Luke 8: 4-15

Jonathan Bellamy

Read afresh The Parable Of The Sower in Luke 8: 4-15

There's a common assumption that people think the parable of the sower is all about salvation. It is, but it is more than that, it is about our journey of faith - a description of the thresholds that every person needs to breakthrough in to come to maturity.

Jesus describes 4 soils that the seed falls on. These soils relate to the state of our hearts.

Soil One - This one IS about the moment of salvation. Jesus describes the birds of the air as the devil taking the word away from their hearts so 'they may not believe and be saved'.

Soil Two - This describes someone who has received and believed that Christ is the way to be saved but they have not chosen, or seen to choose, to build on this initial point of contact with God. Their roots haven't gone down into Jesus. So when issues come along they have very little equipping to see how to find the Father and they will choose to try to save and protect themselves by taking back control of their lives. Jesus says 'Come to me all who are tired and heavy laden and I will give rest for your souls. LEARN from me for I am gentle and humble of heart. Take my yoke upon you.' (Matthew 11:28-30) i.e. be connected to me and journey with me so I can reveal all the riches of the kingdom available to you if you will believe. He says 'Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness...' (Matthew 6:33) - or Seek me and my way, my truth and my life first and you will find the solutions, the revelations, the overcoming mindset for anything this world can throw at you. Jesus offers 'living water' (John 7:38), yet this seed dies because it does not root in deep enough and cannot find enough moisture to survive.

Soil Three - This describes the thorns that choke us from coming into maturity as a disciple. The thorns are described as 'worries, riches and pleasures', which at their root are really FEAR, SECURITY and FULFILMENT/INTIMACY. As a disciple grows with the Lord, the Lord teaches him how to be an overcomer. One of the greatest challenges is to mature whereby you are content whether you have money or not. Paul said he had learned the secret to being content whether in lack or plenty (Philippians 4:11). Another scripture says 'You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon' (Matthew 6:24) - God wants to break us free from the belief that there is a security in money. And it is a powerful security because it is the only thing that God puts on a par with himself! The third soil is those who are held back because they are not convinced that God is a greater reality than the security they find in money. It is also those who do not believe that they can truly find fulfilment and intimacy in Christ and substitute or make up the difference by giving themselves to other pleasures - this is at the root of addictions, overeating, overdrinking, watching things you shouldn't etc. You take fulfilment from these things because you haven't believed you could get it from the Lord. You may have submitted your life to God in many ways but this is a deep root in your make up. The parable says that the thorns 'grew up with the seed' in other words this inherent nature was already in us, and our Father's desire is to gradually convince us of His provision and the fulfilling nature of intimacy from Him and so slowly root out these thorns. If we keep holding back from taking those inner steps of faith at this level we will know the Father at a certain level but not go on to maturity.

Soil Four - At this level the soil of our hearts hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop onehundredfold. It is not overnight. The hundredfold crop is produced over the journey of a lifetime of finding the Father and being obedient to Him, coming to a point of deep trust and confidence in His understanding, His wisdom, His ways, and being at peace to abandon yourself into His care and control of your life.

We say when we get saved that we 'give our lives to Him'. In reality it takes a long journey of gradually relinquishing control, but the more we do, the deeper we let go, the more fruitful we are.

None of these soils where the seed lands is supposed to be the final soil of your heart. We all wrestle at all these levels. Many of us wrestled to come to that first decision of embracing Christ as our Saviour. We have wrestled to dig our roots into Him, and we struggle to believe He is a greater security than finance. But our Father is a gardener and He works in the soil of our heart to make it good soil that will produce a harvest as long as we stay in Him. He will remove the rocks if we let Him, He will remove the thorns if we let Him and He can turn the soil of our hearts into good soil that can bear a onehundredfold crop - much fruit. ('Those who remain in me will bear fruit - fruit, much fruit, lasting fruit' see John 15: 1-17)

How does the gardener of our hearts work? Think of the challenges and trials in your life. In pressures and trials, the enemy tries to get you to doubt in God, to believe ill of Him - that He's not really with you, that He doesn't understand your pain, that you are just being abandoned and you're going to die. Out of these doubts come voices of fear, voices of anger and frustration. We try to get God to respond to these voices, but God doesn't respond to them. He doesn't appease the worries and fears of our flesh by giving in to them. Instead He Father's us towards a different truth - the truth of His character. So that when He says 'Do not worry about anything' He is saying 'You can live by this truth because I AM who I say I AM - I am your Father and I DO love you and I do care about you and care for you, and I will NOT leave you or abandon you and the security you can find in me is the surest, most real and most solid foundation for your life that you can find anywhere'.

Your Father doesn't give into your fear perspective. Instead, like teaching a little child how to walk, He stands at a small distance off and encourages you to take those steps of faith towards Him. He keeps waiting until you get to a point where you know that to go forward, to get out of this pain, will require you letting go of those wrong perceptions of your Father, and in faith choose to believe and to embrace the truth of the Father's heart towards you. To allow His truth to shape your understanding - and to be transformed through the renewing of your mind.

We choose to give ourselves to accepting and trusting that we belong to Him, that He doesn't abandon us, that He is a greater authority than any of our trials and circumstances, He is greater even than the enemy. As Paul said in Romans 8:38-39 "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord".

Like a father teaching and bringing up a son, he is training us to know WHO we are in Him, and the freedom we can live in in this world as a son of the King. We must learn to interpret our lives through the reality of being covered by and connected to our Almighty Father. Jesus was convinced of His Father's love and God will keep working in us until we become convinced too. He is 'authoring and perfecting' (Hebrews 12:2) our faith to bring this about.

One day we will come to the point like Paul where we can say 'it is no longer I that live but Christ that lives in me' (Galations 2:20). Everything of our flesh will be submitted under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and we will have come to maturity having a 'good and noble heart' able to produce a hundredfold crop in our lives.

Ultimately Jesus is showing us that the value of our lives, the success of our lives, and the fulfilment in our lives cannot be found in outward circumstances. 'A man's life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions' (Luke 12:15). Our lives are not measured against the quality of house or car we have; they are not successful simply because we have a job with authority, prestige or high wage; our fulfilment is ultimately not even in relationships with each other - it is not in finding a wife, having children, having close friends; it is not in being healthy or free from sickness. All these things God may give as blessings in this life but if we see them as the goal we miss the true prize, the true treasure, the pearl of great price that is worth giving everything for (Matthew 13:44).

As we want only Him and His will, to be faithful and true to Him we see our trials as the work of the Lord to work into us a treasure and a reality that is on a totally different dimension to what we think is important in this life. "Store up your treasures in Heaven where moth and rust don't destroy" (Matthew 6:19-20). Live for the eternal, live with a perspective that how you walk this life today affects what is being stored up for you for eternity: "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is seen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18.

Your Response:

Perhaps you know you do not have enough rooting in God, and don't get enough moisture. The heat of the day causes you to separate yourself from Him, to fall away from that position you have been given. Jesus said 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled' (Matthew 5:6). Come to the Father with the truth of your heart and ask Him to work in your life to cause you to 'hunger and thirst' after Him.

Perhaps you feel you are choked, held back by life's worries, riches and pleasures. You recognise it, it feels such a giant to let go and entrust to Him. But you want to come into increasing maturity. This journey requires perseverance and these are deep works. It requires a journey of healing and transformation, but as you bring out the truth to those in community with you and pray together you will begin to uncover the giant and begin to face it and take it on. Gradually as you persevere and continue in your journey of truth and intimacy with your Father, you will see Him liberate and remove from your heart these fears, belief in the security of money or addictions to other pleasures for your comfort, fulfilment and intimacy.