Let's open our Bibles to Mark, the Gospel by Mark, chapter 4. We're entering a new part of the Gospel by Mark after finishing the third chapter and going into the fourth. And as we go to the fourth chapter, Jesus changes gears. Jesus is, if you're tracking and looking at a harmony of the gospel, what's happened is in the 12th chapter was what we call the national rejection of Christ. The delegation from Jerusalem came, the religious leaders, and they gave their opinion, well, more than their opinion, their verdict on who he was, and they said that he was from Satan. and that he was doing what he did in the power of Satan. And because of that national rejection, the religious leaders from the temple, from the repository of the worship of the eternal God, when they came and delivered their verdict in chapter 12 of Matthew, which is happening in chapter 3 of Mark, at that moment, Jesus changes. He no longer preaches long sermons in public like he used to. He reverts to what we're going to see in chapter 4. That's called his parabolic or teaching in parables ministry. And from here on, Jesus never publicly gives any of these elongated teaching times like the Sermon on the Mount stuff. He only gives these short stories from life that have a little twist to them. And that's an amazing change in the whole flow of the Gospels. And I'm going to show you, but this day that we're looking at actually begins in chapter 3, verse 20. So go back from chapter 4 a little bit. Let me talk to you about the day. It's been a long day for Jesus. Jesus started the day teaching inside a house somewhere up in Galilee. In chapter 3 verse 20, and in that time as the multitude is milling around, Jesus was approached, as you remember we covered this a month or so back, by his own family that tried to arrest him. It says in verse 21 they wanted to lay hold of him. It's the same lay hold of that's all the way through the book of Acts when they lay hold of Paul and put him in jail, and lay hold of the apostles and put them in jail and beat them. It was literally the word arrest. We're looking at one day in the life of Christ. The day started in chapter 3 verses 20 and 21 at a low point. Jesus' own family thought he'd gone crazy. his brothers and Mary. They wanted to drag him home because he was out of his mind because he was doing all this elongated teaching. They wanted to drag him back to Nazareth so they could take care of him and so that's how it started. Then look in verse 22, he was attacked by the religious leaders. This is the official verdict when they say that he was an agent of the devil. And remember when we covered that, the sin for which there is no forgiveness? Jesus told them that they were close to the sin for which they could never be forgiven. Then looking around, starting in verse 31, Jesus explained who was really in his family. Remember that day? He looked all the way around at those sitting at his feet and he said, you want to know who's really in my family? you that are doing the will of my Father in heaven. Now he heads in chapter 4 and it's still the same day. He heads to the shore of the Sea of Galilee and he begins teaching in parables and if you look all the way down through chapter 4 Verse 34, he concludes this parabolic section. Mark only records a few of them. Matthew records more of them in chapter 13. Remember, the gospel writers were selective in what they put in. They had to follow the purpose and intent God had ordained for their gospel, and the gospel of Mark shows Jesus as a servant, and so he only does scattered parables. But look at verse 35. It says of chapter four, on the same day. Now for those of you that are followers of the harmony of the life of Christ, this is the longest day in the life of Christ, the longest recorded day of ministry. The second longest is his last public ministry just before he's crucified. But this day is massive. When you put together everything that Luke says, everything that Matthew says, and you interleave it, Jesus was going from sun up And look here, the same day when evening had come, in verse 35, he said, let's cross over to the other side. He isn't done. There's big stuff still coming. Evening, by the way, for the Jewish people, evening started after three o'clock. The evening sacrifice at the temple was sacrificed at three in the afternoon. That's exactly the moment when Jesus was giving up the ghost, giving up the spirit, and said, it is finished. But evening for them is after three. So it's after three o'clock. He said, let's cross over. And by the way, verse 38 says that the day had been so full that, look what happens, he falls asleep. The storm takes up. By the way, it was most likely the prince of the power of the air trying to drown him. Remember, Satan was always trying to either have Herod kill him or have the people stone him, you know, or throw him off the cliff or, you know, whatever. So the devil was always trying to do Christ in, and so he stands up and rebukes the sea. And look at chapter 5, verse 1. Same day. And this is chapter 320 all the way through chapter 520 is one single day in the life of Christ. A two chapter long day. Unbelievable. And you all know the story, the demons in the demoniac of Gadara. And that's the day. Back to chapter 4. And I just want to focus on the middle of the day, okay? Half time here. Jesus heads to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps the largest crowd that ever had assembled so far in this ministry is assembled. The wording of the text appears to be describing the largest group yet. So this huge crowd assembles on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and Jesus has prepared by having a boat pushed out and he's in the boat sitting down and teaching. And to this day, when you come out of the city of Capernaum and follow the shore of the Sea of Galilee around, right after Capernaum you come to the Cove of the Sower, it's called. the Cove of the Sower and the Seeds parable. That's what we're looking at. It's still there today. They still call it the Cove of the Sower. When you come around that corner, it almost looks like a natural amphitheater. If you've ever been to Los Angeles, the Hollywood Bowl looks very similar. It's kind of in the hillside and it's just like this. And it's a place where, to this day, you could fit 10,000 people right there in the Cove of the Sower by Capernaum. And if you stand on the shore, in fact, this has been done, many groups have done it, and as soon as they open it up again, we'll do it again, you can stand on the shore and people can be as far up as the top of the hill, and if you just talk in a normal tone of voice like this, they can hear you at the top of the hill. because of the water being behind you, and because of the enclosure, the way that the hill slopes down in an amphitheater shape. And so Jesus is in that amphitheater-like shape, maybe 7,000 to 10,000 people clearly hearing him speak from one of the most ideal natural spots on earth. And here it is in Mark that Jesus starts his famous parables. Jesus, as I said, begins going into the parable mode. Parables are fascinating, and by the way, Jesus didn't originate them, but he mastered the art of the parable. Jesus was such a master storyteller and such a supreme parabler that even the people that didn't believe in him got the message. In fact, Matthew records in chapter 12 that when Jesus got done with the parables, the religious leaders got so angry they wanted to kill him on the spot. because they knew he was talking about them. Jesus was such a tremendous storyteller. The Gospels record more than 35 parables. Jesus probably spoke many others, but these are the ones God wants us to hear. Parables, by the way, were not primarily for reading. As we go through this, you know, you can analyze and try and figure out every nuance and every word and every space, but a parable was intended to be heard. Not so much picked apart and every word kind of thought over. That's called an allegory. An allegory, every word means something else and you're supposed to think about it. Ever read Pilgrim's Progress? That's an allegory. Allegories are wonderful if you know what they mean, but the scriptures and especially parables are not allegorical. That parable was meant to be heard by a group of people and right on the spot, They knew what Jesus was talking about. Now, if they didn't accept it, they couldn't understand it, but they knew the story he was telling because he started so clearly and they went along with him. Well, Jesus used parables to expose the hearts of the hearers. In this first parable is his most important parable because this is the only parable Jesus completely explains every detail of. And it helps us understand the spiritual implication of this form of teaching. Jesus is the farmer in this parable, the sower went forth to sow, which starts in verse 3. Jesus is the farmer, so farmer Jesus goes out, sowing seed, the seed is the word of God. The soil are people's hearts, the people hearing. So that's the whole story. And so the same soil is in four different conditions. Some of the hearts are rocky and some of the hearts are weedy and some of the hearts are trodden down and some of the hearts are good. And that's the whole story. And that's what everybody heard. But those who had spiritual ears heard more. Because they began saying, if Jesus is the sower and the word of God is the seed and the soil is my heart, I don't want to have a wayside heart. I don't want to have a stony heart. I don't want to have a weedy, thorny heart. I want a good heart. And that was the purpose of this because Jesus was telling them that all of the soils in his story are essentially the same. It's the preparation of the soil that differed. One soil had become as hard as stone. Another had become as shallow so it couldn't support life. Another had become so crowded life couldn't go on. But last and greatest was the rightly prepared soil." So Jesus presents this parable with himself as the one that's sowing. And that's in Matthew 13.37. But the whole idea, and you won't understand the parable unless you understand that the farmer, the sower, is sowing seed not for exercise. It wasn't just, you know, he was out there doing something to get aerobic exercise. He wanted one thing. He wanted to crop. He wanted to harvest. He wanted to gather back the fruit of the field. He wanted to harvest. from what he had sown. That's the whole intent of this parable. This is not talking about some, and by the way, you could summarize the parable this way, three-fourths of the soils bore no fruit, and only one out of the four bore fruit, and Jesus is saying that the purpose of the gospel entering a life is to bear the fruit of salvation, so only one of the four are saved. That's the bottom line of this story. Three-fourths of all these soils don't bear fruit, thus there is no entrance of the Word of God into the life and no salvation. Very, very beautiful story. Well, all the soils, by the way, get the same farmer sowing them, they get the same seed, they have the same growing season, they have the same rainfall, but only one soil came to harvest. Only one gave to the farmer what the farmer needed and wanted. Only one soil made it to the end of the season. and bore fruit to be carried home by the farmer. So from the perspective of the farmer, which soil was the good soil? The one that brought forth an increase, only the one that gave a harvest. So Jesus goes on, later on down in verse 13 of our text, which we'll read in just a moment, Jesus goes on to explain that soil is heart. And what he says is, the difference in the soils or hearts is based on their willingness to accept the seed or the word of God. And Jesus puts the responsibility for responding to his sowing on the hearer. And he explains why some people can never understand, never hear God. It's a tremendous story, very powerful. And Jesus says, some hearts don't hear me because they have become hardened, and some have become shallow, and some have become crowded. But some are ready and willing, and they respond. Parables by Jesus teach us that Jesus perfected the art of parable telling. His stories were so relevant, so vivid, and so clear that you could have 7,000 to 10,000 people standing and sitting out in the sun in the Middle East, intently listening, because he was such a vivid storyteller. Jesus drew people to action by his parables. He was so effective in communicating via parable that on more than one occasion some of the listeners wanted to kill him. And that's in Matthew 12, as I mentioned before. He was a good teller of stories. The pattern Jesus followed is to take a common picture of everyday life. All parables started with something everybody, even children, understood. Jesus never started up here in the ethereal and stratospheric place in some nuance or some, you know, idea that people, only a few, would understand. He started right down here. Right where the children were. You know, right there on the ground as they were sitting that day. And Jesus would start with a common picture of everyday life that would capture someone's attention. And then Jesus would expand the story until it began to mirror something in the person's life. And then as the person saw their own life mirrored in Jesus' story, Jesus would open a window. in that story. And if you went through and looked through that window in the story, you would see a spiritual truth that you could reach for and desire. That was the whole purpose of parables, that people would respond to them. And thus a listener was judged by what they heard. If when Jesus spoke it was nonsense to them, it meant that their hearts were deaf to truth. If the parables made their heart to seek after, to go through that window to understand, then they would come to him confessing and saying, I see something there, I see something deeper. What is it? I want to understand it. And that was when he would reveal further truth to them. And we see that in this story when the disciples come in verse 10. Look at verse 10. When he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parable. That was the whole goal. The whole goal was to give this common picture that all of a sudden would mirror their life, and all of a sudden the people would relate to it, and then Jesus would open this window. What was the window? It's verse 9. Look at verse 9. If you have ears to hear, then you'll hear. Jesus is talking about the words being seeds and the soil being hearts. And if you have ears to hear, hear. And the people all said, we want to hear, how do we hear? We want to know, we want to know. And that was what the intention was of Jesus. So, Jesus gave the parable. And when the disciples asked Jesus why he used parables, he explained that it would reveal truth to the seeker and it would hide it from those who were not seeking him. And thus, the listener would stand judged as they heard the parable. In fact, as I go through this, and I'm taking a little extra time because I want you to understand that as we hear Jesus speak, if this sounds like nonsense to you, then Jesus is going to explain why. But if it sounds like something you want to understand and to bring to pass in your life, then Jesus is standing ready to open your understanding even further to his word, because that's the mechanism of parables that only those who know the teacher himself can understand them. Only those who know the king and only those who ask the king himself to open the window of spiritual truth have it open because you cannot and I cannot physically understand this book. You can understand it as literature, When I went to Michigan State University, I had a professor who could explain the Bible in a literary form. He understood all the different forms of speech and all the poetic forms that the Hebrew literature came in, but he didn't know what it meant. He just knew what it said, and he knew it as literature. But this isn't literature, this is living truth. Okay, God's Word is truth. Jesus explained if we by our choices prepare our hearts to receive truth or by our neglect prepare our hearts to reject truth. That's the whole point of this story. So truth is only heard by a prepared heart. So it's vital that We hear. In fact, the word hear, or a cognate of it, occurs 13 times. Hearing is the big thing. And Jesus is saying, how's your hearing? You can only hear with your heart, so how's your heart? Do you hear God? Is what he's asking. Genuine hearing involves truth acted upon, and that invites more truth to be acted upon. So it's a growing process. If you hear truth and respond to it, you get more truth and you can respond to that, and you grow spiritually. False hearing is someone who ignores and rejects the truth, and that leads to further darkness. That means not knowing the truth, not understanding the truth, not receiving the truth. And James, by the way, our Lord's earthly brother, defined biblical hearing as understanding and obeying the truth in James 1.22. And so what we have to realize is that if you hear spiritually, you understand and respond to that truth. And that's what Jesus wants. So here we are, chapter 4. Mark has painted the scene by the lakeside. Jesus is telling this story as the slopes of the hillside gently come down to the water and the water drops off precipitously so he can be in a boat just a few feet offshore, anchored. And here are thousands of people listening. And Jesus starts out his story by saying, And he points. In fact, the word says, look over there. And he starts by pointing to a sower, sowing his field with seeds. And every single person on the hillside looked over there and they went, yeah, yeah, I see him throwing the seed. And some of it's going to land on the hard packed road. And some of it's going to land where the thistles grow. And some of it's going to land right over a thin layer of rock that's a veneer over, just a little veneer of soil over rock. And some's going to burst forth and bring thirty, sixty and a hundred fold crop back. And they all were sitting there. And then as Jesus had them, He begins to apply it. And he began to teach by the sea again. And a great multitude was gathered to him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. And the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. Then he taught them many things by parables. And he said to them in his teaching, listen, and then look. a sower went out to sow. And it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because they had no depth of earth But when the sun was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground, and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased, and produced some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. And he said to them, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. But when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parable, and he said to them, To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside all things come in parables, so that seeing they may not see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should be turned and their sins be forgiven them. And he said to them, Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the Word. And the ones by the wayside are those where the Word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the Word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground, who, when they hear the Word, immediately receive it with gladness. and they have no root in themselves. And so endure only for a time and afterward when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground. Those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred." Let's bow before the Lord. We bow before you, Lord, as if we stood on that shore that day, and all of us with ears to hear on that day would have been saying, We want to know the spiritual truth we see through that window. You are our teacher. Only you can open our hearts to the truth. We need you. We want you. We hear you. Let us hear more. May that be the cry, the longing of our hearts this day. And I pray that we would listen to your voice, Lord Jesus, and that anyone here this morning who is like the wayside, that they would repent of the hardness, the traffic that has deadened their souls, and that they would say today, Lord, break up my hardened ground, let me hear your voice. And for any that are in the shallow soil, they've submerged things in their lives, they're unwilling to give up. May they today, by your grace, say, Lord, I repent. I turn from my own way. And for those who are thorny, who have allowed the desire for the things of this world to crowd their lives so they can't hear their voice, the voice of your prophets, the voice of your apostles, the voice of your word, may they say, Lord, I want your voice. I'm willing to turn. I want to repent of the worldliness of my life so I can hear your voice. And may those of us who have heard your voice want to bring forth fruit that remains that glorifies your name and be that good, fruitful soil. Open your word to us like you opened it on the seaside 20 centuries ago. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Jesus took a common, everyday event that happened at that moment on earth, and Jesus transported the minds of his followers heavenward. Jesus began with the visible to get them thinking of the invisible. Jesus began with the ordinary so that they would see the extraordinary. Even a child could understand when Jesus told these stories. And as Jesus spoke them, Each person in their heart saw something. of that story and something that Jesus could use to draw them closer to himself. Jesus starts to target individuals in this section and Jesus is actually telling the gospel. He's telling the gospel in such a way that even the children could understand it. And Jesus explains that the gospel begins with the sower, the word of God come down from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ himself giving his word and those who heard And had that word fall upon their hearts, would respond to that word in accord with how they had conditioned their hearts. And Jesus said basically, and he tells the story, there are four different ways people prepare their hearts. The first one, if you look at verse four, is the soil that's under the path. This is the first element of the story. He said, and it happened as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside. The ways that were on the sides of the fields. We have to start thinking Middle Eastern first century. Back then they had fields with no walls and no fences because the whole land was just dotted with these little farms and they were ancestral fields that were your tribal field, your allotment, the possession, where you live. And those fields, there was not enough room there to build a big wall between all. They put walls around vineyards and they put walls out around the sheepfolds but not around the places where they farmed because it would be impossible with these sometimes serpentine weaving little fields that was your field to do that. And so what they did is they followed the ancient pathways and they would border their fields with basically entranceway to that field and all the fields were just like patchwork quilts and you would walk down these paths with your ox and with your various stuff down to your field and you'd get off the pathway and you would plow your field and work and you would have your crop growing there. And so each field was surrounded by waysides, pathways, roads. So Jesus says the soil under the path is the first one that he points out. It's a well-trod pathway surrounding that farmer's field. And he says in verse four, and it happened as he sowed that some of the seed fell by the wayside. Remember the farmers would strap a bag, the bottom of the bag to them, they'd hold up the other one, they'd put their hand in and they would broadcast the seed. There were two ways of sowing a field. One is you would actually have an animal with a bag tied to the animal and poke a hole in it and you would lead the animals and as the seeds trickled out of the sack, the animals would walk, in pairs down the field. That would be for a huge field. And a lot of times they would plow the seed under as they did that. That was for the larger fields. This was seemingly a smaller field. And this was a man actually holding the seed in a bag and he'd reach in and he'd just broadcast it. He was just throwing it to spread it out. And some of it, because the field was narrow, it says right here it would fall on this pathway on the wayside and the birds of the air would come and devour it. In Christ's time, this small, unfenced, unwalled, marked off by a narrow path, dirt road, was the boundary. They were everywhere. And as He spoke and said, look at the sower, even as the people looked out, you could see the pathways because these were the pathways that people followed so that you didn't walk through someone's field. In fact, Jesus, in chapter 12 of Matthew, do you remember when He was walking and it says His disciples were plucking the heads of grain? Do you think they walked out in the field? No. It was because every road was bordered on both sides with the crops of the land. And so as you walk down these roads, here's someone's wheat or their barley or whatever they were growing, growing on both sides of the road right up to where you were. And they used every square inch of land because it was a very densely populated area. And so Jesus is just pointing out something they could see. And so, the rich soil under this path had become trampled regularly by many feet and many hooves of many animals and many carts and many wagons. But the story is reminding us it's the same soil that's in the field. It's just by virtue of being a pathway and a throughway and a road, all the carts and all the oxen's hooves and all the people's sandals over the years had taken that same soil and made it as hard as pavement. So that's his first pointing out. And the seeds would just bounce along and rest atop the hard surface and either get trampled or the birds would eat them. So that's the first part of the story. Look at verse 5, because he describes, secondly, the soil that's over the rocks. The first was the soil that was under the path. The second is the soil that's over the top of the rocks. And he says this, he says, some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth. It's just the soil, the same soil that was in the path is the same soil that's now shallowly veneered over Rock. Now some people think that this is a lazy farmer that left rocks in his field. You couldn't see these rocks. These fields have been used for centuries. Actually for thousands of years. And so they have been cleared of rocks. There were no rocks visible. This was the huge massive rocks that were under the surface that could only be excavated and through a lot of work you would break them up and crack them and put in the cracks wood and put water in the wood and split them and do kind of excavation work and then drag them out. That was too much work so what they did is they just spread their dirt around and covered them up. And they could plow over them. But the ground was shallow. And the slab or outcropping usually of limestone was just below the surface. It was too big to be moved. And so the rich soil that covered the slab covered it, but not to any depth. Well, you know what would happen if there's this underlying rock, it would retain moisture better because it wouldn't go down, and it would retain the heat of the sun better. And so this area with the shallow soil would grow kind of like a greenhouse, anything because it would be moist and warm. And so when the seed gets there in this warm, moist ground, it would appear for a little while that that section of the field had the best plants. Because everybody else would be struggling, spending the plants putting most of their energy into putting their roots down to get moisture, which was ever decreasing because it would be absorbed. And so they were putting their roots down, so the top growth was not as extensive as the root system. But the shallow soil, the plant didn't have to contend with roots because there was nowhere for them to go. So it had huge growth upward. And so for a while it looked like the shallow soil was winning. It would appear for a little while this section of the field was the best soil. Until the hot weather came and then the deeper sources of water to feed the plant's growth could not be found because of the limestone stopping the roots and the plant in the heat would wither and die. and would be no more as the farmer's hope of harvest ended. Then look at verse 7. Jesus talks about the soil that's around the thorn roots. Remember, same soil. See, we've got to think like the people did. There weren't, it wasn't, some soil looked like big rocks in it and other soil looked like thorn bushes growing in it. I love reading this story to my children in the children's storybook because the artists in the storybooks have gone wild. It shows the farmer throwing the seeds and these giant cactuses are looking at him like that, like he's a dummy. You know, that why would you ever sow soil with gigantic life-size thorns in it? That's not what it is. What they did with their fields is they burned them off. They would actually burn all the top, and then they would plow under. Well, the top of the thorn bushes got burned off, but their huge root system was still there. And these were perennial, these were native plants to the land. These were the native thistle bearing bramble bushes. And so the farmers would do their best to plow, and they would plow back and forth, but all they succeeded in doing is dislodging these thorn roots. The tops had been burnt and cut off, but the entire under system was still there, kind of like when my children help me pull weeds. Do you know what they do? They pull the tops. And they leave all the crabgrass, you know, those light cream colored snaking out roots that go in every direction. And they just pull the tops off. They'll come with their handful of tops. and they've left the real menace lurking. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying. He says, lurking unseen were the fibrous roots of the strong local weeds, the thistles, the brambles. In fact, he uses the word acantha. That's the local, thriving, hardy, thistle-bearing bramble bush. He says that field was weedy. Now could you see any weeds? No, it was beautiful, plowed. But lurking under the surface were these fibrous roots, just waiting for the moisture of spring, the heat of the sun, for them to start growing. And what happens is, the seeds that the sower is sowing, were the outsiders. And as they newly begin to sprout, they never are able to outpass the strength of the roots of the thorns that are already resident. And so, soon the seedlings lose out for the battle, Jesus tells the story. Sunlight is taken up by their rapid growth, and so the little sprouts are left behind, and the thistles grow up, and soon are shading, and they're absorbing all the moisture, and these little seedlings that the farmer threw out there are literally crowded out, choked, and die because of the thistles that are there. Well, then Jesus continues and he gives the last comparison, the soil that was good, and Jesus points out the last condition of the soil and he says, but other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up It increased, it produced, some 30-fold, some 60, some 100. But remember, the story that Jesus is pointing to on the hillside has these elements. The soil is the very same soil in all four pictures. It all looks the same. Now some parts are walked on, but it's the same color, it's the same texture, it's just some of it's been walked on for a long time, and some of it There's something underneath there, rock, but you can't see it. And some of it has these roots of the thistles and brambles you can't see. But the good soil looks just like the shallow soil and the thorny soil. Because it's all the same soil. In all four pictures, it's rich agricultural dirt. And it's the same farmer. It's the same seed. It's the same sun. It's the same rainfall. The only difference is the conditioning that each soil has gotten. And that's where Jesus starts preaching his sermon. Jesus says the path of the wayside area of the field has become hardened and packed down. The rocky area of the field has these submerged rocks that were never removed. The weedy area of the field contains the roots that were never tracked down. The farmer could go through and rake. The farmer could go through and follow these root trails of these thistles, but it was a lot of work. And that never occurred. The rocks were never taken out. And what Jesus is saying is that the soil that's good is good because it's not hardened, it's not shallow, it's not infested with weeds. That's what makes it good. And then Jesus pauses His story at the end of verse 8 when He tells this, and look what it says in verse 9. You know, you don't have a tape recording of this, and so, it was so vivid as Mark's capturing this moment, that he throws in, if you have a red letter edition, he throws in the black words. And then he said. See, Jesus is telling the story, and everybody's just following every word. They can just see the guy throwing the seed, and they're looking, and they can just imagine, because they'd all seen thorny bushes, and they'd all seen vibrant crops, and Jesus pauses, dramatically. And everybody looks at it. waiting to hear what's next. And he says, verse 9, as Jesus paused, each person who heard him was agreeing mentally with what he said. They all knew from daily life that each farmer faced the same challenges when sowing a crop. They hoped for a harvest. And then the moment of truth comes. Jesus gives his final statement in verse 9, and he said to them, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And this is what we call the parabolic lightning, the flash in each person's mind. You see, as Jesus told this story, he was holding their attention. He was showing them something that they all could relate to, and then all of a sudden he sticks in the application. He says, do you see something in that field that you relate to? that you need to respond to, that you need to do something about. And that lightning flashed in their hearts. And they're saying, yes, it's true. Yes, the hard pack can't get the seeds. The shallow soil terminates growth. The thistles choke seedlings. Yes, the good soil always rewards the farmer with a crop. And you know what? That was the whole goal of the story that Christ told. Bingo! They all had tracked with Him because He told such a simple story. The only purpose of a farmer's sowing is to get plants to come to maturity and harvest. And the truth seekers sitting out there and standing out there that day would ponder, and then they would start wanting to go to him and ask him some questions. Questions like, who's the sower? What's the seed? What does a stony soil mean? What does the thistle-y soil mean? How can I be good soil? And that's exactly what Jesus wanted. So the disciples, in verse 10, do that. And they come to him. Look down at verse 33, by the way. They didn't do this just once. And I'm going to go through his sermon on it in just a moment. But look at verse 33. And with many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. But without a parable, he did not speak to them. And when they were alone, he explained all things to his disciples." You see, they wanted to know. They wanted the further truth. Well, what was Jesus showing them? Let me go through. Basically, look at verse 14. This is Jesus' application. I wish Jesus would have done this and recorded it in the Gospels for every parable he told. In fact, do you know why he didn't? Jesus asked them in another gospel, he says, do you understand? After he got done doing seven in a row, he asked them, do you understand these parables? And they said, yes, we do, Lord. I don't think they did, because they never reflected it. And someday in heaven, I'm going to say to Peter and the rest, why didn't you let him write the rest down? I would love to have had Jesus explain every parable like this. I wish they hadn't acted. It's kind of like we all say, do you understand that? And we all go, uh-huh. Do you know where you're going? Uh-huh. And then we don't. And they were so human. But look at what the explanation says, chapter 4, verse 14. Is anyone spreading the message of salvation? That's what the first part says. Jesus said, the sower sows the word. So it's anybody that's giving out the message of salvation. The last part of verse 14, the seed is God's word. In fact, it actually says that in Luke 8.11. It says the seed is the word of God. Verse 15, Jesus says, and those are the ones by the wayside. But look at the end of verse 15. It says, it takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. So in my Bible, I circled in their hearts, and I said, soil equals heart. And in verse 14, so's the word, seed equals word of God. Okay, so Jesus has kind of given us the explanation. Verses 15 to 20, then, are four responses to the word. And in verse 20, only one soil, one heart, experiences what the word is supposed to do, that's bears a crop for harvest. Now, what makes the condition of those soils so different. Because if you pause and think about it, like the hearers were supposed to do back then, it will deeply touch you. I mean, I spent all week, I told Bonnie last night, I said, you know, I've read this story ever since I was old enough to hear Bible stories. My parents read it to me. And I've never spent a whole week thinking about the sower in the seed. Let me show you what I mean. Because Jesus begins telling about the impenetrable hard and sensitive heart. That's what I call the first one. That's the one that starts in verse 15. And Jesus is explaining oceans of truth, if we'll just pause to listen. And as I go through this, I want you to ask yourself, is this how I am? I mean, this is really, really simple stuff. And I think we can all relate to it, because Jesus is describing the first soil as the soil that the seed bounces on and never gets into. Now, apply that to the 21st century, okay? Here we go. Hard-hearted people are resistant. They are people that live right on the edge of a fruitful field, and yet they're unconverted. That's what he's saying. I mean, this hard-packed path was right there, abutting, attached to a part of the very same soil as the fruitful field. It's the very same soil. It's connected. It's right there. We're not talking about, you know, out in the desert somewhere. We're talking about agricultural stuff. So what he's saying is, you don't have to be far from God to be hard-hearted. You can actually be here this morning. Singing, going to Sunday school, and being hard-hearted. What is hardness? Well, hardness is people who hear sermons and never can remember what they were about. Think about that. It just drops on them. Kind of like right after you put that stuff on your deck, you watch the rain, and the rain, as soon as it hits it, beads up and it never goes anywhere. There is an insensitivity to God. Did you know that it doesn't matter if the sermon's good or bad, it doesn't matter if the speaker is entertaining or not, if they're captivating or not, if the Word of God is contained at all in the message, that part should sink in. It's very dangerous to never hear anything when God's Word is spoken. So not only does nothing ever sink in, they seem to be resistant and unstirred by God. They go to church for show. Preaching doesn't interest them. They sit with their mind on other things. They sit through, they go through the motion, but actually they're thinking about this afternoon, they're thinking about last week, they're thinking about next week, what they're going to accomplish. And they just sit there, and it all goes on around them, and they're totally impenetrable. to any of this God stuff. They leave with no more truth than they came with. They live with no fear of God, no faith, and they don't experience Christ. Spiritually, they feel not, care not, want not, have not. In other words, the impenetrable hearts. Christ's death has no effect on their life. No effect. They live, and they die, and they go, sadly, to a Christless hell, sitting right next to the field where the crops are growing, where the Word is received. In fact, if you've been in the ministry very long, every one of these four soils are in every church. You see it. over the years. And it's tragic. These are those hardened by the wheels of life. How did that pathway, by the way, get to be that way? It used to be good soil, but it has a lot of traffic. And these people are hardened by the wheels of life. The hooves of their prejudices, their fears, falsehoods that they picked up trample down the pathway of truth. And their souls get hardened. They are spiritually insensitive. Life becomes merely the beer and sports page of life. The beauty shop and gossip. They aren't overly bad, they just don't care about God. Sometimes they're hostile to the gospel, but most often they're just disinterested. I mean, they go to church. I come into this all the time. When I go out with you, when we go door to door from this church, I meet these people all the time. They're not bad, they just don't care. Life has just trampled them down and everything going on and they are totally hardened to any movement of God in their heart or life. They're not overly bad. They're just dead to anything to do with God. Sometimes their days are busy and that's Christ's point of the road of life, the pathway, the wayside. God is not relevant to them. They're a place that's so used and so traveled and their life is so full of activity that they have substituted activity for response to God and they can no longer receive messages from God. What a sober first century warning to us who live in a life that travels at speeds that were unimaginable 75 years ago. I mean, Jesus said these people are too busy for God. Their life is too full. It's packed it down. They don't ever reflect. They don't ever receive. They don't ever ponder what they hear. They just brush it off because their life is like a pathway. It's just constantly traveled and it's beating their heart down. Well, boy, if first century people could be like that, we so the more. because life goes by just at warp speed. And whenever a seed of God's Word lands in this busy life, it's either crushed under the traffic of their life, or it's quickly scooped up with the flutter of Satan's birds of distractions. And the only hope for such a hard path is to be broken up. And that's why sometimes God brings upheaval into these people's lives, the disinterested, the ones that God doesn't matter, and their whole life gets upheaved by cancer, or a lost job, or a tragedy, or they find themselves in a ditch somewhere, or in a jail cell, or something, and their whole life is turned on in. And in that moment, and think about that, when did you finally start listening to God? many people first heard his voice when he breaks up the ground of their life and and stops their busy life and in the hospital or or in the service or or in a disaster or in a waiting room finally they're so shocked that they start listening but most sadly in Christ's story here don't and their lives are hard and when the living and abiding word falls on the soil, it bounces off. And the living and abiding word doesn't bring the fruit that leads to repentance. And so what Jesus is saying is if you're in a horror and if God is not in your thoughts, watch out. And if your life's been turned upside down and you find yourself in the ditch of life and you don't stop and say, Am I supposed to be doing, listening to you in some way? If you never do that, God only promises that you can hear his voice so long. He says, while you hear my voice, while I'm knocking, while I'm putting you in the ditch, don't harden your heart. Because if you do, there comes a time when he won't knock any longer. That's the danger of the wayside heart. It never gets the Word to come in. Well, we're going to see the others next week. But what's the application for us? I'd say the majority of us have received the Word of God. You know what the application is? You can stop hearing the voice of God if you get too busy. If you let the traffic of life beat you down. And so Jesus is talking to believers as well as unbelievers. This is an unsaved person until their hearts soften. But hear His Word. And through that window of truth, when he says, watch out, the traffic of life can beat you down, look through that window into spiritual truth and say, God, then what do you want me to change in my busy life so I can hear your voice better and follow you more closely? Let's ask him that. Let's bow together. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you that the implanted word bears the fruit of salvation, of a transformed life. of forgiveness, of an awareness of you in every part of life, of a sensitivity, of a responsiveness. I pray for any wayside, impenetrable hearts, that you would break them up, that you would soften them and let them hear your voice. And I pray that while they hear your voice, they will not harden again. And for us who hear you, may we guard our lives, lest our hearts get trampled down with traffic and we grow increasingly unable to hear your voice. Thank you for all of your blessings. Bless your word to our lives. We pray in the matchless name of Jesus and for his glory. Amen.