05 - "Hear Ye the Parable of the Sower"
“HEAR YE THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.”
“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand.”Ecclesiastes 2:6.
“In the name of God advancing, Sow thy seed at morning light;
Cheerily the furrows turning, Labor on with all thy might.
Look not to the far-off future, Do the work which nearest lies;
Sow thou must before thou reapest, Rest at last is labor’s prize.
“Standing still is dangerous ever.
Toil is meant for Christians now;
Let there be, when evening cometh.
Honest sweat on every brow; And the Master shall come smiling. At the setting of the sun.
Saying, as He pays thy wages, ’ Good and faithful one, well done! ’ “ From unknown German Author, ’’HEAR YE THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.”
Matthew 13:1-58, Mark 4:1-41, Luke 8:1-56.
Christ challenges the closest attention to this first parable.
Let us give heed to the Master’s words, asking, as sincere disciples, for the interpretation, while we examine the parable and its exposition by our Lord.
It is a part of that great revelation of Himself which God has made to His people. Jehovah is become the seed of a divine life within man, and the husbandman to cultivate that life to a perfect harvest. The King of kings is become the Father of His people; the omnipotent God reveals Himself as the tenderly merciful and long-suffering Redeemer; the Judge of all the earth bows in deep humiliation to bear His people’s burdens; the omniscient One, with His own blood, blots out of His sight the sins of His redeemed. We cannot of ourselves add anything to the sum of holiness, and even as we try to reflect the holiness of God, it is marred by our shadows, and the mirrored image is often a deformed one. With our reflection of the gentleness, charity, and zeal of Christ, we are ever mingling our own harshness and coldly formal service. We are sinful, and, strive as we may, we always fall short of any great attainment in righteousness.
Yet the seed of a divinely perfect life is sown within us, and the infinitely wise Sower, who knew the end from the beginning, has prophesied a full harvest. This seed is the ’’word of the kingdom.” *’Thy word is truth,” — the truth that scattered in human hearts brings ’’ the kingdom of God and His righteousness” into the world of human life and sinfulness. This parable, so wonderfully fitted to the occasion when the divine Teacher used it to describe that crowd standing by Genesareth, is as accurately true to-day in every assembly to which the gospel is preached.
Four classes of hearers were defined then, and all four are here to-day. You belong to one, and only one, of these classes. THE SCENE.
What a picture Is here suggested by the inspired writer! A great multitude full of enthusiasm, curious, excited, crowding out of Capernaum and the neighboring villages, eager to catch every word of the wonderful Teacher. Pressed by the throng, this Teacher steps into a boat, and a few strokes of the oars carry Him and His disciples away from the crowd, yet He waits near enonorh to the shore for all the multitude to hear. Only a narrow strip of water separated His body from the crowd, but what an infinite distance separated Him in spirit from them! A rude pulpit, that unsteady fishing boat, but from it came a message as abiding and as powerful as truth from God.
Five hundred feet below the level of the sea, in a cleft of the hills, lies the lake of Galilee. Thus, as if from the lowest station He could reach, Christ spake to the multitude crowding the shore that sloped gently up from the water’s edge to the mountain ridge above. Before His eyes were large and busy towns and hamlets, and terraced hills covered with fruitful vineyards, — Gennesaret, the ’’garden of princes.”
Probably as His eyes return from the Father’s face, He sees a sower scattering erain on the hill-side above and behind the waiting crowd that stood like the ploughed field ready to receive the seed.
We can almost see them turn to look as He bids them, ’’Behold, the sower went forth to sow’’
Galilee’s lake still lies among her silent hills, pure and clear as when this parable was spoken; but sail and oar now seldom disturb her waters. The villages and vineyards that once lay all along her shores are to be traced only in a few ruins; and the crowds that listened to the voice of Jesus are two thousand years away beyond death. Still that voice speaks to us, and still those seeds of truth fall like heavenly manna upon our hungry souls, and to-day are producing a richer and grander harvest in our world than even when they came in all their freshness and vigor from the Master’s heart. Rather, we are still reaping the fruits of that sowing of the divine husbandman. These fruits are in all our thoughts and hopes, in all our homes and cities, fruits that have their root in that Master’s life and work two thousand years ago. THE SEED.
“Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the (clean) heart fervently; having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth.”1 Peter 1:23.
“The seed is the word of God!’
All teachings are seeds that must produce some fruit in every life into which they fall. All uttered thoughts are seeds that hold within themselves some life for future growth. In what a high sense must this be true of the “ Word of God,” which He spake who was Himself the power within all His teachings!
Observe this seed. It is from God, who knows man thoroughly, his history, his needs, and’ his capabilities; who also knows the truth in its own greatness, in its fitness to deliver man into highest freedom, and in its life-giving power as represented to the world in Jesus. The all-wise God, knowing the end from the beginning, has given this seed of life as perfectly adapted to supply man’s need, and to grow up in him to an endless life.
Christ scatters the seed with a perfect knowledge of all this, and with an eternal purpose that it shall produce an abundant harvest in every good and honest heart. For us the Bible, like a treasure house, contains this seed. “ Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are they which bear witness of me.” Treat this book reverently then, for it holds the words of life, the truth concerning Him who is ’’the way, the truth, and the life,” to every good and honest heart.
Christ is both seed and Sower. ’’ He that soweth the good seed is the Son of many Matthew 13:37. But He is also the Word of truth, the holy Logos, the perfect expression of the thought of God.
“God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.”
God hath been made manifest unto us who do believe in Him. Prophets told us the truth of God; the Son revealed the person of God. They knowing only in part, could reveal only in part; He knowing the truth in the very counsels of the Father in all its fullness, uttered truth in all its greatness and wealth. Coming through human prophets and teachers by human language and symbols, it came slowly by changing modes and with varying meaning. Coming by a Son, yea in a Son, who bore in His own nature the express Image of the Father, the manifestation of the truth was perfect, complete and unchangeable. The great and wide universe, with its unnumbered worlds, with all its infinite variety and wealth of life and beauty, is but the incarnation of a few of the thoughts of God. All the tremendous energy manifested in the movements of the worlds of the universe, and all the accuracy displayed in their perfect order, are simply partial expressions of the energy and accuracy of the divine Mind. They ought to be, and are becoming more and more, the illustrations of the workings of that Being whose nature is truth. They, are the utterances of the mind of God, in a language we only partially understand, and at the best we can read from them a very indefinite knowledge of Jehovah.
We would see, and God would have us see, a grander and nearer, a richer and plainer, expression of Himself. We needed an expression of our God that could come to our seared consciences with the voice of life’s Omniscient Judge, that could speak to our sin-narrowed souls with the expanding, exalting voice of eternal life, that could speak to our darkened hearts with the voice of the Father of lights, that could meet our repentance with divine forgiveness, that could heal human sorrow with the compassion of a holy comforter, that could quicken hope by a revelation of the unseen glories of God and Heaven. God speaking in His Son is such an expression. Christ speaks God’s will, but it is by speaking God’s nature. He is the express image of the Father, the very utterance of His Being to our needy human race. This living Christ is the power within the seed, the Word within the word, that breaks the husk and brings forth a new life and growth within the soul. This divine life within the uttered word of truth, when it falls into proper soil, will put forth energy in a new life that shall strike its roots ever deeper and deeper, and send the foliage and blossoms and fruits higher and higher in growth towards Him who sowed the seed. The fault of failure to produce a good harvest cannot be in the sower or the seed. Indeed, if you scatter good seed in any manner upon soil properly prepared, it will grow. If failure come with good seed, the trouble is in the soil or its preparation. The Master illustrates this clearly and forcibly in the four classes of hearers.