Bulletin Articles
“Good Soil”
Categories: Iron sharpens iron“A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.” (Luke 8.5-8)
Jesus explains the parable in the verses that follow, saying that the seed represents the word of God, and the soils are different types of people—specifically, they are different types of hearts, as Jesus says that the word is “sown in [a person’s] heart” (Mt 13.19).
The path, where feet have constantly tamped down and compacted the soil, represents a hardened heart. The seed finds no way to penetrate beneath the surface, nor is it sheltered from the birds—representing Satan. He “takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved” (Lk 8.12). It’s important to note that Jesus specifically mentions that these people do not believe the word they hear—not because we would have concluded otherwise, but because we might have assumed the same thing about the next two types of soil. We would have been mistaken!
The rock represents those who “believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away” (v13). Contrary to the earnest desire and conclusion of many, a moment of belief and profession does not bear fruit and lead to eternal life. Jesus himself, while encouraging belief, says that many will believe, yet fall away through lack of soil, and lack of firm rooting.
The thorny ground also receives the word—these people also believe, and even produce a more enduring growth than the rock. But where’s the fruit? It’s not that the word has produced no growth, but the plant faces too much competition for limited resources due to the weeds that surround it. Although it may eke out a brief existence, there’s no way for it to sustain itself in the long run through bearing fruit—creating more seed.
Finally there’s the good soil, “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience” (v15). This represents the whole package, and the intended outcome is achieved: a bountiful harvest a hundred times as plentiful as the seed that was scattered over the ground at the beginning.
It would be a terrible misfortune, then, to be the wrong type of soil. Right? It’s a tragedy of fate, or destiny, or whatever you might call it—God’s arbitrary providence, perhaps? The Nile Delta was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, but the Sinai desert was so barren that God had to provide bread from heaven for the Israelites. Some hearts are created as good soil, and others are created as clay and stone. Whose fault is this, if not God’s?
But that’s not fair. God also gave us minds, and we’re capable of understanding why our own gardens fail to produce what we want; furthermore, we are capable of addressing the problems and achieving the desired outcome. We can all till the soil, remove the rocks, and pull up the weeds—in fact, if we don’t, we have no one to blame but ourselves for a poor yield. What did we expect? So what can you do, if the fruit you produce isn’t good, or isn’t as plentiful as the farmer—Jesus—expected? How can you turn your heart into good soil for God’s word?
You can soften your hard heart to allow the word a place to take root, sheltered from the devil who wants to take it away. This process will be invasive and uncomfortable, but avoiding that pain will do you no good, when judgment comes. Your heart may be hard enough to keep God’s word out for now, but he promises that one day, “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God” (Ro 14.11).
You can break up and dig up the rocks, or build a more fertile soil above them. In a garden, we’d layer organic material and minerals. For a heart, we must grow a depth of vision and character that is not only interested in the superficial and pleasant aspects of God’s kingdom, but can bear fruit over the long haul, due to a rich and healthy system of unseen roots, nourished in the fertile ground prepared beneath the surface.
Finally, you can—and must!—deliberately remove the thorns and weeds that will grow in any remotely fertile environment. There’s great competition for our attention and our resources, and by entertaining these seeds scattered by the workings of the natural world in addition to those sown by God, we deprive God’s seed of both our attention, and of the resources it needs in order to produce fruit in us. Eliminate distractions from your responsibility to bear fruit for God. More will sprout tomorrow, of course—the work of weeding never truly ends, as long as the work of farming continues.
The difference between the good soil and the bad isn’t limited to external circumstances that happen to befall each parcel of land—each person’s heart. Those things matter, of course; it’s much easier to grow corn in southwest Indiana than in the Mojave Desert. But when you drive past an empty field in April with rich, dark, consistent, well aerated soil and not a speck of green to be seen, do you conclude that this came about naturally? No, someone deliberately worked that soil in order to prepare it for planting and give it the best possible chance of providing a good crop. Prepare your heart in the same way.
Jeremy Nettles
