Our churches—good, bible-believing, gospel-preaching, evangelical churches—are quite likely to have people who consider themselves to be believers but who produce no fruit in keeping with righteousness.…These are the people Jesus said will claim they did all sorts in the name of the Lord and yet He will say to them, “depart from me, I never knew you.”

Everybody knows the parable of the sower. A sower scatters some seed, Jesus explains the seed is the Word of God. It then falls on four different kinds of ground representing various responses to the gospel. Not only does almost everybody know it, it is a very simple and straightforward parable. So much so, JC Ryle said this about it:

Of all the parables spoken by our Lord, none is probably so well-known as this. There is none which is so easily understood by all, from the gracious familiarity of the figures which it contains. There is none which is of such universal and perpetual application. So long as there is a Church of Christ and a congregation of Christians, so long there will be employment for this parable. The language of the parable requires no explanation. To use the words of an ancient writer, “it needs application, not exposition.”

The problem with over-familiarity, however, is it can tend to cause us to skip over the details because we assume we know it already.

The parable (I think) would generally be explained in the following way. The first ground represents those who never come to trust in Christ; they hear the gospel and reject it out of hand. The second ground represents those who profess faith and seem to press on, but they encounter some trial or suffering and then fall away. The third ground represents those who appear to press on for a time and then ‘the cares of the world’ cause them to fall away later. The final kind of soil are believers who are genuine and continue to press on with Jesus.

I have no particular quibbles with the descriptions of the first and fourth kinds of ground. I think the second kind of ground may have a bit more to it, but again I think I can essentially go along with that. But I think the third kind of soil is typically the most poorly applied.

Read More