Matthew 13:1-23

13:1-9 | The Sower represents the Lord, the seed represents the Word of God, and the soils represent four categories of hearers, each with a different response to God’s Word (Mark 4:15; Luke 8:12).

13:3 | In Jesus’ day, sowers would drape a bag of seed over their shoulder, and as they walked up and down the often-uncultivated furrows, they would throw handfuls of seed across the ground. Preaching the truth of God is like taking God’s seed – the Word of God – and scattering it everywhere.

13:4 | The wayside soil represents the callous heart. In Palestine at this time, narrow ribbons of ground divided the fields. These ribbons were rights of way, traveled so frequently that their surfaces were as hard as concrete and the seed could not penetrate the soil.

13:5-6 | The stony ground depicts the casual heart. The stony ground describes not a field filled with rocks but an area of limestone covered by a thin layer of dirt. The seeds would fall and immediately take root, but because their roots could not go deep enough to draw moisture from the ground, the plants would wither in the heat. In a similar way, some people appear to be converted and seem to experience explosive growth, but soon fall back into their old ways of living. Jesus is not speaking of losing one’s salvation – He says instead that such people never had salvation to begin with. Instead, they had only a shallow, emotional experience.

13:7 | The thorny ground represents the crowded heart. This soil has weeds that eventually choke out the seed. The soil has four kinds of weeds: the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, the lust of other things (Mark 4:9), and the pleasures of this life (Luke 8:14). The enemy here is not internal but external. The hearts of the third set of hearers are divided. Their hearts are crowded.

13:8 | The good ground represents the converted heart – the person who hears the Word, allows its truth to sink in, and is genuinely saved. Just as there are three levels of not believing the Word of God, there are also three levels of productivity in the heart of those who believe. Some produce fruit a hundredfold, some produce fruit sixtyfold, and some produce fruit thirtyfold. But Jesus presents no category where a true believer produces fruit “zerofold.”

13:11 | Typically, teachers employ parables to offer new understanding by using scenes or images from daily life. But Jesus used parables because He did not want some in the Jewish crowd to understand His teaching. This method veiled the truth from casual listeners and his opponents, but to the ones committed to following Him, the truth of these parables exploded in their minds.

13:12 | This is the great principle of spiritual growth: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The spiritually receptive understand more and more spiritual truth, while those who do not pursue spiritual growth go backward in their walk with the Lord.

13:13-17 | When people receive God’s Word and fail to act on it, they gradually become callused in their hearts, get cataracts on their eyes, and lose their hearing (Acts 28:26-27; 2 Tim. 4:4; Heb. 5:11).

13:18-23 | The enemy of the Word in the first soil is the devil, represented by birds who snatch away the seed. The enemy in the second soil is the flesh that cannot handle the heat of the sun. The enemy in the third soil is this world and its system – the pleasures, riches, and cares of this life. The proof of genuine salvation is not shown by listening to or emotionally responding to the Word, but by the fruit.