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The harvest is sure
Mark 4:13–20 (The parable of the sower, continued)
‘Don’t you understand this parable?’ he said to them. ‘How then will you understand all the parables? What the sower is sowing is the word. The kind of people represented by the case in which the seed fell by the side of the road are those in whose case the word is sown, and whenever they hear it, immediately Satan comes, and snatches away the word that was sown into them. Just so, the kind of people represented by the case in which the seed was sown on the rocky ground are those, who, whenever they hear the word, immediately gladly welcome it. They have no root in themselves, but they are quite impermanent; and then, when trouble or persecution happens because of the word, they immediately stumble and collapse. Then there are the others who are represented by the case in which the seed was sown among thorns. These are the people who hear the word, but the anxieties of this world and the deceptive attraction of wealth and the desires for other things enter into them and choke the life out of the word, and it never gets a chance to bear fruit. The kind of people who are represented by the case in which the seed fell on good ground are such as hear the word and receive it and bring forth fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’
EVERY detail of this parable would be real to its hearers because every detail came from everyday life. Four kinds of ground are mentioned.
(1) There was the hard ground at the side of the road. The seed might fall on this kind of ground in two ways. The fields in Palestine were in the form of long, narrow strips; these strips were divided by little grass paths, which were rights of way; the result was that they became beaten as hard as stone by the feet of those who used them. As the sower scattered his seed, some might well fall there; and there it had no chance to grow.
But there was another way of sowing. Sometimes a sack of seed was put on the back of a donkey; a hole was cut in the corner of the sack; and then the animal was led up and down as the seed flowed out. Inevitably as the donkey was brought along the road to the field some of the seed fell on the road; and just as inevitably the birds swooped and gobbled it up.
There are some people into whose hearts Christian truth can find no entry. This is due to the hearer’s lack of interest; and that lack of interest comes from a failure to realize how important the Christian decision is. Christianity fails to make an impact on so many people, not because they are hostile to it, but because they are indifferent. They think that it is irrelevant to life and that they can get on well enough without it. That might be true if life was always an easy way where there were neither tensions nor tears; but in fact there comes to each one of us a time when we need a power that is not our own. It is the tragedy of life that so many discover that too late.
(2) There was the rocky ground. This was not ground full of stones; it was a narrow skin of earth over a shelf of limestone rock. Much of Galilee was like that. In many fields, the outcrop of the rock through the shallow soil could be seen. Seed which fell there germinated all right; but because the soil was so shallow and held so little nourishment and moisture, the heat of the sun soon withered the sprouting seed and it died.
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