New Testament : The Parable of the Sower? Meaning of the Parable of the Sower: “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.” (Mark 4:8) First, there is the hard heart, the seed that falls along the roadside. This represents people who hear the Word of God, but never really believe. Then there is the shallow heart. That is the seed that falls on stony ground. This signifies the people who hear the Word of God and receive it with joy, but because there is no root to sustain them, they wither.
Thorny places implies people whose hearts are filled with worldly lust and other pleasures which don’t allow the word of God to grow in their hearts. Good ground is the heart of those who accept the word of God and produce good fruits for their Master by obeying word of God. The seeds were sown in all kinds of soils. They were not specifically sown on good ground alone. Similarly, nowadays, through technological advancement everyone in the world is getting the word of God by various media. As each and every individual is special in the eyes of God, the word of God reaches everyone without difference in race or country or colour or language.
The Parable of the Sower (sometimes called the Parable of the Soils) is a parable of Jesus found in the three different Gospel books of The Holy Bible in Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, and Luke 8:4-15. Speaking to a large crowd, Jesus tells a story of a farmer who sows the seed and does so indiscriminately. Some seed falls on the wayside with no soil at all, some on rocky ground with little soil, some on soil which contains thorns, and some on good soil. In the first three cases, the seed is taken away or fails to produce a crop, but when it falls on good soil it grows, yielding thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold. See even more details on the The Parable of the Sower video on YouTube.
Later, Jesus explains to his disciples that the seed represents the Gospel, the sower represents anyone who proclaims Jesus is the messiah and Son of God, God the Father himself. The various soils represent people’s responses to it, The first three representing rejection and not holding onto their faith while the last one represents holding and growing their faith until the end. The Parable of the Sower story begins with a farmer in this farmer who had a big huge bag of seeds. He decided one day that he was going to go into his field and he was going to start sowing seeds.
Now wait for a second here I’ve heard of sewing machines and sewing clothes, but I’ve never heard of sowing seeds. What does “The Parable of the Sower” mean? Well, sowing seeds actually just means to scatter or to throw seeds. So the farmer went to his field, he started to scatter seeds around and throw seeds around into the field. Some of the seeds fell onto a path while other seeds fell onto Rocky soil. Still, others fell into the soil with thorn bushes. And finally, some seeds fell into good soil. Now after some time, the seeds that fell onto the path were snatched up and eaten by birds.
Another kind of soil that Jesus tells us about, another kind of human heart is one where the seed falls and in thorny soil and the seed sprouts up and it would be someone who says yes I believe this gospel. I want to live according to this gospel. But then the thorns or the cares of this world, as Jesus says, rise up and just choke it out. The person begins to get distracted by money or by the pursuit of power or by the pursuit of worldly pleasures and before long, the plant that grew out of the seed of the word, just shrivels up and dies.