CreationFoundation
-- Home Page/Contents
22
-- THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER
Then His disciples asked Him, saying, "What does this parable mean?" And He said, "To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, 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 by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.
Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and with patience {perseverance] bear fruit.
Once again we see that although Jesus preaches the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God to the world in general, he is also calling out and training a small group of disciples. Notice again the key phrase: He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Scholars are troubled by this approach, and one of them comments: "Why did Jesus now begin to speak in parables? A ready answer would be: to make truth plain. His own explanation, however, indicates that this answer will not do. In fact, it looks as though his purposes were to veil the truth. But would Jesus ever deliberately seek to keep the truth from men? The fact is, Jesus used parables both to reveal and to conceal truth. Whether truth was made plain or was hidden depended solely on the quality of spiritual curiosity and receptivity of the hearer!" (Saint Luke, by D.G. Miller).
Miller is in fact correct -- and parables can make Truth plain to those prepared to ponder and probe for it. The disciples of Jesus, it appears, receive the spiritual curiosity and receptivity he refers to as part of their calling. To others, although the parables may be academically interesting they appear to have no real significance, and may even be regarded as religious nonsense (1 Corinthians 2:14).
In the previous section, Jesus warned his disciples of the danger of merely hearing but not applying this words -- and the key point in this famous parable seems to be an additional and very sober warning to those who have been called out and given ears to hear and the ability to begin to comprehend this awesome calling, that they must take immense care not to neglect it because of the worries of life and pressure of other things.
Perhaps it is significant that in a talk I attended recently, the speaker from the Salisbury Diocese was moved to say of the nominal Christian congregations he ministers to: "If only we did pray and if only we did study the Bible, how different things would be!"
Notice again, in the last line of this section, the reference to a slow and steady process of spiritual development -- as the word of God takes root in the disciple's life and grows like a tree or bush and then bears good fruit.