Articles
Good Seed/Good Soil/Good Results
When Jesus’ original audience first heard His parable of the sower, before He reached His conclusion, do you suppose it sounded like a rather depressing story of one failure after another? The birds eat up the seed by the wayside. The seed on the rocky ground sprouts but then withers. The seed in the thorny patch gets choked out. Devoured, withered, choked.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there! He goes on to tell about the good soil where the seed “grew up, and produced a crop a hundred times as great.” So Jesus’ parable has a happy ending after all!
Why such a drastic difference? The sower is the same in each case, and so is the seed. “. . . the seed is the word of God.” If the problem is not with the sower (the one who brings good news), and if it’s not with the seed (the gospel), then the variable must be the soil (the individual who responds one way or another)!
The good soil represents people “who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:8, 11, 15 NASB).
Isn’t Jesus telling us not to get discouraged? Not all our efforts will produce conversions. We already knew that, didn’t we? But the part we really need to hear is that the right kind of hearts will produce the right kind of fruit. Our job is to broadcast the seed. God will take care of the results (1 Cor. 3:6).
Just keep sowing.
