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POSTED
01 FEBRUARY, 2005
The Responsibility of the Sower
by
J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net
The Messianic community today is in a very profound state of
growth. Thousands of Believers all over North America and the
world are crying out to the Lord for more understanding and
insight concerning the Scriptures, as they know internally that
there is more to the Bible than what mainstream Christianity
commonly presents. These Believers, praying diligently to our
Heavenly Father, are being led into the Messianic movement and
are being convicted by the Spirit that they need to live a life
of Torah observance like Messiah Yeshua and His early followers.
This is creating great change in the lives of these people, as
they are growing like never before in their walk of faith, and
are actually hearing the voice of the Lord and knowing Him
unlike ever before.
This should be the testimony that we hear from those entering
into the Messianic community as we should be impacting others
positively, and should be here to help and minister to people in
their personal lives and walk of faith. Sadly, this is not
always the testimony that we hear. We do encounter individuals
who rather than entering into the Messianic movement because
they were convicted by the Word of God and verses of Scripture,
were instead sensationalized by a book, article, or teaching,
and are in our midst to do things other than grow and mature
spiritually. The attitudes of such people often do not include
critical Biblical concepts such as love, grace, and mercy, but
many of them are mean-spirited, hateful, and resentful toward
their Christian brothers and sisters who do not understand them.
These
negative attitudes will have to be contended with until the
Messiah returns. But understanding the fact that the Messianic
movement is going to continue to grow, we can learn from the
mistakes of others and we can commit ourselves to doing the
right thing, helping people grow the right way. Yeshua’s parable
of the sower has some very important lessons that we as the
Messianic community need to learn, both about how this message
is received, and even more importantly, how it is presented to
other people.
The Parable of the Sower: What We Already Know
Yeshua’s parable of the sower is one of the most familiar
stories to any student of the Bible, as it is frequently taught
in Sunday schools and in remedial teachings on the New
Testament. It appears in all three of the Synoptic Gospels in
Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8. Generally speaking, these
portions of Scripture are used to talk about the sowers, those
being preachers of the gospel, sowing the seed or good news of
salvation in Messiah Yeshua, to the world. The seed is cast onto
various types of soil, and either the seed takes root and
sprouts, or it does not. Basically, this is to represent how the
gospel message is received in various ways by various types of
people. The shortest of these accounts appears in Luke 8:4-8:
“When a large crowd was coming together, and those from the
various cities were journeying to Him, He spoke by way of a
parable: ‘The sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed,
some fell beside the road, and it was trampled under foot and
the birds of the air ate it up. Other seed
fell on rocky
soil, and as soon as it grew up, it withered away,
because it had no moisture. Other seed
fell among the
thorns; and the thorns grew up with it and choked it out. Other
seed fell into the good soil, and grew up, and produced a
crop a hundred times as great.’ As He said these things, He
would call out, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’”
Yeshua describes the types of ground that the seeds are cast
onto, saying that (1) some is cast beside the road, (2) some is
trodden down by the feet of others, causing the birds to eat it,
(3) some falls on rocky ground and wastes away, and then (4)
some falls on good soil and yields a great produce. Yeshua then
describes what this means to His Disciples, who are perplexed.
The Scripture says,
“His disciples began questioning Him as to what this
parable meant. And He said, ‘To you it has been granted to know
the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest
it is
in parables, so that
seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand’”
(Luke 8:9-10).
In
Yeshua’s response to His Disciples, He tells them in response to
their questions that they have been told the mysteries of the
Kingdom by Him, but others are told the message in parables,
which can be challenging to understand to the undiscerning. He
quotes to them Isaiah 6:9. Isaiah 6:8-10 says, “Then I heard the
voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go
for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’ He said, ‘Go, and
tell this people: “Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep
on looking, but do not understand.” Render the hearts of this
people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim,
otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.’”
This Scripture details the calling of Isaiah into the service of
the God of Israel as a prophet. The Lord tells Isaiah to
prophecy to the people, “Hear, indeed, but do not understand;
see, indeed, but do not grasp” (NJPS), in that most of the
people to whom he will be prophesying will not understand the
message. Yeshua applies this same Scripture to Himself. Most of
the people to whom He will be preaching are not going to
understand. This is why they cannot understand the simplistic,
yet profound meanings of His parables. This is how serious each
one of us has to seek out Yeshua and truly press into God for
salvation and deliverance. Sometimes we have to put our human
minds aside, so we can let God be God and teach us lessons that
affect our relationship with Him.
Yeshua then proceeds to describe the meaning of His parable,
telling His Disciples, “To you it has been granted to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest
it is in
parables, so that SEEING THEY MAY NOT SEE, AND HEARING THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND.
Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God. Those
beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes
and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not
believe and be saved. Those on the rocky soil are
those
who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have
no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of
temptation fall away. The seed which fell among the
thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on
their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures
of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity. But the
seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the
word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear
fruit with perseverance” (Luke 8:10-15).
This has largely been interpreted as representing how the gospel
message is received and then enacted in the lives of those who
hear it. There are those who hear the message, but Satan takes
it away from them before anything is able to be accomplished, as
the seed falls by the road and then gets swept away. These
people are unable to be saved. There are those who are like
rocky soil, in whom a plant is able to sprout, but it has no
stable root. Because of the lack of any foundation the person
falls away from the faith when the temptations of the world
come. The third group is those who grow up among thorns, and the
thorns, representing the riches and pleasures of the world,
choke them out, thus prohibiting them from becoming mature
Believers. The fourth are those who grow properly and sprout
much fruit. This comes by perseverance, and by always having the
“proper soil,” representative of humble, contrite, and sincere
people who are truly seeking after God.
This
view of Yeshua’s parable of the sower has absolute merit, and it
is important for us to understand it as Believers who have
received the Messiah into our lives, and have received
salvation. Some of us may have been, or be involved, in
evangelism, and we have no doubt encountered these reactions to
the gospel message, and have sadly seen people that we know fall
away from the faith, or at the very least have a massively
ineffective spiritual walk. Every day, we as individuals must go
before our Heavenly Father, and pray that the good news that we
accepted as truth one day in our lives perhaps years ago, fell
on proper soil, and is continually growing and sprouting fruit.
Part of being able to sprout fruit, is that as in any good
garden, or field of produce, that we be continually cultivated.
Spiritually for us as Believers, this means that we are to pray,
ask the Lord to convict us of areas of our lives that need to
change, and show us new things from His Word that can make us
more effective for the work or service that He has for us.
J.K. McKee
(B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury
Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN
Online (www.tnnonline.net) and is a Messianic
apologist.
He is a 2009 recipient of the Zondervan Biblical
Languages Award for Greek.
He
is author of
numerous books, dealing with a wide range of
topics that are important for today’s
Messianic Believers. He has also written many articles on
theological issues,
and is presently focusing his attention on Messianic commentaries
of various books of the Bible. |
