (that you worry about) will be given to you as well.’ Do you believe the words of Jesus here? Don’t let ‘the worries of this’ life crowd round you like thorns choking your faith in him!
What other kinds of thorn might there be? There’s the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things. If a little wealth comes our way, there’s no doubt at all that it can dampen our Christian faith. Yes, material things can indeed be a blessing from the Lord: a decent house or car – but beware! – material blessings can so easily become a snare.
The deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things – in following Jesus, we cannot have divided loyalties. No wonder he said, ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.’ (Matthew 6:24)
I wonder what Jesus means by ‘other things’? It may just be the things we mentioned under ‘worry’: what we eat or drink or what we’re going to wear. And Jesus says, seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness and these things will take care of themselves. But in our consumer society, it’s usually more than just the basics. We want ‘other things’. We want stuff. The whole economy is based on buying stuff we don’t really need. And if we’re trying to follow Jesus but have our heads turned by wanting a new this, a new that when what we have is perfectly fine, then the thorns choke our faith, dampen our zeal for the Lord, little by little, bit by bit.
Perhaps it’s someone who was a joyful vibrant Christian in her teens, but now she’s nowhere spiritually. What happened? The thorns got in and choked her faith. If it’s a choice between church and sport, which do you choose? Maybe there’s even someone here today who’s thinking back to earlier times, when the flame of faith shone really brightly but it’s not shining brightly now. And you’re thinking, ‘How did it come to this?’
Now here’s the thing: with all 3 types of ground that the seed has fallen on so far – the path, the rocky places and the thorny ground, there is a way to be on the good soil after all.
The good soil…
The good soil with its spiritual crop of thirty, sixty or one hundred-fold isn’t because of something good in us, it’s because of something done for us, namely Jesus dying on our behalf to cleanse us from our sins. But the point of this story that Jesus told is that we listen, not just hear. Those who have ears, let them hear! Let them take it on board! You’ll never get to grips with the message of the Christian faith by sitting on the sidelines, as you might sit in an audience looking at a play or a gig on a stage. You need to be in the play yourself! Up there on the stage yourself!
If you just let the message go in one ear and out the other…
If you listen to that little voice that says, ‘This doesn’t really apply to me…’
If you treat faith as just a harmless hobby for those who like that sort of thing…
If you let the thorns choke out any glimmerings of faith you may have, then I have to tell you: you’re not in a good place!
You see, listening to God’s word week by week, you’ll either be helped or you’ll be hardened. You’ll be helped if you respond to God’s voice speaking to you, calling you deeper into a relationship with him, despite your sinfulness, despite your failings. But if you listen without responding, if your pride makes you think, ‘I’m fine I don’t need a Saviour!’ Then hearing God’s word will just harden your heart, more and more. Until it’s too late.
‘If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.’ (Matthew 4:23)